Reports from two big space conferences, including one about claims for the imminent death of NASA’s Ares I, have been swirling around the blogosphere. One of the conferences is the AIAA Space 2007 event, held from 18-20 September in Long Beach, California, and the other is the World’s space industry’s annual jamboree, the 58th International Astronautical Congress – held every year somewhere different and this year it is Hyderabad, India. Next year it is Glasgow.At Space 2007 one speaker, promoting the DIRECT architecture, claimed that he is hearing that NASA’s Ares I will be gone by quarter three next year.
Well it is true there have been rumours about its solid rocket booster first stage problems and some even more potentially explosive (no pun intended) stories about personnel involved, which Flight can’t corroborate so I won’t detail it here, have been circulating.
I do know that when the Space Shuttle’s SRB’s where tested 30 years ago they found them to have lower thrust outputs than the predictions. I would imagine that for the block two Orion crew exploration vehicle lunar version that could be a major stumbling block.
For other Space 2007 reports go here to hobbyspace.com’s links.
For the IAC, which starts today Spacedaily.com has an all encompassing view of what participants can expect this week.
Talking of India, The Hindu newspaper has a report about the Russians being asked for help by the Indian government to enable the billion people super power-to-be to join the International space Station programme.
Rather surprising as India has recently become a strategic partner with the US that includes deals on nuclear power; is the ISS that much of a leap beyond that controversial issue? India may have a basic manned spaceflight capability by 2015, if its government approves its space agency’s proposals, but before then it will have to fight the US, Canada, Japan and Europe for seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Good luck!
