Well, it looked spectacular.
I'm referring to NASA's recent launch of the Ares 1-X, billed as the prototype of the Ares 1 as a crew launch vehicle, a fancy term for a manned space booster. The rocket is said to have performed as planned, and ushered in the era of the Ares rockets to replace the Space Shuttle next year. Only it won't. In fact, the much-hyped Ares 1-X was much ado about nothing.
Yes, the rocket that thundered aloft from NASA's Launch Pad 39B sure looked like an Ares 1. But that's where the resemblance stops. Turns out the solid booster was - literally - bought from the Space Shuttle program, since a five-segment booster being designed for Ares wasn't ready. So they put a fake can on top of the four-segmented motor to look like the real thing. Since the real Ares' upper stage rocket engine, called the J-2X wasn't ready either, they mounted a fake upper stage. No Orion capsule was ready, so - you guessed it - they mounted a fake capsule with a real-looking but fake escape rocket that wouldn't have worked if the booster had failed. Since the guidance system for Ares wasn't ready either they went and bought a unit from the Atlas rocket program and used it instead. Oh yes, the parachutes to recover the booster were the real thing -- and one of the three failed, causing the booster to slam into the ocean too fast and banging the thing up. So, why you might ask, if the whole machine was a bit of slight-of-hand rocketry did NASA bother to spend almost half a billion dollars (that's billion with a "b") in developing and launching the Ares 1-X?
The answer: politics.
Technical problems, the kind that follow every new rocket's development, have haunted the Ares like leftovers from Halloween. The rocket as currently designed shakes so much during launch that shock absorbers are needed beneath its capsule payload. All of this takes time to fix -- and money, money that NASA really doesn't have. To stave off critics, three years ago the Project Constellation managers conceived of the 1-X flight to supposedly show some progress. They could instrument the rocket with hundreds of sensors gathering information never before obtained during a booster use in a Shuttle mission. It would give the launch team some practice in the assembly of an Ares. And NASA would find out if something as ungainly as the Ares 1 design - a thicker top than the bottom booster - could survive during ascent through the Earth's atmosphere. Of course, all of the changes to the Shuttle launch pad to accommodate the Ares wouldn't be ready in time, so they decided to just leave all of the Shuttle hardware, such as the rotating tower that envelops the Shuttles there. A success might just buy more time for Ares to fix its problems.
And that's just what happened.
Meanwhile, the huge Ares V super booster is just a series of drawings. Unlike the plan used to send Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins and me to the Moon in 1969, whereby we used just one rocket to lift all of the elements of our Apollo spaceships, the current return-to-the-Moon plan requires not one rocket but two-one launch of an Ares 1 carrying the astronauts in the Orion capsule, and an Ares V lifting a big upper stage, a sort of space tug, and the lunar landing craft called Altair. Together, the two ships dock in orbit and then the tug, called the Earth Departure Stage, fires up for the outbound trip to the Moon. Two rockets in development; two launching systems. And two price tags. Two ways for failure to occur. Or delays to develop.
Worse yet, neither rocket alone can accomplish a deep space mission. And deep space, such as Mars is, as our friends in the recent Augustine report stated, our destination in space. These rockets were originally supposed to all be derivatives of the Space Shuttle-using four segment boosters and Shuttle engines - but the designs were changed to save money and development time. Neither of which has proven to be the case today. Our Augustine panel colleagues stated flatly that some new heavy lift rocket would be needed no matter which direction President Barack Obama chose for the space program. But Ares 1 is too small, barely able to lift the crew space capsule. And Ares V is too weak to boost all of the elements together.
What do we need? One rocket for all our deep space missions. Save the taxpayer's money by canceling the Ares 1 and V. And go "back to the future" in designing the big beast. So how do we get to the space station without Ares 1? Let the commercial space firms develop their own crew launchers, and crew vehicles. Why should Uncle Sam be in the people hauling business?
Here's my plan -- and yes, I am a rocket scientist -- cancel Ares 1 now and the version of the Orion capsule that is supposed to fly astronauts back and forth to the International Space Station. Instead, unleash the commercial sector by paying them for transportation services to the station. Could be capsules. Could be winged ships like the Space Shuttle, capable of flying back to a runway with its crews and cargoes, not splashing in the ocean like a cannonball. With the money saved, start developing a true heavy lifter worthy of the Saturn V's successor. Could be a side-mount rocket like the Shuttles, with a tank-and-booster set flanked by a payload pod jammed full of cargo-or a space capsule with astronauts in tow. Or new upper stages capable of deep space missions. Let's open 'er up to a true competition, with designs from inside -- and outside -- NASA. If we bypass a foolish Moon race and let the development of the Moon be an international affair, we will have time to refine the super booster to make sure it is compatible with our deep space goals, like missions flying by comets or asteroids -- or to the moons of Mars. Such a rocket would be ready when the time comes to colonize Mars. No more false starts and dead end rockets.
Maybe use innovative elements like new upper stage engines, or entirely new propulsion systems. Or designs truly evolved from the Shuttle era. The idea is to get the best thinking from rocketeers before we start spending Uncle Sam's space bucks.
I confess I have a design in mind that I and my team have worked on for years. It's called Aquila, and it is a true offspring of the Space Shuttle. It makes maximum use of the existing Shuttle infrastructure -- unlike the real Ares -- and Shuttle boosters, engines and the side-mounted design where today the winged orbiter rides into space. If we need bigger rocket engines, Boeing's RS-68 behemoth is always available, flight proven and flight tested aboard the Delta IV commercial launchers. You see, heavy lifting doesn't need to be heavy spending, if we do the job right.
But let the designers take the field-and may the best booster win. To paraphrase David Letterman, we don't need any stupid rocket tricks. Just good sound engineering. For without good new rockets to carry our payloads and crews, nobody is ever going to follow in Neil, Mike and my footsteps into deep space. And that's where we are destined to go.
