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The House bill awaiting action would give twice as much money to Russia for transporting astronauts and cargo to the space station as it would give to U.S. companies working to build that capacity.

NASA is pushing ahead with work on its new Orion space capsule and Ares rockets despite their ambiguous status as lawmakers discuss the agency's 2011 budget request.  Orion and Ares are part of Constellation, a NASA program designed to take astronauts back to the moon. Under his 2011 budget proposal, President Barack Obama called for canceling Constellation and urged NASA to work toward sending humans to an asteroid and then on to Mars. The outlook for Constellation's fledgling rocket and capsule spacecraft is not clear. Obama did recommend continuing development of Orion -- but only as an escape ship that...

The so-called “Great Debate” at the National Space Society’s (NSS) International Space and Development Conference (ISDC) in Chicago on Saturday afternoon featuring Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin and former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart was something of a dud, in part because it wasn’t that much of a debate: after ten-minute opening statements by Zubrin (who opposes the agency’s proposed plans) and Schweickart (who supports them), the floor was turned over to the audience, some of whom asked questions of the two, and others who simply expressed their opinions. Conference organizers explained that the event wasn’t intended to be a debate...

During World War II in the Pacific, many native tribes were astounded by their first contact with an advanced technological civilization, when the Americans would come in, clear a strip in the jungle, set up a control tower and loud giant silver birds would appear from the sky bearing canned food, trinkets, fuel and other supplies. After the war, the Americans went away for the most part, but the memories remained. Many of the natives, changed forever by the experience, decided to replicate it. They cleared their own strips, built control towers of thatch and palm, and waited for the...

HUNTSVILLE, AL - Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle is also sounding off about the president's plans for Constellation. Mayor Battle mailed a two-page letter addressed to President Barack Obama telling him to keep the Constellation program on schedule. Mayor Battle walked into a room with confidence to speak to the media. In his hand, was a two-page letter written to the attention President Obama. The mayor takes issue with the president's proposal to cut NASA's Constellation program. "This is not just about Huntsville. This is about the United States of America having a space program that goes forward," said Mayor Battle....

After 30 days of data reduction, Ares I-X engineers continue to find fairly close correlation between their computer models and the flight performance of the test vehicle, which was the tallest rocket ever launched. Flight-control algorithms developed for the operational vehicle "worked extremely well," said NASA's Marshall Smith, systems engineering and integration (SE&I) manager for Ares I-X, and the flight data in general validated the computer models being used to design Ares I. "I, personally, from SE&I, am very, very pleased with the performance of our (guidance, navigation and control) system; the algorithms that we're testing for Ares I worked...

- Names Ares "Invention of the Year" Based on Launch of Dummy Vehicle Citing Time magazine's selection of NASA's proposed Ares rockets "The Best Invention of the Year" based on a single purported "test flight" of the vehicle on October 28th, the Space Frontier Foundation congratulated NASA on its propaganda triumph. The Foundation pointed out that the rocket launched by NASA was not an Ares 1 at all, but a dummy vehicle cobbled together from pieces of other space systems, an elaborate mock-up shaped and painted to look like the actual vehicle, which isn't even scheduled to fly for another...

<p>Wonder at the impressive technological prowess of the genius engineers at NASA, as brave Ares launches. Be amazed at the sheer beauty of the mighty rocket as it it breaks the sound barrier, thundering the skies of this glorious nation.</p> <p>OK, so it looks like a flying condom.</p>

Well lets try it again..

Ares I-X is (hopefully) about to come out of its 20 minute hold. Launch is predicted to take place around 08:30 (or later).

In the wake of the Augustine Commission's declaration that the troubled Ares rocket program is unaffordable under any realistic budget projections, the Space Frontier Foundation renewed its call to immediately cancel the costly dead-end project and replace it with multiple commercial vehicles. "Three years ago we published Unaffordable and Unsustainable, declaring that government must henceforth 'buy all crew and cargo services with a destination of low Earth orbit [from] commercial providers using privately-owned and operated spaceships'," said Foundation co-Founder Bob Werb. "For over a decade, we've said that continuing to try and develop new government rockets costs too much and...

