oh great, now I can start getting all stressy about when exactly the launch is in my local time. I don't even know when daylight savings time changes here.

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TimeAndDate.com (after asking for a conversion of the launch time)

I can't vouch for how smart it is about daylight time. I've seen it kow the US schedule pretty well.

Links. Baked, not fried.

NASA Constellation Program :: Ares :: Ares I
NASA Constellation Program :: Ares :: Ares I-X Flight Test
NASA Ares I-X Flight Test Fact Sheet (PDF)
NASA News Twitter
NASA Ares Twitter
Wikipedia: Ares I
NASA Launch Schedule
NASA Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Countdown Status
NASA Ares I-X Flight Test Launch Blog (active about 6 hours before liftoff)
National Weather Service, Southeast Sector, Base Reflectivity
National Weather Service, Melbourne Florida, Hourly Weather Forecast Graph
CBS News Space Place (only guessing it might cover Ares I-X)
Spaceflight Now Ares I-X Mission Status Center
BANews Twitter (only guessing the BA might cover Ares I-X)
NASA TV (or NASA TV Yahoo! source or high-resolution)

Launch target:
2009, October 27, 0500 PDT, Tuesday
2009, October 27, 0800 EDT, Tuesday
2009, October 27, 1200 UTC, Tuesday

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This weekend! Sunday, October 25.

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If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

Yup, just heard about DST on the radio, so I've got that one down now.

So that would be 13:00 Brussels time in a 24h system? I had expected it to launch in the middle of the night Brussels time, because many launches are at night in our local time.

I don't think I'll be able to watch the launch live, as 13h is a little bit collective lunch break time (read: being in the company restaurant).

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You may have to c and p the entire link.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/2863433...7610311312927/

Enjoy team.

Why does it have to be on the same day as the Cross Country Division Championships? Why?

__________________
I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

If you squint you could almost believe that its the Ares V in the background .

Um, I think I have spotted a design flaw in the pad modifications:

(warning, large image)
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/3..._2009-5728.jpg

When a proper Ares I is placed there, how is the crew supposed to get into the capsule? Climb up the second stage?

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"I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive." - Carl Sagan, 1995

Do you think, maybe, that they'll be building a proper gantry to let crews get access. Maybe. Do you think they might do that. And perhaps, possibly, as this is just a test of what is distantly related jumble of parts, they've not bothered with it yet.

There have been no pad mods for Ares I. Only enough pad mods to allow for Ares I-X to fly. Ares I will require a new MLP with a LUT and the shuttle FSS/RSS will be removed from the pad.

It keeps saying weather is unfavourable. Weather tolerance should really be higher up the agenda given all the problems it causes.

Where in the background?

__________________
I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

You have to squint so hard that you see Ares I-X twice and a blurry orange spot in the middle. Might cause some vains to blow, so beware.

I'm still thinking of creative ways to be able to follow the launch live.

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A wonderful set of pics...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/2863433...7610311312927/

It looks so Soviet with it's bulgy top.

"its". Not enough blueish green and see-through connecting rods for the genuine Soviet look though.

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Now less than 24 hours to launch!

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Sorry, quoted the wrong link. I meant this one Damburger posted. Its a big-ish JPEG.

Perhaps a few extra shipments of wheat might have gotten us a smoother profile.

That's actually quite alarming that they haven't got that done yet, considering how long it has taken to get to this stage. Bear in mind it is 5 years since the US government committed to the Ares I design (and the basic notion, of a booster with a shuttle SRB as a first stage had been formally explored before that). Consider that Saturn I got from a paper project to a suborbital flight in 3 years, without the aid of modern computers or prior experience developing dedicated launch vehicles. It also didn't begin with the advantage of having its first stage already in service (remember Ares I-X is using a normal 4-segment booster not the proposed 5-segment extension), and had to have its launch complex built from scratch.

Why has 50 years of technological advancement and experience with spaceflight caused things to move slower and not faster?

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"I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive." - Carl Sagan, 1995

1. $
2. $
3. $
4. Political aspirations.
5. An already filled dance card (exploration, ISS, STS, etc)
6. Public interest.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Why is it "alarming"?

The pad was used for shuttles until recently, then it was adapted for Ares I-X, next it will be adapted for Ares-I.

As for the timing of Ares I-X:

-when is the pad available
-when is the craft available
-when do you get the most valuable return of the flight (it has little use to launch a dummy craft if it turns out later in the design process your final craft should look totally different; your dummy craft needs to resemble your final design with quite some certainty)

So I doubt they launch Ares I-X now only because it took this much to develop Ares I-X in itself. You can't consider Ares I-X isolated from the rest of the project.

To me that's not alarming but basic logic.

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It still takes money to grease the wheels of progress into the fast lane.

Why? They've got many many years before they have to think about getting people onboard an Ares 1 vehicle - if, indeed, it ever happens at all.

My own recollection is that Saturn V was a developmental anomaly, pressed by a need for a moon landing prior to 1970 and fueled by tons of money. I recall it was von Braun who said in the book Apollo: Missions to the Moon that development of a new missile/booster would go through the incremental process now being used on the Ares, with maybe ten or more launches (ballasted first stage only, second stage added, etc.) before the final product was tested.

The first Saturn V was an all-up test. High risk, high reward.

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If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

And he didn't have the blogosphere nitpicking every thing he did either.

Its alarming because, as I pointed out, the Saturn I had a shorter development time (to unmanned suborbital launches like this one) when they had to build a separate pad from scratch - surely a more complicated process than adapting an existing one, or they would not bother adapting an existing one.

I was talking about Saturn I, which is a more comparable rocket and had a more cautious development. Yes, Saturn V was a risking all-up first launch, but we won't see how that compares to Ares V for quite a while yet.

Who actually listens to the 'blogosphere', aside from the rare cases where particular bloggers are already qualified in their field before they come to the Internet? Yes, there has been a lot of criticism of Ares I and Ares V, but none of it I can see that NASA was actually forced to pay any attention to.

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"I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive." - Carl Sagan, 1995

Nah, it needs more spheres.

And people could say they liked his work without starting flame wars.

__________________
I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

NASA Constellation Program :: Ares :: Ares I-X Flight Test

Weather is iffy.

NASA TV (or NASA TV Yahoo! source or high-resolution)

Launch target:
2009, October 27, 0500 PDT, Tuesday
2009, October 27, 0800 EDT, Tuesday
2009, October 27, 1200 UTC, Tuesday

11 hours to launch

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What are the constraints on the launch window in this case? I mean, the rocket ain't going anywhere particular. Daylight? Traffic? Some law from 1812?

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