Nasa launches the biggest rocket

Oct 29 2009 By The Journal

THE world's biggest rocket has been successfully launched by Nasa in the latest bid to take man to the moon once again.

The replacement for Nasa’s space shuttle, blasted off in a flight test from Cape Canaveral in Florida yesterday with an unmanned dummy stage attached to the top of a rocket .

The 320ft long Ares I-X, which weights 1.8 million pounds, is part of Nasa’s Constellation project, which aims to return humans to the moon by 2020 and eventually to Mars.

Ares I will carry Orion, the six-person craft that will take astronauts to the International Space Station, while Ares V will boost the four-person Altair Lunar Lander into space. The booster deployed parachutes after separating about 25 miles above the Earth’s surface from the mock upper stage crew module and landed in the Atlantic Ocean, where it will be recovered for analysis.

Manned launches are planned to begin in 2015, when astronauts would be launched in a capsule known as Orion stacked on the top of the rocket.

The project was developed following the 2003 loss of the shuttle Columbia which was destroyed, with the three crew members on board, as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere after suffering damage from a falling piece of insulation during its launch.

But the White House is still considering the viability of the project. Last week a committee established by US President Barack Obama concluded that without increasing Nasa’s budget by about $3bn a year the organisation was not able to conduct "meaningful human exploration" of space.

"The U.S. human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory," the committee said in the summary. "It is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources."

The committee laid out at least five alternatives that suggest using modified commercial rockets to bring crews to low- Earth orbit, instead of current plans to use Ares I for such missions.

"While this presents some risk, it could provide an earlier capability at lower initial and lifecycle costs than government could achieve" with developing its own launch vehicle, such as the Ares I and Orion, the committee said.

The first space shuttle, Columbia, was launched in 1981. Russia, India and China are also planning lunar missions. Russia and India want to build a laboratory on the lunar surface while China aims to land a man on the moon by 2020.