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"Frickin' Fantastic" Launch of NASA's Ares I-X Rocket
coondoggie writes "With a hiss and roar, NASA's Ares I-X rocket blasted into the atmosphere this morning at about 11:33 am EST, taking with it a variety of test equipment and sensors but also high hopes for the future of the US space agency. The short test flight — about 2 minutes — will provide NASA an early opportunity to look at hardware, models, facilities and ground operations associated with the mostly new Ares I launch vehicle. The mission went off without a hitch — 'frickin' fantastic' was how one NASA executive classified it on NASA TV — as the upper stage simulator and first stage separated at approximately 130,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean. The unpowered simulator splashed down in the ocean."
It may really be the case that the launch was 'frickin fantastic', but just having finished reading Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age I don't put a lot of faith in what the media gets wind of with regard to space technology. This stuff is really complicated, and the general public doesn't understand that test flights going awry is not necessarily a bad thing-- so officials often put a nice veneer on the results.
I hope it really was fantastic. A lot of people put a lot of time into this thing. But this thing is so politicized, I'm not holding my breath.
As the guy in the background of the control room that did the sad wee celebratory dance.
So do they recover all of the parts and go over them closely to look for stress fractures/bad parts/etc?
When they are developing a new rocket, I would certainly hope they do more than a few of these test flights. One successful test flight doesn't thrill me. Multiple test flights utilizing different manufacturing runs of critical parts does.
If all went well, when's the next launch and what are its goals?
Well then, please allow me to be the first to say:
"Heck yeah!"
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
"I guess you can keep your job."
"You betcha!"
"The unpowered simulator splashed down in the ocean.""
And threw "water spray" all over Iran.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I am just glad I was not riding in that simulator. Did anyone else notice the separation, and the flight path of the (in the future to be occupied) simulator? The booster and the simulator appeared to tumble after separation. It could have been the camera angle I suppose, but that front section should have continued on, correct?
If our ancestors in Europe and Asia had felt the way you do, Africa would still be starving and the United States would not exist.
I think he misspelled frackin
Yeah.. "nothing of value" http://science.howstuffworks.com/ten-nasa-inventions.htm
I'd say something scathing and then list all the things the space program has benefited humanity and your daily life with but luckily NASA still has enough time to explain it all nicely without being condescending like I would have been:
http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/at_home.html
Also... They have a particular section about helping humanity in general with feeding the world:
http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/at_home/formankind.html
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
NASA's new moon rocket makes first test flight.
Moon... Ares I... Yeah, let us know how that works out for you.
*sigh*
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Even though the Space Shuttle was a boondoggle and had its problems, it seems odd that we are going right back to the type of vehicle that started it all. DNRTFA, but is there a new and improved capsule to mount to this thing? Or are we just going to give up and use Soyuz capsules?
Where does the money COME FROM? Especially in a burgeoning depression? A government that produces surpluses, though it does so on the backs of the people, at least can justify some absurd pork and waste. On the other hand, a government that has an over ONE TRILLION DOLLAR BUDGET DEFICIT cannot afford to shoot giant phalluses into space. Period. You are out of fucking money. Clean up your own house first, that is my point.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
You mentioned 'Intelligentsia.' I'm going to go out on a limb and wonder this: You've never been suspected as being a part of that group, have you?
Spain is a country in which thousands of people are homeless and thousands of others live in squalor. Where is the government getting the money to waste on the stupid foolishness that is world exploration at a time like this? The New World is a frontier for our great-grandchildren to consider, as for us, perhaps we should get to work solving our religious struggles or feeding Africa. There is more than enough prosperity, more than enough resources in the world for everyone to have food and shelter and clean water and even leather shoes. Instead, we fund explorers and give the navy endless resources that will produce nothing of value for the average human being.
Gee.. That's nice....
I wish NASA would do one of several things:
1. Concentrate on robotic missions and other non-manned science.
2. Put together a serious push for a Mars mission.
Things that I feel are an utter waste of time and money:
1. Going back to the moon purely to go back.
2. LEO (Low earth orbit) projects and questionable ISS science fair projects.
Put together a real push for Mars and get people excited about science and technology again. Or make a real effort in exo-planet research and searching for life around other star systems. (I did not say "intelligent life, or infer anything about aliens and flyingf saucers there!) The tools are available for both.
Also, manned missions to Mars are not "cost effective" but you can't beat the sizzle effect that you get from the "boots on the ground" of a live mission. Best bang for the buck there comes from the unmanned and robotic research.
Sad to say, NASA, for the most part has become another government bureaucracy. I would like to be proven wrong and see them return to what the did from 1960-1970, but the congressional money path probably won't happen again.
From 1963 to 1970 was a great time to be a kid watching all this stuff happen. Too bad there were a lot of other ugly things going on at the time, (Vietnam, Watergate, etc.) but history allows us to remember the great and suppress the ugly.
How about a space elevator project? Arthur C Clarke said we would build one roughly 50 years after we stopped laughing at teh concept. Well, the laughing seems to have died down.
www.effectiveelectrons.com "chips that work" Analog, RF, Mixed Signal
You are broke!
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
It comes from burning Trolls, now haud yer wheesht
I was watching the launch with my kids on NASATV, and just when the stages separated, the leading stage started to tumble, and NASATV went black. When they came back in 20 seconds or so, they were following the larger stage on its descent.
I have to say, the supersonic vapor plume around the rocket during acceleration was awesome. I said to my kids, "look, they just broke the sound barrier," and the announcer came on with "passing Mach 1".
Very cool looking rocket, more narrow exhaust plume than I'm used to seeing, interesting angled ascent (it didn't go up straight vertically like a shuttle). We like to rag on NASA, but if this is really a an under-3-year project, who am I to cast stones?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Where does the money COME FROM? Especially in a burgeoning depression? A government that produces surpluses, though it does so on the backs of the people, at least can justify some absurd pork and waste.
Not to be a downer, but cutting government spending and raising taxes to balance the budget actually worsened the 1930's Great Depression. Its the worse thing any government could do when there is a shrinkage in credit liquidity. Balanced budgets anti-inflationary measures can only be done when the economy is healthy when there is room to avoid a deflationary death cycle.
