On 2005-02-23, Will McLean wrote:

It is clear that Boeing would prefer to sell the Heavy,
but a 20 ton CEV payload would underuse Heavy. It sounds

One solution would be to add an ASTP style logistics module behind the
CEV for ISS flights. Especially since the CEV will be a lot less than
20 tons if it doesn't need to carry fuel to push it back from the moon.

It strikes me - at the risk of doing some wouldn't-it-be-cool paper
engineering - that there's an interesting lesson to be learned here from
(of all things) Shenzhou.

Shenzhou makes an interesting change to the well-understood Soyuz
modular concept, in that its orbital module is enlarged and designed to
be capable of autonomous flight; one concept that's been batted around
is that these could be docked with later Shenzhou flights, providing
double the "living space" for a later mission. When that one deorbits it
leaves *both* orbital modules behind, and so on - an incremementally
built space station, a kind of "Salyut light".

The implications of applying this concept to a later CEV "mission
module" should, of course, be apparent; by making it an "optional"
design component you end up with a small CEV capable of using lighter
launchers, or a heavier one - with additional capacity - to utilise the
full capacity of a D-IVH or the like. It doesn't need to be ISS-tasked,
specifically, but some form of mission is almost certain to be seen as
desirable...

It's a pipe-dream - CEV is all things to all men at this point - but it
is an interesting idea to consider. Taking modularity a next step on...

--
-Andrew Gray