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NASA Installing Shocks On Ares
caffiend666 writes "In order to abate the massive vibration issues of their new Ares I spacecraft, NASA is installing shock absorbers. 'The plan is to install 16 canisters in the bottom of the rocket with 100-pound weights attached to springs. Battery-powered motors will move the weights up and down to stop vibrations. Those are essentially remote-controlled shock absorbers, said Garry Lyles, who headed the team of NASA engineers tackling the shaking problem.' So, when the spaceship is a rocking, don't come a knocking?"
Will they then have to haul nearly a ton into space? That sounds like a very costly improvement to the shuttle.
You think the Saturn V didn't have many tons of anti-vibration structure, anti-pogo devices, and other such things? Get real!
Clueless computer types such as yourself might think that a rocket should be fuel tanks and an engine and nothing else, but that's not how it actually works in the real world. There's a reason that "rocket science" is used as an idiom to indicate something that's extremely hard, you know.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
The Apollo missions definitely weren't entirely safe... but people didn't really care about it as much as they do today. They were driven to succeed at almost any cost, and to do so before the Russians.
Now we have this culture of protection and safety that's we're too afraid to (accidentally) sacrifice a human even at the prospect of settling on the moon. Not saying it's wrong, but it complicates things more.
Move all sig!