The UK Guardian says the report was apparently surprising to some inside NASA, who thought the project was more or less on track. Nine billion dollars have already been sunk into the Ares I rocket, which now risks becoming the most expensive pile of scrap metal ever seen. And thanks to a 1.3 trillion dollar deficit, the chance of that extra funding coming from the government seems unlikely.

This also throws a bit of a wrench in the plans of the Constellation project, which aims to put someone on Mars by the middle part of the century. But again, without funding and the additional voyages (like that to the moon), the 81 billion dollar project will suffer some epic setbacks. This could not have been what Dubya envisioned when he commissioned the project in 2004 (WE WERE SUPPOSED TO FIND LITTLE GREEN ALIENS!) [Guardian via Slashdot]

MLAS—named after Maxime Faget, the designer for the Aerial Capsule Emergency Separation Device in the Mercury program—is an alternative abort launch system concept developed by a team of NASA engineers, working in parallel with the Constellation program team. It won't replace the Orion abort system, however, but according to NASA this concept has serious potential for future missions:

MLAS is of potential interest because it is theorized to have aerodynamic performance benefits, weight savings and be relatively simple in some spacecraft applications. Much of the potential gains would be accomplished by eliminating the launch abort tower, which also means eliminating the attitude control motors.

[NASA]

While there are some naysayers who claim that Orion, Ares I and V are not the best option to take us back into real space exploration, NASA thinks the contrary. The Right Stuff people says that only after three years they are already testing actual components, and they have all needed hardware and software in various stages of development.

I tend to believe the folks who took humans to the Moon in record time, only to be shut down just when the fun started. [Hyperbola]

Ares V Unmanned Cargo Rocket, EDS and Altair: The Gear Goes Up First
First it's the turn of the giant unmanned Ares V, carrying most of the real hardware you'll need on your journey. You and the rest of your astronaut compadres walk around the pad hours ahead of the launch—a metaphorical kicking of Ares' tires. Man, that thing seems hellish big.

Six hours later you're watching the countdown from VIP bleachers, and all 360 feet of rocket looks even more ominous. You all have on the "spaceman" face for the news cameras—confident, professional, all smiles. But when the five RS68 engines at the bottom of that rocket light up, followed by the two solid boosters, and that thundering noise finally reaches you, you're all suddenly kids on Christmas morning. Literally tons of fuel is burned every second, pushing a blunt needle skywards. It makes a heck of a show, and the noise of Ares V racing to space barely covers your whoops. Quickly you remember to use your crappy little digicam to snap the rocket's launch—there'll be thousands of official photos, but these will be yours.

Minutes later, you and the crew watch monitors in a nearby viewing room as the rocket makes it to orbit. Everyone's quiet, as they see the final stage, the Earth Departure Stage, fire its engines. The huge aerodynamic nose cone isn't needed any more and it pops off, revealing the lunar lander, an Altair. It's bolted at the top of the EDS, and looks more like a sci-fi fantasy than a real moon ship. Eventually, the instruments aboard the EDS all phone home to NASA with a digital OK, and the spacecraft pauses. It's waiting for you to join it out in space.

Ares I Crew Rocket, Orion Capsule: Time For You To Hit the Road
Twelve hours later, it's your turn to go up. All six of you are suited-up and sardined into an Orion capsule, 280 feet above the launch pad at the top of an Ares I rocket. While ticking off mission control's checklist, you think about the imminent journey. If Ares V is a giant space truck, the smaller Ares I you're strapped to is a crazy-ass custom-engined dragster—a dragster without a parachute brake, that is.

Eventually the time ticks down to T-Zero: The booster's solid fuel is ignited, and acceleration slams you and the crew in the back as "The Stick" races skywards. Holy crap, it's a wild ride: Pure rocket chemistry, raw chest-squeezing thrust from a giant Roman candle. The booster burns out in just 150 seconds, and detaches with a wrenching noise and a jolt—the external camera view you see of it tumbling away behind you is awesome. Then comes thrust from the liquid-fuel J2X engine—the first taste of Apollo-era tech, updated for the 21st century. The ride is now smoother, a little less like Aliens, a little more like 2001.

