The Starship Is Here - XM Is Ready

Buzz Aldrin: We Can Build Spaceships Worthy of the Name - Now!: "In storage at Marshall Spaceflight Center, and elsewhere around the country are spacecraft components from which we can build a true spaceship, one worthy of the name. I've called it the Exploration Module, or XM. This vehicle, lifted up to orbit aboard the Space Shuttle in its final missions, would be a true spacecraft that lives only in space. Just like the Lunar Module Eagle that Neil Armstrong and I rode down to the moon's surface during our Apollo 11 flight. Once docked to the International Space Station, astronaut crews could practice and train for future deep space missions, to encounter asteroids say, or the moons of Mars. If the XM was shielded and connected with a spacecraft like the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle or some other return-to-Earth craft, once tested at the space station, we could take it out for a spin, say cycling between the Earth and the moon. My concept for a cycling spaceship, now universally called the Aldrin cycler, could be fashioned out of the XM. All we'd need would be a rocket to attach to it, maybe like the Centaur liquid hydrogen upper stage flown many times aboard many different launchers - and managed by Ohio's Glenn Research Center.

Consider what I'm proposing: commercial vehicles fly from the surface of the Earth to the station. Their destination - the XM, is built from existing hardware and managed by say the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The spaceship's propulsion and life support system could be managed by Huntsville's Marshall Spaceflight Center. And everything is assembled, tested and launched from Florida's Kennedy Space Center. Commercial providers do what they do best - flying people and cargo from Earth. NASA does what it does best - build deep space vehicles - and there is sufficient work to keep all of the existing Project Constellation centers humming along.

As someone once said, 'Mission Accomplished!'"

Not quite yet, Buzz...

"We're gonna hi-jack the Starship..." - Paul Kantner, "Blows Against The Empire"