Magnificent Desolation_ The Long Journey Home From the Moon - Buzz Aldrin [150]
But I wondered, What if we could launch more than one crew, each in its own spacecraft, on one launch vehicle? That has never been done before! I went to work on that concept, designing one heavy-lift launch vehicle, but one that could carry up to six separate spacecraft or “crew modules” attached to it, similar to the way in which the space shuttle orbiters have previously been attached to a launch vehicle. But in my design, there would be six separate eight-person crew modules, rather than one shuttle orbiter. That way, we could launch nearly fifty people into space at one time! Following liftoff, each of the crew modules would separate from the launch vehicle to embark on their own respective missions, and then return to the Earth for a runway landing. In addition to taking more people into space with each launch, the flexibility offered with multiple crew modules would make it feasible for NASA’s scientific missions and private-sector missions to be launched at the same time, on the same launch vehicle, from the same launchpad, thus saving money, while opening the space frontier to public travelers. It was a win-win idea, so I put my thoughts together in a formal proposal, and on December 7, 2004, I was awarded a U.S. patent for “Multi-Crew Modules for Space Flight.”
At the same time, I was unwilling to give up on the idea of developing a heavy-lift launch vehicle that could serve as a workhorse similar to the Saturn V rocket that we used for Apollo launches. The Saturn V was capable of carrying enormous weight, as much as 260,000 pounds, into Earth’s orbit, and as much as 104,000 all the way to lunar orbit, nearly a quarter of a million miles away. But after launching us to the moon nine times, and hoisting America’s first space station, Skylab, in 1973, the Saturn V was inauspiciously “retired” from NASA’s transportation vehicles.
Instead, NASA focused on developing the space shuttle program, with its initial launches in 1981 using a transportation system that carried only 55,000 pounds and could travel only about 215 miles above the Earth, within the area referred to as “low Earth orbit.” Since the shuttle was partially reusable, it was thought that it would replace the need for the Saturn V, reducing costs and making spaceflight more routine. Unfortunately, those goals turned out to be more elusive than NASA originally thought.
Consequently, back in 2002, I started encouraging my StarBooster design team to work on a “next-generation” launch system that would once again power a spacecraft with human beings beyond low Earth orbit. We needed something bigger, a heavy-lift launch vehicle that could carry an expanded crew, have greater cargo capacity and also have on board an escape pod that could be a “space lifeboat.”
We named the vehicle we were developing Aquila, the Latin word for eagle, and obviously a term that meant a great deal to me. The Aquila was a heavy-lift rocket system that would carry twice the pay-load of the space shuttle’s capacity, with the goal of accomplishing large missions such as building a space station, space hotels, or space ports along the route between Earth and Mars. All of this could be done at lower costs and lower risks, since fewer flights and less assembly in space would be required.
As 2004 drew to a close, I could see that people were catching on to my vision of space travel, and entrepreneurs were developing new technology that could take us to the final frontier, or, as my cousin Buzz Lightyear is fond of saying, “to infinity and beyond!” Except this is no movie; the commercial exploration of space