The National Launch System (or New Launch System) was a study authorized in 1991 by

President George H. W. Bush George Herbert Walker BushSince around 2000, he has been usually called George H. W. Bush, Bush Senior, Bush 41 or Bush the Elder to distinguish him from his eldest son, George W. Bush, who served as the 43rd president from 2001 to 2009; p ...

to outline alternatives to the

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program na ...

for access to Earth orbit. Shortly thereafter,

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

asked Lockheed Missiles and Space,

McDonnell Douglas McDonnell Douglas was a major American aerospace manufacturing corporation and defense contractor, formed by the merger of McDonnell Aircraft and the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1967. Between then and its own merger with Boeing in 1997, it produ ...

, and TRW to perform a ten-month study. A series of launch vehicles was proposed, based around the proposed Space Transportation Main Engine (STME) liquid-fuel rocket engine. The STME was to be a simplified, expendable version of the

Space Shuttle main engine The Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25, also known as the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME), is a liquid-fuel cryogenic rocket engine that was used on NASA's Space Shuttle and is currently used on the Space Launch System (SLS). Designed and manufacture ...

(SSME). The NLS-1 was the largest of three proposed vehicles and would have used a modified

Space Shuttle external tank The Space Shuttle external tank (ET) was the component of the Space Shuttle launch vehicle that contained the liquid hydrogen fuel and liquid oxygen oxidizer. During lift-off and ascent it supplied the fuel and oxidizer under pressure to the ...

for its core stage. The tank would have fed

liquid oxygen Liquid oxygen—abbreviated LOx, LOX or Lox in the aerospace, submarine and gas industries—is the liquid form of molecular oxygen. It was used as the oxidizer in the first liquid-fueled rocket invented in 1926 by Robert H. Goddard, an applica ...

and

liquid hydrogen Liquid hydrogen (LH2 or LH2) is the liquid state of the element hydrogen. Hydrogen is found naturally in the molecular H2 form. To exist as a liquid, H2 must be cooled below its critical point of 33 K. However, for it to be in a fully li ...

to four STMEs attached to the bottom of the tank. A payload or

second stage A multistage rocket or step rocket is a launch vehicle that uses two or more rocket ''stages'', each of which contains its own engines and propellant. A ''tandem'' or ''serial'' stage is mounted on top of another stage; a ''parallel'' stage i ...

would have fit atop the core stage, and two detachable

Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster The Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) was the first solid-propellant rocket to be used for primary propulsion on a vehicle used for human spaceflight. A pair of these provided 85% of the Space Shuttle's thrust at liftoff and for the first ...

s would have been mounted on the sides of the core stage as on the Shuttle. Period illustrations suggest that much larger rockets than NLS-1 were contemplated, using multiples of the NLS-1 core stage.

Program cancellation

The NLS program did not venture beyond the planning stages and did not survive the

Presidency of Bill Clinton Bill Clinton's tenure as the 42nd president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1993, and ended on January 20, 2001. Clinton, a Democrat from Arkansas, took office following a decisive election victory over Re ...

, which started in January 1993. In 1992,

Daniel Goldin Daniel Saul Goldin (born July 23, 1940) served as the 9th and longest-tenured Administrator of NASA from April 1, 1992, to November 17, 2001. He was appointed by President George H. W. Bush and also served under Presidents Bill Clinton and Georg ...

was selected to replace Vice Admiral

Richard H. Truly Richard Harrison Truly (born November 12, 1937) is a retired Vice admiral (United States), vice admiral in the United States Navy, a former fighter pilot, engineer, astronaut, and was the eighth NASA Administrator, administrator of the NASA, Natio ...

NASA administrator The Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the highest-ranking official of NASA, the national space agency of the United States. The administrator is NASA's chief decision maker, responsible for providing clarity to ...

. Goldin championed the motto, "faster, better, cheaper," which may not have fit the ambitious NLS vision. A NASA history from 1998 says that reusable

single-stage-to-orbit A single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) vehicle reaches orbit from the surface of a body using only propellants and fluids and without expending tanks, engines, or other major hardware. The term usually, but not exclusively, refers to reusable vehicles ...

