The unmanned rocket blasted off from a modified space shuttle launch pad at Cape Canaveral in Florida on Wednesday after weather-related delays.

The skinny, 327-foot Ares, almost as tall as the US space agency's biggest ever rocket – the Saturn V - flew to an altitude of more than 25 miles and at nearly five times the speed of sound.

After firing its rockets for two minutes, it then separated and parachuted back down into the Atlantic Ocean where it was recovered by a Nasa ship. The project has cost $445 million.

"It's the most beautiful rocket launch I have ever seen. I get tears in my eyes," said Jeff Hanley, the programme director, when the applause had died down in the Nasa control room.

Doug Cooke, associate administrator of the agency's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, said the Ares team had been together for little more than three years.

"They went from a concept to flying this vehicle in that period of time, which is the first time this has been done by a human spaceflight team in a long time," he said.

"The vehicle flew well and we are going to get a lot of data back and we are going to learn a lot that will stand us in good stead for the future."

Nearly twice the height of the shuttle which it is intended to replace, the rocket was carrying 700 sensors whose readings will now be analysed so the design can be fine-tuned.

Ares and Orion, a manned capsule which will perch on top, are part of Constellation, Nasa's grand scheme to send astronauts back to the Moon by 2020 and hopefully more distant destinations such as Mars.

Instead of landing like a plane as the shuttle does, it will float back to Earth using parachutes.

The White House is considering a report ordered by President Obama that has raised questions about the Constellation project.

A commission concluded that the programme "appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory" and had set itself financially-unrealistic goals.

Constellation's initial overall budget was set at $28 billion dollars but has grown to at least $44 billion. Nasa's annual budget is about $18 billion dollars.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/6...et-Ares1-X.html

aww i wanted something really hilarious to happen, like the parachute being deployed instead of firing the rockets

I'm not sure if it's surreal or unsurprising for a libertarian to cheer NASA.

One can recognize that a private research institution couldn't have produced the atom bomb by 1945, landed on the moon by 1969, or decoded the genome by 2003.

There are few necessary responsibilities of government, but I would argue that in the modern world, advancement of sciences is one of them.

I think it's funny how the main rocket scientists that furthered NASA and ultimately got the US to the moon were Nazis.



Maybe "funny" isn't the right word.

Except in this case:
1) It was an international project, using primarily public institutions in 4 countries.
2) The involvement of this corporation drove the acceleration of the project, since their "shotgun strategy" made it tons cheaper to sequence genome. Of course, their attempts to keep data private while simultaneously using open access public data previously obtained was sketchy.

How this relates to NASA? I think it would be in the best interest of space exploration for
1) The 5 or 6 space agencies (US, EU, China, Japan, India, Russia, etc) to collaborate even more on projects.
2) The private industry to come up with efficient and cost-effective methods to help improve the field.

You really can't argue that. Private institutions have been and are hampered by government involvement in a lot of ways so we don't know where we'd have been without government intrusion.

Though it's funny seeing a libertarian cheering genocidal weapons as well.

also, in the case of the human genome project, there was a private alternative,. led by Craig Venter.

REALLY?! I NEVER KNEW THAT!!! Oh wait...



Oh snap! I showed you!

Further proving my point?



Again, you're further developing my argument



They're already doing this. However, I think do think that further deregulation of the aeronautics sector could certainly help.



While this is true, its also generally true that the public sector can amass more funds for specific projects than the private sector. As I said, less government hampering is a good thing. Its good for them to help, its not good for them to have a monopoly on such research.



First, people need to stop ascribing labels to a person then assuming every choice they make must fit in to that label.

Second, I wasn't "cheering" nuclear weapons. But nuclear weaponry was the catalyst for nuclear research, and now its produced one of the cleanest of most viable forms of energy production available today - not to mention a host of other technologies and ideas for technologies that are around today because of the Manhattan Project.

Oh, I wouldn't call you a libertarian.

Okee dokee then.

edit: Oh, and by the way, in regards to that private genome alternative, they both freely took information acquired by the public sector, then withheld the information THEY discovered for their own business interests.

