"Jim Oberg" wrote in message
...
The long-awaited Delta-4-Heavy test flight has just
blasted off from Cape Canaveral, looks good so far.

Boeing is the manufacturer -- a good day for them.

The liftoff video is mighty impressive, see
http://www.boeing.com/news/feature/l...vy_webcast.htm

This is the new rocket that is most often talked about
as the booster for NASA's new human spaceship, the
'Crew Exploration Vehicle' (CEV) of 'Project Constellation'.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches...xt_launch.html

This version can carry fourteen tons into orbit -- twice the size of
Russia's 'Soyuz' rocket. It's not quite as heavy as a full payload
on the space shuttle, but is a lot cheaper.

I beg to differ. Man-rated with a CEV capsule the cost will probably exceed
$250million a flight. That's half that of a Shuttle flight which can carry
a lot more load and is a lot more flexible. OTOH a capsule wil lbe much
safer and the U.S. space program can't afford another fatal accident.


Better -- this rocket architecture can be upgraded with more
strap-on boosters, to get to the twenty to twenty five tons.
That's a lot more than the space shuttle can deploy
It's big enough to assemble space vehicles in orbit that can carry
astronauts back to the moon.

But it still falls far short of Saturn V (100 tons or so in LEO). Maybe a
new booster should be considered.