Rocket goes 36 miles in 125.8 seconds with Kentucky’s right stuff
We forget sometimes that the United States is still in the space business and that we are still developing rockets to take us to other worlds.
Don’t say anything like that to the folks at American Synthetic Rubber Co. in Louisville. They’ll probably ask where you’ve been living, on Saturn?
American Synthetic Rubber is one of 200 companies in 32 states that are developing the Ares I, dubbed “America’s next flagship in space” by the rocket people at NASA.
“It takes a nation to build a rocket,” says Steve Cook, manager of Ares Projects at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. “And this is the rocket that will inspire our nation.”
American Synthetic Rubber’s role is to supply “raw materials for propellant ingredients.” (Scientific translation: They make stuff that goes into rocket fuel.)
Ares I is the first vehicle in NASA’s next-generation Constellation fleet. It will be tested beginning in 2009. It is expected to carry the first crew into space by 2015.
Get this: The rocket’s first stage, which will contain the ingredients from Louisville, will burn more than 1.3 million pounds of propellant in 125.8 seconds to push Ares to 36 miles above the earth.
At that point, the upper-stage engine ignites and carries the crew into space. The first stage is jettisoned.
“The first stage will deploy parachutes and gently drop into the sea for recovery, analysis and reuse,” NASA says.
It will be reloaded with more of that good Kentucky bourbon … ‘er, fuel, to carry “the right stuff” back into space.
Go Cats! Go Ares!