Follow Buzz Aldrin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/therealbuzz
NASA May Drop Ares I-Y Test Flight | International Space Fellowship
NASA's Ares 1-X Vs. the World's Tallest Rockets
While I have no real objection to private spaceflight I think a lot of the private space enthusiasts are putting the cart before the horse. Declaring NASA defunct and declaring the private sector king is very premature given that so far private space companies have only put a couple of pieces of equipment in space and are still years from putting a single man in orbit. The problem is that public interest is low and cash is far too scarce. Obama actually cut NASA's budget in the 2010 FY budget. At this rate they may not even be able to finish the shuttle on time. I suspect it is so he can clear up funding to fund his pet project of escalating the War in Afghanistan.
4) While the DIRECT plan is definitely my second favorite plan (I still prefer Ares to DIRECT but I think it's the most likely backup if Ares falls through) I think it's enthusiastic (almost evangelical) proponents are as naively optimistic about it as NASA is about Ares. As it is DIRECT still seems underpowered for getting accomplished what it wants to do and it's not as flexible as the Ares for LEO missions. It's almost entirely dedicated to LLO missions. I doubt that it will be as cheap as its proponents claim for several reasons. a) The opportunity cost of stopping Ares at this relatively late juncture might take away from any cost savings DIRECT might have. b) While it uses a lot of proven technology it relies on man-rating the RS-68 engine. The RS-68 will require at least 200 changes to be safe for humans to ride on top of. Hence why man-rating the Delta IV would be just as expensive as Ares and possibly not as safe since the Delta IV rocket has never been used for manned missions......
I also have to disagree with "unleash the private sector" slogan for several reasons.
1) There is currently little demand for private space flight right now. Only 4 or 5 American companies are even trying to put stuff in space.......
I am amazed by the amount of materials we extract and create from the earth. There apparently is a lot of it, but I doubt enough to sustain the inefficient method of chemical rockets.
Dr Aldrin just happened to be the first person to celebrate The Eucharist on the moon.
The Russian's say they can build a nuclear powered craft for $650B by 2013. We can't build a replacement space shuttle with an Ares rocket for that price, primarily because of the $10,000 hammer issues from the same old contractors. It's a game of who's pockets are going to get lined, not the acheivement of real technological goals.
Sad.
Instead of believing everything that's said, let's look at Russia's recent history. Did you know their Phobos Grunt mission was recently delayed because of technical problems? Or that their Anagara rocket, the successor to the Soyuz, was just delayed today because Russia has cut back funds for launch pad construction? If they can't complete ordinary projects on time without funding issues, you really think they can do this in four years? Spending 30 years of NASA's budget in just 4? C'mon.
The problem is that the engineering thought process (or the scientific method, for that matter) is straightforward and verifiable. Political thought is an oxymoron to an engineer.
The politician needs to avoid risk. After all, something bad happened a while back. Might not get reelected.
This, of course, is a big insult to the engineering profession. So the engineer bites his tongue. A big, noisy, prototype with zillions of instruments on it is built. This will show the politician that the design is ok. The number will prove it.
But politicians don't do numbers. They make them up and assume that everyone else does, too.
The engineers don't get enough money, so they suggest that the risky things that scare the politicians, like the manned missions, should be offloaded to the private sector. That mitigates a lot of the fear from the politicians.
The politicians refuse to give money to the private sector. The private sector can't do it without a guarantee. So we're back where we started.
A question for Mr. Aldrin: How many folks are researching more exotic propulsion systems like ion, solar wind, magnetic, "warp drive", etc? What is the current status of such research?
Solar Sail: Planetary Society Plans Sunlight-Propelled Spacecraft
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/10/solar-sail-planetary-soci_n_352087.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_Specific_Impulse_Magnetoplasma_Rocket
they are both good ideas. Just because we have been to the moon doesn't mean we shouldn't go back. And the moon would be a good place to test out the equipment that would be used to go to Mars.
And they didn't destroy the blueprints for the Saturn V, its all on microfilm.
Also, there is no rush. I know he probably wants to see a Mars mission before he dies but it probably won't happen.
We can't educate our kids.
We can't maintain, let alone fix, our infrastructure.
We can't talk to other nations to resolve differences, we prefer to bomb them, and then occupy them.
We can't rescue our own drowning people after a hurricane.
We encourage modern day pirates to destroy our mortgage, banking, and investment systems.
And, it looks like the glory days of the U.S. space program are in the past. Most recently, we have lost entire Space Shuttle crews because a chunk of ice knocked a hole in the heat shield during lift off, and because of a poorly designed O-ring system.
An engineer in Mexico told me that they have a saying down there, that NASA now stands for "Need Another Seven Astronauts."
Most of the stuff in your list is completely valid, but I completely disagree with your comment about the Shuttle. The shuttle is without a doubt the most complex piece of machinery ever designed by mankind, composed of tens of thousands of parts - the failure of any of which could be catastrophic. The shuttle fleet has completed over 150 flights and experienced only TWO catastrophic failures. These were tragedies and I'm not making light of them, but when you consider the unprecedented SUCCESSES of the shuttles' systems and compare them to the two failures, I think it's clear that the NASA community has built and flown an example of American know-how that easily eclipses anything done by any other country.
Yes, NASA needs a revamping for the 21st centrury (and Buzz's suggestions should be seriously considered as part of that process). But that doesn't mean that what they've done so far is crap.
And BTW, the "need another seven astronauts" joke was coined after the Challenger disaster. I heard it a lot here in the US, so I really doubt that it originated in Mexico. There are *some* things - tasteless humor being one - that the US hasn't yet outsourced.