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Description

To attempt to reduce costs during SEI, several heavy rocket configurations were studied using clusters of existing stages. This vehicle featured a first stage made from ten evolved Shuttle SRBs, a second stage built around 3 ET-sized tanks and 6 SSMEs, and a new third stage. These vehicles were mainly sized around the First Lunar Outpost mission profile as well as extensibility to future Mars missions. The clustering approach was generally not favored, due to extreme complexity of integration and high likelihood of extensive modifications being needed to their components, ultimately being comparable in difficulty to a clean-sheet design

Description

To attempt to reduce costs during SEI, several heavy rocket configurations were studied using clusters of existing stages. This vehicle featured a first stage made from ten evolved Shuttle SRBs, a second stage built around 3 ET-sized tanks and 6 SSMEs, and a new third stage. These vehicles were mainly sized around the First Lunar Outpost mission profile as well as extensibility to future Mars missions. The clustering approach was generally not favored, due to extreme complexity of integration and high likelihood of extensive modifications being needed to their components, ultimately being comparable in difficulty to a clean-sheet design