Launch vehicle, Atlas V Options

[Redstone]

NASA has decided to use the Atlas V, with 4 strap-on solid rocket boosters to launch MSL. This is the same rocket that launched MRO (no solids) and New Horizons (5 solids).

Cost: $194.7 million, less than half the price of the Titan IV which would have been needed a few years ago.

Rocky Mountain News article

NASA press release

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

The Discovery missions are all supposed to use Delta 2 (or smaller boosters) for precisely that reason -- although even that has been complicated by the fact that Delta 2's use as a commercial launcher is about to cease, which makes it a lot less cost-effective for Boeing to keep the assembly line going, which in turn has caused a big jump in the price that Boeing demands from NASA for Delta 2s. *sigh*

Couple this with the fact that the important Solar System exploration goals that can be achieved at this point with little spacecraft are decreasing in number, and the case becomes very strong for considerably slowing down the pace at which Discovery missions are launched -- maybe to about one every 4 years, as with the New Frontiers missions -- at the same time that we raise their cost cap. (By contrast, it still looks as though there are a lot of worthwhile scientific goals, of greatly varied type, that can be met with small Explorers.)