{"id":417,"date":"2009-01-14T07:02:12","date_gmt":"2009-01-14T12:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/?p=417"},"modified":"2009-01-15T07:51:48","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T12:51:48","slug":"what-couldnt-giant-rockets-revolutionize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/2009\/01\/14\/what-couldnt-giant-rockets-revolutionize\/","title":{"rendered":"What couldn’t giant rockets revolutionize?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Giant Rockets Could Revolutionize Astronomy<\/a>, is the headline of a NASA press release (check the link, if you don’t believe me, I wouldn’t lie about this) to which my inner, early-morning snarkbot says “well, duh.” <\/p>\n

Giant rockets could revolutionize lots of things: ice hockey, Buddhism, my daughter’s time outs for poking her little brother…<\/p>\n

The release does give a wonderful idea of just how big the new Ares V <\/a>rocket will be. Big enough to lift 396,000 lbs into orbit. That is, as the release puts it, 16 or 17 school buses or, as I reckon, about 200 average (178 lbs<\/a>) adults (naked and without life support, that is, these shouldn’t be people you actually like).<\/p>\n

In any case, yes, this thing should be able to lift a decent-sized telescope to orbit. <\/p>\n

Confusing things, somewhat, is NASA’s own verbiage on the topic, according to the Ares V<\/a> site: <\/p>\n

The versatile, heavy-lifting Ares V is a two-stage, vertically stacked launch vehicle. It can carry nearly 414,000 pounds (188 metric tons) to low-Earth orbit. When working together with the Ares I crew launch vehicle to launch payloads into Earth orbit, Ares V can send nearly 157,000 pounds (71 metric tons) to the moon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What’s even more confusing is all the geekspeak for the new shuttle replacement rockets. I think I got it, though, if you’re curious…<\/p>\n

The Constellation Program<\/a> is the umbrella name for the shuttle replacement.<\/p>\n

The Orion<\/a> is the capsule where the crew (about 4-6 people) sits. <\/p>\n

The Ares I<\/a> is the smaller rocket, capable of lifting 25 tons to orbit and beyond. It looks top heavy, which is fine, but it might shake a bit too much<\/a>, which isn’t.<\/p>\n

The Ares V is the aforementioned biggun.<\/p>\n

The Altair<\/a> is the lunar lander, which will go aboard an Ares V.<\/p>\n

The Altair IV is where Dr. Morbius and his daughter Altaira live. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, none of this will happen for a while. The Ares I is set to launch in 2014, I believe. The shuttle, however, stops launching next year (making it very unlikely at this point I’ll ever see a shuttle launch in person). <\/p>\n

Taking up the slack — since astronauts still need to go up and down the well — will be the Russians in their Soyuz (people mover) and Progress (thing mover) vehicles, which sensibly sit atop Soyuz rockets. (Seriously, NASA loves naming things.)<\/p>\n

In addition, NASA is spending about $500 million or so — the cost of an average shuttle launch — on the COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) program. COTS is, essentially, a service contract to a commercial outfit that will send their own rockets up to resupply the space station. <\/p>\n

Two companies recently won the contract: Space X (Elon Musk’s rocket company) and Orbital Sciences Corporation (who seriously have to work on their name if they are going to compete with Space X, a name that is only cool by comparison). <\/p>\n

Space X has the Falcon 1<\/a> (which has launched before<\/a>) and Falcon 9<\/a> (which hasn’t, but will soon<\/a>). There’s a Falcon 9 variant called the heavy<\/a>, which can carry more stuff (but less than the Ares V) They also have a crew capsule called the Dragon<\/a>, which can carry seven folks and their luggage. I take back what I said, as goofy as “Space X” is, the company knows how to name stuff.<\/p>\n

Orbital Sciences Corporation (yawn) has the Cygnus unmanned resupply vehicle and the Taurus rocket (which hasn’t lifted yet, either)<\/del> I was wrong, the Taurus rocket has lifted, a number of times. The COTS entry is the Taurus II, which has yet to go up.
\n. <\/p>\n

With some luck and skill, both COTS contractors will get their acts together this year and we’ll see some fun by 2010, when Roy Scheider will finally learn what happened to the Discovery.<\/p>\n

Anyway, that’s all the geekiness I can manage before the sun comes up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Giant Rockets Could Revolutionize Astronomy, is the headline of a NASA press release (check the link, if you don’t believe me, I wouldn’t lie about this) to which my inner, early-morning snarkbot says “well, duh.” Giant rockets could revolutionize lots of things: ice hockey, Buddhism, my daughter’s time outs for poking her little brother… The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,6,17,3,18,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dumb-thoughts","category-gregs-reference","category-pr-guy","category-rant-andor-rave","category-science-fandom","category-sciencegeek-porn","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7V2xo-6J","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":426,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions\/426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}