Ares-X1 actually.

But yeah, i saw the launch thanks to my physics teacher, when it occurred.

That is a damn fast rocket.

I was never disagreeing with you. I was merely stating that your example of the Genome Project is quite different from your examples of the space race and the atom bomb since those two were, at least in my mind, primarily US achievements. Yes, many scientists were involved from many nations, but you can't disagree that those two achievements were made in a time where paranoia of Russians beating us to the punch was high. The Genome Project, on the other hand, started out as an American endeavor, but is quite international and open, when compared to the atom bomb and moon landing.




Why is it that nobody bothers to read my posts? Seriously...it's right here...

It's not a threat to individual liberty, and congress has the constitutional power to promote sciences. It's perfectly fine.

Well, that would just follow the logic of public/private.

A government can usually do more with huge projects than a private entity(albeit less efficiently), while multiple governments can do more with huge projects than a single government.



Sorry, Lam threw me off

I agree. Governments will have more resources than private companies (in most cases), but since private industry is, I feel, more results based (their profit depends on it), they end up being more efficient at certain things. It is this efficiency that governments should then try to harness.

But they're using tax money to fund it! Isn't that a threat to your individual liberty to keep all your money? Or is it only so when you don't support where the money goes?


edit: oh right, the topic. I am a huge fan of space travel/development/etc. so rocket news is good news. I'm interested, though, in how the administration will decide the fate of space travel from the options presented in the Augustine Commission report.

I am glad to see Ares-X1 go up, it is a grand sight to see.

Though, I'm still personally a fan of this bad boy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Galactic

That's the company, but look at WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo. Can't go nearly as far as pretty much anything NASA does, but it's still awesome (they go barely into space and back)

I confess to being a little disappointed that in 40 years, we haven't come very far from the Saturn V in terms of our methods of moving heavy things into orbit.

Truth. It's criminal that we don't have fully working HTOL spacecraft at this point.

Well, even with all that money, you still need the technology and know-how...which can sometimes be monopolized by the public sector. Given enough time though, I think private corporations will be able to launch vehicles further and further....



Hey, if it aint broke, don't fix it...

but it many important respects it is "broke". Using a vertical rocket to launch on a planet with an atmosphere is incredibly wasteful. Combination jet and rocket would save huge amounts of fuel.

Well, why don't you go design one?!

several people beat me to it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_launch

It's WAY broke, because of the exorbitant cost-per-kilo of getting materials into orbit.

If our other transportation systems worked like spacecraft, the only cars on the road would be Bugatti Veyrons ... 30-40 in total ... but we'd still pay the same highway taxes.

It's true that the public sector has the money to successfully do more, however, I'd like to see the public sector try using more efficient ways of getting up there. Currently it's just "let's make a big explosion until it eventually makes it up there," instead of say, using a large aircraft and rocket-launching after reaching 70,000 feet or more.

I'm just happy that some private-sector guys are trying though, as I think that the "competition" (in quotes because it's not really competing with NASA in any way), could help NASA see that they could use their money more effectively.



See my earlier post with Virgin Galactic in it, and Lam's post about it. A lot of people have and are working on designs and successfully making it into space (albeit, not very far at this point).

Terrible excuse for not getting off your $@! and building a rocket.



Pocket change, in my opinion...



Yea, but then it doesn't look so friggin awesome... I mean, look how awesome this looks!



Exactly!



As a member of the Colbert Nation, I despise anything related to Richard Branson!!

You're right, that's a pretty terrible excuse.. However, I don't have that kind of money, and something tells me he doesn't either. >_>

If it's pocket-change, build a bigger one/less efficient one! If it's not good enough, make it louder I say!

The launch looks pretty awesome, though I still don't like the fact that every second you watch is another who knows how many hundreds of pounds of fuel being burned.

I can respect that last one. I don't like the guy much either, though his crew is still doing a pretty bang-up job.

Direct taxes are an affront to individual liberty, i.e. the income tax.