The Orion capsule that will take astronauts back to the Moon and beyond could be delayed by more than two years if the Ares-1 rocket is canceled as part of the recommendations of the Augustine Committee that is studying NASA's manned space program. The comment comes from a NASA official quoted by the Orlando Sentinel.
The Ares and Orion programs are part of the $35 billion Constellation program that will replace the space shuttle with a smaller medium lift vehicle to get astronauts into space, and a larger unmanned Ares-V heavy-lift vehicle to get major components into orbit.
The Orion capsule, which will sit on top of the Ares-1 rocket, passed its preliminary design review on Tuesday, a major step towards building actual hardware.
The review evaluated the vehicle's capability, as currently designed, to support three types of missions: flights to the International Space Station, weeklong missions to the moon and missions to the moon for up to 210 days.
"The Orion vehicle design is much more mature than you might see on many programs at the review checkpoint because we have worked so closely with our NASA counterparts every step of the way during the vehicle design phase," said Cleon Lacefield, vice president and Orion project manager at Lockheed Martin in Denver. "To date we have completed more than 300 technical reviews, 100 peer reviews and 18 subsystem design reviews."
However, Ares 1 faces mounting technical and financial problems, which suggest that the likelihood that the launcher will be canceled in the next few days is high.
Paul Guinnessy
My hope is that both the ARES 1 and ARES V vehicles will come to fruition on time.
These systems would be a shame to abandon given all of the money that has already gone into them.
We definately need a medium duty lift vehicle like the ARES 1 to get us and our mid-range mass equipment to LEO. It is a potential national security issue to let several years go by without a good mid-range vehicle to lift both humans and heavy equipment into LEO orbit on a regular basis.
As for the ARES V, with the ability to lift some 275 metric tons into LEO, this baby can be used to lift components of a Mars bound or Asteriod Belt manned craft into LEO wherein the components can be assembled. Just five ARES V vehicle launches could be used to assemble a 1,375 metric ton dry wieght manned Mars Ship or other interplanetary ship into LEO.
Given that we have not yet fielded plasma or ion rockets for vehicles with the mass range of manned Interplanetary craft yet, and we seem to be stuck in the rut of using chemical rockets for propulsion of such craft, the ARES I and the ARES V vehicles can open up a new era of manned interplanetary travel and perhaps off world colonies.
What comes next? Hopefully journeys out into the Kuiper Belt, the Oort cloud, and then to our stellar neigbboors. But that will take more capable forms of propulsion.