Mars Rockets
As the Apollo program continued, NASA designers started looking at their needs for the post-Apollo era, and it appeared that a manned mission to Mars would be the next "obvious" step. For this role the Saturn V was far too small, and a second series of Nova design studies started for launchers of up to 1 million pounds delivered to LEO. Unlike the original Nova series which was designed by NASA, the new designs were studied under contract by the major aerospace companies that did not receive major Apollo-related contracts, namely General Dynamics and Martin Marietta. Philip Bono at Douglas Aircraft decided to send in his own unsolicited proposals as well.
All of the companies submitted a wide variety of designs. Many of these were based on existing technology, suitably enlarged. For instance, Martin's smallest design, the 1B, used fourteen F-1s in the first stage and had a LEO payload of 662,000 lb, over three times that of the Saturn V. They also suggested a number of "advanced" designs using the latest (undeveloped) technology, notably aerospike engines.
Soon after the proposals were submitted, it became clear that post-Apollo funding would be considerably less. NASA abandoned their Nova plans in 1964.
The name "Nova" was used in over thirty large rocket proposals/studies from the late 1950s through the 1980s. Some other specific names given to the proposals were:
Douglas
- Nova DAC ISI
- Nova-1 DAC
- Nova-2 DAC
General Dynamics
- Nova C
- Nova D
- Nova GD-B
- Nova GD-E
- Nova GD-F
- Nova GD-H
- Nova GD-J
Martin Marietta
- Nova MM 14A
- Nova MM 14B
- Nova MM 1B
- Nova MM 1C
- Nova MM 24G
- Nova MM 33
- Nova MM 34
- Nova MM R10E-2
- Nova MM R10R-2
- Nova MM S10E-1
- Nova MM S10E-2
- Nova MM S10R-1
- Nova MM S10R-2
- Nova MM T10EE-1
- Nova MM T10RE-1
- Nova MM T10RR-2
- Nova MM T10RR-3
NASA
- Nova 4L
- Nova NASA
- Nova 4S
- Nova 5S
- Nova 7S
- Nova 8L
- Nova 8L Mod
- Nova 9L
Convair
- Nova A
- Nova B
Read more about this topic: Nova (rocket)
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