Tag: constellation

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Audio/Video Space

Ares I Rocket Test

Ares I Rocket Test

Ares I Rocket Test

NASA posted some video of the first stage of the Ares I rocket being test fired out in the desert. 22 million horse power. As powerful as this rocket is, it doesn’t compare to Ares IV and of course the Saturn V.

I get the impression you don’t want to be anywhere near the business end of this thing when it’s lit:

During the test the flame exited the rocket motor out of a nozzle at about mach 3 and burned for approx. 123 seconds and the temperature of that flame approached approx. 4500 F. This is approx two-thirds the temperature of the sun’s surface. At this temperature steel does more than melt, it boils. And sand that was placed around just aft of the rocket motor got hot enough to actually turn to glass

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Space

We Choose To Go To The Moon

Moon Landing 40th Anniversary
Moon Landing 40th Anniversary

Moon Landing 40th Anniversary

It started during a Joint Session of Congress on May 25, 1961 with John F. Kennedy challenging the United States to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. 1969, 6 years after JFK was assassinated Apollo 11 landed on the moon and this famous newscast with the late Walter Cronkite who coincidentally passed away on Friday.

For the 40th anniversary NASA restored some of the old video of the landing, now available in H.264 to view. It’s not true HD in today’s terms but still impressive to see. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) also manged to snap a few pictures of the landing sites of the Apollo missions just in time. I believe this is the first time they have ever been identified since the actual landings. 2-3X higher resolution images are under way.

Lastly The John F. Kennedy Library launched “We Choose the Moon” a clever “live” broadcast of the Apollo 11 mission in its entirety with exactly a 40 year delay.

Now 40 years later NASA is embarking on Constellation which even in vehicle design parallels what was done in Apollo. We may be back on the moon by 2020 assuming Constellation, Aries IV or DIRECT succeed.

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Audio/Video Space

NASA Constellation Program

NASA Constellation Ares V/Altair

NASA Constellation Ares V/Altair

NASA has posted a very cool video showing the status, and some renderings of the Constellation program. The parallels to the Apollo program are obvious and intentional as they are trying to minimize cost and risk by utilizing what was learned a generation ago. In just 3 years they seem to have done a lot of work, though there’s still years to go until the first flight, and a while longer until we’re looking at a return to the moon. That’s of course assuming that the program isn’t canceled or modified by then.

Altair in a sense is a modernized enlarged version of the lunar lander and Orion is in many ways a larger Apollo Command Module.

The Ares V rocket is a real monster of a rocket. It will be able to lift more than even the Saturn V (famous for being the rocket that shot the Apollo missions into space). Interestingly the Saturn V used the J-2 rocket for the second and third stage (the first used the F-1). The Ares V will use the J-2X rocket which is a modernized version for it’s second stage.