CAPE CANAVERAL — The aerospace giants contracted to help build NASA's next-generation spaceships are quietly hedging their bets and stepping back from the Ares rockets that the agency has staked its future on after the shuttle retires next year. In recent weeks, Lockheed Martin Corp. and the Boeing Co. have reached out to NASA officials, lawmakers and a presidentially appointed panel reviewing America's human-spaceflight plan, expressing a willingness to change plans or offering alternatives to the rockets that until recently they strongly advocated.

For the first time in more than a quarter-century, a new space vehicle will begin stacking on a mobile launch platform (MLP) at Kennedy Space Center, thanks to the hard work and dedication of an experienced team of employees from NASA and contractors United Space Alliance (USA) and Alliant Techsystems. The Ares I-X aft skirt, which was mated to a solid fuel segment in the Rotation, Processing and Surge Facility at KSC, rolled over to the 528-foot-tall Vehicle Assembly Building, where it will be lifted and placed on the MLP in High Bay 3.

The results of misbegotten space policy choices over the past decades are finally coming to a head in the new administration. The cans have been kicked down the road as far as possible with regard to when to retire the space shuttle, and the future of NASA’s human space flight program in general and the International Space Station (ISS) in particular. Indeed, we’re reaching a point of no return. Fortunately, at least some uncertainty has been reduced with recent reports that the U.S. is moving toward a decision to continue supporting ISS through 2020, despite the fact that it will...

HUNTSVILLE, AL -- The White House is expected to announce a major review of the Marshall Space Flight Center-managed Ares rocket program. The Ares I and Ares V launch vehicles have been in development to replace the aging space shuttle, which is set to retire by the end of 2010. Ares has come under criticism over the past year because the program has fallen behind schedule and is over budget. When announced five years ago, the Ares I had been slated for its first launch in 2014, but that date has fallen to 2015. Rep. Parker Griffith, D-Huntsville, confirmed the...

WASHINGTON — U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's NASA transition team is asking U.S. space agency officials to quantify how much money could be saved by canceling the Ares 1 rocket and scaling back the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle next year. Obama pledged during his campaign to inject an additional $2 billion into NASA aimed in part at narrowing the gap between the space shuttle's retirement and the introduction of a successor system. While NASA Administrator Mike Griffin and his senior managers are adamant that Ares and Orion are the right vehicles to fill that role, Obama did not endorse either system...

A former chairman of the House science committee told Brevard County leaders Monday that NASA’s next rocket is “on the chopping block” and that a new administration may abandon the Ares I as successor to the space shuttle. The next president may look instead to use military rockets to launch NASA astronauts, said Robert Walker, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who, as a Washington-based lobbyist, represents Brevard County. Walker told county commissioners; U.S. Reps. Tom Feeney, R-Oviedo, and Dave Weldon, R-Indialantic; and representatives of the local aerospace community that the word in Washington and at recent space conferences was...

Acknowledging that a NASA authorization bill is unlikely to be enacted this year, three Republican senators – including presidential candidate John McCain (R-Ariz.) – have written President George W. Bush imploring him to direct NASA to hold off for at least a year taking any action that would preclude the agency from flying space shuttles beyond 2010. McCain, joined by Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) and David Vitter (R-La.), also cited Russia's recent military incursion into neighboring Georgia earlier this month as evidence that Russia's continued cooperation on the international space station program should not be taken for granted. Once...

NASA announced on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 that it has worked out a solution to the excessive-vibration problem in its yet-to-be developed Ares 1 launch vehicle. The Ares 1 rocket will take astronauts into space inside their Orion crew capsule as part of the new Project Constellation for the United States. The first manned flight is due around 2015. However, early in the design phase of the Ares 1, NASA engineers found that combustion in the solid-fuel motor would spread excessive vibration throughout the multi-stage Ares 1 rocket and the Orion crew capsule. Although the larger-than-desired vibrations would only appear...

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — By day, the engineers work on NASA's new Ares moon rockets. By night, some go undercover to work on a competing design. These dissenting scientists and their backers insist they have created an alternative rocket that would be safer, cheaper and easier to build than the two Ares spacecraft that will replace the space shuttle.

