The NOVA was a series of conceptual vehicles which would have competed with the Saturn V using all solid propulsion. YORF user luke skywalker has provided a flood of info on the NOVA, starting with excerpts from a 1962 JPL study entitled "The Applicability of Solid Propellants for a NOVA class Injection Vehicle and Comparison with a Liquid Vehicle of Comparable Capability." He provides a text file summarizing the 109 page document as well as a bunch of diagrams showing the vehicle options. I grabbed only the first one as a teaser. This beast would weigh 30 million pounds (about five times what a Saturn V weighed) and could lift lifting 500,000 pounds to LEO and 130,000 pounds to escape velocity. His later posts to have also include info from other sites, including Astronautix and Wikipedia.
We are way off track, these should have been the rockets of the 1970s and 80s, not the shuttle. Imagine what you can do with 1 million lbs to LEO? Giant space stations in one or two launches. Mars trips in two or three launches. 15 meter optical telescopes. 50 meter radio space telescopes. Monolithic solid stages. Big dumb rockets. Sea dragon.
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