Also... NASA's budget is minuscule to some other sectors of spending:
Look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget
Then look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_budget_(United_States)
Notice how NASA doesn't even show up on the pie chart of spending categories. Its less than 20 billion compared to the 500 odd so billions for medicare, social security, and defense spending a piece!
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
So czarangelus sez:
"Wank, wank, wank!"
Such ideological purity!
"The scientific triumphalism NASA represents is just modern day bread-and-circuses aimed at the Intelligentsia."
Sorry, I meant to write, "Such ideological masturbation!"
"Where is the government getting the money to waste on the stupid foolishness that is space exploration at a time like this?"
The general revenues of the United States. That's where. And such a minuscule fraction , at that. Barely US$18 billion.
How much American treasure and blood was spent on Chimpy McCokespoon's Excellent "See how big my dick is!" Adventure in Iraq?
Wank all you want, just don't do it where we can see it.
kthnxbai!
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
Only a total mathematically impaired moron would call the NASA budget "endless resources".
Try fixing the schools first.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Please go to econ 101. A burgeoning depression is the last time to be reigning in spending.
As opposed to the $23.7 trillion of taxpayer exposure for all of the bailout programs, which has so far cost us over $12.8 trillion.
Most economists say that all of this money has just postponed the inevitable and done nothing to truly fix the situation.
With $12.8 trillion we could launch one of those rockets every day for over 70 years.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
You are a parasite, you are driving around on roads that you refuse to pay for.
watch the launch
I originally understood the Ares rocket to be based around (somewhat outdated) solid propellant technology, meaning the the boosters can't be shut-down, controlled properly once lit, and suffer from severe resonance of the structure of the rocket from combustion instability of the solid propellant. As for solid propellant itself, this is a total nightmare - voids in the propellant, controlling grain size, differences in batch quality, effect of temperature, and binding of the propellant to inhibitors, insulation materials, and coatings. These sort of problems effectively make it impossible to 'man rate' this type of booster (at least without unacceptable risks - although I'm sure the politicos will protest at such engineering assessments!).
I was wondering if anyone knows if NASA has redesigned the Ares around more modern style staged combustion engines that use a liquid propellant, so that it will actually be safe for manned missions?
If not, I fear that this will be the end of the US space program, which has become a particularly sad and pathetic shadow of that of other more successful countries.
Go back and listen to the audio. (unless they made this part up for you tin-foil hat types) After burnout, they separated, and ignited a "tumble motor" to send both parts off on another direction so they wouldn't bump into each other. The rocket motor was the important part, and was recovered. The "mass simulator", the upper section was not recovered and was expendable.
"endless resources" to NASA. ahahahahahahahahaha. Oh wait, you were serious, let me laugh even harder. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Even with the very tiny amount of money the US spends on its space program (compared to something like military spending or social security) the human race as a whole has benefited significantly from the things we have learned while doing it. Not just that the moon is grey and barren, or that ants still make anthills in zero gravity, but new materials, new ways to do old things, new computing, new understanding about the universe, a better understanding of the sun and outer planets and greater understanding of the building blocks of the earth itself.
It wasn't just some wasted hole that they poured money into to piss off the Russians.
Space exploration and the whole area around how to actually explore space needs much more funding than it currently has.
You are mistaken. I gave the State God Almighty their "registration" money, and then they decided that my car needed $500 in repairs despite the fact its ACTUAL EMISSIONS are well within state guidelines and, in fact, quite exceed them.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
Well, no, he's paying his gasoline taxes.
He's probably just talking about not being able to comply with the emissions rules, so his car is probably causing cancer instead.
Great. First we bomb the moon, looking for water. Then we bomb the Atlantic Ocean. Were we looking for Moons?
Did Bolden even bother to be on hand for this?
It's flight hardware now. Can't call it a 'boondoggle' or whatever media-speak they had been using. That much more poisonous a pill to swallow when they kill it.
Also, the 'thrust oscillation' theory is on it's last leg. The 5 segment ATK ground test showed no threatening oscillation. This launch won't either. Won't stop any of you from prattling on about it, however.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
"I really feel like we've regressed to the 1960s"
As this launch is partly testing the Solid Rocket Booster stage, you could argue its regressed 750 years into Chinese firework technology!.
Although both would be a little unfair and while its easy to joke at it being basically a high tech firework (at the moment as the other stages are not used yet), the goal of making launches cheaper is very important.
Although to be fair its no where nearly as impressive as even a Shuttle. Its currently not even as impressive as a Saturn V rocket.
I wish we would back a design like Skylon. Now that would be something to get really excited about and it would fill even the general population with a sense of awe to inspire a whole new generation of space exploration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
Go live on a rock then, without any technology.
The car you are driving (that you "cannot afford to register") will have directly benefited from the space programme's work into composites and computing. The computer you are using to type your ill-informed comments will also owe a lot to the space programme.
Are you suggesting that no one pays any tax? Or that any tax that is collected is used solely to reduce the deficit? If you do that and cut all the spending that benefits humanity (and that creates jobs by the way - you don;t think the guys at NASA work for free do you?).
NASA really is a miniscule, tiny, microscopic drop in the spending bucket of the US, and cutting it out completely severely affects the future benefits we receive as a race.
What exactly do you think scientific research is ultimately for, if not to improve our lives? Do you think we would have the quality of life that we currently do (unregistered car aside) without it? If only private companies do research, what do you think will happen to "large" projects like the LHC, or the moon missions, or the ISS and the benefits from those? What do you think will happen to the cost of technologies that come out of solely private labs?
It is, however, a wonderful time to rein in your spelling.
Some items to note:
(I largely copied this from a comment I made yesterday, but it still seems pertinent)
Am still not a fan of the Ares design. I feel that the solid boosters are to blame for both of the Shuttle disasters (Challenger, directly, and Columbia and other ice impacts due to their extreme vibration) and as such feel that it's technology which should not be used for human flight. Ares I scales up use of the solid booster- Ares V, even more.
Don't get me wrong. I love the space program. I live in Florida and have a NASA tag on my car. I'm a year-pass holder for the visitor's complex. I just think that the Ares is a really bad design, influenced by contractors trying to hold on to their existing work, and it's going to hurt everything in the long run.
