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" Technically and financially, it might still make sense to give up on Ares I and simply write off the money spent on it, but politically, that's probably impossible. "

Henry Spencer

Money

Impossible

Off

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" The Apollo programme of the 1960s had some weight problems, too; in particular, the lunar lander needed some fairly drastic weight-reduction work. "

" If your goal is to change the world, you can't start by doing things the same old way because it sells better. "

" In a small spacecraft, it was hard for the other two guys to sleep when the on-duty man was talking to Mission Control regularly. "

" Past experience, on the shuttle and the Titan rockets, suggests that large multi-segment solid rockets have a probability of failure of 0.5 to 1 per cent. "

" Testing a parachute drop of a heavy object is not simple. "

" Reusable rockets promise much easier testing because you should usually get them back, and you can debug as you go rather than having to get everything perfect the first time. "

" The communications delays between Earth and Mars can be half an hour or more, so the people on the ground can't participate minute by minute in Mars surface activities. "

Henry Spencer

People

Earth

" Claiming that solid rockets are necessary for a heavy-lift launcher is obvious nonsense. "

" Sure, there were hopes that Constellation's systems could later be adapted to support more ambitious goals. But Apollo had those hopes, too. It didn't work in 1970, and it wasn't going to work in 2020. "

" In 1960-61, a small group of female pilots went through many of the same medical tests as the Mercury astronauts and scored very well on them - in fact, better than some of the astronauts did. "

" Spaceflight, especially in the Mercury spacecraft, clearly wasn't going to be much like flying an airplane. "

Henry Spencer

Flying

Much

" Developing expendable rockets is always going to be painful and expensive. Throwing the whole rocket away on each attempt not only costs a lot, it also hampers figuring out just what went wrong because you don't get the rocket back for inspection. "

" Supplying fuel for a Mars expedition from the lunar surface is often suggested, but it's hard to make it pay off - Moon bases are expensive, and just buying more rockets to launch fuel from Earth is relatively cheap. "

" Since SpaceX's very beginnings, they have talked about recovering and reusing at least the first stages of their rockets. "

" It's true that Apollo 10's lander was overweight. Late in the craft's development, it became clear that its ballooning weight was endangering the whole mission. "

" Rocket engines generally are simpler than jet engines, not more complicated. "

" NASA has never had a problem finding capable people to be astronauts. NASA's problem was, and still is, finding ways to cut the list of capable applicants down to a manageable length. "

" Liquid oxygen is one of the cheapest manufactured substances on Earth. In large quantities, it costs pennies per kilogram - cheaper than milk or beer. "

" Progress requires setbacks; the only sure way to avoid failure is not to try. "

" Large solid rockets have never been a very good way to build launchers that might have crews on top, especially because of the problems in getting the crew away from a failing launcher. "

" Historically, the U.S.'s big launchers fly seldom enough that their costs are dominated by annual upkeep of facilities and staff, not by the actual cost of each launch. The expensive part is maintaining the launch capability, not actually conducting launches. "

" The key virtue of orbital assembly is that it eliminates the tight connection between the size of the expedition and the size of the rockets used to launch it. "

" Solid-fuel rockets can't easily be shut down on command. "

" Speaking of photography, while the Apollo 8 crew shot hundreds of photos, there was one that got everybody's attention: a blue-and-white Earth rising over a gray moonscape. "

" Not until the space shuttle started flying did NASA concede that some astronauts didn't have to be fast-jet pilots. And at that point, sure enough, women started becoming astronauts. "

" Sometimes people wonder why aeroplanes are so cheap and rockets are so expensive. Even the most superficial comparison shows one obvious difference: aeroplane engines use outside air to burn their fuel, while rockets have to carry their own oxidisers along. "

" An experienced designer with more freedom to act might have realised that there was just too much optimism in the Ares I concept: that a shuttle SRB was simply too small as a first stage for a rocket carrying the relatively heavy Orion spacecraft. "

" The Orion capsule uses an escape system quite like that of the Apollo spacecraft in the 1960s and 70s: an 'escape tower' containing a solid-fuel rocket that will pull it up and away from Ares I in a pinch. "

Henry Spencer

Rocket

Space

" The original specifications for Apollo navigation called for the ability to fly a complete mission, including a lunar landing, with no help from Earth - none, not even voice communications. "