Jupiter Versus Aries

NASA engineers are hard at work developing the Aries launcher for the post-shuttle manned spaceflight era. NASA says the first test flight of Aries is less than a year away. That might be critical for maintaining political support for the Moon/Mars program through the change in presidential administrations. After hours, however, some of those same engineers are working on an alternative approach.

That alternative is called "Jupiter." Jupiter relies more heavily on evolving shuttle rocket technology than Aries does. Its supporters say Jupiter would be simpler and more powerful, and save $19 billion in development costs. NASA says Jupiter is a "design on a napkin" that wouldn't work, as against the Aries program that is moving along.

While NASA may be right about that, the argument is weakened by the fact that some engineers are working on both efforts. Holding an engineer to be competent to judge designs when working on Aries and something less than that a few minutes later when working on Jupiter is surely one thing that won't fly.