You are broke! I want Uncharted 2. I don't buy it, because I do not have any more money. Unlike your nation, I don't apply for a Chinese credit card and ring it up because I am broke! I like to live within my means, instead of appealing to the working people of China for yet another loan. America is the deadbeat drunkard cousin of the world who always needs $2000 for this great new business idea he has. When you are broke, when you are twelve trillion dollars in debt, you have to stop spending money! It boggles my mind that the same people who laugh at the SNL skit about DON'T BUY SHIT YOU CAN'T AFFORD turn around and expect their government to do just that unto infinity.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
The upper stage was unpowered - it was just dead weight that was meant to simulate the mass, moment, strength, etc; of the real first stage. It wasn't meant to do anything but essentially fall off the booster at the end of the flight.
This is what Buddha said more than 2000 yrs ago, but we as human being learn only from making mistakes.
The positive: Judging from the downward looking onboard camera, the vibrations and oscillations I was expecting were minimal at best. Great job!
BUT: The first part of the flight looked like a fight between the booster and the attitude control system. It was some time before the booster settled down. I could see a couple guys talking about it in the launch room. An absolutely visible cant to the bird. Probably gave the RSO the jitters!
Separation: Gads, the booster swung around as planned due to the rockets firing, but the top stage swung around just as quickly. Certainly would want data on that.
"Space is a frontier for our great-grandchildren to consider"
We will always have the poor.
If not now, when? If not us, who?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Yeah, I'm jealous too.
I wish we would back a design like Skylon. Now that would be something to get really excited about and it would fill even the general population with a sense of awe to inspire a whole new generation of space exploration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon [wikipedia.org]
Yeah sense of awe, as in WTF... the skylon is unrealistic for the following reasons:
1) Looking at the wikipedia article, first off, 50% faster than blackbird engines is a pure pipe dream. Material science has not improved enough for turbine blades to survive that, and the intakes required to decelerate incoming air to subsonic will either be too heavy, or impossible, or not distribute airflow evenly enough, etc etc. Tech and cad design help some, but not enough.
2) Second wiki article problem, twice the size (twice the wing area?) but three times the weight, that things going to be a real handful at take off.
3) The sabre engine probably will not work, as the designer himself only gives it a TRL of 2 or 3. By his own admission, that's right up there with warp drive proposals and telekinesis. The ISP is too low, the T/W is too low. Following the old 6-6-6 rule, whats wrong with 6% bigger fuel tanks and an off the shelf engine?
(The 6-6-6 rule is mach 6 (good f-ing luck) at 60Kfeet up (difficult to impossible for an air breathing engine) gets you a whopping 6% of the way to orbit)
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
NASA has always been "another government bureaucracy". The difference between the 60's and now: in the 60's, we had 1) a clear goal to aim for, and 2) sufficient funding to achieve the goal. In recent years we've had neither of these things... and that's not NASA's fault, it's the fault of Congress and the President.
And regarding the space elevator: the laughter has died down, and been replaced with... nothing. That's because there's nothing to talk about. We still don't have the technology to produce carbon nanofibers in anything like the lengths that would be required to build it. Nor do we know if other technical obstacles to building one can be overcome. Nor do we have even the slightest idea what it would cost (and won't until we solve the first two issues). And if you don't know the cost, you can't evaluate whether it's more cost effective than just using rockets. All of which means there's no basis to proceed with a project.
You're correct that resources are badly allocated at present, but it's a fallacy to assume that simply reallocating money will fix it. You know what would happen if the US forcibly liquidated Warren Buffett? Every American would get ~$200.
I want everyone on Slashdot to send me the entire contents of their bank account. In return, I solemnly swear I will spend almost all of it on trying to create a handheld device capable of diagnosing cancer. It would clearly be of great benefit to the human race. What? What's that? But it's for science! Are you against progress, you knuckle-dragging Cro-Magnon barbarian? How could you be against it if it's for science!?
It's just welfare for people who drink expensive bourbon.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
How very true, fail on me.
Hum, I happen to live in Spain, and I do disagree with you.
Yes, let' s keep all eggs on a single basket, close all space exploration, until all problems are solved!
ugh, man, get a hand on reality. This is space exploration, absolutely needed. Why not stop the totally useless wars? Afganistan, Irak, etc, etc, etc
Just few days of operation there, pay for this kind of testing, and of course, would end any hunger in Africa, and any habitage problem in Spain you seem to mention here.
You heard this from me and others on fark.com many times in the past, but here it goes once more:
GO TAKE AN ECON 101 CLASS!
When and who?
When India or China lands on the moon or mars or asteroid.
USA, EU, Australia and Russia are too busy sending tax dollars to the rich.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
yeah I'd much rather live in a place with no government like somalia or afghanistan...yeah I know, there may be plenty of room in between the US and somalia on the quality of life spectrum, but at the same time, I'm sick of people complaining about the government being a parasite on their backs...you can only think of all the little inconveniences to yourself, without thinking about the public works and stability that are provided by said government. You may have this fantasy that if the banks all failed and the car companies disappeared, a glorious anarchist utopia would arise from the shear courage of indidvidualists...but that is BS. In a power vacuum, the real violent psychopaths always take over...but for all we know, you might be one (though I don't have evidence of that, so that's just a possibility not even an opinion. don't sue me).
So you're not from America?
Then you go and quote that from SNL (SIC). You, however, have already spoken that you can't afford to pay the registration fees for your car. Now, do you understand that you can *not* afford the car you drive?
You are a fool and a troll. Go buy a bicycle or a bridge to park under.
You are not worth the karma points so I am posting anonymously.
It was all staged, the shadows are not right and the flag is waving.
Yes, all progress must come to an end because the pocket is tight! Oh, wait, if Quenn Isabella had had your attitude the new world might not have been explored, idiot.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
go back to fark, son
Let me clear things up for you. I do not live in Spain. I also do not live 600 years in the past and travel to the future to post on Slashdot about my views on spending money to explore the New World. I was pointing out that the same argument against space travel that the parent I replied to was making could have been made about exploring the New World which led to many unforeseen benefits or really any other human endeavor.
