Space shuttle replacement Ares rockets to be under White House review

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

[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.