Despite Financial/Political Difficulties NASA Constellation Engineers Move Forward

Never mind all of the controversy and confusion surrounding NASA's budget, their new leader and the possible delays for the shuttle retirement; I have some good news for you!  NASA's engineers working on the Constellation program are actually making some serious progress.

Ares I-X, the code name for the first Ares rocket to be tested, will lift off from Kennedy Space Center early this summer. It should climb to around 25 miles (40.2 km) in a two-minute powered test of the first stage and its recovery system. The test is meant to find out if there are any basic design flaws that need to be fixed before the more complex components are added to the rocket.  This just goes to show that no matter how powerful the computers and simulations are these things just have to be tested the old fashion way.

There are countless teams and individuals working on this project and if this test is a successful it will help immeasurably in boosting moral and renewing faith in the whole Constellation program.  Not to mention it will help keep it on track for the Design Review scheduled for 2010.

Here is the base of the Ares rocket being put together in Virginia's Langley Research Center.

This picture gives a good perspective of the size of the rocket and what it should look like as it gets closer to completion.

And here are a quick video of NASA in the Inaugural Parade with Barack smiling (which hopefully is a good sign for NASA!)

Source: nasa.gov

Thanks for reading!

The Fool

Congressman Proposed Plan to Delay Shuttle Retirement

Rep. Dave Weldon (R-Fla.) unveiled legislation Dec. 17 aimed at keeping the U.S. space shuttle fleet flying beyond its planned 2010 retirement. The plan will keep the shuttle's alive until at least 2015 though possibly past that. The purpose of the bill is to make the transition to the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle a little smoother and in case the Orion Vehicle cannot make crucial trips the shuttle will be there to make the launches. I suppose the bill is a good idea, it strips some funds from NASA while adding others. It comes at the same time as Congress was poised to take up an omnibus spending bill that includes the $17.3 billion the White House requested for NASA for 2008, that would increase the agency's spending on science and aeronautics at the expense of Orion and Ares. The bill proposed by Weldon will provide NASA with $3.7 billion annually for upkeep of the shuttles. Hopefully the bill will not be needed but I expect that it will, regardless of whether it is passed or not. We will soon see what exactly NASA's budget is next year and as soon as I know you will know.

I just found a neat little slideshow about the Orion and Ares vechicles: http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagegallery/igviewer.php?imgid=3562&gid=263

The Fool