Ares I Rocket Rumored To Be Too Heavy

eldavojohn writes "In an article entitled "Constellation Battles the Blogosphere," problems with the Ares I lift vehicle are dispelled by NASA. An e-mail containing the rumor that the payload was a metric ton too heavy spurred this post which caused a lot of sidelines speculation that NASA might be setting themselves up for failure and simply need to start over. From the article, '[M]any who carp from the sidelines do not seem to understand the systems engineering process. They instead want to sensationalize any issue to whatever end or preferred outcome they wish," wrote Jeff Hanley the NASA official leading the development of the rockets and spacecraft the United States is building to replace the space shuttle and to return to the Moon.' The article also mentions that NASA looked at 10,000 to 20,000 different iterations of designs in their "Exploration Systems Architecture Study." As armchair speculators of space exploration, do our posts & blogs create negative fallout for NASA or is public criticism like this healthy for keeping government agencies in line?"

Comments

False

[falcon5768]

The "rumor" was started by a guy who is well known to post junk. This was the same guy who after Challenger said that the Shuttle fleet was going to be canned and that no more would ever be produced saying he heard "directly from Griffin."

NASA has responded to this rumor over a week ago BTW.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=22553

Its basically a bunch of bullshit, shame on Slashdot for posting about a story that was a non-issue weeks ago.

Completely False--Pointed Out To Be

[eldavojohn]

Its basically a bunch of bullshit, shame on Slashdot for posting about a story that was a non-issue weeks ago.

And if you read the article that I linked to from Space.com, the topic was the fact that this is BS causing NASA problems. I posted this story to raise the discussion and awareness of misinformation causing problems for NASA despite their rigorous methodologies (which I also linked to).

I apologize if you and anyone who feels like I propagated FUD, I only meant to draw attention to the fact that it was mere rumors causing a severe amount of fall out that should never have happened. Hence my final sentence in the submission.

Normal development issues

[amightywind]

These are normal development issues. Here is a good summary. Also it is not the Ares I launch vehicle that is overweight, but the Orion CEV.

Are people really this stupid??

[oni]

"An e-mail containing the rumor that the payload was a metric ton too heavy"

So, people honestly think that actual engineers, with actual engineering degrees, and actual engineering experience - people who can calculate exactly how much compression force a load-bearnig wall is under, and exactly how much tension the cables on a bridge need to be able to withstand, and exactly where to point and how much thrust is needed to send Cassini inward to Mercury, then back out past Venus, then inward again, then past Earth, then past Jupiter, and go into orbit at SAturn - going right past Titan so that it can release a probe...

*takes a breath* ... and yet these same engineers just randomly throw an engine onto a rocket while screaming "ye haw!!" and hope that it works??

And then some random guy on the Internets looks over their work and says, "whoa guys, I may not have any education or experience and not even be able to balance my checkbook, but it looks to me that you're 1 metric ton too heavy."

Is that how the world works?