The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) successfully launched its Ares I-X rocket Wednesday, October 28, 2009 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spectacular test flight lasted for 6 minutes from launch to splashdown (of the rocket’s booster stage) 150 miles downstream.

The 327-foot-tall rocket (price tag: $450 million) finally blasted into space after a day’s delay due to inclement weather. NASA reported that the test vehicle “produced 2.6 million pounds of thrust to accelerate the rocket to nearly 3 g’s and Mach 4.76, just shy of hypersonic speed.”

A Huge Step

Equipped with over 700 sensors to accurately measure aerodynamics, instrumentation, and vehicle performance, the Ares rocket lofted upper stage, service module, and crew module simulators to test its capability to transport crew and cargo into space.

Doug Cooke, a senior NASA official hailed the test flight as:

“…a huge step forward for NASA’s exploration goals. Ares I-X provides NASA with an enormous amount of data that will be used to improve the design and safety of the next generation of American spaceflight vehicles — vehicles that could again take humans beyond low Earth orbit.”

Ares rocket concept image by nasa1fan/MSFC on Flickr

Uncertain Future

The rocket is part of NASA’s Constellation Space Program designed to develop technologies for advanced space exploration and to create a new family of spacecraft to replace the aging space shuttles. The program has come under review recently under the Obama administration to assess viability and cost-effectiveness. While the review panel determined that a return to the moon and manned missions to Mars are not within NASA’s budget in the next few years, it has also recommended the continuation of the Ares V rocket program.

The debate continues in Washington DC today, the outcome of which will determine how dominant the United States will be in the space frontier of the future in the face of recent advances in European, Chinese, and Indian space exploration programs.

Should we really abandon space exploration?

While I can understand the motive of those who advocate scrapping space programs altogether in favor of more immediate concerns like hotly-debated health care program and alternative energy projects, I think this thinking is short-sighted and myopic. It is in our best interest to advance our knowledge of space and the universe – our sun will become a red giant star in a few billion years swallowing the earth and there will always be practical applications of the cutting-edge technology developed in our space programs.

World Space Agency

Given the prohibitive cost of singularly pursuing lunar and Mars exploration goals and considering the fact that discoveries in those programs will benefit not just the US, I think it’s time that the US and the other countries seriously consider joint funding for the next generation of space vehicles and technology. We share the ISS with some other countries but each of the participating country still run its own space program, just making instruments compatible with those used by the others.

The idea of a genuinely multinational space program may not be feasible politically in the next few years and may not sit well with the some of our space technocrats, but it’s the only one that makes sense over the long term. Sooner or later, we need to cooperate with the rest of the world to pursue our space exploration goals.

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