Monday, March 23, 2009

Fortune Teller?

We suspect the words of an ATK VP will maybe perhaps one day come back to haunt him...if the red button ever gets pushed.

"It's more like a submarine," says former astronaut Charles J. Precourt, of the Ares-1X sham hardware coming together at the Cape.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Speaking of fortune telling, NASA has ways of directly effecting the personal fortunes of those with differing opinions. Doesn't matter if those opinions turn out to be correct - they are a direct challenge to the ruling authority and will not be tolerated.

If NASA is willing to go after individuals at this stage of the game, what do you suppose they will do when 1-X shows its' true colors?

What were those words? An open culture of trust and mutual respect?

Anonymous said...

Y'know Rocket Man, I think you must be getting mad and typing fast 'cause that's the second time you spelt it 'Aries'. Or is that a deliberate mistake, reminding us that a fairly small cabal have RAMmed this LV down NASA's collective throats?

(ba-da-bum-tish)

Seriously, though, IIRC, Ares-IX doesn't have an upper stage or payload, just a boiler-plate fake. So, after the RSRM burns out at T+2:04, the top will be on a ballistic path to a splash-down somewhere in the mid-Atlantic anyway.

Nonetheless, the way the schedule continues to slip away (First manned flight in 2017? No ISS missions until 2018?!?), I can't see Ares-1 surviving much longer.

Correction: I can see it surviving but ultimately being the cause of the death of the NASA in-house LV program (maybe including HLLV). At this rate, after all, it is going to be being beaten into space by private competitors. Will China be racing to the Moon against Space-X or a Lockheed/Bigelow joint project?

Anonymous said...

Ha ha.

Glug, glug, glug...