A space exploration strategy that promotes international and commercial participation

NASA has created a plan to implement the Flexible Path strategy, which utilizes a heavy lift launch vehicle to deliver crew and cargo to orbit. In this plan, NASA would develop much of the transportation architecture (launch vehicle, crew capsule, and in-space propulsion), leaving the other in-space elements open to commercial and international partnerships. This paper presents a space exploration strategy that reverses that philosophy, where commercial and international launch vehicles provide launch services. Utilizing a propellant depot to aggregate propellant on orbit, smaller launch vehicles are capable of delivering all of the mass necessary for space exploration. This strategy has benefits to the architecture in terms of cost, schedule, and reliability.