DIRECT project

The wikipedia entry describing the DIRECT project is here.  Further reading on the subject leads me to believe that the speculative posts I made are going to be only in my imagination.  It isn't going to happen unless there is a change, but that isn't likely either.  Hard to say what might happen if additional changes are made.

Instead of recycling the ET, the plan is to de-orbit them just as before.  That pretty much knocks my ideas out of the ballpark.

So, where is this plan going?  It just looks like a modified Constellation program which uses the Shuttle derived system, but not with a sidemount.  It is said to be less capable than the original Ares rockets, but much cheaper and faster to be put into service.  The gap with no manned launch capability will be cut from 7 years to as little as 2 or 3 years.

There was some discussion of the RL-10 rocket engines.   Another variant of this engine which is still in development, would allow the engine to "throttle well" - between 104% to 8% thrust.  The RL-10 design is going to be used in the JUS (Jupiter upper stage), which will serve as the Earth Departure Stage , per Constellation plans.

It is not clear if the throttling engine is in the works for this system.  Nor what it will do.

If it could shut down and restart and throttle well, it could become quite versatile, I would think.  Just a bit of speculation here, this engine could seem more like a jet engine than a rocket.  But much more capable than a jet engine of course.  With such an engine, maneurvering could become more sophisticated.  But for what purpose?  This may answer that question.   It will be used on the Altair lander to land on the moon.