Shuttle Insulating Foam To Be Part Of Ares I

NASA engineers revealed Thursday that the agency's next-generation Ares I launch vehicle -- capable of sending astronauts to the moon, and onward to Mars -- will rely on a disquieting remnant of the past: insulating foam.

Engineers in Huntsville, AL told the Associated Press the brittle foam -- which led to the destruction of the shuttle Columbia in 2003 -- will be used on a section of the booster that is similar in construction to the shuttle's external fuel tank. So similar, in fact, that it will need the exact same kind of foam currently used to keep fuel onboard the shuttle's tank cool.

But there's a big difference, those engineers added -- unlike the shuttle, falling foam during launch will not jeopardize the safety of the six-person crew exploration vehicle (CEV), riding atop the Ares I booster.

"This is a different application," said Don Krupp, chief of the vehicle analysis branch at Marshall Space Flight Center. "If we have any foam debris it falls away from the astronauts. They're ahead of it."

Of course, looking to the past is nothing new for the Ares project -- which in both design and implementation, relies on technologies developed by NASA during the days of the Apollo moon launches.

In fact, the design of a stackable booster rocket -- reminiscent of the Saturn boosters of the late 60s and early 70s -- should make the rocket far more capable than the shuttle could ever hope to be. Ares will fly higher and faster in the moments after launch than the shuttle does, for example -- causing the vehicle more stress, but also allowing it to be less susceptible to launch delays than the shuttle.

"We are trying to design this vehicle to fly in any weather," Krupp said. "Our goal is to not let weather constrain our launch window."

One thing Krupp made clear... despite the reliance on older forms of technology (and even because of it), Ares I should be a much safer vehicle than the current shuttle.

"I do not want to have another Challenger or Columbia on my watch. We do not want to lose another astronaut," Krupp said.

FMI: www.nasa.gov