Clark Lindsey, like me, is severely underwhelmed.
[Update in the afternoon]
Per comments, I don’t know what music they played at the rollout, but what should they have played? The theme from the Titanic?
19 thoughts on “Ares 1-X Rolls Out”
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Go, Go Rinkersat!
I think “potemkin future” is a good phrase to describe what NASA has been selling us.
But just look at the symbolism of these rollout pictures ! I wish it had two big round tanks of something attached at the base ..
Well, Reader, if you look at it at just the right angle, with the tail service masts aligned just so…
Can someone explain to me, in words of few syllables that my small brain can comprehend, why the Ares I design, with a redesigned, five-segment, vibration-damped solid stage, is somehow superior to or more cost-effective than:
* A vehicle with a Shuttle four-segment SRB and a slightly larger liquid stage, either parallel-staged or totem-pole?
* A vehicle with two Shuttle four-segment SRBs and a liquid stage, sort of like a mini-Jupiter 100 design?
NASA apparently has already spent a huge amount of money to redesign the solid stage of Ares so its thrust oscillations won’t puree the Orion’s crew, and it’s still throwing money at the Ares I’s problems. Suppose instead that NASA had taken the current and future R&D money and used it to buy additional Shuttle SRBs. Over the lifetime of the program, which approach would have been cheaper?
Note: I’m not advocating either of these strawman designs, and I think that several of the other alternatives that have been proposed are superior. But I would like to know (1) were they considered, (2) would they work, and (3) would they have cost more or less than our beloved Ares I?
Anyone know what music was played during the rollout? This being such a historic occasion and all — not.
Ares I-X is the surest indication yet that the only purpose of NASA manned spaceflight is to payoff important congressional districts with aerospace jobs and continue to maintain the ponderous NASA bureaucracy.
NASA manned space has finally become what it has always claimed it was not: a boondoggle. Whether anything of any value comes out of this sham is a bonus.
The Ares I-X is NASA’s R-101, or their Titan IV. An irrelevant effort wasting billions of dollars and untold man-years of work to produce a vehicle that is vastly inferior in every way to the existing state of the industry.
And today Chris Bergin of NASAspaceflight reports that the Altair program has been defunded. This my American friends is how your government misspends the money allocated to its space program. It’s worse than a bridge to nowhere, it’s an unfinished yet already broken bridge to a destination that can already be reached with existing means, meant as a precursor to a bigger bridge to nowhere.
Shouldn’t people be going to jail over this?
The theme from “Space: 1999”?
The Aries 1-X cannot be put to it’s proper use for two reasons, one it’s anatomically impossible, and two Griffin might enjoy it.
Some suggestions for an appropriate Ares-IX rollout song:
The Grand Illusion, Styx
The Pretender, Jackson Browne
Theme from “Shaft,” Isaac Hayes
Good Vibrations, The Beach Boys
Shakin’, Eddie Money
Pretending, Eric Clapton
Everybody knows Ares is doomed. The only reason this sham launch is going ahead is because it’s cheaper to launch the damned thing than it would be to de-stack it and haul it away.
Pathetic.
So would extending shuttle operation for another 10-20 years be cheaper than Ares? If so, would that not be a better option?
Perhaps “Nearer My God, To Thee” would have the appropriate historic precedent and symbolism.
Jeeze. The music clearly should have been Eye of the Tiger. Whichever version was the theme of Rocky LXIV.
We will all go down together – John Denver
“The Show Must Go On” – Queen
“Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin On” — Jerry Lee Lewis
“Shake, Rattle and Roll” — Bill Haley & His Comets
“Loser”, by Beck.