This is a static test of the Ares I rocket motor:
As the Bad Astronomer noted, it is unclear if there will be a program to fly it.
I suspect that when historians look back on the 20th Century from a vantage point of a few hundred years, the cancellation of the Apollo program and the termination of the production of the Saturn V rockets will be among the greatest errors of the century.
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I have similar regrets regarding the move to rockets itself. We had a fine space plane program going, which we turned our backs on, as a result of a silly tin ball.
The X-15 set records that will stand for decades more. Where would we be now, if we had continued along that course?
I respectfully disagree, Nangleator. We effectively did use the spaceplane concept as best we could for a heavy spaceplane; it's called the shuttle.
It is a heavy, reusable, complex beast with an expensive turnaround and is sadly failure prone.
Simple, relatively cheap non-reusable heavy-lift rockets ala Saturn V would have been so much better. At least until the space elevator comes along.
The X-15 was a nice project, but it was no more a space plane than Rutan's SpaceShipOne. Coming back from orbit (and burning off all that kinetic energy) is a heck of a lot more of a daunting problem than a parabolic flight to 100km.
Yes, the X-15 was just a good initial step. Had we gone that route, it probably would have taken longer to develop a good, working space plane than it took to get a man on the moon with rockets, but in the end we may have had a cheaper, faster, better solution than the Space Shuttle.
Soooo... how many humans have died in simple, cheap, expendible rocket Soyuz explosions over the past 25 years? And how many humans have died in complex expensive Space Shuttle explosions over the past 25 years? What does that say about the relative advantages of simple, cheap, expendible rockets vs. inherently-complex space planes? Hmmm... even a kitty with a brain the size of an almond can figure that one out.
How many times is that fucking dweeb gonna say the word "data"? lolz
rudekitty is rude.
You attack my notion of a space plane by demonstrating how dangerous a lowest-bid, rocket-launched space plane hybrid is? Half those deaths were during a rocket launch and the other half due to an accident during a rocket launch.
I contend that had the research effort put into rockets been expended on the space plane idea, we'd have a vehicle now that would make the Space Shuttle look like a weak, slow, expensive death trap.
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