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On May 11, the critical design review of the NASA Space Launch System (SLS) kicked off in Huntsville, Alabama.
This new rocket will be the most powerful launch vehicle ever built. It is designed to be sustainable and evolve to carry crew and cargo on deep space missions, including an asteroid and ultimately to Mars.
Milestone reviews like the critical design review are just that -- critical. The critical design review demonstrates that the SLS design meets all system requirements with acceptable risk, and accomplishes that within cost and schedule constraints. It also proves that the rocket should continue with full-scale production, assembly, integration, and testing and that the program is ready to begin the next major review covering design certification.
In the critical design review, there are literally thousands of pages of documentation that are reviewed and every part of the system is put under the design microscope by the best minds and engineers at NASA and their contractors. According to the article, all the subsystems have already been gone over in their own critical design reviews, but this one is for the complete project.
This review follows the somewhat more exciting successful booster tests from early March and the first Orion flight test from last December.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday May 14 2015, @02:56PM
There is a great deal of spaceflight history that, while well-documented, can be hard to find. In my case I know a lot about it because I once lived in an Air Force town. The Solano County Library in Fairfield, California has an excellent collection of spaceflight history books, such as "We Seven" by the Mercury astronauts.
I expect "The Right Stuff" was based on "We Seven".
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