NASA goes back to the future

[dubuque]

Facing tight deadlines and uncertain budgets as it works on President George W. Bush's plan to send astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars, NASA is both cannibalizing and analyzing pieces of its glory years, namely the Apollo program that first put humans on the lunar surface in 1969.

Snoddy, a manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, has been removing valves and other parts from Apollo exhibits as he oversees construction of the upper-stage engine on the new moon rocket, dubbed Ares 1. Some of the pieces and accompanying documentation are not available anywhere but museums, he said.

The move makes sense: The new engine Snoddy is working on, a J-2X, is an updated version of the J-2 engine that powered the third stage of the 363-foot (109-meter) Saturn V rocket during Apollo.

"We've gone back to the days of simplicity. You can get more complicated, but why bother?" Snoddy said.

Don Krupp, chief of the vehicle analysis branch at Marshall, said it is unlikely any of the antique parts will actually fly in space; instead, they will be used for research and development.

As part of the effort to draw on NASA's past, space executives visited the state-owned U.S. Space and Rocket Center museum in Huntsville to borrow an Apollo operations manual from 1969, and an engineer working on a new lunar lander went to see an unused lunar descent stage on display at the museum.

The same thing is going on at the Smithsonian Institution and Space Center Houston, where exhibits manager Paul Spana said he has had about a dozen visits this year from young NASA engineers and contractors trying to figure out how their predecessors sent people to the moon. They were particularly surprised to see the tight squeeze inside the lunar lander, he said.

"They say they have documents, but they feel more comfortable coming in and putting their hands on things," Spana said.

Some old Apollo engineers are even being brought back on a contract basis to work with the young folks, some of whom were not even born when the Saturn V was flying lunar missions.

The new manned exploration project, called Constellation, is deliberately drawing upon lessons from the past as the space agency works to meet a congressional deadline of flying the Ares rocket by 2014. In fact, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has described the new program as "Apollo on steroids."

Aside from incorporating updated versions of Saturn technology, Ares will include an expanded solid-rocket booster similar to the ones that have been used to propel the space shuttle into orbit since 1981.

Parts of Ares' exterior will be covered with the same insulating foam used on shuttle fuel tanks, and the agency plans to launch the rockets from the same pads that were used for Apollo and the shuttle at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

"We're not inventing rocket engines. This is an evolution," NASA associate administrator Scott Horowitz said during a visit to Marshall, which is in charge of developing propulsion systems for the new spacecraft. "You get the benefits of the heritage, but you also get the benefits of new technology to help drive down costs."

NASA has not released an up-to-date cost on the program, but congressional budget office estimates put the price at more than $125 billion over 15 years.

The new Ares rocket will be bigger and more powerful than the Saturn V. Early designs of the Ares capsule, which will carry a maximum of six astronauts, closely resemble the old three-person Apollo gumdrop design. And chances are the new lunar lander will bear a resemblance to the spider-legged lunar module that Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin landed on the moon on July 20, 1969.

"The mechanics of landing on the moon and getting off the moon to a large extent have been solved. That is the legacy that Apollo gave us," said Jeff Hanley, manager of the Constellation project for NASA.

[uber0ne]

That sounds pretty cool. I would like to watch that live like back in the good old days when i wasn't even born yet :\

[Glynnder]

nobody has landed on the moon

[gracz54]

nobody has landed on the moon

Yeah, and it's George Bush who ordered the WTC attacks.

Yeah.
Sure.
Totally.


Not.

[zodionic]

Glynnder, yes your right, it was all a bid to gain more credit than russia, but if they had have went up, radiation would ave killed them, so they faked it, but bit WAW its not the only thing america has lied about, just look at bill clinton for example, its easy to lie, but its hard to tell the trouth
-= Double Post =-
gracz54, common now be reasonable

[Abe_Froeman]

Anyone who thinks there wasn't a moon landing is a moron.

[gracz54]

gracz54, common now be reasonable

You know, I hate conspiracy theories. If they say they were on the moon, that means they were on the moon. Leave them alone.

Anyone who thinks there wasn't a moon landing is a moron.

QFT.

[Chrono6456]

Oh great, just more money to add to our nearly 3 trillion i belive budget deficit, just great

[madsoul]

Anyone who thinks there wasn't a moon landing is a moron.

true true.

[xsorifc28]

Yeah, and it's George Bush who ordered the WTC attacks.

Yeah.
Sure.
Totally.


Not.

hey, his country trained the guy that did this...[wtc]

[Nero]

everything is true!! but i hate george bush hes a liar!

[Ciaran_]

hey, his country trained the guy that did this...[wtc]

"The story about bin Laden and the CIA -- that the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden -- is simply a folk myth. There's no evidence of this. In fact, there are very few things that bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the U.S. government agree on. They all agree that they didn't have a relationship in the 1980s. And they wouldn't have needed to. Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently.

The real story here is the CIA didn't really have a clue about who this guy was until 1996 when they set up a unit to really start tracking him."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden

;)

[Chrono6456]

everything is true!! but i hate george bush hes a liar!

Well, sometimes its better when your lied to, as they say, ignorace is bliss