The Constellation Program
As of 2010 NASA's shuttle program will be ended an the shuttles will be retired. The retirement of the Shuttle program will make way for the Constellation program. The Constellation program is supposed to take man back to the Moon. For all the new space duties NASA has will be constructing some new rocket style space ships. There are currently a wide variety of designs for this new generation of manned and unmanned rockets. All of the new rocket plans have borrowed some of their traits from the shuttle program, like for instance the twin outside booster rockets which also hold fuel. Some of the larger rockets will also have a huge external fuel tank similar to the one used for the shuttles. NASA wanted to have what they call "heavy lifter" rockets able to carry much, much more cargo then any of the previous space crafts. To do this NASA has employed a number of improvements in the designs of the new space crafts. Many of the improvements rely on new alloys of materials such as stainless steel, and improved casting processes that allow complex parts to be made in one piece rather than welded from several components. Some of the designs have what is being called the "In-line design" that place the cargo (or crew) directly atop a lower first stage as did Saturn launch vehicles. This meant to help avoid the problem the shuttle had with falling foam and debris damaging the heat shield of the ship. However there are increasing budget pressures to develop a side-mounted shuttle-derived "heavy lifter" as well. A side-mount design had the lowest infrastructure change requirement for launch logistics. An in-line required the most modifications, which of course would be more expensive.
Two series of boosters derived from the Space Shuttle SRBs have been evaluated. Assumptions made, included full recovery of the booster, use of a new retrorocket system, and a new liquid upper stage that would be large enough to inject the CEV into orbit and be restarted multiple times for approach to a lunar fleet, or to approach and depart from the ISS. Both four and five segment motors have been studied. As far as I know NASA is still in the process of selecting the designs they are going to use. So below is a picture of all the current possible designs.
Unfortunately president Bush has underfunded and has shown no support for NASA space missions. This means that there will be a five year gap in-between the Shuttles' retirement and the Constellation program. NASA will have to rely on Russia to get astronauts to the space station. I cannot express how much this makes me upset. "It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species." -(Stephen Hawking) This seems obvious to me, for many reasons most of which I stated in "Space Sort." One being that it is only a matter of time until the next asteroid large hits earth, and it will happen, no one disputes that. It is certain that the next big impact will wipe out most if not all of the people on the planet. If the initial impart does not kill you starvation certainly will. And because we are only able to monitor a small portion of the sky dew to underfunding this could very well happen tomorrow. Anyway my point is that it's extremely important that we spend more time and money on the space programs in this world. However as a side note, I have to admit that I don't know much about the Russian space program and how much funding they get.