New design for next generation shuttle

For its next generation of space vehicles, NASA has decided to abandon design principles that went into the aging space shuttle, agency officials and private experts say. Instead, the new vehicles will rearrange the shuttle’s components into a safer, more powerful family of rockets. The plan would separate payloads on top of the rockets—as far removed as possible from the dangers of firing engines and falling debris.

By making the rockets from shuttle parts, the new plan would draw on the shuttle’s existing network of thousands of contractors and technologies, in theory speeding its completion and lowering its price. The plan for the new vehicles is to be formally unveiled this month and may help deflect attention from the current troubles of the shuttle fleet. —NYT