Ares I Origins

[CFE]

It has been said that the Ares I concept originated in the Astronaut Office during the OSP program. I am curious as to whether there was any study of the eventual Ares I as a launcher for the winged OSP concepts. The earliest "Ares I"-type rocket I can find pics of (summer 2004) has a 231" wide, short upper stage with 1x J-2X, an Apollo-style capsule on top, and fixed fins on the aft SRB skirt.

 

[mz]

Scott Horowitz started toying around with an excel flight performance spreadsheet. I think it was a capsule right from the start.

Of course Ares I -like vehicles have been proposed by a number of instances probably since 1972...

 

[Archibald]

1965 Astronautix has lot of solid first-stage Saturn IB (full length 260 inch, 1/2 length, 156 inch in three or four segment variants...)

 

[CFE]

Scott Horowitz started toying around with an excel flight performance spreadsheet.

If America's next manned launcher is the product of an astronaut tooling around with MS Excel, then God help us all...

 

[starviking]

Not directly dealing with the ARES I, but Flight, 25th October 1986 refers to a:

SR-X unmanned Shuttle booster once proposed by Nasa

I have a hazy recollection of a NASA design with three SRBs in parallel. Anyone got more on this?

Starviking

Reference: http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1986/1986%20-%202885.html

 

[mz]

Scott Horowitz started toying around with an excel flight performance spreadsheet.

If America's next manned launcher is the product of an astronaut tooling around with MS Excel, then God help us all...

Heh, well, it sure is blasphemy, everyone knows proper aerospace design starts either on a napkin or the back of an envelope. Excel - that can't be a good omen. Who knows, maybe there has been a napkin initially involved too.

Of course, Horowitz has been shuffling between ATK and NASA jobs so he is familiar with the SRB.

 

[Mark Nankivil]

Scott's favorite design ;D

http://cgi.ebay.com/Offical-NASA-Ares-1-and-Ares-V-Models-1-200_W0QQitemZ180406846605QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item2a0116048d&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

Enjoy the Day! Mark

 

[airrocket]

Please whoever gets those models burn them. They remind of that moron Griffin who "horns down" lead NASA Constellation manned space program down the ARES road to extinction.