Harry Hope wrote:

The space agency has been working on a plan to return to the Moon, at
a cost of more than $100 billion, since 2005.


http://www.hindu.com/2008/01/21/stor...2155291500.htm

Jan 21, 2008

WASHINGTON:

NASA is wrestling with a potentially dangerous problem in a
spacecraft, this time in a Moon rocket that has not even been built
yet.

Engineers are concerned that the rocket meant to replace the space
shuttle and send astronauts on their way to the Moon could shake
violently during the first few minutes of flight, possibly destroying
the entire vehicle.

“They know it’s a real problem,” said Carnegie Mellon University
engineering professor Paul Fischbeck, who has consulted on risk issues
with NASA in the past.

“This thing is going to shake apart the whole structure, and they’ve
got to solve it.”

If not corrected, the shaking would arise from the powerful first
stage of the Ares I rocket, which will lift the Orion crew capsule
into orbit.

NASA officials hope to have a plan for fixing the design as early as
March, and they do not expect it to delay the goal of returning
astronauts to the Moon by 2020.

The entire ESAS (Exploration Systems Architecture Studies) was a fraud,
pushed through by a bunch of prima donna astronauts, one of which, Scott
(Doc the Whore) Horowitz worked for ATK - Alliant Techsystems, who ended
up with a no bid contract for the solid rocket booster Ares first stage.

Other players were Marsha (Psychotic Bitch) Ivins and Doug (Pony Tailed
Religious Freak) Stanley, a former Orbital Science engineer (OSC of the
$30,000 per kilogram to orbit solid rocket booster launcher fame).

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/horowitz.html

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/...n_stanley.html

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/ivins.html

We all know who Michael (Chief Engineer of the Universe) Griffin is.

http://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights/griffin_bio.html

And of course, we have George W. (to the cosmos, and beyond!) Bush.

Notice Mr. Griffin also was heavily involved with Orbital Sciences.

Now, the Stick - Ares I. Anybody with any physics training at all could
easily see that the Ares I would fail, on basic physics principles, and
that the entire VSE (Vision for Space Exploration) was George W. Bush's
vanity space program. His daddy tried it (the SEI - Space Exploration
Initiative) and it failed miserably, fortunately before they wasted
billions of dollars and years of our valuable time pursuing it.

However, at the time, nobody besides myself stood up to challenge this.

If you will recall, for two full years I ran an advanced Wordpress AJAX
blog (BLOB) with the sole purpose of challenging this idiotic program :

http://cosmic.lifeform.org (offline)

I pounded on these people for two full years to no avail. However,
during this period, my working group (The Tsiolkovsky Group) also ran
our own launch vehicle architecture study, using a new release of the
Orbiter Space Flight Simulator as our physical simulation test bed. We
occasionally posted our results on the blog and on sci.space.policy so
that everyone could keep up with our work and follow it if they chose.

Then, in November of 2007, another round of COTS (Commercial Orbital
Transportation System) Solicitation was proposed, and we wrapped up our
study, and wrote a position paper, which we submitted as a proposal.

http://webpages.charter.net/tsiolkov...oposal/IPO.doc

During this time I also poked and prodded Keith Cowing with everything I
had, in order to attempt to get him to act on the information we knew he
had, but also to no avail. My understanding is that finally as these
issues became more widely known, AP filed a FOIA (Freedom of Information
Act) request, and Keith Cowing, reading the writing on the walls after
two full years, finally filed a PAO (Public Affairs Office) request
specifically citing the vibration issues, which should have been obvious
from the start. Now finally, this is in the news. Two years too late.

So, almost three full years and countless billions of dollars have been
wasted on what is inarguably a dead end in space. Considering that
America is wasting billions a week on a dead end war, and billions a day
servicing an incredible debt, clearly this is really just small change.

Just add it to the ever growing list of Bush administration scandals.

If we didn't absolutely need a viable space program to combat an ever
increasing environmental disaster I would never have bothered with this.

I'm getting back into condensed matter physics, the war is lost here.

If you want to follow this story, you can get the entire scoop here :

http://rocketsandsuch.blogspot.com

This guy is the real hero.