General Dynamics Nexus

{{Short description|Conceptual rocket design}} thumb|right|NEXUS heavy-lift booster concept. Hydrolox truncated plug engine. Atlas ICBM at lower left indicates scale.

The '''NEXUS''' reusable rocket was a concept design created in the 1960s by a group at General Dynamics led by Krafft Arnold Ehricke. It was intended as the next leap beyond the Saturn V, carrying up to eight times more payload. Several versions were designed, including 12,000 and 24,000 short ton vehicles with payloads of one thousand and two thousand short tons respectively.<ref name="APR">{{cite journal|title=Convair NEXUS |journal=Aerospace Projects Review|volume=3|issue=1|pages=40–80 |url=http://www.up-ship.com/eAPR/ev3n1.htm}}</ref> The larger version had a diameter of 202 feet (61.5 metres).<ref name="APR"/><ref>{{cite web|url=https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/ch2.htm|title=SP-4221 The Space Shuttle Decision|publisher=NASA History|access-date=10 January 2011}}</ref> It was never built.

It was a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle that would be fully recoverable upon landing in the ocean. It would use parachutes to slow descent, with retrorockets (on top) for a final soft touchdown.<ref name=Astro-n>[https://web.archive.org/web/20160825081206/http://www.astronautix.com/n/nexus.html General Dynamics Nexus - Astronautix]</ref>

==Notes== {{Reflist}}

==External links== *[https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/ch2.htm SP-4221 The Space Shuttle Decision - Chapter 2] refs "Astronautics, January 1963, pp. 50-56." re Nexus *[https://web.archive.org/web/20160825081206/http://www.astronautix.com/n/nexus.html Encyclopedia Astronautica - Nexus] *[http://www.up-ship.com/eAPR/ev3n1.htm diagrams of NEXUS versions]

Category:Space launch vehicles of the United States Category:Hypothetical spacecraft Category:Cancelled space launch vehicles Nexus