First In A Series Of Updates On NASA's Next Manned Space Program

by ANN Guest Contributor Wes Oleszewski

Pre-stacking of the Ares I-X vehicle has started in the VAB at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Key parts that will make up the test launch vehicle have been arriving there since late 2008 and now the upper sections of the vehicle that will be the first test of project Constellation hardware are beginning to take shape.

Consisting of a single Space Shuttle SRB topped by a dummy upper stage and mock-up of an Orion Service Module, Command Module and Launch Abort System, the Ares I-X is scheduled for launch in the second half of 2009 from Launch Complex 39B at KSC.

Ares I is intended to be the rocket that will one day send the Orion spacecraft into low earth orbit. Orion will either tend to the International Space Station or rendezvous with an earth departure vehicle that will boost it and the Altair lunar landing vehicle on a trajectory to the moon. The intention of this being to replace the Space Shuttle as the primary means of access to space for the United States. It is called the Constellation Program.

Ares I-X is designed to be the first step in flight testing of the basic launch vehicle configuration. The flight will consist of the SRB first stage boosting the simulated upper works, followed by separation of the SRB and its parachute recovery. No recovery for the simulated upper works is planned. The flight is aimed at answering basic questions about stability and control of the stack during first stage boost.

Working in an atmosphere of unknowns the Ares I-X team finds themselves doing unexpectedly more with unexpectedly less. No one really knows yet what the Obama Administration's plans for the Ares launch vehicles will be. Meanwhile, the grand proposal of the previous administration's "Vision for Space Exploration" that gave birth to the Ares vehicles and the Ares I-X itself, was not followed up by the funding needed to bring the program up to speed. Following a tradition started back in 1970, when the Apollo program was slashed, NASA has been forced to adapt and improvise the Constellation Program within a flat budget. Over the past four years NASA has found itself in the position of having to support the new "vision" with far less funds than expected. This it has done, however, and the first piece of heavy flight hardware has started to take shape in the form of the Ares I-X.

On January 29 the simulated Command Module, (CM) arrived at the VAB. At that same time the simulated Launch Abort System, aka the escape tower, also arrived. The CM was "fit-checked" to the boiler plate Service Module beginning February 18 as the basic parts of the Ares I-X began to come together. As of this writing the upper stage adapter was in the VAB and waiting to be checked out and then moved, with the rest of the segments to the high bay for stacking.

Although the Ares I vehicles remain held hostage to the political whims of any given moment, the work on the Ares I-X continues at KSC and the vehicle itself is moving toward vertical stacking in the VAB's High Bay #4.

An avid space travel enthusiast and model rocket designer, Wes is best-known as the creator of the "Klyde Morris" strip that runs on Mondays and Fridays on ANN. More information on his rocket designs is available here.

(ANN thanks NASA for use of its photos and images of the Ares I-X)

FMI: www.nasa.gov