information:extraction
Ares family

In 2006, as part of the proposed Constellation program, NASA unveiled plans to construct two Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicles, the Ares I and Ares V, which would use some existing Space Shuttle and Saturn V hardware and infrastructure. The two rockets were intended to increase safety by specializing each vehicle for different tasks, Ares I for crew launches and Ares V for cargo launches. The original design of the heavy-lift Ares V, named in homage to the Saturn V, was 360 feet (110 m) in height and featured a core stage based on the Space Shuttle External Tank, with a diameter of 28 feet (8.4 m). It was to be powered by five RS-25 engines and two five-segment Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs). As the design evolved, the RS-25 engines were replaced with five RS-68 engines, the same engines used on the Delta IV. The switch from the RS-25 to the RS-68 was intended to reduce cost, as the latter was cheaper, simpler to manufacture, and more powerful than the RS-25, though the lower efficiency of the RS-68 required an increase in core stage diameter to 33 ft (10 m), the same diameter as the Saturn V's S-IC and S-II stages.

In 2008, NASA again redesigned the Ares V, lengthening the core stage, adding a sixth RS-68 engine, and increasing the SRBs to 5.5 segments each. This vehicle would have been 381 feet (116 m) tall and would have produced a total thrust of approximately 8,900,000 lbf (40 MN) at liftoff, more than the Saturn V or the Soviet Energia, but less than the Soviet N-1. Projected to place approximately 400,000 pounds (180 t) into orbit, the Ares V would have surpassed the Saturn V in payload capability. An upper stage, the Earth Departure Stage, would have utilized a more advanced version of the J-2 engine, the J-2X. Ares V would have placed the Altair lunar landing vehicle into low Earth orbit. An Orion crew vehicle launched on Ares I would have docked with Altair, and the Earth Departure Stage would then send the combined stack to the Moon.