NASA engineers work on alternative moon rocket

$230 billion to get to the moon, using 1960s technology. The Chinese also plan to get there by 2020. My bets are on the Chinese actually doing it. NASA is the graveyard of good ideas.

$230 billion... to what end? We have been to the moon, and that long enterprise yielded nothing. Well, except for good anti-communist PR. Are there no actual scientists left in America? Are there no diseases needing cures? Are there no real problems needing solutions?
This is disgusting.

There is a big possibility that the Ares rocket will shake itself apart at launch as a result of resonant vibrations in the lower structure. NASA knows that and they are still trying to find ways to solve that problem with shock absorbers that will absorb the vibrations. That is an approach never taken in the past. There's no proof it will work. Vulvox's materials science page shows the shuttle that broke up over Texas
a couple of years ago. Navigagte to it from
http://vulvox.tripod.com Will history repeat itself?

There are plenty of technologies gained while struggling to get into space. So there is an end. Why the moon? There is still much more we have to learn about it.

But ultimately, the plan to go to the moon first then mars was set by a certain president... Not from a group of expert scientists.

Oh and the 230 billion isn't going up as a payload. It goes to salaries, parts, testing, testing facilities, expensive toilets :-) and etc. So the money does go back into American pockets.

well, if that rocket is so good, why don't they find themselves a venture capitalist and ground a company? if the design is good, the market makes them win

Ok, folks. No, no, no, and no. This is an example where giving your impression of what's going on in a complicated technical field may obscure the real decisions that are to be made.

dirk: NASA isn't using 1960s technology. It isn't realistically possible to even recreate such such crude technology. The machinery, metallugy, organizational techniques, are all 45 years out-of-date. (The engines are a number of generations more sophisticated, as a quick example.)

Mike, going to the moon didn't yield "nothing". Maybe President Kennedy was acting from political motivations, but 10,000s of NASA employees were not. The goal is to return, and settle. Also, and apart from that, there are compelling economic reasons to make factories for space material there, rather than on Earth.

Neil, it's apparently true there are design problems. There were actually similar problems with "slosh" in the Saturn V. That vehicle was modified, and had a 100% launch success. We're hoping the same for the Ares, right?

Arikin. President Kennedy was not given an option to go to Mars. Werner von Braun, who had his, Disney's and almost everyone else's respect, had a fairly specific set of steps for getting to Mars. A space station, and going to the moon were intermediate steps.

The great amount of testing is an interesting subject. It happens because the American public is not willing to sacrifice the lives of a few people for the greater public good. On an Apollo mission, the astronaut-geologist asked to have the "emergency escape rocket" removed from the top of the spacecraft, to make enough weight for an experiment he wanted to take. His fellow astronauts were fine with that. It was almost done, except that NASA thought there would be such a big PR hit -- in the one in a thousand chance the escape rocket would be used -- they were unwilling to remove it. In later years, and I'm speaking here as someone who worked for one of the astronauts, there was a change of attitude among "The Right Stuff". I didn't hear any questions from astronauts about the extremely expensive emergency exit retrofitted in the Space Shuttle. Astronauts are now fat and happy, and expect millions to be spent so, to be blunt, they can return home to their bank accounts. It's not "the government", as such that's mandating the testing, it's popular public opinion.

I have the utmost faith in NASA to choose the least efficient, most disastrous, and contractor-lucrative design available.

Build the one that uses the most fuel as a gesture to the gods.

"$230 billion... to what end?" This time it's about economy, not about national prestige: tritium, hydrogen isotope 3H, as the most promissing energy source. China, Russia, EU, Japan are jumping the bandwagon for a good reason.

I was actually thinking of George Bush. So a more recent time frame.

As a retired aerospace engineer who grew up in Huntsville, had relatives that worked on Saturn, relatives and friends who managed NASA programs, who worked on projects at the Cape and who has former students in NASA in DC, I am certain that NASA designs are obsolete, safe, expensive, over designed, and slow to reach operation. The future of US space exploration and exploitation is private business.

The US should be funding the Commercial Orbital Transportation Service or COTS program to a much greater extent along with creating the infrastructure to get into space. The governments place is to create an infrastructure in which commerce may partake as they did with the railways and interstates which opened up the West and created an industrial revolution second to none.

The Ares system is too far along to turn back. To keep vacillating back and forth is to accomplish nothing that is why Michael Griffin took the reigns of this horse and has accomplish so much in so little time.

The Jupiter 2.0 is just a napkin drawing compared to the Ares system and it is obviously not as safe.

To separate the humans from the cargo is what enables safety (A No Brainer to me).

The Jupiter 2.0 is a system that has to be human rated and is a much more complex system than the Ares 1, it has two modified Shuttle SRBs and a modified Shuttle liquid fuel take just for taking humans into orbit. The Ares 1 is a much more basic system. One modified 5 1/2 segment SRB and one J-2X Main upper stage engine to safely get people into orbit. Along with the Human rated much more efficient simply designed Ares 1 the (non-human rated) Ares 5 separates cargo from crew and will be able to lift 176,000 pounds to lunar orbit and is much cheaper to design than a human rated vehicle.

And for those that think we should spend our money on more earthly things I say%u2026 Space is most definitely the final frontier or at least China, Russia, India, Japan and Iran think it%u2019s worth perusing but, I guess for some people becoming a third world nation is OK as long as the government pays for everything??? (NOT!!!) Smell the coffee and realize space is where we are going!!!

I would be more supportive of the NASA team if it were reported that the engineering team members were sneaking off by cover of darkness to work on THE ARES SYSTEM!

This lack of unity and open insolence is exactly what makes the general public turn their collective back from these giant and expensive projects. This kind of conduct produces bushel baskets of letters to Conress members pleading them to cut funding.

I think someone needs to step up and tell these engineers to get their act together. They are undermining the entire NASA mission with this juvenile treachery(perhaps that is their "mission?").

This is no way to run a railroad, let alone go to the Moon. And I think, given this open stupidity, that this nation should simply forget about going to Mars. Such an undertaking will take decades of unified dedication to a singular mission. This NASA "team" has proven that they are simply not capable.

I can just imagine the nonsense that is going unreported. I guess we'll find out at the end of the countdown. God help us.

Until they use the proposed near light speed propulsion engine design I'll hold my vote.