New Manned Spacecraft Named Ares

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According to Astronomy Magazine, NASA has announced a name for the replacement to the space shuttle:

As the space shuttle Discovery prepared for launch Friday, NASA announced the name of its replacement. The Crew Launch Vehicle, which will ferry astronauts to Earth orbit as early as 2011, is now called Ares I. The monstrous heavy-lift rocket, designed to loft cargo headed for the Moon later in the decade, is called Ares V.

Ares, the Greek word for Mars, is a nod to the agency’s vision of one day sending astronauts to the Red Planet. The numerical designations salute the Apollo-era Saturn I and Saturn V rockets, the first large U.S. launchers specifically designed for human spaceflight.

Ares. That’s way better than CLV. And I like the “I” and “V” designations in salute to the Saturn that took us to the moon, my favorite of all rockets. Pictures and more details at astronomy.com.

0 Responses

  1. Charlza
    | Reply

    Ares is a good name. Oddly enough, I just finished reading Red Mars for the first time this week too.

  2. Siamakُ
    | Reply

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  3. tsmacro
    | Reply

    Yay for Ares!! I’m all for anything that get’s us up and out there on a regular basis. It seems at this point the shuttle program is going to be forever crippled, they’ve gotten so hypersensitive about every little thing it’s made it nearly impossible to use it as the everyday space workhorse it’s supposed to be, as the last couple of years have shown. While I agree that the two shuttle accidents are tragic, we need to remember that spaceflight is very dangerous and sometimes people are not going to survive it. I think it’s amazing that there have been only two accidents with the shuttle in all these years. No matter what we do we can’t make it 100% safe so we can’t allow ourselves to become paralized trying to make it so. I think we’ve got to learn to think of spaceflight like driving or flying, sometimes there’s accidents and people die, but you can’t let that stop you from getting in your car or on that plane when you’ve got places to go and things to do.

    To Charlza: IMO Red Mars is the best book about Mars ever! Green & Blue aren’t bad either. The thing I like about Red Mars is that it reads just like it’s a completely believable history of the colonization of Mars as opposed to a sci-fi book about the possible future of Mars. I know some people think it’s too political (Kim Stanley Robinson is known to be quite so if you’ve read more of his stuff) but I think he gets it right in Red Mars. Afterall anyone who thinks we’re going move large numbers of people anywhere (Mars certainly not excluded) and there’s not going to be differing political ideas and ideals truly is living in a fantasy world!

  4. Todd Wheeler
    | Reply

    I haven’t been keeping up so please forgive the ignorance. You all seem up on NASA’s doings.

    From what little I know, the Shuttle’s problems began with it being outdated by the time the first one ever left the ground. Since then it’s just been a slow slide downhill. Again, perhaps I’m off base on that.

    However, NASA has had and likely still has problems making big projects work well. Quick and cheap (relatively) seems to be working much better for them. At this point is Ares a nice name and some blue sky PR, or does NASA have a real plan for a new shuttle that will meet the needs we’ll have when the fleet is actually ready to fly, rather than the needs we have today?

  5. Jose
    | Reply

    Ares seems a bit militant for a peacnik like me but its better than a souless three letter acronym which in turn is better than nothing at all.

    Here’s hoping that we aren’t nicknaming Ares “White Elephant Mark 5” in ten years time.

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