1). Scramjet using the liquid hydrogen propellant to cool the air at the intake
2). because air is cool at all speeds/altitudes, composite alloys and other lightweight materials can be used
3). ???
4). Profit!!!
I wonder how the natives of Haiti would have felt about such a proposition? As if Europe was the center of the universe? As if no one could make progress except for Europe?
Science is an investment, and you make investments in hopes that they will be profitable in the future. However, you cannot make an investment if you do not have any money. If I invested $10,000,000 in Lockheed today, maybe I'd have $20,000,000 twenty years from now. The big hole in this argument is I don't have $10,000,000! I wish I was the government, and you all looked to me for technology and progress. Then I could spend as much money as I wanted and never be held accountable to any budget! And if anyone criticized me, I'd just mock them for standing in the way of progress.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
If you want to drive your car and pollute MY air then you will pay whatever it is so that your pollution levels are within tolerance of what is considered "acceptable". If you can't afford this then you are probably one of the parasites you have a certain Randsian detest for.
What I love about books like "Atlas Shrugged" is people identify with it...like they AREN'T the parasites described in it. What have you created? What do you do that supports everyone else? How are you not a parasite to world like everybody else?
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
I wish we would back a design like Skylon. Now that would be something to get really excited about and it would fill even the general population with a sense of awe to inspire a whole new generation of space exploration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon
Nice looking bird. Trading off very high specs at transition altitude shows a design philosophy has been well thought out. But that motor is a complexity nightmare http://www.astronautix.com/engines/sabre.htm . Great idea with too many details. Great Idea: Manipulating the motor cowling into the pressure wave at Mach 2 to transition from necessary cowling drag reduction to pressure feeding the intake. Complexification: Inserting a Brayton cycle power loop for heat exchange between air and fuel in order to reduce fuel flow. A lot of machinery with finicky operating parameters just to perform a simple function. There's got to be easier ways.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Spain was broke when they gave Columbus his commission, they had just finished a costly war and had severe economic problems on the domestic front, yet they paid for his exploration because they thought that it might bring future wealth. When the main driving force in your economy is new technology investing in a program that is centered around advancing knowledge and applied technology makes perfect sense.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Then borrow the 10,000,000. Why wouldn't you accept money at a great interest rate if someone is willing to give it to you?
Do you live on cash and cash alone?
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
I am having trouble understanding Spain as some kind of good guy. They committed genocide, wiped out dozens of peoples, cultures, languages, stole an outrageous fortune from the people who had worked to bring it out of the Earth, and set the stage for the ethnic cleansing of two continents.
So you think I should invest $10,000,000 in Lockheed right? But since I'm not the government, it's not okay for me to print money in my basement and then transfer it to a few preferential firms under the banner of science!
Oh, if I were the government, I'd have you all locked up for lesse-majiste.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
It's impossible, I tell you, impossible!
I believe the technical challenges you have raised concerning solid rocket motors can be addressed.
My understanding is that solid motors are a lot less complicated than liquid motors. You eliminate all the turbomachinery and related hardware and piping for fuel and oxidizer management, for one.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
If I were Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve would loan it to me at 0.5% and I would have to be a Mongoloid to not make a fortune off of it. But I'm little ol' me, a working class civilian, and I receive no such benefits.
They print money, loan it out to favored corporations, and then those favorites do the government's bidding. I have little doubt that this Ares rocket is more about ICBMs and military applications than getting a flesh-bag into space. It's the Soviet Union all over again, and the average, intelligent, well-educated Slashdotter doesn't have the sense God gave a turnip.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
I saw the launch firsthand. The other day, I'd been asked to explain the basic physics of projectile flight to a student, and here I was today watching a parabolic trail of smoke being drawn in the sky!
Revive the Constitution.
$17B a year is not going to make a dent in the economy or in poverty or homelessness, or climate change or anything else. Those are the results of human nature and/or normal cycles, and fixing them is a matter of political will and good policy, not a few extra dollars.
Spending a small amount on space exploration is EXACTLY what the government exists to do -- do things that require large amounts of money (for an individual or group) with high risks and low immediate reward, but that have the potential for great reward for all of society.
And if you think $17B a year with increases less than inflation and ever new directives and goals are 'endless resources' I think you need to take a look at the scale of the federal budget.
is a way to shoot lawn darts from a gun.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I see SOMEONE with an agenda has mod points and an inability to refute.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
But we have to start thinking about how much this crap COSTS. $500 million? That's $3-4 taken out of my last paycheck. Just for this project.
$500M is 2.8% of NASA's budget. NASA's budget is 0.5% of the federal budget. The $500M rocket is 0.015% of the federal budget. If you really paid $21,000 in federal taxes on your last paycheck, you should shut the fuck up about the government failing to provide homes for the homeless, and just buy them a shelter yourself.
like this
or or this
Although both would be a little unfair and while its easy to joke at it being basically a high tech firework (at the moment as the other stages are not used yet), the goal of making launches cheaper is very important.
Although to be fair its no where nearly as impressive as even a Shuttle. Its currently not even as impressive as a Saturn V rocket.
The sad part is that the estimated cost per launch for the Ares I is going to be $1-$2 billion, making it more expensive per launch than either the Shuttle or Saturn V.
Why feed africa?
No, you are mistaken. In CA, if your check engine light is on, you fail smog, regardless of your actual emissions. So it's not like he's driving around polluting the air, since the car has the same emissions of any other car. I had the same problem a while back. I needed to spend $800 to "fix" a $2,000 car when it's actual emissions were compliant. My solution: stop driving. You need to stop being so judgmental, the state bureaucrats really are being totally out of line on this one.
"What do you do that supports everyone else? How are you not a parasite to world like everybody else?"
I would assume the poster has a job, that's where many people get their money from. I certainly have one, I make more than $60,000 a year. But I have better things do do with my money than waste a bunch of it fixing a car that isn't broken. Our "leaders" could learn from this, but accounting for how all that money is spent is the last thing on the mind of most politicians. And many seem to view the taxpayer as a blank check to fund all of their "noble" aspirations and endeavors. There is a limit to how much can be spent, and the people deciding how and how much to spend are way out of line.
so, look at apollo. Was the money spent on that inflationary? No, because there was all sorts of economic payoff. A sovereign government can spend all sorts of money "it does not have" on infrastructure and focused science-driver projects and not be inflationary because of all the economic payback. But you cannot do it if you are a monetarist. On the other hand, bailing out speculators seems to make sense to a monetarist. Go figure.
