Posted by Ray Katz in NASA, current
Washington Post: relics of the new space age
Artists image of the (imaginery) Ares I rocket launching from the (bought and paid for) $500 million tower.
As I sit here in the Washington Court Hotel, later attending a session of a conference for air and space museums elsewhere in D.C., I see the front page of the Washington Post.
There’s a picture of the launch tower for NASA’s Ares I rocket—it appears all ready. But there is no Ares I rocket to fly from it, and the Ares I along with the rest of the planned Constellation moon/Mars program is being canceled.
The article notes that work continues on the Ares launcher and the Orion crew vehicle until the program is officially canceled. This must feel very strange for the people working on the project.
And then there’s this quote by Howard DeCastro of United Space Alliance, talking about the $500 million launch tower, never to be used: “I guess you could sell it to Sea World or something and put a big ol’ slide on it.”
Funny. And sad.
