Alex Terrell wrote:

Ed Kyle wrote:


Has anyone else noticed that the proposed
SRB/SSME "Stick" vehicle has a second stage
diameter that is roughly the same as the
diameter of the Delta IV Common Booster
Core (5.1 meters)? And, by the way, that
the SRB/SSME second stage length seems to
be not much less than the length of a CBC?



Coincidence or Cooperation?

I guess the White Elephant second stage diameter is driven by the CEV
diameter and the length is then driven by the propellant required.

Using a Delta IV common booster would save a lot of development work,
but that rather defeats the puropose of the Stick.



Not really. Practically, just about all that would be used on a
Stick/DIV vehicle from the DIV woud be the tanks, payload interface and
some of the plumbing, and even the tanks would be changed (shortened).
Development would still be required, but at least the tooling would be
in place for some of the major hardware.

--
"The only thing that galls me about someone burning the American flag is how unoriginal it is. I mean if you're going to pull the Freedom-of-speech card, don't be a hack, come up with something interesting. Fashion Old Glory into a wisecracking puppet and blister the system with a scathing ventriloquism act, or better yet, drape the flag over your head and desecrate it with a large caliber bullet hole." Dennis Miller