Updates Ares Updates and Discussion

[apollo13]

This thread will be led by me, and maybe Chipstone if he wants to.
NASA Conducts Second Test of Ares Rockets' Main Parachute

Validating an earlier test conducted in September, NASA and industry engineers on Thursday successfully tested the main parachute for Constellation Program rockets. Outfitted with a 42,000-pound weight, the parachute was dropped from a U.S. Air Force C-17 aircraft flying at an altitude of 16,500 feet. The one-ton parachute and all supporting hardware functioned properly, landing safely approximately three minutes later at the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Ground near Yuma, Ariz. The parachute system will allow Ares I and Ares V first stage boosters to be recovered and reused.

Image above: Second test of the parachute system that will allow Ares I and Ares V first stage boosters to be recovered and reused.
Image Credit: NASA/MSFC

 

[apollo13]

Tex can you make this as a sticky?

 

[Chupacabra]

Thanks for the reply. I've looked through the Direct Proposal (my eyes are watering, there are hundreds of pages to go through hmy. Personally it is very well thought out and it seems to be the right way to go but I don't want to hijack this thread from the Ares topic. (As much as I would want to discuss Direct's advantages, I think I'll keep my mouth shut...at least in this topic :angel

Is Ares I being thought out at the same time as Ares V or are they currently focusing on I before they get to V?

 

[Cale]

Ok, don't want to hijack this either

Suffice to say, check out the following website: www.directlauncher.com

Cheers,

Cale

 

[Chupacabra]

I just wanted to point out an insightful article on The Space Review. I'm sure many of you have read it but I want to put it out there.

The article compares the VSE with Kennedy's Plan. Very well written with little bias.
Somewhat as a clamor in the wilderness

 

[SiberianTiger]

They are just asking...

http://www.space.com/spacenews/spacenews_summary.html#BM_3

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's NASA transition team is asking U.S. space agency officials to quantify how much money could be saved by canceling the Ares 1 rocket and scaling back the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle next year.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]"After all, these are the questions that everyone is asking, and the transition team certainly must get NASA's best answers to them," Logsdon said, adding that the questionnaire "is unlikely to reflect the totality" of the transition team's investigation of current programs and alternatives.
[/FONT]

I hear the sound of a headsman's axe being sharpened... :!:

 

[Zatnikitelman]

Her's my question to them:
WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO GIVE US A FREAKING STRAIGHT ANSWER YOU TWATS!?
Perhaps if we had elected a competent president that actually looked at how little a budget NASA has, we wouldn't be in this mess.

 

[Messierhunter]

I agree, can't say I didn't see this coming. Everyone was all abuzz in my hometown after Barack visited that he said he'd continue funding Ares I and V, but if you listened to him carefully you realized that he never promised anything specific. I took that to mean he had every intention of carving up the Orion program, looks like I may be proven right. Relying completely on other countries to boost our own manned craft into space with launchers that were not designed for manned launches (the very reason we rejected the EELVs to begin with) sounds like a terrible idea to me. If you're going to use non-man rated boosters, why not use US launchers rather than shelling all that money out to other nations? Guess that would be too "nationalistic."

 

[Urwumpe]

Well. While you rant and shout, let me tell you a truth about NASA.

It is NASAs fault.

If NASA would be really controlled by the smartest heads, the USA can offer, NASA would be today in a situation, to give the transition team the right bill:

If the Ares I would be the best solution, any other solution would end in more money being required.

But the Ares I isn't the best solution. We know it. NASA might know it. And the transition team could know it too. The Ares I was have today, is doctoring around on a bad solution only to keep it going. A smarter NASA would have axed the Ares I already three years ago.

 

[pete.dakota]

My simple, short, probably un-founded opinion on the direct launch is thus:

Seems an awfully big rocket if, for some missions, all NASA want to do is put 3/6 new people in space. Without the Ares 1, how could they warrant using all the fuel needed to launch V with atop just a few kilograms of astronaut? Would they still ask Russia manage crew swap?

 

[Messierhunter]

If NASA would be really controlled by the smartest heads, the USA can offer, NASA would be today in a situation, to give the transition team the right bill:

If the Ares I would be the best solution, any other solution would end in more money being required.

Red herring, that "answer" does not fit the question that was asked. They didn't ask for the "best" solution, the simply asked how much it would cost to cancel Ares I right this minute. They are not soliciting for better ideas, they think they have the answer with giving the money to other nations to do all our long term manned launches. Furthermore, the best solution should not be dictated by the price tag alone. If that were the case we could just plop Orion onto a Delta or Atlas and call it a day, no need for a new booster, no need for foreign dependence. It's the cheapest solution, you don't even need to design a new rocket, but is it the safest idea? No.

The Ares I was have today, is doctoring around on a bad solution only to keep it going.

Handing all launch responsibilities to a foreign nation on a booster that isn't even man-rated is a worse solution. Unfortunately the transition team doesn't seem to realize that.

 

[JamesG]

They don't care. All they see is a boondogle project from the Bush administration that they are stuck having to deal with and pay for during a recession and financial crisis.

