Ares 1-X gives Mr Obama something to ponder
The "stick" has flown. The 100m-tall, super-slim Ares 1-X rocket has completed its demonstration mission.
Time will now tell whether this event was a giant leap on the road to a new astronaut launch system or just a spectacular side-show.
Nasa wants to use the fully developed Ares 1 to propel its next-generation crewship into orbit, and expects the rocket to be flying in 2015.
A White House advisory panel has suggested otherwise [PDF 7Mb]. It doubts Ares can be made to fly before 2017, and has pointed to potentially easier and cheaper options for getting humans into low-Earth orbit.
Wednesday's launch may not have advanced Ares' cause, but it will not have harmed it either.
The flight went ahead after a series of frustrating "no go" calls from weather officers.
Conditions had seemed benign enough except for some persistent high cloud.
The concern was that if the vehicle had climbed through this cloud, a build-up of static might have interfered with radio signals sent to and from the rocket.
If the flight had gone wrong for some reason and the vehicle had begun to veer out of control, this "triboelectric effect" could have interfered with a command to destroy the rocket.
The risks associated with a maiden flight are always higher than with a proven vehicle and so nothing could be left to chance.
The 1-X had an explosive charge running the full length of the booster and officials at the spaceport would not have hesitated in using it if required to do so.
As we now know, the weather finally obliged towards the end of the launch window and the Ares 1-X was given a "go" for 1530 GMT.
The 1-X uses the same booster technology (with modifications) that helps lift the space shuttle off the launch pad. The higher thrust-to-weight ratio of the slender 1-X meant of course that its departure from terra firma had a little more zip about it.
Everything appeared to go pretty much to plan: a two-minute powered flight to more than 130,000ft (45km), with the vehicle moving at almost five times the speed of sound.
Separation of the booster from the upper part of the rocket occurred right on cue.
The booster was flipped by thrusters to slow it, and it fell towards the ocean, deploying a new parachute system during the descent.
The team sent to recover the booster from the water also tried out a method of retrieval not previously used to salvage the shuttle's discarded motors.
One point of note was the way the upper part of the 1-X - a physical simulation of what the top of an Ares 1 should look like - appeared to start its tumble motion earlier than expected.
All of the immediate goals do seem to have been achieved. But it will take months for engineers to assess the data returned by the more-than-700 sensors on the 1-X.
The demonstrator was intended to help verify design assumptions so that when the Ares 1 proper is built, everyone can be confident it will fly as expected.
Which brings us back to the "big question": will the Ares 1 actually be developed?
This is one only President Barack Obama can answer. He also has to find a budget to support whatever solution he proposes to get US astronauts into space once the shuttle is retired.
His expert panel has told him that $3bn a year extra is needed by Nasa to do anything "meaningful" in the realm of human spaceflight.
The weeks ahead in Washington are sure to be fascinating. The lobbying will be intense, and Congress is sure to want to have a say.
I know science reporters like myself are usually given the "space beat" in the mainstream media, but I'm very aware that the decision which has to be taken is not a scientific one. It's a political one; and given the size of the US space sector, it has major economic considerations.
Many thousands of jobs will hang on President Obama's Ares deliberations.
Watch this space.
I’m 
© MMX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~12~RS~)
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I've been meaning to ask you, ever since I started reading this blog.
You have a model of the ATV on one side of you, but why do you have a glass of beer on the other side? :-)
As to the Ares 1X, I can't help feeling that it's rather large for something that puts men into LEO. Why is so big? when you think back to the small Titan II and Saturn 1B that used to do the same sort of job.
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What we have seen is the 480M$ demonstration that a Space Shuttle’s Solid Rocket Booster can fly on its own. A step towards a Moon mission dream? Methinks not.
It’d be vastly cheaper to develop just a capsule to launch on top of the Ariane-5. Or better yet, order 200+ Soyuz flights from Russia.
What is missing is a really heavy launcher, not yet another reinventing of the manned rocket.
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"What is missing is a really heavy launcher, not yet another reinventing of the manned rocket."
It's not missing, it's called the Ares V. Originally intended as just a heavy cargo launcher the Augustine Committee put forward the idea of a 'Lite' version with fewer engines and smaller SRB's(the ones intended for the Ares 1) to be used for launching the Orion capsule for missions beyond LEO. One other point the committee made was that using Orion as a ferry for the ISS would be expensive and wasteful, something along the lines of the SpaceX Falcon9/Dragon combo would be more economic operationally if not in terms of development costs.
The point of the Ares 1 was to be the simple, cheap, quick solution to replacing the shuttle. It's already failed on all three counts so why push on with it?
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Ares is bigger than earlier rockets like the Gemini because it is designed to launch the Orion capsule which is bigger than Apollo capsule. Orion is set for long duration trips (add a service module launched by Ares V, the really heavy lift launcher). That capsule has been scaled back from 6 seat to 4 because of weight problems.
If NASA just wanted to go to the space station it would be easier to buy rides on Soyuz, or maybe man-rate, European ATV + Ariane, Falcon 9, Atlas, or Delta heavy
Wasn't most of the 3 bn short fall for the next couple of years removed from the standard budget because of the uncertainty generated by the Augustine investigation.
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@AsaScot: that's what I meant. Why waste all that money, when money is tight, in anything else but Ares V?
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"@AsaScot: that's what I meant. Why waste all that money, when money is tight, in anything else but Ares V?"
That seems to be roughly speaking what the Augustine Committee was suggesting, with the job of ferrying crew to the ISS falling to a commercial vehicle, possibly the Falcon9/Dragon but that was one of the things they left open. Using Orion as a LEO ferry is a hideous waste of money, it's going to cost more per launch that something like the Dragon, even if the development costs are similar, that's where the committee see a saving in the costs.
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All Ares rockets are meant to go as far as Mars. This whole 'going to the ISS' thing is secondary. Ares I and V are both part of an integral system. If you want to go to Mars, both of these rockets together are not a waste of money, that's exactly the type of mission they were designed for. However, if you just want to haul people to the ISS, it is a waste of money. Like using a million-dollar tank to open your front door. Now if you send this tank to the battlefield, it makes a lot more sense, doesn't it?
Sending cargo or people to the ISS is soon becoming small time. With many nations now able to send cargo to it, it won't be long before nations and commercial entities begin sending humans up there too. I think the question Obama is asking himself is, will SpaceX be ready before we have to resort to using Russian services? This is the political question.
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If you can go to Mars on an Ares I you can go to Mars on an Ares V...
And so once again...why have this Ares I at all, given the limited amount of available money? With the additional risk of Ares V being cancelled ("Hey, we have Ares I!") only to see then Ares I mothballed because too expensive and pointless. That's exactly what happened to pretty much all other NASA manned space program projects this side of the Space Shuttle
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If you can go to Mars on an Ares I you can go to Mars on an Ares V...
The reason for two is that it is supposed to be versatility. If you only need to send heavy cargo, but no crew, you can send Ares V alone. If you only need to send crew, you can send Ares I alone. Or maybe even two Ares V but only one manned Ares I... situations are endless.
The Saturn rockets, by comparison, had a very specific purpose. Fly cargo and crew to the moon. And even then, the Saturn I rockets launched command modules alone, rather than using the Saturn V which was still in development at the time (sounds familiar?). However, the Ares rockets have an uncertain purpose, and as such, are built with versatility in mind. Maybe Mars? Maybe the Moon? Maybe another planet's moons?
This much I can gather, I don't think you give NASA enough credit.
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Given that Roskosmos announced yesterday that they are pursuing a nuclear-powered spacecraft to be launched by the end of the next decade, and that President Medvedev is personally lobbying for funding and is liable to get it on the basis of Russian pride, it puts the US efforts into perspective, no? They are going back to technology we used 40 years ago, at huge cost, without any real commercial future for such forms of travel.
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Two things: (1) Nerderello. The pint of beer is actually my 1:50 scale model of the Herschel telescope. The small size of the picture means it appears as a pint of beer. I kinda like that. (2) There is now a lot of pressure on SpaceX, I think, to put on a good show for the first launch of Falcon-9. Were it to have a failure as Falcon-1 had on its maiden flight, you can imagine Constellation supporters, especially those on Capitol Hill, making quite a fuss.
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@space_adjutant: "the Ares rockets have an uncertain purpose"
in other words, they are as good as scrap metal...
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"The reason for two is that it is supposed to be versatility. If you only need to send heavy cargo, but no crew, you can send Ares V alone. If you only need to send crew, you can send Ares I alone. Or maybe even two Ares V but only one manned Ares I... situations are endless."
Well I think one of the motivators for the two rockets was actually that NASA needed, or was pressured to create, a manned launch system that could be brought online as soon after the Shuttle retirement as possible, hence the Ares I design. The real problem isn't even the rocket but the Orion capsule itself; which is a fine design but massively overbuilt for the role of crew ferry for the ISS, which is initially the role it would be expected to fill, hence the focus in the Augustine report on a simpler commercial vehicle like the Dragon. Take away the crew ferry role and the Ares I rocket doesn't really have a mission, when/if NASA is ready to go to the moon/Mars/NEO's an Ares V 'lite' as an Orion launcher makes sense.
As far as the Russian nuclear rocket goes, its certainly an admirable goal but it will be a long time before the technology is ready, never mind the international politics.
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It would seem to me as both an amateur observer of the Manned Spaceflight program in the US and a very sceptical person, that there is an elephant in the room again.
The whole "Constellation" program was IMHO sold to and by Dubya as "Apollo Mk2" as simply Political Pork for what is left of the US Aerospace industry. CM by Company X, SM By Company Y, LEM By Company Z. Launcher by consortium. Electrics by A, Computer Systems (already out of date by fly time) by B. Jobs for All, Guvvment cash for All in Swing States, that'll be a non-executive directorship please.
The Russians have made Space a commercial venture by knocking out multiple copies of tried and tested technology. Dnepr and Proton Boosters and Soyuz. It is entirely possible that Soyuz will be flying into its 60th year. American "commercial" launchers have No Chance in the face of that sort of record.
Why pay megabucks for an American or European Launch when the Russians will sling it on top of a converted ICBM for half the cost and point to a 95% plus success rate and the Indians will take it up for almost nothing as part of their test program ?
For manned flight, sure, the innards of Soyuz may have changed but Hey, It Wasn't Broke, They Didn't need to fix it. The Chinese have copied it and stuffed it full of proprietary electronics and if they don't already have the forty-year old designs for the L3 to work off and improve then its because they've already designed a LEM at twice the capacity and half the weight that will work with an uprated additional stage on a Long March 5.
Next up will be the Chinese Salyut by about '11 or '12 and then on to the Moon.
Who knows what the Russians will do. It suits them at the moment politically to be part of the ISS. They've still got the designs and the plant for Buran and Energia. It worked, the only thing that stopped the Soviet Shuttle was the lack of a Soviet Union. Their neighbors to the East are getting a little too interested in Space and the ability to negate satellites…..Comrade Putin, do you not think that……
Ranting a bit I know but point is, why redesign the wheel ? You want men to the ISS, buy 150 seats on Soyuz or Shenzhou. Sure, Man-Rate the ATV or the HTV, got to be a cheaper alternative than an entirely new capsule/module family. Dust off the plans for Hermes now that Arianne V seems to work reasonably well.
The Moon is a distraction. Mars is the target and that mission can't be a 14-day capsule/module stack. Think ahead America, go for the Red Planet before you have to pass through Chinese Customs on Phobos !
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Chiefy1724 I'm sure the Russians and the Chinese have plans to go to Mars but what neither they nor anyone else has is a rocket big enough to launch the required payloads, that's why the Ares V is needed by NASA. As to this Chinese super LEM, some evidence it exists as more than a theoretical excercise would be nice. The suggestion that Soyuz could be used as the sole crew ferry is naive at best, especially when you also seem to be implying the Russians might turn against the ISS at some point. I am also an amateur observer, I would suggest taking your post and using it to open a thread at the BAUT(Bad Astronomy Universe Today) forum where the experts can explain the issues you raise much more clearly.
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#15 AsaScot
How charming of you. What a lovely welcome to a forum. Responses involving cerebral extremities and natural isotopes of dihydrogen oxide at 373.15K spring to mind. I do hope that you are not a Scot as I would be very disappointed if one of my countrymen was so downright impolite to a new contributor.
1: Did I say that Ares V or even Ares I wasn't "needed" ? Can't see that anywhere in my post. No Heavy Lift Launcher of the type required currently exists. NASA needs….But the next gen Arianne or LM series ?
2: Chinese "Super-LEM". You're missing the point, either accidentally or deliberately. They don't need to invent one, there is an almost-functional (albeit a bit rusty) template sitting in Moscow. I would be surprised if in 40 years, given what they have done to the base Soyuz design, that it could not be improved on in some way. It would be naieve (note correct spelling) not to assume that at least technical plans and specs have made their way to Beijing. If required.
The Chinese have all the necessary technologies in place to allow them to go circumlunar next flight if they wanted to. The Shenzhou is almost a direct copy of the Russian Soyuz. This was designed and flight qualified in the 1960’s as Unmanned Zond for return to the earth from the moon and it is a matter of record that Leonov and Makarov were preparing to fly a manned version in '68. They still probably could have done – Leonov himself maintains that.
The Chinese could go Direct Landing by adding a fairly simple Descent stage and using a second orbital module as an ascent stage back to Lunar Orbit. Again, a well documented and modelled solution.
So, sorry, no "Super LEM". Build a plane to a 40-year design with modern technologies and materials and of course you save weight, increase efficiency, etc. Why is the concept of being able to do that with a 40-year old LEM design in exactly the same way that they have improved a 50-year old CSM design so difficult for you ?
3: Soyuz as sole ferry. Nope, can't see that anywhere either. I must be really rubbish at writing for you to misread what I am saying so badly. Or maybe you just aren't actually reading it ?
Missing the point again old son. Shuttle gone in '10 or '11 if SLEP approved. How do US Astronauts get to orbit given that Orion, if it ever flies, will not fly until '15 at the earliest ? So why re-invent the wheel ? What does Orion and the "Constellation" program give that Soyuz or a man-rated ATV doesn't in terms of LEO operations and the ISS ?
4: Russians "against" the ISS. The Russians have already written the book on Duration Flights. Otherwise, the ISS is simply a proving ground for the Trainers of the next generation of Astro/Cosmonauts in the basic techniques needed for LEO construction. If the Russians could have physically afforded to replace Mir do you think that they would have signed up to the ISS ?
Otherwise, cheers pal and similar sentiments to the horse that you rode in on. Maybe I will go off to BAUT as a distraction from my usual haunts on the Political blogs. After all, I've been following Manned Space Flight almost since I could walk and although a simple Biologist by profession, I have picked up a little from my Batchelor's, 2 Masters and a Doctorate.
Civility in dealing with people being one of those little things that I have picked up
Maybe I'll get a Civilised welcome at BAUT ?
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"Civility in dealing with people being one of those little things that I have picked up
Maybe I'll get a Civilised welcome at BAUT ?"
I thought my post was perfectly civil but if you felt otherwise I do apologize. You will receive a civil welcome at BAUT but you will be expected to back up some of your claims with hard facts, especially that one about the manned Russian Moon flight.
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17 AsaScot.
You will find reference to Leonov and Makarov getting ready for the Circulumnar flight in a modified Zond in Johnson, Nicholas L, The Soviet Reach for the Moon, Cosmos Books, Washington, DC, 1994.
Leonov also indirectly confirms this on p252 of his collaboration with Dave Scott "Two Sides of the Moon", when he says that following the 1968 Apollo 8 flight "Those of us in training for these (lunar) flights were convinced that we should go ahead and carry them out".
Ergo, Leonov and Makarov were in training (i.e. preparing) to fly circumlunar in '68. Remember, it was fear of this happening that turned Apollo 8 into a circumlunar mission.
Further down that page (252) he confirms that the plan had been that following 2 successful circumlunar Zond flights, the next would be manned and he would be the commander. Which according to the flight roster would have made Makarov his engineer.
The failure of Zond 7 to successfuly reenter (Leonov says on Page 253)stopped the further development of the program but he remains convinced that the man-rated version would have successfully re-entered due to differences in the design.
Hard enough for you ?
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While I'm at it, Mike Collins in "Carrying the Fire" (p296, Footnotes) suggests that the fact that Zond 5 went circumlunar with a biological cargo (September 18th 1968) "represented a hell of a capability and made a lot of NASA people edgy. Would Russian Men follow shortly ?" and on page 301 says that "as the December lunar Launch Window approached, the moon beckoned to the Russian as well as us".
A Manned Soviet Loop or full insertion into Lunar Orbit in December'68 was not beyond the realms of possibility and had Zond 6 been a complete success would have probably gone ahead.
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Chiefy1724, this is a blog on the future of the Ares 1, I think its been hijacked quite enough which is why I suggested going to a more appropriate forum like BAUT to discuss some of these issues in the first place. Since however you seem determined to keep going and become increasingly rude well I'm sorry but what you propose as 'evidence' is nothing of the sort, its just anecdotes from books written decades after the event that you've chosen to interpet as meaning a manned Soviet flight was imminent, when it could just as easily be taken as meaning the program as a whole should go ahead regardless of what the USA might do.
I'm going to make that my final word on the subject on this blog, if you want to take my refusal to argue further as running away or conceding defeat you go right ahead.
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Jonathan, thanks for the blog. Space is not well covered in the UK and its a welcome addition. I'll pass by every so often whilst waiting for the Modding on Blether With Brian to catch up.
It's been an interesting day of contribution. I thought that I had made a few valid points towards MHO that Ares/Constellation essentially stops here but it seems to have degenerated into an ill-tempered exchange, for which I humbly apologise to the other contributors for my part.
I'll not be back.
Peace/Pax/Mir/Shanti/Shalom/Salaam to you all and your generations
Chiefy
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