NASA: Ares WILL Fly

Rumors of a fatal flaw in the new Ares rocket—the booster for NASA’s next generation manned space vehicles—are just plain wrong, says NASA.

An October 26th report in the Orlando Sentinel claimed that the rocket, as designed, will crash into the launch tower on takeoff. NASA admits that there are problems, but that the possibility of a tower crash are exaggerated.

Rare Conditions

They say it would only happen under certain rare weather conditions. And NASA has several ways to deal with the problem. (I would say they could do like they did with Apollo—when the wind is too strong, don’t launch that day.)

The Orlando Sentinel also claimed that there was a near-revolt among astronauts and engineers working on Orion (the capsule) over design decisions. NASA also denied that charge.

Personally, I would be more worried about this—if management is charging ahead and ignoring engineers, bad things happen. But I have no knowledge as to whether or not this is happening.

Project Continues

In any case, the project is moving ahead. The first test flight of Ares is currently scheduled for July 12, 2009.

More on this story from space.com.