page_title: DIRECT
section_title: DIRECT v3.0
hierarchical_section_title: DIRECT / Origins and history / DIRECT v3.0
caption_attribution_description: English: A remote camera captures a close-up view of a Space Shuttle Main Engine during a test firing at the John C. Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi.
context_page_description: DIRECT was a late-2000s proposed alternative super heavy lift launch vehicle architecture supporting NASA's Vision for Space Exploration that would replace the space agency's planned Ares I and Ares V rockets with a family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles named "Jupiter".
  DIRECT was advocated by a group of space enthusiasts who asserted that they represented a broader team of dozens of NASA and space industry engineers who actively worked on the proposal on an anonymous, voluntary basis in their spare time. In September 2008, the DIRECT Team was said to consist of 69 members, 62 of whom were NASA engineers, NASA-contractor engineers, and managers from the Constellation Program. The small number of non-NASA members of the team publicly represented the group.
  The project name "DIRECT" referred to a philosophy of maximizing the re-use of hardware and facilities already in place for the Space Shuttle program, hence a "direct" transition.
context_section_description: On 29 May 2009, DIRECT spokesperson Stephen Metschan gave a presentation to the 28th Annual International Space Development Conference in Orlando, Florida entitled, "Direct 3.0: Landing Twice the Mass on the Moon at Half the Cost."  In April 2009, following NASA trade studies comparing use of the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) to the originally planned RS-68 engine for Ares V, the DIRECT Team announced that future DIRECT proposals would recommend SSME as the core-stage engine.  The engine change was due to concerns that the ablatively-cooled RS-68 would not survive the intense heat produced by the nearby exhaust plumes of the Space Shuttle SRBs. DIRECT asserts that the higher cost of the regeneratively cooled SSME will be offset by the time and money saved by not human-rating the RS-68.  Similarly, for the upper stage, the DIRECT Team recommended using six of the flight-proven RL10B-2 engine.
  In May 2009 the Office of Science and Technology Policy announced the Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee to be chaired by Norman R. Augustine. On 17 June 2009, team member Stephen Metschan presented the DIRECT v3.0 concept to the Committee, which was formed to offer independent advice to the incoming Obama Administration. The Committee's final report did not directly compare DIRECT to the Constellation Program, but did offer budget, schedule, and mission combinations where a shuttle-derived launch vehicle could be used.
  On 19 January 2010, amid rumors that NASA would propose a DIRECT-like inline launch vehicle, the DIRECT team made a presentation to NASA Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, Douglas Cooke, and NASA Associate Administrator for Space Operations, William H. Gerstenmaier, in a meeting convened by NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden, Jr.
caption: To save development time and costs, Direct v3.0 proposed to use "off the shelf" Space Shuttle Main Engines which were already human-rated.
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