Space shuttle replacement Ares rockets to be under White House review

al.com ^ | 05/05/09 | Shelby G. Spires

[KevinDavis]

HUNTSVILLE, AL -- The White House is expected to announce a major review of the Marshall Space Flight Center-managed Ares rocket program. The Ares I and Ares V launch vehicles have been in development to replace the aging space shuttle, which is set to retire by the end of 2010.

Ares has come under criticism over the past year because the program has fallen behind schedule and is over budget. When announced five years ago, the Ares I had been slated for its first launch in 2014, but that date has fallen to 2015.

Rep. Parker Griffith, D-Huntsville, confirmed the White House directed review of Ares, but said the program was still healthy. "The Ares I and V vehicles have been through several studies and reviews and I am confident that any additional study will show that the Ares program is our best option to take our astronauts safely to the space station and beyond," Griffith told The Times.

NASA announced last month that the planned six-member crew size of the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle would be slashed to four seats.

[Moonman62]

W was and is anti-technology. That has nothing to do with whether I think humans should be in space.

Where did the Apollo program have its origin? It wasn't a president or a bunch of politicians.

[anymouse]

All those NASA workers that voted for Zero are going to be in for a rude shock when he scuttles their jobs to fund ACORN and other PC government pork.

[TalonDJ]

That means we have NO manned capability in space.

Actually, Burt Rutan and Virgin will have more of a manned space capability at that time than NASA. Heh.

[TalonDJ]

I thought we had two other rockets we could use (Atlas 5 and Delta 4). Don’t they have good track records and acceptable throw weights?

They are not 'man rated'. Something about it being too expensive to redesign them to be safer for manned use... BS really. If you look at the desgn of the Aries launchers you can see the real story. They are built as derivatives of the shuttle main tank and boosters. I.E. They are designed from the ground up to keep in place the infastructure that was built for the shuttle and to keep paying the same companies and people to run the new program.