Apparently, that’s the name of the new launch vehicles that NASA wants to develop, which will be announced in a couple hours. The Crew Launch Vehicle (heretofore called CLV) will be the Ares 1, and the Cargo Launch Vehicle (previously known as the CaLV) will be the Ares 5. A tribute to the Saturn numbers, I guess, and an indication of the ultimate planned destination (Barsoom).

Amidst all the talk about the Shuttle launch this weekend (hopefully), the fact that we had a successful Delta 4 launch from Vandenberg seems to have gone largely unnoticed. A few more successes of this vehicle and the Atlas V could at least put a stake through the heart of the “stick,” given that the design of it still seems to be in flux, and it’s turning out not to be as “safe, simple or soon” as advertised.

[Update a few minutes later]

This is funny. I decided to link to http://www.safesimplesoon.com, but the site is down. Is it just a temporary problem, or did ATK decide it was an embarrassment?

I’ll be talking about my NRO piece, NASA, the Shuttle and the future of human spaceflight on the Ron Smith Show this afternoon, a little after 3:30 Eastern.

[Update a few minutes later]

Apparently, just before me, the guest host (Ron Smith is apparently on vacation) is going to be talking to a Matt Towery, who had this “Scuttle the Shuttle” piece at Townhall.com yesterday. It seems a little incoherent to me–it’s not clear what he’s proposing in its place, and the logic doesn’t necessarily hold together:

Experts still refer to the shuttle as an “experimental craft,” one in which the odds of a catastrophic failure — loss of the shuttle or the crew or both — are somewhere between one in 60 and one in 100 launches. Would you get on a conveyance of any kind that had one chance in 60 of killing you?

Well, in general, no. But if I thought that it were my one and only chance of getting into space, I might spin the cartridges on the revolver–it’s ten times better odds than classical Russian roulette, with a heck of a payoff. If not one in sixty, what is the right number?

The Shuttle safety debate often reminds me of the irrationality of the fifty-five-mph speed limit. Or the minimum wage. These people think that there’s some rational basis for their arbitrary numerology, but you can never get them to explain it.

Wayne Hale, manager of the space shuttle program, shares some thoughts and emails to the team on NPR this morning. I believe Hale has mismanaged the shuttle program.

That was quick. My NRO piece is up. Almost as good as blogging.

[Update at 5:20 Eastern]

Clark Lindsey has more thoughts on the (futility of) the Scuttle the Shuttle campaign.

And as Bill White points out, for once, the Space Frontier Society and the LA Times are on the same page. Probably for entirely different reasons, though…

[Update a few minutes later]

The press should really give up on trying to get this right:

Each shuttle mission costs about $450 million for a few days in low-Earth orbit.

There is no single, always usable number for the cost of a single Shuttle mission. As I pointed out in my NRO piece, the last mission cost over ten billion, and this one will have cost about five.

Which is a good time to reiterate my point about costs of space access.

It’s the flight rate, stupid!

[Update at 9:40 PM Eastern]

Mark Whittington says:

…I take my guidence [sic] from Dr. Hawking in that ultimately the thing to be accomplished is the spreading of humankind across the Solar System and ultimately the stars, to ensure our survival at least until the death of the universe.

Believe me, no one in Washington, with control over the federal pursestrings, is talking about that as a national goal or purpose for the space program, and if they are, ESAS is one of the most cost-ineffective means to achieve that goal.

Fortunately, others, with more foresight, are, and are acting upon it.

So says the Space Frontier Foundation, two days before the next scheduled launch:

The Space Shuttle program consumes approximately five billion dollars a year whether or not it flies a single mission. Most of these funds go to support the so-called “standing army” of NASA and aerospace employees dependent on the Shuttle for their jobs. If all goes according to plan, twenty billion dollars will be spent between now and the last Shuttle flight. Meanwhile, NASA’s much-ballyhooed Commercial Orbital Transportation Systems (COTS) project meant to create a new and varied humans-to-space transportation industry using the space station as a customer is spending only $500 million to spark the development of new low-cost systems with none at all allocated to purchase rides.

“We are spending the same amount of money every six weeks to not fly Space Shuttles as we are investing in the entire NewSpace industry. We are mortgaging our future while starving these incredibly talented and promising new companies and ideas, all to sustain a system that has completely failed,” Tumlinson said. “It is time to get the U.S. government out of the

Jeff Foust points out that the usual suspects in Congress are trying to defund the president’s new space initiative. And as usual, they have the same stale, non-sequitur arguments about the relative cost effectivity of “science” between humans and robots, as though that’s the only reason we have a space program (as I point out in comments over there).

Jeff Foust points out that the usual suspects in Congress are trying to defund the president’s new space initiative. And as usual, they have the same stale, non-sequitur arguments about the relative cost effectivity of “science” between humans and robots, as though that’s the only reason we have a space program (as I point out in comments over there).

Jeff Foust points out that the usual suspects in Congress are trying to defund the president’s new space initiative. And as usual, they have the same stale, non-sequitur arguments about the relative cost effectivity of “science” between humans and robots, as though that’s the only reason we have a space program (as I point out in comments over there).

Jim Pinkerton agrees with Stephen Hawking, that we need to get some of our earthly eggs into other baskets.