Budget may scrap Ares I motors

Discovering water on the lunar surface plus a test launch of the sleek new rocket that would carry astronauts back to the moon — maybe this time to stay — created a hum of excitement in November and December across the network of Utah-area astronomers, astronauts, engineers and every space enthusiast didn't even need the Web to feel.

Expectations were high the last two months of the year because a manned mission back to the moon, and at long last using it as a staging area for deeper flights, was almost, they hoped, a given.

In January, excitement started to drift into the gravitational pull of politics and a new administration, and now, the next era of crewed space flight might not come at all, or at least it's going to look a lot different.

A proposed budget by President Barack Obama will likely scrap the Utah-designed, -engineered and -built motors for the Ares I rocket, the centerpiece of NASA's Constellation program. That isn't likely to get funding it needs to continue on its current schedule of getting back to the moon by 2017 and on to Mars some eight years after that.

The booster rocket motor and the astronaut emergency escape system on the Ares I launch were designed and built by Alliant Techsystems, the aerospace company that has a facility in Plymouth with 3,500 employees. Constellation was intended to replace the shuttles, which have four more missions scheduled after Endeavour's current flight. NASA officials say using the shuttles longer is one of many course changes the agency must grapple with in the next two years.

The Ares I, not so affectionately known as "Apollo on steroids" by some space bloggers and some aerospace competitors, is one of two rockets. Ares I would be capable of taking the Orion capsule and its four-astronaut crew to low Earth orbit. To get to the moon, Orion would dock in orbit with the proposed Altair lunar lander, an 80,000-pound-plus assemblage that contains fuel, equipment and living space that astronauts would need to get to the moon and back. A larger rocket that would carry substantially more payload is also part of the plan.

People seemed to have a been-there-done-that attitude with the Constellation program, said Clark Planetarium director Seth Jarvis. "But that wasn't true; there was much more. And finding water was a stunning development and really more reasons that exploring the solar system, no matter who is in charge or what constraints there might be, a top priority. Space is a great vantage point for keeping tabs on the Earth and its place in the solar system."