I remember the entire space program, or nearly so. I was born at roughly the same moment that the Russians launched Sputnik II. Warped me forever, that did. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, the Shuttle… I never missed whatever TV coverage any space mission got once I was old enough to change the channel on our family TV set. I just turned 51 earlier this week, and still nothing thrills me like seeing we puny humans shove the barriers of our ignorance aside and taking a giant leap into the unknown- in order to make it into the known. I eagerly await the advances we have yet to make within my lifetime. The future can’t come quickly enough. I want to see my children and grandchildren walk on the surface of other worlds, to fulfill the human ambition of finding out what wonders await beyond the limits of our vision, but not beyond the limits of our imaginations.

A former chairman of the House science committee told Brevard County leaders Monday that NASA’s next rocket is “on the chopping block” and that a new administration may abandon the Ares I as successor to the space shuttle.

Afterward, in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, he elaborated: “The discussion I am hearing in the space community is that Ares will certainly be reviewed by the next administration.”

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_space_thewritestuff/2008/10/grim-outlook-fo.html

I think it long past time to reconsider Ares 1X and find a better launch system. Ares is starting to have the smell of boondoggle: late, overpriced and with less capability than advertised.

It’s really time to give EELV, Direct and private initiatives another close look before making further investment into Ares. EELV is the closest system to launch capability. D4-Heavy could well be modified to fit an Ares capsule on it. Direct may have more promise than EELV or Ares. Or, a better Ares design may be found.

Ares V — no problem. The Stick, however, stinks, and I don’t care what Michael Griffin tells you. Talk to the engineers building it, and I do, and a great deal of them will give you their grave concerns about the potential for success of the project.

In the meantime, keep the damned Shuttle flying.

You might be right there, von Braun historically didn’t like solid boosters at all as they have crappy performance and give a hell of a rough ride.

justcorbly: The point is U.S. has at their disposal vehicles which *can* put Orion into orbit. They’re both EELVs (Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle) and ANY upgrade required to man-rate them (Atlas, as was said, would be easier to man-rate) would cost *vastly* less than what NASA is spending on their own little bottle rocket. We are talking BILLIONS here.

Then again, it’s your tax money so have it what you like…

“Yeah, let’s base our only rocket system on a part of the shuttle system that has already demonstrated it can destroy a shuttle. That sounds good!”

IMHO, solid rockets should *never* be man-rated. Let me clarify: Never, Never, *Ever* be man-rated. And this one’s got it as the first – and most important – stage. How dumb is that?