NASA’s Shuttle-Derived Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle Concept

The Shuttle-Derived Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (“HLV“) was an alternate super heavy-lift launch vehicle proposal for the NASA Constellation program. It was first presented to the Augustine Commission on 17 June 2009. Based on the Shuttle-C concept which has been the subject of various studies since the 1980s, the HLV was a Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicle (SDLV) that proposed to replace the winged Orbiter from the Space Shuttle stack with a side-mounted payload carrier. The Space Shuttle’s External Tank (ET) a