NASA Names New Spacecraft 'Altair'

simonbp writes "NASA's new spacecraft, designed to travel to the Moon and International Space Station, has been christened 'Altair' - 'named after a variable double star in the constellation Aquila.' The crew launch vehicle will be called 'Ares I'; the larger cargo vehicle, 'Ares V'; and the lunar landers will be named after Artemis, the Greek goddess of the Moon and twin sister of Apollo."

Comments

With the hard part out of the way...

[Shihar]

...now we just need to create a moon base from scratch, create an inter planetary spaceship that can haul enough food and water to keep a few astronauts alive for a few months, build a ship that will keep the crew alive if a solar storm hits them on the way, get the ship to stop, drop the astronauts into a hostile gravity well, do some science, get back up out of the hostile gravity well, get back into the ship, turn it around, and survive the voyage home. Oh yeah, one more thing I forgot. They need to fund this, the subcontractors, the workers, and the deal with a cost of a few thousand dollars per kilogram sent up.

But hey, at least they got the hard part out of the way; figuring out names.

This post is a perfect example. It took my a hell of a lot less time to spit out a dozen or so challenges they still face then it did to think up a good title. Way to go NASA! You are almost there.

Gives it away what this is about

[Flying pig]

The crew vehicle is named after the god of war. I always suspected that, deep down, the only interest of the current administration in space is as a way of increasing US military dominance.

That, or NASA is illiterate in the classics. Which I doubt.

But why a variable star? Is that because they expect the program to expand and contract according to the budget, stories on slow news days etc.?

The whole thing about the inflation of names relating to space is more than a little childish. Calling people who barely got out of the Earth's atmosphere "Astronauts" and "Cosmonauts" is a bit like calling a dinghy sailor "Admiral".

how about engineering specification?

[helioquake]

Who gives a flying fark about the name?

How about the specification of the vehicle, instead?

Name of spacecraft?

[MichaelSmith]

The title bar of my web browser says:

NASA Names New Spacecraft - Mozilla Firefox