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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?"
Why not ask questions of the people at NASA? They have been designing, building, and testing rockets for decades. Most arm-chair rocket scientists have no practical experience in doing things on the scale NASA does. Asking questions instead of making claims that NASA has screwed up would help us learn more about what NASA is doing and, perhaps, help them look at what they are doing from a different view-point.
Sounds like we need to be open-source in our approach to communicating with NASA - ask questions, offer ideas, create a solution that all may benefit from rather than firing the cannons of FUD.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
First, this is just a rumor, second, every rocket program since Goddard fastbaked the first potato during his first liquid fueled rocket experiments has had weight problems. Phase I is to set the basic requirements of thrust and payload, phase II is to make it work. Things start heavy and get lightened. At one point during the Apollo program, the program managers were offering bounties to people who could cut an ounce so that they could meet the performance requirements needed for the missions.
This is not news, this is sensationalism. The stick concept will probably work just fine. It grates on me because I've got real problems with the SRB as relates to the shuttle, but with an actual launch abort system that can pull the capsule away, I guess it's a good and cheap solution. It'll probably be quite a ride, too.
C'mon folks, this isn't rocket sci- well... let me rephrase. C'mon folks, this isn't a new problem, and it's not even unexpected. It's a standard part of rocket development, just like debugging compile problems is a usual part of large software development projects.