Ares 1-X has lift off..shuttles are now history

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/10/20091028154829411769.html

A rocket developed by the US space agency Nasa to eventually replace the space shuttle has completed a test flight after a series of delays to its launch.

The Ares 1-X, which at 100 metres in height is the world’s tallest rocket, took off at 11.30 (15:30GMT) from Cape Canveral in Florida.

“That was just unbelieveable, that was fantastic, I’ve just got tears in my eyes,” Bob Cabanam, the director of the Kennedy Space Centre, told the launch team.

Over the course of two minutes, the rocket flew to an altitude of 45km and reached a speed nearly five times the speed of sound, before its parachutes deployed and it drifted into the Atlantic Ocean.

The launch of Ares I-X had originally been scheduled for Tuesday, but take-off was repeatedly delayed due to bad weather and minor communication system problems.

The test spacecraft was unmanned, but was fitted with more than 700 sensors to monitor pressures, vibrations, temperatures and speeds.

The rocket is a key part of Nasa’s planned next generation of manned vehicles – dubbed Constellation – which the agency hopes will replace the ageing space shuttle fleet due to be retired next year.

It hopes to use an Ares rocket to launch the first astronauts into orbit in 2015, beginning a new chapter of manned space flight that it says will take humans back to the Moon and onwards to a landing on Mars.

A much larger rocket, the Ares V, would be used to blast the necessary hardware into space which would then rendezvous with the manned capsule before the assembled spacecraft begins its mission.

But an independent panel of experts last week threw cold water on Nasa’s ambitions, warning that the agency needs $3bn a year in extra funding to meet its goals.

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http://www.greek-islands.us/greek-gods/ares/

In Greek mythology, Ares is the son of Zeus and Hera. Though often referred to as the Olympian god of war, he is more accurately the god of savage war, or bloodlust, or slaughter personified. Among the Greeks Ares was always distrusted and although Ares’ half-sister Athena was also considered to be a war deity, Athena’s stance was that of strategic warfare while Ares’ tended to be the unpredictable violence of war. His birthplace and true home was placed far off, among the barbarous and warlike Thracians, to whom he withdrew after he was discovered on a couch with Aphrodite.

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interesting name for the rocket isnt it?

if you were a company suppying shuttles with goods you maybe in some trouble now..shuttles are finished

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