NASA is wrestling with a potentially dangerous problem in a spacecraft, this time in a moon rocket that hasn't even been built yet. Engineers are concerned that the new rocket meant to replace the space shuttle and send astronauts on their way to the moon could shake violently during the first few minutes of flight, possibly destroying the entire vehicle. "They know it's a real problem," said Carnegie Mellon University engineering professor Paul Fischbeck, who has consulted on risk issues with NASA in the past. "This thing is going to shake apart the whole structure, and they've got to solve...

Experts are wrestling with a propulsion system problem in the design of the new moon ship that would create dangerously high vibrations for the spacecraft and its astronauts, NASA said today. In a statement, the space agency said it expects to develop several options to address the problem with the Ares I rocket by March. NASA is counting on the Ares I rocket and the Orion capsule that will house astronauts to replace the aging space shuttle fleet. The shuttle is facing retirement in 2010. At current funding levels, NASA hopes to begin launching astronauts to the international space station...

As NASA makes progress in fulfilling the Vision for Space Exploration laid out two years ago by President George W. Bush, the space agency's three California centers are advancing in their own roles for the program. "NASA is in a time of transformation," returning to an emphasis on exploration, said Scott Horowitz, NASA associate administrator for exploration systems. Horowitz gave an update on the nation's new plans to return to the moon as a stepping stone to Mars and beyond during the California Space Authority's Transforming Space Conference on Friday. The event brought together the varied interests that comprise the...

The first test flight of NASA’s crew launch vehicle Ares 1 will use a four-segment solid-rocket booster for its first stage, not the five-segment design specified in the baseline requirement. Ares 1’s current design uses a Space Shuttle-derived five-segment SRB first stage and a new liquid-oxygen/liquid-hydrogen Rocketdyne J-2X-powered upper stage. The launcher will place the agency’s Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) into a suborbital trajectory, from which the CEV’s engine would boost it into low-Earth orbit. The first Ares 1 test is due in April 2009. Steve Cook, NASA’s exploration launch vehicle director, based at Marshall Spaceflight Center, says the first...

Amateur radio operators will take part in a scavenger hunt this weekend, seeking information rather than hub caps or cowboy hats, in an exercise designed to get them acquainted with Southeastern Connecticut before a major emergency drill next month. Wayne Gronlund, who is coordinating the event, said he is trying to put together at least 50 amateur radio enthusiasts for TOPFF, a weeklong exercise that will include simulated terrorist attacks on ports in New London, New Jersey, Canada and the United Kingdom. “We know we're not going to have enough amateur radio resources in New London County to provide all...

Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) teams were ready and waiting as Hurricane Ivan devastated entire sections of the US Gulf Coast early September 16. Packing 115 MPH winds as it made landfall, Ivan zeroed in on the Mobile Bay area of Alabama, but because of its huge girth, the storm wrought widespread death and destruction in the Florida Panhandle and also affected Mississippi. Below-sea-level New Orleans was spared major flooding, however. Alabama Section Emergency Coordinator Jay Isbell, KA4KUN, said ham radio has been helping relief agencies, especially in the hard-hit southernmost counties. "Right now the adrenaline's still up," he said...

NEWINGTON, CT, Oct 27, 2003--As wind-driven fires continue to burn in California, Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) and Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES) teams have activated to assist local authorities and relief organizations. Statewide, authorities report 11 separate fires and at least 13 dead. Gov Gray Davis has declared states of emergency in four counties. Eleven of the fire-related deaths occurred in San Diego County, where incredibly fast-moving fires driven by hot, dry Santa Ana winds have burned over upward of 25,000 acres. ARRL San Diego Section Manager Kent Tiburski, K6FQ, says the fires encroached on more-populated areas, forcing...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 November 26 Name This Martian Robot Drawing Credit: Mars Exploration Rover Mission Team, JPL, NASA Explanation: NASA will launch two robots to Mars next year and you can help name them. The Mars Exploration Rovers are scheduled for launch on or near this coming June, when Mars and Earth are relatively close in their orbits. The landing craft are expected to touch down on Mars in January...