(SSTO) rockets and space planes such as the

McDonnell Douglas DC-X The DC-X, short for Delta Clipper or Delta Clipper Experimental, was an uncrewed prototype of a reusable single-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle built by McDonnell Douglas in conjunction with the United States Department of Defense's Strategic ...

and the

Lockheed Martin X-33 The Lockheed Martin X-33 was a proposed uncrewed, sub-scale technology demonstrator suborbital spaceplane that was developed for a period in the 1990s. The X-33 was a technology demonstrator for the VentureStar orbital spaceplane, which was pla ...

seemed attainable and represented smaller, simpler alternatives to the sprawling Shuttle program. The NLS, by contrast, was more of a continuation of the Shuttle legacy. By the beginning of the Clinton administration, the expensive Space Shuttle and planned

Space Station Freedom Space Station ''Freedom'' was a NASA project to construct a permanently crewed Earth-orbiting space station in the 1980s. Although approved by then-president Ronald Reagan and announced in the 1984 State of the Union address, ''Freedom'' wa ...

programs had enough momentum to continue, and the SSTO projects showed enough promise to fund. There was no money left for another big program such as the NLS.

Legacy

In 1994, the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle National Security Space Launch (NSSL) — formerly Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) from 1994 to 2019 — is a program of the United States Space Force (USSF) intended to assure access to space for United States Department of Defense and o ...

(EELV) program led to the development of the

Delta IV Delta IV is a group of five expendable launch systems in the Delta (rocket family), Delta rocket family introduced in the early 2000s. Originally designed by Boeing's Defense, Space and Security division for the National Security Space Launch, ...

Rocketdyne Rocketdyne was an American rocket engine design and production company headquartered in Canoga Park, California, Canoga Park, in the western San Fernando Valley of suburban Los Angeles, California, Los Angeles, in southern California. The Rocke ...

realized that they would need a powerful, simple engine for the proposed liquid-fueled

Common Booster Core The Common Booster Core (CBC) is an American rocket stage, which is used on the Delta IV rocket as part of a modular rocket system. Delta IV rockets flying in the retired Medium and Medium+ configurations each used a single Common Booster Core as ...

(CBC). NLS research on the STME, a simpler SSME, served as a starting point for the greatly simplified

RS-68 The Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-68 (Rocket System 68) is a liquid-fuel rocket engine that uses liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LOX) as propellants in a gas-generator power cycle. It is the largest hydrogen-fueled rocket engine ever flown. It ...

that powered the

EELV rocket. The

Delta IV Heavy The Delta IV Heavy (Delta 9250H) is an Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, expendable heavy-lift launch vehicle, the largest type of the Delta IV family. It is the world's third highest-capacity launch vehicle in operation, behind NASA's Space L ...

rocket is composed of three CBCs. NASA later developed a very similar launch vehicle to NLS-1 called the

Space Launch System The Space Launch System (SLS) is an American super heavy-lift expendable launch vehicle developed by NASA. As of 2022, SLS has the highest payload capacity of any rocket in operational service, as well as the greatest liftoff thrust of any r ...

, as part of its

Artemis program The Artemis program is a robotic and human Moon exploration program led by the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) along with three partner agencies: European Space Agency (ESA), Japan Aerospace Exploration ...

to return astronauts to the Moon in the mid-2020s. The similarities include a lengthened Shuttle external tank-like core stage, four engines meant as expendable versions of the SSME, and large solid rocket boosters (with five segments instead of four).

Notes

References

* * * * * * * * *{{citation , last=Wood , first=B. K. , year=2002 , title=Propulsion for the 21st Century—RS-68 , work=38th Joint Liquid Propulsion Conference, Indianapolis, Indiana. July 2002. Reston, Virginia, USA. , publisher=American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics , url=http://www.pwrengineering.com/dataresources/PropulsionForThe21stCentury-RS-68.doc , access-date=April 25, 2010 , url-status=dead , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090319075127/http://www.pwrengineering.com/dataresources/PropulsionForThe21stCentury-RS-68.doc , archive-date=March 19, 2009

External links

EELV - Boeing
Contains good summary of NLS from an early 1990s perspective.
Cycle 0(CY1991) NLS trade studies and analyses report. Book 1: Structures and core vehicle

Cycle O (CY 1991) NLS trade studies and analyses, book 2. Part 1: Avionics and systems

Cycle O(CY1991) NLS trade studies and analyses report. Book 2, part 2: Propulsion
* Many documents on NLS are available at th
NASA Technical Reports Server
administered by the NASA Scientific and Technical Information Program Office. Search term: NLS Shuttle-derived space launch vehicles Cancelled space launch vehicles

Program cancellation

Legacy

See also

Notes

References

External links