Space Transportation for the 21st Century

Space Transportation for the 21stCentury

Developed by Concerned American Aerospace Engineers

Coordinated by Nelson Aerospace Consulting

Executive Summary

Sustainable and affordable space transportation for the 21st century must be based on commercially operated reusable launch and space based vehicles. These vehicles will be designed to support near earth requirements, provide the capability for deep space exploration, and support Earth's need to obtain deep space resources. This requires a space transportation system that has the capability to return commercial quantities of near-earth and deep space resources to the Earth's surface…a commercial space shuttle.

The Commercial space Shuttle (CSS) will reduce shuttle operational launch cost to $205 million and have the capability to deploy and return payloads of 15 metric tons. The shuttle will be autonomously operated and use the orbiter airframe, external tank, and SRM boosters. Crews will be flown only on missions requiring their transfer to space based vehicles and they will be provided escape pods. Pad assembly of the shuttle will reduce operations cost and turnaround time. Rapid turn-around is a unique CSS feature which permits support of the USAF requirement and provide; the capability for timely intercepts of asteroids/comets that may impact earth.

The following chart shows the launch cost breakdown of the NASA space shuttle and the expected cost reductions for the CSS.

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