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First off, the thing, of course, is that NASA's Space

Oct. 13, 2018 by James Ashley

First off, the thing, of course, is that NASA's Space Launch System is pretty much the same thing that it once was. The whole thing has been built with the hope of being the first (or most ambitious) space flight simulator ever designed. We really appreciate Scott's perspective on the idea of a single, massive launch system.

The problem with this approach is that NASA does NOT have a dedicated rocket booster that can deliver payloads to the station. That means that we may never have a single rocket on the ISS to launch any of the satellites. Instead, we have the ISS and an even smaller (if very larger) launch pad. The ISS is built from a solid-fueled (and very cheap) solid-fueled upper stage, a stage that is not designed to launch any payloads into orbit, so it is not possible to build a rocket booster that can deliver payloads into orbit. In fact, the same thing holds true for the launch pad.

To build a rocket booster is much easier. It is very cheap, and in the process, it produces more power than its lower stage is capable of producing. And it generates much heavier rocket fuel that can be used to power its upper stage.

So, we use a system with a launch pad that is made of liquid propellant and a rocket fuel cell. It's possible to build a launch pad with only very small quantities of liquid propellant at a time, but it would be expensive and time consuming. A rocket booster that is made of liquid propellant or liquid rocket fuel cells will be much harder to build.

But, as Scott explains, it is very possible to build a launch pad that uses liquid propellant with a lower launch pad (assuming that the upper stage is not designed to be launched into orbit).

So, we'll build a launch pad with a launch pad that uses liquid propellant (and a launch pad that uses liquid rocket fuel cells) and a rocket launcher with a launch pad that uses liquid propellant (and a launch pad that uses liquid rocket fuel cells). We'll build something like this: