Tuesday - October 20, 2009

A Last Hurrah For NASA?

Nasa’s Ares 1-X rocket was finally secured on the launch pad today ready for its $455 million test-flight, even as the White House considered a proposal that the vehicle should be scrapped.

The 327-foot booster, which has been four years in the making, emerged from the 52-storey Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, at 1.39am local time in what its creators heralded as a “historic” moment. It reached the launchpad nearly eight hours later.

The prototype rocket, designed to launch astronauts into orbit following retirement of the shuttle — and ultimately to the Moon and Mars — is the first crew spacecraft Nasa has rolled out in 30 years.

A floodlit Ares I-X departed the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) in the early hours of Tuesday, ahead of test launch of a new system that is under real threat of being canceled in the coming months. However, Ares I-X – set to launch on October 27 from the slightly modified Pad 39B – is still deemed viable, due to its role in gathering important data for the engineering teams.

Blast-off, scheduled for next Tuesday, should be a more animated affair as the rocket hurtles 28 miles high, at a top speed of 3,000mph, before diving into the Atlantic Ocean.

The demonstration flight will allow Nasa to test hardware and gather critical data, in readiness for manned launches that are planned to begin in 2015, when astronauts would be launched in a capsule known as Orion stacked on the top of the rocket.

But a White House-appointed review panel has established that Nasa does not currently have the budget to fulfil its vision for venturing as far as the Moon, and has suggested the abandonment of Ares in favour of cheaper, commercially-built boosters.

NASA plans to use a five-segment shuttle booster as the first stage of its Ares I rocket, one of two being designed as part of the post-shuttle Constellation program. Carrying a hydrogen-fueled second stage, the Ares I is designed to boost Orion crew capsules into low-Earth orbit for flights to the International Space Station and eventual trips to the moon.

Two five-segment boosters would be used to help launch a huge new unmanned rocket called the Ares V designed to loft Altair lunar landers into orbit. After docking with an Orion capsule, the Ares V would boost the combined spacecraft to the moon. NASA hopes to establish long-duration research stations on the moon in the early 2020s.

The rocket is Ares I-X — a suborbital prototype for the Ares I rocket NASA plans to use to launch its shuttle successor, the Orion spacecraft. Currently the world’s tallest booster, the Ares I-X rolled out to the launch pad early Tuesday and is slated to blast off Oct. 27 at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT) on a short demonstration flight.

”The Ares I-X is going to fly straight up and straight out,” said NASA commentator George Diller as the 327-foot (100-meter) tall rocket began moving toward Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “During that time we’ll be testing the stage separation to determine how well the first stage separation motors perform, as well as the performance of the booster itself, namely the parachutes and other apparatus that will deploy.”

The Ares I-X is not a full Ares I rocket. Its first stage is a four-segment solid rocket booster — repurposed from the shuttle fleet’s inventory — capped with a dummy fifth segment. The thicker second stage, Orion crew capsule and launch abort system are also all mock-ups built to simulate the size and mass of the real thing.

The Ares I-X flight is the first of three planned test flights for the Ares I rocket. The next launch, dubbed Ares I-Y, is slated to launch in 2014 and include a real second stage.

The Ares 1-X stands 327 feet tall. The Saturn V rocket was 363 feet tall. Ares’ first stage, the main booster, is a solid fuel rocket. This launch will use a 4 segment motor, future versions (Ares 1-Y, scheduled for 2013 or 2014) will use the full 5 segment motor. This motor consumes 1.4 million pounds of fuel in 2 minutes, producing 3.6 million pounds (22 million horsepower) of thrust. This is about half the thrust of the Saturn V’s first stage, but it’s only a third of the weight. It was recently tested out in Utah, and was a spectacular success.

“After witnessing what we just saw, it’s pretty easy to become speechless,” said Alex Priskos, first stage manager for Ares Projects at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. “That was quite remarkable. This did exactly what we wanted to do. We are confident we’re going to get all the data we wanted to get out of this test. I think the team did a great job, we got the test we wanted to get. ... We are very, very pleased. The data looks great.”

Said Charles Precourt, vice president and general manager of space launch systems for ATK: “It’s a very humbling experience when you think about harnessing the kind of energy we just unleashed today, 3.6 million pounds of thrust. Our engineers in the back rooms are ecstatic, the preliminary indications look wonderful.”

So, regardless of cost or development problems, or even politics, it looks like NASA is finally all systems go. Too bad Washington and it’s feet of clay are all systems stop. The dems always did hate space exploration, and this program is no different. Obama has been against it since before the inauguration. Better to spend the money on some more welfare checks to the po’ an starvin’. Oh, plus stuff like this makes America look good, and we’re all proud of the accomplishment. Can’t have that! Gosh, just think of the carbon footprint something like this makes!

Like the early Saturn 1-B flights, the launch of the Ares-1X is primarily to test the booster engine, the thrust vectoring controls, and the stage separation mechanisms. The upper stages will be dummies, containing little more than instruments. The booster will be recovered by parachute and is reusable, but the dummy upper stages will be allowed to crash into the ocean.

Other links to Ares:
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/ares1x/091007lvrt/
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/ares1x/091010lrr/
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/tag/ares-i-x/

Posted by Drew458     on 10/20/2009 at 12:13 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
• Comments (3) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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