The shuttle solid rocket boosters that will form the first stage of the Ares I-X rocket are being prepped for shipment to Kennedy Space Center after a move from a final assembly facility in Promontory, Utah.Alliant Techsystems hauled the segments to a holding facility where engineers and technicians are making final preparations for cross-country shipment via railcar in March. The ATK booster train is scheduled to depart Utah on March 9 and arrive at NASA's prime launch operations center about 10 days later. You can click to enlarge and save the ATK photos.
The Ares I-X rocket is tentatively scheduled to blast off July 11 from Launch Complex 39B, where NASA just recently completed the raising of three, 600-foot-tall lightning towers that will protect the vehicle at the pad.Once at KSC, the four solid rocket booster segments will be integrated with mock-ups of a fifth booster segment, an upper stage, an Orion spacecraft and a Launch Abort System. The segments have been instrumented with more than 100 sensors that will gather data on the performance of the first stage flight control system as well as the stage separation and parachute recovery systems.
The booster segments sport a distictive "Z strip" paint job that will enable engineers to observe and evaluate the rocket's roll during ascent as well as its tumble after stage separation and a subsequent descent into an Atlantic Ocean recovery area.Click Read More to see a video of the Ares I-X aft center segment on the move.
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Check out this Ares I-X Fact Sheet.pdf. Click on the hyperlink and save a copy.
Here's a cool AresI-X Mission Specs.pdf.
3 comments:
To those people "in the know" who read these comments: has anyone considered, even in conversation or on the proverbial cocktail napkin, whether it would be possible to strap on several castors to the Ares I first stage to get a boost in performance? Might it help mitigate some of the vibration issues? Or would it simply add complexity and cost without much benefit? Thanks for any insight.
Adding strap on solids to the Ares 1 had been looked at last year. It was dismissed since it added complexity and increased the LOC (Loss of Crew) numbers... which defeated the whole point of Ares 1. Also, because of the flared motor end segment of Ares, they had to be mounted higher up and their nozzles canted outward a bit. Adding attachment points would have also been problematic.
What about the cost of booster recovery? Is there any detailed analysis to show it is cheaper than using an expendable booster?
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