Yeah, in comparison http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) seems easy to do. Probably doable tech wise and completely impossible politically.
I'm not quite sure where you are getting your info on hypersonic aircraft but you should take a closer look into it, the tech is REALLY sweet. That being said:
The SR-71 did not use turbines at high mach #s so material science really does not come into play here (also.. the Blackbird was designed in the late 60s and I would imagine that we've come along way since then). She was a ramjet hybrid. The turbines would allow her to lift off where after it would enter a dive. During the dive airflow bypassed directly to the afterburners where it essentially became a ramajet.
As to the intake geometry you really should take a look at what NASA's doing with the the X-43. They somehow managed to get that bird above mach 9 :)
Used mplayer plugin w Firefox - works flawlessly
..........FULL STOP.
We will always have the poor.
Not if we launch them into space.
Yeah right...
Don't you have better things to do with your time now that FARK kicked you off besides leach of your parents' dime with your philosophy degree and unemployment?
The newly discovered continent has all manner of valuable and exotic fruits, vegetables and animals. The savages living there are in need of being converted to christianity and having their gold and silver plundered. There is trading to be done. There is rich farmland and vast unexplored forests teeming with game. Why it's a whole new world (tm), and ours for the taking!
vs.
We can spend billions of dollars to send no more than 4 people to a barren, desolate place where they will die almost instantly if there are any problems with their complex and expensive life support equipment. In return we get invaluable scientific knowledge and practical experience in living under such conditions.
I ask you - which is the easier 'sell' to the public?
Yeah right...
Could you elaborate?
2). because air is cool at all speeds/altitudes, composite alloys and other lightweight materials can be used
Well, the impractical part is the heat exchanger has to be lighter and more efficient than simply making a bigger fuel tank, thus you don't need to cool your air.
Even better a rocket engine uses pure, ice cold liquid O2. But the precooling the intake air wastes 80% of the cooling on nonburnable nitrogen.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
IIRC The sr-71 didn't use turbines for high speed flight; it used ram jets.
As for speed: Scramjet technology has currently reached mach 17. To put this in perspective, the blackbird hasn't broken mach 4.
...and made Spain the richest fucking country on the planet, a return on investment that is unrivaled. You really are quite the dumbass, aren't you.
Yeah, the MIL (malfunction indicator lamp) test is pretty asinine, but it does at least have a minor purpose in that if the MIL is on and an emissions control part goes bad later, you could go out of spec without knowing it. Still, I tend to agree that the MIL test should not be a requirement for passing smog.
Back on topic, I wonder how the Ares I-X did on its smog test....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Given that this test, while useful, didn't actually use any of the components of a man-rated Ares I, I'm not that excited.
Ares I will use a new 5 segment Solid Rocket Booster (SRB), this was the good old STS 4 segment SRB.
Ares I will use the J2-x powered upper stage, this was a weight equivalent mock-up.
Ares I will use the Orion capsule and it's engine to finish up the orbit, again, just a mock-up with right szie and weight.
Ares I flight control software not built yet, but that's ok, as the hardware it will guide wasn't here either.
You know when the car companies build a clay mock up of that new model? That's about where this Ares I-x test was. Baby steps are ok, but I was hoping for more return on investment.
So I'm annoyed that the test program hasn't progressed further, but in reality, this is rocket science, and at least they got the thing off the ground in a reasonable fashion. The problems here go a lot further than my unease that NCSA isn't that far along for the time and money they've already spent. Here's a list of issues that they still have to face in making this a viable launch system:
What's the lifting capacity of the ARES I? 25mt? That was the declared goal. 24 mt? That was a compromise when other issues crept in. 20 mt? Where the current design is, but Ares I needs 25 mt of lift for an Orion capsule with safety features and lunar capability for 4 crew, and doesn't have it.
Also, when is the Ares I scheduled to fly with the Orion capsule, even in a non-man-rated test? 2013, as NCSA originally planned? 2016 as the Augustine commission recently claimed?? Before the Space shuttle stops flying? Before the ISS is de-orbited? Be nice for NCSA to have a way to get our astronauts to the ISS without "borrowing a Soyuz."
More importantly, how much has NCSA spent on the development of the Ares I to date? 5 billion? 6 billion? They still have to finish the 5 segment SRB design and tests, the J-2x Upper stage engine and tests, the new upper stage and tests and the Orion capsule and tests before any manned flights can take place. That's got to be another $5 billion easy. All this to get the lift capacity of an Atlas V or a Delta IV heavy and a theoretical better safety rating.
Lastly, one reason the Ares I was chosen was that it was supposed to be safer for the crew than any alternative. But there's this- http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/07/death-knell-for-nasas-ares-roc.html. I feel sorry for the hard-working engineers at NCSA, and I hope that the new management can get them back on track with a better design.
The Internet has no garbage collection
The space program is chicken feed compared to the military. A year's NASA budget wouldn't fund the stupid and unnecessary Iraq war for a day.
Or how about we just legalize drugs and dismantle the DEA and the ATF? I think they get more funding than NASA. Plus we'd have fewer Federal inmates, and we could regulate and tax the drugs. That alone would allow us to double NASA's budget.
Free Martian Whores!
"USA, EU, Australia and Russia are too busy sending tax dollars to the rich."
That's funny. Where's my mod points when I need them?
USA and the EU are too busy sending their citizens' wealth to their governments, to be redistributed to anyone with a hand out. The rich are victims also, but shed not a tear for them. It's the middle classes that are being hammered, and of course the poor who can least afford *any* taxes.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Unless my numbers are wrong, it's closer to .03% of the Federal budget. I understand your point that the cost of the launch was spread across a lot of time, and thus it didn't all come out of one week's salary. That said, the amount it took out of the GP's salary in total is in the ballpark.
