Exploration HLLV

American heavy-lift orbital launch vehicle. Numerous NASA studies in the late 1980's and 1990's came to the same conclusion as the Nova studies of the 1960's - to get to Mars, an extremely heavy lift launch vehicle was needed to assemble Mars expeditions in low earth orbit. A nominal heavy list vehicle with a payload of at least 140 metric tons into a Space Station Freedom orbit would have to be developed for such missions.

Shuttle-derived vehicles (Shuttle C and Shuttle Z) or ALS or NLS-derived vehicles all would require excessively high launch rates in the NASA mission models.

LEO Payload: 156,900 kg (345,900 lb) to a 407 km orbit at 28.50 degrees.