If by “real world” you mean the vast majority of the population who believe everything they see, hear, or read in the media (including Time mag) without ever questioning, researching, and critically thinking about anything then you’re probably right.

It’s going to take 20 years to repair the damage you cretins have caused upon the United States of America.

The Time Magazines award just illustrates the huge gap between the way the blogsphere experts view NASA’s program and how the real world views them. Maybe instead of posting hair splitting here blogsphere experts should be spending their time educating the real world.

By publishing numerous results, positions and proposals during this fiasco?

What have you done, besides chanting “Go Ares” like some steroid addled freak, like technological innovation and engineering is some sporting event.

Buzz Aldrin is arguably part of the “real world”, and here’s what he had to say:

“Well, it looked spectacular.

I’m referring to NASA’s recent launch of the Ares 1-X, billed as the prototype of the Ares 1 as a crew launch vehicle, a fancy term for a manned space booster. The rocket is said to have performed as planned, and ushered in the era of the Ares rockets to replace the Space Shuttle next year. Only it won’t. In fact, the much-hyped Ares 1-X was much ado about nothing.

Yes, the rocket that thundered aloft from NASA’s Launch Pad 39B sure looked like an Ares 1. But that’s where the resemblance stops. Turns out the solid booster was – literally – bought from the Space Shuttle program, since a five-segment booster being designed for Ares wasn’t ready. So they put a fake can on top of the four-segmented motor to look like the real thing. Since the real Ares’ upper stage rocket engine, called the J-2X wasn’t ready either, they mounted a fake upper stage. No Orion capsule was ready, so – you guessed it – they mounted a fake capsule with a real-looking but fake escape rocket that wouldn’t have worked if the booster had failed. Since the guidance system for Ares wasn’t ready either they went and bought a unit from the Atlas rocket program and used it instead. Oh yes, the parachutes to recover the booster were the real thing — and one of the three failed, causing the booster to slam into the ocean too fast and banging the thing up.”

See:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/buzz-aldrin/why-we-need-better-rocket_b_351335.html

“Maybe instead of posting hair splitting here”

Refuting blatant lies by other posters about Ares I contractors, EELV launch history, the LAS for an EELV-launched Orion, and the multiple flaws in the Ares I-X test flight is not “hair splitting”

“blogsphere experts should be spending their time educating the real world.”

They already know. See Buzz Aldrin above.

FWIW…

Ares has already taken the United States on quite a ride, so I can only imagine what’s next:

– ISS science and engineering cut beyond the bone
– ISS dumped in the ocean in 2015
– Ares 1 delivered in 2017 – 2019 to service the long-gone ISS
– huge commercial space opportunities lost for U.S. industry
– NASA Aeronautics vanished
– Planetary science robotics, including missions to scout human spaceflight destinations, fading to a shadow
– NASA research, development, and technology demonstration work cut and limited to Ares investigations
– NASA Earth science missions few and far between
– Ares V delivered in 2030, but no budget to put anything on it
– EELVs, Falcons, and Taurus II greatly underutilized (and thus more expensive per launch than necessary) by the loss of commercial crew transport to LEO, fuel launches, early destruction of the ISS, and lack of budget to launch robotic missions – resulting in U.S. launch industry not being competitive in the global marketplace

Thanks, Ares!

Here’s what the Augustine Committee report says about the current plan, which includes Ares 1 and Ares V:

“In short, this program … offers little or no apparent value.”

Thanks for the informative, insightful, and mature response.

“Just as in your handle is a fictional astronaut, your musings are as equally misguided.”

Fictional and misguided aren’t the same thing. Use a dictionary.

“Hey come to think of it, didn’t Major Tom lose contact with ground control, as in lost all contact with reality. Yup…appropriate name.”

You do realize how stupidly hypocritical it is to use my handle to lamely criticize my arguments when your handle is “AstroNut”, right?

If you want to discuss issues of substance, please feel free to try and post again. But if your idea of intelligent debate is juvenile namecalling, then go visit the nearest playground.

Lawdy…

@Lebowski – it’s not that “critics” are crying and moaning and looking for the worst. Credit is being given where it is due. But, let’s at least be objective and truthful in telling it like it is. The cheerleading being done in some of the posts above is loaded with skewed, misleading, and just plain wrong assertions. Apply some critical thinking skills. Do you really believe that “This invention will inspire future generations to reach for the stars, and to dream big.”? The development and operations costs threaten to bankrupt the human spaceflight budget to the point where we cannot afford to go anywhere but LEO. Do you really believe that one (and eventually a second huge) vehicle built, operated, and paid for by a single customer is the way to go?