Rendezvous in Orbit: The Delicate Mating Dance of Spaceships
Switches are thrown and your ship's computer matches the Orion's orbit with the waiting Earth Departure Stage with Altair moon ship. Your skin feels alternately hot and cold, which has nothing to do with the air conditioning or the sunlight stabbing through the capsule window—just excitement. And finally there it is: The EDS, clear in the sunlight, spinning gently as the laser-guided rendezvous process with your capsule begins. At one point the Altair's given name is visible, hand painted in copperplate by some techie a thousand miles away: Rama. That had given you a shiver. You hear the clunk of mating adapters as Orion joins the EDS, greeted by cheers from Houston over the radio and a bunch of zero-g hand shaking with the rest of the crew.

Moon Shot: Leaving Earth's Orbit
"The Stick" has become "The Stack," and all is ready to leave earth orbit, and head out toward the moon. The mood is calm: No one aboard will let themselves believe it yet. But twelve hours later, when long checklists are complete, and the magic words, "Go for lunar orbit burn," come over the radio, emotion arrives with a rush. "Want a drink?" comes a request from behind you, and the accompanying wink made you curious. Sipping at the plastic squeeze bag you suddenly weren't surprised to taste a tiny stab of whiskey: Totally against the rules, but frankly the people who made those rules weren't riding a flimsy steel, titanium and composite can mated to a couple dozen tons of explosive gases in outer space.

The EDS's engine fires up again, this time pushing the Altair and the Orion forward and you—tucked inside—into a head-back, eyeballs-out position as you fly, backwards as it were, to your date with history.

When its fuel is gone, the EDS is ejected, leaving you racing to the moon for three days in the combined Altair/Orion moon ship at 25,000 miles per hour. You're just desperate to take a walk.

The Lunar Landing: Pulling a Neil Armstrong, 50 Years Later
40m... 35m... The counter in the middle of the Altair's hi-res display screen has simulated LEDs, like an old alarm clock, and it makes you smile. Those numbers are a serious wake up call though: They're exactly how far above the dusty surface of the moon this little spacecraft hovers. Altair—wasn't that the name of an old computer? Probably had more CPU power than the original Eagle did, you think. Armstrong landed that old thing on a wing and a prayer. Now it's your turn, and your mind's free to wander because computers are largely in control, steering, firing the RL10 rockets and monitoring radar. It's just a question of checking in case you need to intervene. Your hand hovers over that big red "LANDING ABORT" button, which you hope never to push.

25m... 20m... A lateral shove from a thruster shakes you and your fellow moonwalkers behind you, a minor course correction. 15m... "Kicking up a little dust," you say over the radio, and you know the guys behind are grinning. "Aye captain!" quips back the mission's chief engineer.

10m... 5m... And here came history. Dust really does stream up in the bright sunlight past the windows as the final meters pass. At least you know the surface you'd be arriving on—the Apollo guys had no idea if they were landing on concrete or cake icing.

0.8m... 0.6m... 0.4m... The Altair's descent rocket shuts down so very suddenly that the silence is a shock. With less of a jolt than you get when riding on a roller coaster, it's touchdown. Velcroed to the control panel, the tiny nodding dog trinket—a present from some young fan—had been wobbling broken-necked in zero-gravity, but now it begins to behave properly, and nods its approval of the landing.

You're on the moon.