There are about 141 million workers in the U.S. Therefore, every working person paid, on average, would have paid about $3.54 if it all came out of personal income tax. Even if you divide it equally across the entire U.S. population, every man, woman, and child paid about $1.64, either through direct taxation or through higher costs of products from companies that were taxed. Reality lies somewhere between those two numbers, in all likelihood.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Regarding your point 1), you must be an aeronautical engineer (and a clairvoyant one, too) to claim that "the intakes required to decelerate incoming air to subsonic will either be too heavy, or impossible, or not distribute airflow evenly enough, etc etc."
You know that real experts (and not "experts" like you) once claimed that breaking the sound barrier is impossible in principle?
the estimated cost per launch for the Ares I is going to be $1-$2 billion,
{citation needed}
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
Apparently you are not familiar with the advances in materials specifically superalloys and the new ceramic matrix composites (CMC) that Pratt and GE are now using in their high performance engines. The high end superalloys (mainly gamma/gamma' NiAl amoung others) have melting temperatures of 1600C. With active cooling and the TBC-TGO-BC-substrate layering used in modern superalloys these parts can be run to 90% of their respective melting temperatures. The most current progress into CMCs using SiC pushes the melting point of the materials even higher having a melting temperature of roughly 2700C for SiC. In addition to this producing an engine that out preforms the J58 is not outside the realm of feasibility the PW5000-F119 produces similar thrust at almost half the weight (6000lbs for J58 vs 3500lbs for the F119). The main reason that no engine has been built is that there is no need for such performance in current applications.
No one knows what it would cost to launch a Saturn V in todays dollars. The last one launched over 30 years ago. There was some talk about bringing it back to life with modern materials to make it lighter and STS engines instead of the JP-1's but that idea was quickly killed even though NASA still has the blueprints.
Since when was it appropriate to say "Frickin'" in any official announcement? Oh, wait. Here it is... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2YX6FsoMIY
1) Looking at the wikipedia article, first off, 50% faster than blackbird engines is a pure pipe dream. Material science has not improved enough for turbine blades to survive that, and the intakes required to decelerate incoming air to subsonic will either be too heavy, or impossible, or not distribute airflow evenly enough, etc etc. Tech and cad design help some, but not enough.
At high speed the blackbird engine is more or less ramjet, so turbine blades are of no concerns. A SR71 rebuilt with today's materials would certainly be quite a bit faster. Using hydrogen as fuel and 50% faster seems realistic to me.
Well... mebbe if you proofed your original post you'd notice that it has one piece of information (that's been repeated plenty in this discussion) surrounded by very deliberate inflammatory statements. Troll, flamebait, or whatever you want to call it-- yourpost did not add anything meaningful to the discussion. "Ideological masturbation" is not informative. "Chimpy McCokeSpoon" is not insightful.
/. seems to disagree with the Iraq war)-- Improve your ability to take part in civil discourse, and *then* complain that the mods are out to get you.
Odds are the mod who hit you with the troll agreed with you (most of
+1 Disagree
According to the Mission Status Log on Spaceflightnow.com there appeared to be some telemetry acquisition issues as late as t + 6:30 (min:sec) mission elapsed time. I am not sure how the launch vehicle was designed or what it's asset acquisition profile was supposed to look like, however, for Atlas V and Delta IV launches I know that acquisition and vehicle state data can start dumping to ground resources at least as early as t + 100 sec (with lag of course). Does anyone know if this test launch was designed with a full communications package on board, or whether or not the Ares acquisition profile is designed to fly this long without a telemetry dump to the ground? It seems very dubious to me and, if it is an error, it is a major one. Having a launch vehicle fail to establish a proper data connection with ground assets for ~5:00 + minutes could mean anything from an incorrect roll attitude to a power system failure to software state failure.
If the telemetry acquisition timing wasn't planned for or accounted for, I would say that the Ares team has some major debugging to do, which, of course, means some extra time and money =)
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
THAT, boys and girls, is how you do Space.
"yourpost did not add anything meaningful to the discussion."
What? A link to the actual NASA budget for 2009 after the absurd claim of the OP isn't meaningful?
""Chimpy McCokeSpoon" is not insightful."
It is, however, 100% Accurate.
Troll is "ZOMG! Obama is a secret muslim socialist hitler!!!!11!"
Now, THAT'S a troll!
Randroids with mod points: A Great Slashdot Tradition.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
Most of America's spending is on social programs. Military spending is less than half of social programs. NASA spending isn't enough to even talk about. Spending on necessary infrastructure is not that high either.
You're right that we desperately need to reduce spending. When you figure out how to stop voters from voting themselves money from the treasury in a democracy, make sure to write down your plan. You could be the great philosopher of the 21t century! Democracies have been destroying themselves by means of voters voting themselves tax money paid by others for 2500 years now - it's not sustainable, but no one has ever found the cure.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Before you start leveling such claims, I'd like to see the percentage of road-maintenance costs which come from vehicle registration fees (in the GP's jurisdiction). It has been my impression that most of the cost is covered by gas taxes, in which case the GP is indeed paying for the roads.
It is highly unlikely the GP's total tax burden is less than that required to cover his/her own share of the maintenance cost. Even if that were the case, however, the government started this fight by instituting taxation; only by ending that practice permanently, and making full reparations, can they regain the moral authority to demand that would-be freeloaders stay off their property. Until then it comes down to an individual and an organization which each consider the other's actions criminal; you can't expect to be taken reasonably while appealing to just one party to change its ways (trespassing) and ignoring equivalent or greater offenses (theft) from the other side.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Except taxes don't work like that. The bottom 33% of tax payers pay effectively no income tax as all. The whining poster is likely among them, and probably paid only a trivial amount of taxes last year, and therefore only pennies for this launch, perhaps less than a penny. Meanwhile, I paid, at a guess, $40K in federal taxes alone. I paid far more than $3.54 for this launch, and I'm more than happy with my purchase.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The sad part is that the estimated cost per launch for the Ares I is going to be $1-$2 billion, making it more expensive per launch than either the Shuttle or Saturn V.
{citation needed}
Sure. There's a nice discussion here.
