Ares will power into the sky
NASA’s planned Constellation program has recently been announced to have dropped behind schedule by some years. This puts the already distant launch date of 2013 back to 2015, at the earliest. This will not be good news for opponents of the costly scheme, and will put additional strain on the pockets of the U.S. taxpayer.
Part of the problem fuelling the massive amount of time and work required is the testing of Ares rocket. The design itself has been largely completed and passed initial design reviews recently. These reviews are far from over, and the 1,100 specialist staff that review the design and test individual parts must continue to work flat out if they are to meet the seven year deadline. Building the Ares rocket is a huge task: making sure it works is a bigger one.
The crew of the Orbit shuttle, the piece of kit that Ares will power, will be relieved to hear of all this attention to detail: it is their lives that are at stake if corners are cut. Losing billions of dollars in building costs for the project would be bad – losing lives due to poor attention to detail would be disastrous and unforgivable.
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