[NASA's Orion at Gizmodo]

Seagate's 2TB constellation drive, expected this September, is mainly exciting because it runs at a full 7200RPM while Western Digital's model operates at an eco-friendly, undisclosed speed. Given that as hard drives get more storage it only takes longer for systems to seek out their data, speed is an especially important point. Then again, Western Digital's model is out now for $300. We'll be curious what Seagate's fatty Constellation goes for when it arrives later this year. [Seagate via PCMag]

While the written piece prods and pokes at the budgetary and bureaucratic challenges (shocker!) NASA is jumping through to get their plan for Constellation (which includes the Apollo-like Orion capsule, a lunar lander and two rockets, the Ares I and larger Ares V) off the ground, the graphic is a great 90-second summary of what will probably be our main space vehicle system for many years to come. [NYTimes]

November 9, 1967, T-minus 8.9 seconds: Thousands of gallons of kerosene and liquid oxygen begin coursing through the giant center F1 rocket engine: The Saturn V's ignition sequence has begun. Next, two outer engines are lit, followed 300 milliseconds later by the other two, ignited in pairs to avoid toppling the 364-foot rocket above. Nine seconds after all five engines go to full thrust, the first Saturn V rocket begins to lift from the launchpad, taking the unmanned Apollo 4 check-out module into space.

The launch was flawless. Forty-one years ago to the day, the Saturn V became the biggest, tallest, largest-payload rocket ever to be sent into space. Even more amazingly, it still is.

If you talk about the Moon landings, some people remember Armstrong and Aldrin landing on the moon, and may think of the photo of that famous footprint, or the planting of the flag. I choose to remember the rocket that enabled it all, the Saturn V, a pretty shocking mechanical masterpiece all by itself.

Nearly everything about it is monumental in scale and historic in importance:

• At 364 feet high, it was roughly as tall as a 36-story building.

• Its launch weight of 6.7 million pounds was equal to about 2,200 average late '60s cars.

• Its orbital payload of 260,000 pounds is the equivalent of about 1,500 average people.

It was designed under the supervision of the rocket man, Wernher von Braun, and was chosen in 1963 from a list of potential systems proposed to make good President Kennedy's promise that a man would visit the moon within a decade.

The rocket was so very large that it required NASA to build the Vertical Assembly Building, one of the world's largest buildings. It had to be constructed in three stages, could hold four Saturn Vs at the same time, and was reportedly so large that it had its own weather systems. It's still used to put Space Shuttle stacks together, and will house the upcoming Ares series rockets too. It's also home to the four largest doors in the world.

The Saturn V's first-stage rockets—five F1s made by Rocketdyne—are the most powerful single-nozzle liquid fueled rocket engines ever to see service. The engine bell for each was over 12 feet across. Each engine developed 1.5 million pounds of thrust, drinking over 670 gallons of fuel mixture per second: That's enough to empty your typical 30,000-gallon swimming pool in around 45 seconds. The F1 even makes the more modern Shuttle seem wimpy, since each F1 had more thrust than all three Shuttle main engines combined.

Its second-stage rockets—five J2s, also by Rocketdyne—were the largest liquid-hydrogen rocket engines in their day, and remained so until the Space Shuttle's main engines were built. The J2s were also the first rocket engines that were able to restart in mid-flight.

In comparison, America's first manned rocket, the Redstone, was about the same length as the final stage of the Saturn V. Redstone was actually less powerful than the emergency escape rockets on the manned capsule atop the Saturn V. (I suppose it's important to note, too, that those escape rockets never had to be used.) And Redstone's maiden liftoff was only 14 years before the Saturn V's, which shows the tremendous speed of NASA's rocket program in the '50s and '60s.

Here's a great comparison chart of the world's biggest and best rockets:

Even the Space Shuttle, deemed by some the most complex machine humans have yet built, doesn't compare to the Saturn V. And if you're wondering what the unlabeled black rocket in the middle is, it's Saturn V's competitor, the Soviet N1 moon-shot rocket. This had four attempted launches, none successful. Part of this was due to lack of management and funding, but part had to do with its incredibly complex first-stage design, which required the synchronized firing of 30 separate rocket engines.

