Ares 1-X Ready On Pad, Launch Set For 1200 GMT 260
DynaSoar writes "NASA's new Ares I-X rocket is undergoing final preparations for its planned launch test Tuesday, October 27. Launch time is scheduled for 8 AM EDT (1200 GMT). As of noon Monday it appeared that there was a 60% chance of showers and/or high altitude clouds interfering. However, the launch has a an eight hour window of opportunity through 2000 GMT, and would require only 10 minutes of clear skies within that time to fly. Of interest to engineering types, both those who favor the new vehicle's design and its critics, will be to see whether the predicted linear 'pogo stick' oscillation will occur, and whether the dampening design built into it prevents damaging and possibly destructive shaking. Extensive coverage is being presented by Space.com; for NASA TV streaming video, schedules and downlink information, visit nasa.gov/ntv." Update 15:37 GMT by timothy: The weather did not cooperate; today's planned launch has been scrubbed.
Re:Number one in what exactly? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Number one in what exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Number one in what exactly? (Score:4, Insightful)
>I'm pretty sure that Congress could find a lot of other uses for that half billion dollars
Yea, think of all the coke the bankers could buy with handouts from half a billion dollars.
Re:Solid Rocket Vibrations Are Not Pogo (Score:2, Insightful)
structure to 'diverge'
Never hearing the term before, it very succinctly communicates the situation. I must say the mental image is also quite pleasant. Well done!
~the chemical engineering student who uses numerical methods to solve large problems
Re:Solid Rocket Vibrations Are Not Pogo (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that the term "blow up" would be just as apt, though a little less British in the degree of understatement.
Re:Tragically, We Cannot Afford This Now (Score:3, Insightful)
Once you stop the wheel, it takes a lot to get it to start turning again.
Aerospace engineering expertise exists in the engineers that live/work/breathe/teach their profession. If you temporarily cancel a program, all of those engineers will have to find work elsewhere and all of their knowledge that is stored in their heads will be lost.
Tell me, as an engineer who recently graduated, why I should even go into aerospace engineering if I have to deal with the opinions of people like you who would rather we not spend money on such frivolous activities. Instead we are so broke we need to allocate a few billion for national health care or for bailing out wall street. Why would any student go into aerospace engineering in the kind of an environment where they don't even have a potential job.
You claim we have more pressing problems to solve like clean energy etc, but you don't realize that just throwing more people at the problem isn't going to necessarily solve it. Those engineers might want to design rockets instead of fuel cells yah know.
Re:Tragically, We Cannot Afford This Now (Score:3, Insightful)
You are now saying that space exploration is "wrong."
That's a different argument. You are entitled to your opinion.
Re:Tragically, We Cannot Afford This Now (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing would speed our journey to becoming a has-been superpower faster than the cessation of government funding for scientific research. Especially critical is government funding of pure research: that is, research that has no immediate and obvious commercial benefit. Even if you think that space exploration/research is a luxury you should argue for doing as much of it as possible to keep our science on the cutting (leading) edge.
Of course, if you think that space is a luxury with no benefit then you are, simply, either woefully underinformed or an idiot. Weather satellites, NASA's projects have directly led to the creation of dozens of industries that have revolutionized the world. http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/spinoff.html [nasa.gov]
Science is what catapulted us to being the dominate superpower. Applied science is money today, pure science is money tomorrow. We can't afford to cut any of it.
Re:Tragically, We Cannot Afford This Now (Score:3, Insightful)
For example: spending $500 billion dollars to find a cure for cancer will be very important.
Will it be, really? People will continue to die by the thousands every year. And then we will have the same cry: We must stop (whatever becomes the new cause of death) before we can think about space. People are supposed to die, and a lot younger than we currently do. Eliminate the big causes of death and you *increase* the load on the planet's resources. And why cancer? Only *one* cancer (lungs) is in the top 10 causes of death worldwide.
And what happens when 20 years from now we now we realize that the climate change won't stop. Climates *always* change, and not always into a form that is comfortable for us. The idea that we can freeze the climate in a configuration that we like is the ultimate in hubris. You can slow it, you can try to minimize the change, but you can't stop it "in its tracks". So what happens when we realize the planet will continue to change and we have nowhere else to turn because we've been ignoring space all this time?
Any economist will tell you: running four programs concurrently at 25% of max capacity is more efficient than running one at 100% and retooling between each. Money is always tight, but if you *stop* a program, more times than not it never gets restarted.
NASA's budgets is approx. 0.5% of GDP. If you want to find money, look at the big money sinks. Which is more feasible: killing NASA or finding a way to reduce defense spending by 2.75%? They both free up the same amount of money.
Re:I'm a rocket, man! (Score:3, Insightful)
There are a lot of steps between Ares 1-X, and an actual Ares 1 + Orion that can take people to orbit. Augustine and crew say 2017 before that happens, and they seem to have a good idea of what they're talking about.
Whats on the pad now is largely a publicity stunt -- especially with the future of Ares 1 itself in doubt. Its a 4-segment SRB with a dummy 5th segment, and a dummy second stage and Orion capsule. The fact that the SRB is different means it doesn't represent the vibrations and harmonics of the actual vehicle well. The upper parts are still under development as well.
Of course, its not a worthless test. Its ridiculously well instrumented, thus why weather matters even though its a suborbital lob, and it has also been modeled extensively. Being able to compare models to actual data on this scale is quite valuable. Probably not worth the $450M this launch will cost in total, but probably worth the remaining cost in the recent decisions to go ahead and continue the launch even with Ares 1 in doubt.