NASA need 1960's saturns to inspire them..

For once you're right.

And that's what they've done.

Originally posted by apc
For once you're right.

And that's what they've done.

No not really, it's the same thing only a bit biger.
Acts the same , looks the same.

Uhm... it may act the same... in that it goes from the ground to space very very fast.

And the ARES is bigger. The CEV is smaller. Two seperate animals now, remember? Or did you ignore that part, too?

Originally posted by pepsi78
No not really, it's the same thing only a bit bigger.
Acts the same , looks the same.

well...scramjets aren’t mature enough yet...which means we have no other option then to use rockets...which means its going to look similar to all other rockets.

BTW apc, Orion is bigger then Apollo.

I think the context is the entire lifter and capsule assembly...

so going by your own picture ( ) the Orion stages and booster are shorter than the Saturn.

In either case, they certainly are not mirror images as Mr. Fizz implies.

pepsi, the Saturn V and the Ares 5 are not the same launch vehicle - Ares 5 isn't even an extension of the Saturn. The most glaring difference is that the Saturn used a Lox/Kerosene mix on its first stage, while Ares is going to use the same mix as the Space Shuttle: Lox/LH2. The Saturn didn't make use of solid rocket boosters, either. The Ares is a completely different animal, and while I think that it is great that NASA is using the Saturns as a jumping off point for designing the Ares, it is ignorant to say that they are the same thing - or even that they are similar, apart from being Big Freakin' Rockets.

Sources:
www.nasm.si.edu...
en.wikipedia.org...

Originally posted by pepsi78
No not really, it's the same thing only a bit biger.
Acts the same , looks the same.

Yeah, and no-one dare admit that out of pride.

It looks very basic, very very basic. I'm sure it's designed to do the job, but something more sophisticated would of been nice.

Rockets can come in all shapes and sizes.. there's lots of concept designs www.foamtotem.org...

Originally posted by SteveR
It looks very basic, very very basic. I'm sure it's designed to do the job, but something more sophisticated would of been nice.

Would be nice or would look nice? What about the old addage of KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid?

I hope this mission spurs on some much needed R&D

Just you're all aware, I'm going to go off on a rant here in a second, but I want to offer this caveat first: Research is great, science is great, and pushing the limits of engineering is great. I'm a fan of science, I like to read and learn about science, and I have a great deal of trust that science will, ultimately, help to make the world a better place.

[rant]
However, more research, more science, more engineering, and more development are NOT always the answer for everything. Research and development has an appropriate place, and that is on experimental technology-demonstrators like the X-planes, such as the X-43, a scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet). We don't know much about scramjets, so NASA built a 12 foot long working model, attached it to a pegasus rocket (which acted as a booster stage), and flew it, and crashed it (per mission plans), and learned from it. The next one will be better. That's research. Total cost: about $230 million.

A great example of how NOT to do research would be the X-33 program. NASA spent over $900 Million, and Lockheed-Martin another $357 million, trying to build a working, aerospike-powered, single-stage-to-orbit craft. Then they decided it was impossible with current (2001) technology, and would probably be impractical for the foreseeable future. So they cancelled it, after more than $1 billion spent and years of promising the public a safe, cheap, reusable launch vehicle.

Turning the Ares V into an excuse to to "some much needed R&D" (as SteveR put it) has only one likely conclusion: an expensive, drawn-out, ultimately fruitless program that turns the general public off to space travel even more than they already are. No return to the moon, no landing on Mars, no Big Freakin' Rocket to launch space station components, next-generation probes - perhaps an unmanned interstellar mission? - etc.

As cmdrkeenkid said, KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Simple is (relatively) cheap, it is reliable, and it can be improved as more advanced technology (technology that may have been researched on an X-craft type platform when our "simple" craft was first built) becomes available. That's why the Russians kept a space program flying through a revolution, an evolution, civil unrest, and an economic collapse: the Soyuz rocket they fly to the ISS (and flew to Mir, Salyut, etc.) was first flown in 1966, and they've made modifications to this original design as new technology became practical. That's why they can offer $20 million orbital flights, with a space stations stopover included.

Turning Ares V into a "research and development" project gets us nowhere. Research needs to be done on new launch technology, I agree. But let's keep research in its place.
[/rant]

I agree.

Ares should not be about pushing the technical boundaries of manned space travel (the Shuttle has already done that), but about making manned space travel as cheap, realiable and near-routine as possible. Well understood ideas and technologies are the key to this.

It may not be glamourous or technologically exciting, but if it helps get us ( and not just our robots) into space more often and more reliably, I'm all for it.