Perhaps most amazing of all facts about the Saturn V is that each of its 12 main Saturn V launches was successful. Two of them suffered in-flight problems including engine cutoffs, but the on-board computers were able to compensate, resulting in a successful mission. The rocket was even considered at one point to act as a prototype for the first stage of the Space shuttle, thereby requiring no solid-rocket boosters. If that had happened, the 1986 disaster that befell Challenger would never have happened.

There were also plans for several post-Saturn V projects on the drawing boards. The best was a super-massive variant with eight engines in each of the first two stages, capable of launching all the International Space-Station hardware to orbit in one shot. Sadly, for political and financial reasons, all variants were canceled.

Today, there are other contenders as NASA suits up for the next moon shot. Though not as tall as its predecessor, the massive Ares V rocket, child of NASA's somewhat troubled Constellation program, is technically able to put 414,000 pounds of payload into low Earth orbit.

But until the Ares V flies, the Saturn V remains king of rockets. Call me overly nostalgic (or pessimistic, seeing as Ares is well underway), but I'm inclined to think the Saturn V may well keep that title forever.

During the development and early testing of the smaller Ares I rocket, there've been fears that uneven fuel burning in the motor could lead to high-g shaking when in flight. If the shaking builds to a high enough intensity, it could be deadly to both the crew and vehicle.

So Ares Is will have an adaptive damping system built into the rocket base: essentially spring-mounted weights, with smart springs that can be adjusted so the system compensates for severe vibrations—a little like some anti-earthquake systems employed in modern buildings.

Apparently the design team has enough margin in the power-weight ratio of the rocket's current configuration to accommodate the extra safety equipment. "I'm comfortable that they'll be able to absorb the mass impact that these things imply, with no problem," said the Constellation program manager. Though whether or not this adds more delays to the development of the rockets remains to be seen. [New Scientist]

Rather than building a huge, expensive, and very complicated rocket carrying a smaller space ship—like the powerful Saturn did in the Apollo missions—the Constellation program will use two rockets to send a larger spacecraft. The first rocket will carry the lunar lander along with a propulsion stage into Earth orbit. The second one, the Ares I launch vehicle, will carry the Orion spaceship with the astronauts on board, which will be rendezvous with the lunar lander in orbit and dock. Once docked, the propulsion stage will push the combined craft to the moon and some lucky, smart, and courageous astronaut would be able to say: "It may not be the first step, and it certainly won't be the last one." Or "Oh boy, whooooopeeeee-doooo!"

Both work for me. [Constellation Program]

These monkeys gone to heaven, who are bred at the Sochi Institute only for this purpose, have been used in previous space experiments. Unlike Laika, who died because of the stress of the launch, these monkeys resist the trips and get back in one piece. Like 16-year-old space veteran Krosh, who flew to space in 1992 and—according to the BBC—"is still in rude health." Which we guess means he keeps healthily pooping out and throwing his crap to everyone around.

The macaques will have to be able to sustain a 520-day trip and they are crucial for the survival of the future cosmonauts, as their tolerance to radiation levels is very similar to those in humans. [BBC]

This capsule won't leave Earth's atmosphere: it will be used in a 90-second flight to demonstrate the features of the new ship, built using the same concept as the Apollo capsule but on a much larger scale. The Orion is 16.5 feet in diameter, with a mass of 22.7 metric tons, which gives it "two and a half times the volume" inside the Apollo capsule.

Knowing how small Apollo was, it's not going to be the Enterprise flight deck, but it will be able to fit four crew members comfortably starting in 2014, the year in which it will travel to the International Space Station. Six years later, it will go to the moon. [NASA]

The GSM/EDGE cellphones, aside from being gilded, are fairly standard: expect Bluetooth and USB support, but then again, I'm pretty sure that my toothbrush has Bluetooth now, so it's really not that impressive.

While the Constellation cellphones are supposed to be more affordable, Vertu still hasn't said how much they want for their utterly amazing luxury cellphones. Given the company's history, though, affordable may be a bit of a misnomer. – Nicholas Deleon

The Most Affordable Vertu Fashion Phone [SlashGear]

Vertu Home Page [Vertu]