Well Drat!

We heard today that the company I work for (which shall remain nameless) was awarded the NASA contract for the Crew Exploration Vehicle. Actually, it wasn't my company. Lockheed-Martin got the contract, but my company was part of the Lockheed-Martin bid.

Yippee?

Well, yes and no. The CEV is an Apollo-like spacecraft designed to replace the Space Shuttle starting in 2010 (hold the laughs down, please). The first manned flight of the CEV is supposed to happen in 2012 (stop that snickering). On the one hand, the CEV makes a certain amount of sense to me. The Shuttle, whatever its other strengths and weaknesses, isn't very efficient. Having to heave a double-delta wing with a cross-range capability of about 1200 miles is good if you need a 1200-mile cross-range capability, but kind of a bummer if all you're doing is delivering crews to the ISS. (Litte did we realize at the time how much we would pay for the one-orbit return-to-launch-site capability!)

The CEV makes sense to me - I'm a product of the Apollo years, so of course it would make sense to me. Spacecraft are supposed to look like bells, not dang airplanes! So I'm pleased that the L-M CEV won, and I'm glad my company is a part of it.

But I've never been a fan of the "stick" booster, which has lately been given the name Ares I in an apparent attempt to distance it from its Shuttle provenance. Take a Shuttle SRB, plop another segment atop it, plop a J-2X powered second stage atop that, and you have an Ares I. My beef is with the SRB portion of the undertaking. I seem to have some kind of visceral problem with man-rating a booster that is entirely solid fuel.

Am I just being a wet blanket? Is my deep-seated preference for Apollo-like hardware forcing me to remain an outspoken proponent of the F-1 engine? Do I have a touch of von Braun-itis, the pathological aversion to anything not liquid-fueled?

I don't know. But I'd feel a lot better if the Ares I had a proper liquid fuel engine, like an F-1 derivative, or an RD-180, or if the Ares I amounted to nothing more than fancy paint on an Atlas V or a Delta IV Heavy. Say "liquid fuel" to me and I think Saturn V. Say "solid fuel" to me and I think Honest John. It's just that simple.

Or is it?