Ares 1-X Standing Tall

NASA has a fully assembled Ares 1-X rocket standing in the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center. It is scheduled to make a test flight October 31. At 327 feet, Ares 1-X is the tallest vehicle to stand in the VAB since the 1970s, when Saturn 1Bs launched Apollo capsules to Skylab, the first American space station.

The question is whether Ares has a future beyond Halloween. There are many critics-- both inside and outside NASA-- who argue Ares is not the way to go to return astronauts to the Moon by 2020, even assuming the Obama administration embraces that goal. The Augustine Committee, set up to advise the President on the future of NASA manned spaceflight, seemss to have concluded NASA would need an additional $30 billion to achieve that goal. Some critics have also argued Ares is not up to the job technologically.

A spectacular Halloween launch could bend the argument in Ares favor. On the other hand, a spectacular failure would likely take Ares out of the argument completely.