Using the Soyuz still makes sense from a financial if not from a political and national one.

If NASA had been smart they would have focused on a smaller Aries I project first on a modular lift vehicle and rushed to get hardware built and with a least a prototype launched before Obama took office to raise its profile and make it harder to kill. Sacrifice the "one size fits all" Orion concept if need be but have it on the back burner, its costs comparatively little to design systems and build test rigs, and that can keep the whole thing on life support in case events swing back NASA's way (moon race with the Chinese, a republican space advocate wins in '12, etc).

If they were really smart or managed well they would already have the NAASP in service, and would only have to sell building lunar transit vehicle, but thats a whole other can of worms...

 

[eveningsky339]

I'm no Obama fan, but I think cancelling the Ares program is the best thing that can be done right now. It's nothing more than glorified Apollo, regurgitating 30-year old technology for no practical purpose.

 

[Missioncmdr]

Of course NASA is getting another budget cut! Anyone could have seen that coming from a mile away. Even if NASA was on top of their game, they would still be getting budget cuts. There is no political reason to fund an agency that is not going to give back. Personally, I think NASA's budget is going to continue to be cut until we need to beat more communists to the Moon.

In fact, it is my belief that after the Space Shuttle is retired in 2010, the United States may never have a public space program again. No Mars, no Moon, no LEO.

 

[JamesG]

In fact, it is my belief that after the Space Shuttle is retired in 2010, the United States may never have a public space program again. No Mars, no Moon, no LEO.

I wouldn't go THAT far. The moon and mars field trips are probably (hopefully) DOA. But the US has vital national interests in maintaining its presence and even dominance in near Earth space.

The science that NASA does is neat and a better use of public funds than a lot of things I can think of, but manned exploration beyond the moon is really not a good return on investment.

Looked at in a long term frame of reference, it does not matter who gets to the Moon or Mars first, but what you do there. Who cares if you plant a flag on a planet if you pack up and don't come back for another half century?

I think we will be better off waiting until the technology and commercial interest is there before making the push for manned trips to other planets. If that does not happen in our life-times, oh well. They will still be there. There are plenty of problems here we need to fix first.

 

[Piper]

While I agree that Ares I needs to be scrapped, man-rate an existing EELV instead, and Orion redesigned (namely enough fuel to brake into lunar orbit itself, and not just enough fuel to get back, plus a return to land-landings), I don't think the whole program needs to be scrapped. There are very good reasons for going back to the moon, namely for mining things like Helium-3 which can be used for producing large amounts of energy, not to mention pure science. We may have been to the moon already, but we hardly scratched the science. If anything, we left the moon was a lot questions then we answered, and a lot of those questions can be better answered with humans then any robotic probe. Indeed, I think it is safe to say that the scientific returns of NASA's Apollo missions utterly dwarfs that of the Soviet Unions unmanned missions (valuable as they were). From a science point of view, I think that is pretty good "bang for your buck."

I say let the private industry inherit LEO, and let NASA move on to the Moon and Mars.

Whether that happens or not, is yet to be seen....

 

[pete.dakota]

My question at the bottom of page one seems to have slipped people by. So here it is again:

My simple, short, probably un-founded opinion on the direct launch is thus:

Seems an awfully big rocket if, for some missions, all NASA want to do is put 3/6 new people in space. Without the Ares 1, how could they warrant using all the fuel needed to launch V with atop just a few kilograms of astronaut? Would they still ask Russia to manage crew swap?

 

[JamesG]

To answer your question, yes. Aries as it is currently envisaged in a really stupid design. Unlike the STS where the shuttle could also carry satellites or experiments along with ferrying personnel up to ISS, the Aries capsule can't so you wind up hauling a alot of wasted space designed for trips out to the moon for short trips to LEO.

 

[SiberianTiger]

To answer your question, yes. Aries as it is currently envisaged in a really stupid design. Unlike the STS where the shuttle could also carry satellites or experiments along with ferrying personnel up to ISS, the Aries capsule can't so you wind up hauling a alot of wasted space designed for trips out to the moon for short trips to LEO.

What's an Aries capsule?

 

[Messierhunter]

Other than different equipment, this is more or less identical to the Apollo program. We are launching a capsule to accomplish goals that were accomplished 30 years ago,

Bringing wings all that way would be a lot of wasted Delta-V. It may be fun to do in orbiter, but it's impractical for real life. A capsule fits the needs of the mission best. There are lots of things Orion can accomplish that Apollo did not. For one thing, I hope we get to the point that we build an infrared observatory in a crater that gives us perpetual darkness.

leaving behind an expensive lander as we did 30 years ago,

Again, you need far more delta V to bring the whole lander back, and for what?

jettisoning an expensive resource module into the atmosphere,

Again, what else would you do with it? Let it continue on a trajectory between the earth and moon? Where are you going to get the delta V to brake it into earth orbit?

and then re-entering and splashing down. It worked great when we had a big budget and speed was of the essence, but now we have much more efficient ways of doing things.

Braking into earth orbit with large amounts of fuel would be far less efficient than a direct reentry.