November 7 News Items

NASA Admits "Significant Threats to Performance" of Ares I Launcher (Source: Flight International)
NASA has admitted in an internal circular that there are "significant threats" to the performance of its Ares I crew launch vehicle (CLV), as Flight has learned that the preliminary design review for the CLV first stage has slipped by up to six months. The Ares I first stage is based on the Space Shuttle's four-segment reusable solid rocket motor (RSRM), but with five segments. Initially intended to be largely unchanged from the RSRM, its insulation, throat diameter, propellant chemistry and geometry, and number of segments had all been changed by December 2006. NASA sources also say that, due to ascent stresses, areas of the segment casing are to be modified for strengthening.

The first stage is being designed to lift the CLV's upper stage, the Orion crew exploration vehicle (CEV) and its launch abort system to 101km (63 miles) before staging. The first manned flight is planned by March 2015. The Ares I program has been dogged by rumors of inadequate performance and blamed for repeated redesigns of the Orion's crew and service modules driven by the need to reduce mass. NASA has refuted the rumors and maintained that the Ares I CLV is capable of meeting requirements. But now the agency's November internal circular says: "There are significant threats to the performance to be worked as the project works towards [PDR]."

Museums Want to Land Shuttles for Exhibits (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
When Discovery and its crew touch down at Kennedy Space Center today, only 13 more shuttle missions remain before the fleet will be retired. America's museums can hardly wait. At least five institutions and NASA centers have been lobbying over recent months for a chance to put Atlantis, Discovery or Endeavour on display when NASA pulls the program's plug in 2010. "No doubt. Everybody wants one," says Roger Launius, a curator at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington. But the competition is tough. Vying alongside the Smithsonian are the Johnson Space Center in Houston; the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala.; the newly formed Vision for Space Exploration in Palmdale, Calif.; the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio; and, of course, the Kennedy Space Center in Brevard County.

China Sends Mixed Signals on Space Station Plans (Source: Reuters)
China, the third country to put a man into space on its own, plans to launch a space station by 2020, one of its top rocket scientists said on Wednesday, prompting an official denial that left any plans unclear. The space station was planned as a "small-scale 20-ton space workshop", said one Chinese official. "It is the first time a timetable has been made public for the building of the first space station, the third and final step of the country's current manned space program," he said. But a second space official later used the official Xinhua news agency to curtly deny any firm plans. "China at present has not decided on developing a space station," Li Guoping, spokesman for the China National Space Administration, told Xinhua.