Basically, NASA's own current estimate of the development cost for Ares I + Orion is $35-$45 billion (the cost estimate seems to climb every few months), with development finishing 2017-2019. Current plans after that are for three launches a year (2 ISS flights and 1 crewed lunar flight), and if you take into accounts the annual fixed and per-flight costs it comes out to an additional $800 million a year (including the cost of the standing army of maintenance personnel, which costs ~$2 billion a year). Amortizing the development cost over an expected 20 year lifespan for the Ares I and combining that with annual costs gives the $1-$2 billion a launch figure.
It is designed and built for show, not for real testing. The Ares 1X is just a Potemkin rocket to make a good impression on congress and the American public. Any test data is just incidental.
There are so many things that need to be tested, but this launch tests almost nothing. Unfortunately this is what I have come to expect of NASA: good PR, solid engineering, poor vision.
Please let the president and NASA administrators choose the Augustine flexible path using EELV rockets so that we can get something accomplished in addition to burning money.
engineers are all basically high-functioning autistics who have no idea how normal people do stuff
I think it was more along the lines of this - never take incredibly stupid risks that a first year engineering student in any field knows are incredibly stupid especially when the only gains minor political ones and give no technical advantage at all.
Due to a disconnection between management and technical staff they had to go via Feynman to get the very well understood message out. Feynman was simply a messenger that was too well respected to ignore in that case.
You have worthwhile points above but your example is very poor and you are not distinguishing between calculated risks for real gain incredibly stupid ones for pork barrelling.
People may question what I say about even first year engineering students knowing better but I stand by it: behaviour of polymers above and below the glass transition temperature has been part of introductory materials science since some time before the space shuttle disaster.
You mean the 6-6-25 rule. Rocketry goes by delta v not energy and Mach 6 is almost 25% of 9,000 m/s (which at least for rockets is adequate delta v to get into space). You still need to lug up to that point a vehicle that can make the difference. A rocket would require roughly 85% propellant mass fraction.
The Russians have a huge chip on their shoulder because they lost the Cold War. They're always making grandiose-sounding announcements, but they very rarely follow through.
They recently made a huge announcement about sending cosmonauts to Mars, but they're flat out funding their existing programs, like Angara. They've only recently had a flight test of the Angara common booster core; and only on a "South Korean" rocket.
I'll believe it when I see it -- and by that, I mean bent metal, not press releases with delusions of grandeur.
I said the same with fewer words below, and managed to get flamed. If you've avoided any flames, well played.
The Ares is a bad design. It just is.
But we have to start thinking about how much this crap COSTS. $500 million? That's $3-4 taken out of my last paycheck. Just for this project.
$500M is 2.8% of NASA's budget. NASA's budget is 0.5% of the federal budget. The $500M rocket is 0.015% of the federal budget. If you really paid $21,000 in federal taxes on your last paycheck, you should shut the fuck up about the government failing to provide homes for the homeless, and just buy them a shelter yourself.
Amen to that -- oh, and you should have your car registered.
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
""Space is a frontier for our great-grandchildren to consider"
We will always have the poor."
And that's why we have to fling the poor into a hyperbolic escape trajectory.
It's for science!
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
I heard the "frickin fantastic" bit on news radio this afternoon. Honestly the guy sounded unprofessional and not what I'd expect at NASA. It made me wonder why we even fund this stuff.
Our government has spent us broke, and at this point non-military space missions are non-essential vanity projects that we can not afford.
If the SR71 was built TODAY, it would perhaps be faster but it would also be smaller and also uncrewed. A missile with a camera inside it. Add automated midair refueling for fun if the range or loiter isn't there, a digital uplink for real-time pics, and a WORKING self-destruct device for when the odds catch up with it.
Lose one, no sweat. No crew held behind the lines. Just build another. Fly it from Tonopah like the others. Done.
Sig for hire.
"In return we get invaluable scientific knowledge and practical experience in living under such conditions."
The problem is that's a fallacy. We wont learn anything new about human habitiation in space. Because even if we go back to the Moon, we won't be spending any considerable amounts of time there. Just like Apollo, it'll be there and back. There's nothing more we can learn unless we send them to the moon for considerably longer periods of time. And that's why this whole thing is going to be canceled.
The whole rationale behind Constellation was to use the Moon as a means to get to Mars. But even NASA admits we don't have the technology to do that. It's simply too far away, and we can't get men there fast enough.
So what's the point of sending men back to the moon? Nostalgia? If we were going to build a real moon base, and keep astronauts there for extended periods of time, hell, I'd be right onboard with that. That would be progress.
But we're not going to do that. No one seriously believes we'll build a moonbase in the near future, nor that we'll send a man to Mars in our lifetimes. Unless we send some dying cancer patient on a one-way trip, it simply isn't going to happen. We still could do pioneering manned space exploration by sending astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid. But no one seems to think that's a glorious enough mission. Which is sad, because it'd be one hell of a first.
As things probably stand, we're better off canning the whole nostalgia trip, and using the money to do real space exploration... sending more robotic probes across the solar system to send back data.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Prolly not insured, either, since that's just more ramblings of bloated plutocrats funding the insurance-industrial complex, no doubt. Since people like you who refuse to pay also live in Arizona, my insurance premiums are higher than what they should be to cover my uninsured motorist rider.
With 300 million citizens in the US, your cut is about a buck 75. Now, factor in how much your yearly income tax is. That buck 75 is dirt cheap now, ain't it? About 1/3 the cost of a cup of coffee at Starbucks, right?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
I think he's just not stepping back enough to see the whole picture. Somebody was screaming about 18 billion dollars and he wasn't taking it in context. Sure, 18 billion is a lot to me & thee down here in the streets, but compared to the entire budget of the US, or the 15 TRILLION the government spent in bailouts, 18 billion ain't even coffee & donut money.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Naw. Start with the lawyers and the more rabid environmentalists. You know, the ones that want to stop all human progress because it'll damage a blade of grass someplace. By using them instead of lab animals, we satisfy two goals at once. We rid the planet of obstructionists and save the monkeys for genetic modification experiments.
Besides, chimps are much less likely to sue. And by getting rid of the lawyers and envirowhackos, it just MIGHT save us money on unnecessary litigation.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
the moon is grey and barren
Someone missed LCROSS I take it...
