NASA"s new rocket arrived at the launching pad Tuesday for a test flight next week that comes at a time when the future of the country"s spaceflight program is up in the air, AP reported. It"s the first time in 34 years that a rocket other than the space shuttle has stood at Launch Pad 39-B. NASA modified the pad for this rocket, which is supposed to eventually carry astronauts to the moon. The experimental Ares I rocket spent all night traveling from the hangar to the pad. The four-mile (6.4 kilometer) trip took more than seven hours. The test vehicle will blast off next Tuesday on a 2½-minute ballistic flight to demonstrate how the partial first stage performs. It"s costing NASA $445 million. Thin and exceptionally tall at 327 feet (nearly 100 meters), it looks like what will carry astronauts into orbit, possibly by 2015. But much of it is a mock-up, and no person or payload will be on board. The shuttle, by contrast, is 184 feet (56 meters) tall. The Saturn V rockets that carried men to the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s were a record-setting 363 feet (110.6 meters). Shuttle program manager John Shannon said the Ares I-X is safe enough to launch even though Atlantis is just 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) away on the other pad. The impact zone if there is a launch explosion «just barely clips by» the pad holding Atlantis, he said. He noted that there"s proven technology in the Ares" first-stage booster. It"s the same type of solid rocket booster used to propel space shuttles. The booster will parachute into the Atlantic and be retrieved for analysis. The rest of the rocket _ all false pieces weighted with ballast _ will crash, uncontrolled, into the ocean. The rocket is rigged with hundreds of sensors. --SPA
