According to Reuters, the planned launch of the Ares Rocket was postponed today due to bad weather on the Central Florida Coast. It will be retried tomorrow, Wednesday, at 8 a.m. EDT.
The Ares Rocket program is designed to (sadly) replace the Space Shuttle Missions program by 2015 and take crew to the Moon by 2020. According to the NASA website, the rocket will use an updated version of the engines originally developed for the Saturn V Rocket used to carry astronauts on missions to the Moon in the 60s.
Tomorrow's planned launch - if it goes as intended - will be an interesting rebuttal to the reports of problems with thrust-induced vibrations, and other technical problems that have made Ares a lightening rod for criticism. Originally budgeted at $28 billion, it now costs $44 billion as of this writing.
And regarding the thrust vibration problems, which start with the energy from first-stage engine thrust causing small rapid motion that (if you remember the physics formula for "simple harmonic motion") can become larger and so pronounced if it is not dampened that physical damage to the space frame - or worse for a vehicle carrying people - could happen.
In September, NASA reported a solution to this problem in SpaceNews.com:
Dale Thomas, deputy program manager of NASA’s Constellation program, said officials reached a key decision in early September to pursue a so-called “dual-plane isolator” system to address the issue. The system consists of springs that will be inserted between the Ares 1 first stage and upper stage, and between the upper stage and the Orion crew capsule, to keep the violent shaking originating in the rocket’s main stage from reaching Orion and its crew.
I will monitor Wednesday's launch with interest to learn if this "fix worked well. Even if the rocket takes off successfully, the inability to get the problem under control will ignite project critics (who want a cheaper rocket used for passenger missions) and hamper the program's future.
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