On the other hand, NASA is a quite small part of the US national budget, something along the lines of 0.5%.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
Dude, go to town hall meetings for your therapy.
I feel sorry for the Austrians because of the likes of you.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I as going for the "perceived wisdom angle" of the GP who thought the entire program was worthless, when we already "knew" that it was a lifeless, water-less rock.
Given the great use that Spain made of the wealth of the Indies, that may not be the best example to use. Since you used "world exploration" I would suggest using the example of Portugal, in a complaint about how much Prince Henry "the Navigator" was "wasting" on new ship designs and the idea of sailing around Africa when one could just pay the Turks their markup for spices.
So, does that mean it happened at 12:33 PM for the rest of us east-coast folks who are still on Daylight Saving Time?
I realize that income taxes are tiered. A significant portion of the money, however, comes from taxes on business. The poor pay a disproportionately large percentage of that because they spend a larger percentage of their income to buy products that businesses produce. Combine that with the income tax tiered the opposite direction, and it likely balances out to be about the same whether you are rich or moderately poor, assuming that you are at least making enough money to get by.
BTW, the point at which you are paying approximately the federal budged divided by the population, depending on which of the contradictory 2009 budget numbers I believe, is either $40,000 or $56,500. The U.S. median income is about $50,300, so whichever set of numbers you believe, close to half the U.S. (either a little more or less) pays more than average.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
One More Thing. The SRB at the base came from existing shuttle inventory but was modified. That is what is known as sunk cost. So this launch at least made use of this.
Now the $445 million price tag may be from development that has been done already for the entire program. It is true that a Delta IV would be about $10 million or so, but these aren't man rated. To get to that level with anything is costly. Lots of things have to be designed and built that you wouldn't need otherwise like the LES for instance. Space suits aren't cheap. Way more redundancy to lower the failure rate and so on. So maybe someone has to decide if we really want to keep doing manned missions or not. I know the Russians can man rate their stuff cheaper but they kill off more people at first to figure out how. So I guess if you want to make it cheaper, human life has to be sacrificed for that convenience.
Really, the shuttle didn't get approved by Nixon because it was cheaper but because NASA told him in secret that we could bring back Russian spy satellites with it. That was a real selling point back then, but compromises were made, but that was and still is one good reason to have something like that, to bring big stuff back here.
You never know what you might find out there until you look.
No one knows what it would cost to launch a Saturn V in todays dollars. The last one launched over 30 years ago. There was some talk about bringing it back to life with modern materials to make it lighter and STS engines instead of the JP-1's but that idea was quickly killed even though NASA still has the blueprints.
Correction:
No one knows that it would cost to launch a Saturn V today presuming that NASA/Congress/President Nixon didn't trash the whole infrastructure and do incremental improvements over the past 50 years with newer more modern materials and equipment upgrades. Certainly the Apollo Guidance Computer alone could fit on a single radiation-hardened programmable logic chip and do much, much more than what went to the Moon with Neil Armstrong.
Von Braun's dream was to have hundreds of Saturn Vs be put into a production line and to have continuous improvements in the overall design... and to reduce cost at the same time. Minor changes would be introduced in a gradual program of rapid prototyping and testing. In other words, if the manned spaceflight program had stuck with the Apollo hardware architecture, the Saturn V rocket of today would be only a passing resemblance to the Saturn V of 50 years ago.
It stands for logic that the fixed infrastructure costs had already been sunk with the development of the Apollo rockets to the Moon, so the incremental costs of additional hardware is all that would have been necessary for continuing the program. In the switch-over to the shuttle program, all of that knowledge, skill, and even knowledge base by workers who didn't bother to write down all of the "fixes" they did to get folks to the Moon has been lost. Much of that would have been preserved at the Saturn V been continued.
Restarting the Saturn V program after a 50 year hiatus? Yeah, that is about as stupid as it gets.
I argue that we would have been better off in terms of costs had the USA not gone with the Shuttle program in the first place. Yes, this is in hindsight, but unfortunately I see the same thing happening all over again with the termination of the Shuttle program and the proposal to de-orbit the ISS. If anything, I wish more serious study had been done on making a Shuttle Mark-2 program that would have built off of the existing knowledge base that comprises those involved in launching the current generation of shuttles.
Most of that expertise is also going to be lost in a fashion just as the knowledge lost from the cancellation of the Saturn V program has now been lost. Of course, a Shuttle Mark-2 should have been launched a decade or more ago, but that is a separate issue.
Now the $445 million price tag may be from development that has been done already for the entire program.
Actually, Ares I development costs has been $3 billion spent so far, and Orion development has been another $3 billion. The $445 million was specifically for the Ares I-X.
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2009-09-06/news/0909050169_1_ares-1-rocket-astronauts
It is true that a Delta IV would be about $10 million or so, but these aren't man rated. To get to that level with anything is costly.
According to the Augustine Committee, man-rating and developing crew capsules and LES for commercial rockets like the Delta IV would cost $300 million - $2 billion, depending on the rocket.
Well, that's a good point. And social security tax is massivly regressive (thank heavens, it's the only reason I can afford Cali state tax). But the whiney poster above me was complaining about income tax specifically, as people often do.
I'd rather see all income taxes outlawed and move entirely to a VAT. That way, whenever I was pissed at the government, I could just stop buying stuff. Given I'm often pissed at the government, it would really help me save more!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Big friggin woop! I'm so impressed - in 2010 we have a rocket that doesn't work when in 1969 we had one that took us to the moon.
--The $445 million was specifically for the Ares I-X.--
Well, it appears you are right. Yeah there's something up with that number for sure.
I also know that NASA gets credit for inventing a lot of things they didn't like Tang and Teflon, but that they didn't get credit for inventing or improving some other things like O2 tanks for fire fighters for instance.
What they are really best at is finding a design and improving it with better materials, and maybe a better shape.
I still wonder who exactly to blame, them or congress or maybe a little of both.
Maybe they should get these guys to help them out.
http://www.porsche-design.com/live/deutsch_en.PorscheDesign
Pure Functional-Innovative Products for Men. I like the sound of that. Thanks for the information.
You can find 18 billion dollars in the couch cushions over at the Pentagon.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.