Besides, Time is the magazine that likes to show how unbiased they are by making a big deal out of people that are basically human scum. Hitler, Osama bin Laden, etc.

"What was launched is an Ares 1-X - a one-off test article that differs in substantial ways from the real, production line, Ares 1. Ares 1-X is (was) a rocket cobbled together from pieces of old shuttle hardware, a borrowed avionics system that will not be used on the actual Ares 1, and dummy upper stages - none of which will ever fly again. Indeed, its first - and only - flight resulted in an unexpected upper stage trajectory, a parachute system malfunction, and heavy damage to its launch pad."

[www.latimes.com]

The in-house alternative, which the entrenched, anti-Shuttle, Bush-era middle-management keeps taking off the table, would have U.S manned launches resuming within 1-2 years of Shuttle retirement, and it would cost far less, and it would re-use existing tooling and facilities, crawler-transporters and crawlerways, but it doesn't have the shiny newness that the much more expensive Ares I/Ares V plan is imbued with.

[en.wikipedia.org]

[www.directlauncher.com]

Then again, the early Mercury-Redstone hops were the original lawn darts of NASA.

But problems experienced during that test flight are of no surprise, just the severity of them have the engineers scratching heads and trying to figure out what to do. Separation can be handled by ullage, retrofire and adjustments to the separation timing. Remember, the upper stage was a boilerplate, unpowered and didn't have a chance with the SRB coming on hard after separation.

The chutes, well they are the biggest they deployed, so there were questions about the packing methods used.

But the pad damage, I have yet to hear what kind of damage it took from the impinging of the SRB's blast or shock damage, so I cannot really say if it is fixable within budget or no.

It does not physically exist, yet.

In fact, ATK even made two posters showing that all-but-one portion of one of the four active segments of the Ares I-X booster SRB had flown on numerous STS missions. (see [forum.nasaspaceflight.com] , [www.collectspace.com] for the posters)

Ares I-X was not representative of flight hardware, at all. It's mission profile wasn't representative of an Ares I launch, either -- lower aerodynamic pressure (Max-Q), lower-altitude staging, less thrust oscillation, different burn profile, etc.

The only truly new system on board was the parachutes, and they failed, catastrophically. The roll-control system isn't representative of flight hardware, using recycled Peacekeep missile motors, rather than the projected thruster packs.

Everything else was an empty-shell, or was already proven.

All for the low-low, bargain basement price of $495,000,000

I used to read Discover magazine, so some of this is familiar.

The solar shingles were invented in 1997. Dow is just deciding to manufacture them now and make them available.

Discover mag, July 1997:

"Back in 1994, while he was lecturing on the virtues of solar energy in the home, Subhendu Guha was showing a slide of solar cells arrayed on a roof. But it's so ugly, said an architect in the audience. Who would want that on their house? It was just a flip remark, but it got Guha thinking..... Last July, Guha put the finishing touches on his solar shingles......Roofers install the solar shingles just as they do normal ones, except that for each they must drill a hole in the roof for electrical leads. An electrician wires the leads to the home's electrical system."

In 1993 they were testing retinal implants to see if they were safe for implantation. Although on these, I think they needed technology to advance before full development.

Discover mag, June 1993:

"Both teams have developed surgical techniques for getting the implant into the eye and fastened to the retina. The northern researchers are now putting blank chips into the eyes of rabbits to see how well a living eye tolerates having electronic hardware sitting inside it. By the end of the year they hope to put a prototype in one eye of a rabbit. They'll measure electrical activity in the rabbit's visual cortex and do behavioral tests to assess how well the animal can see."

Discover mag, August 2005:

"In 2002 Rainge, now 58, was one of 10 patients to receive a retinal chip developed by physician Alan Chow and his brother Vincent. This past spring another 20 patients got the silicon device."

TIME saying that these are "new inventions" of 2009, is total bull. The name is very misleading. Like they came up with these things THIS YEAR. Um, NOT.

@subtlefrog: but you could have worked the walking dead/undead/near living into one of your classes.

I'm confused, though. How much is "recycled" parts and how much new stuff? It seems (to this laymen) that since much of the Ares I-X was tried-and-true, it should have been more predictable. I'm guessing all the innovations are the seemingly problematic areas?

And, I'm OK with failures - large and small - occurring for these early tests. It's sort of the point, isn't it? :)
And, if they don't release the data, I'd be upset. But if they're delaying it so they can parse out what happened, I'm OK with it. It does the mission no good to throw out results without their analysis.

The stuff on top was mostly mock-up.

I don't think that the Ares J2X engine has even been test-fired yet. And it's a redesign of the old Saturn engines...

@subtlefrog: Woah... I am suddenly scared for you.. and I remain glad that I got the heck out of traditional Highschool when I did.

What annoys the most is that in these times of fiscal scarcity (once the economy's functioning again), I can't see NASA having the budget to do both the Moon/Mars thing and continue the amazing, real scientific advances they've done with robots. So the latter's budget will be cut.
All so the rubes can gawk at people traipsing around once or twice, before getting bored and demanding the whole thing get shut down prematurely. Hurting both exploration approaches.

Yay for quality education!

He's also, at least in my personal experience, a bit of a grouch.

Ares I-X was a shuttle SRB with a large amount of dead weight attached t its nose. And it wasn't even a successful test. (Parachutes, recontact, pad damage.)

@nbs2: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...oh. Were you serious? (Disclaimer : I work with NASA on a near-daily basis)

I was little more than a PR stunt by NASA's Marshall Spaceflight Center.

The 5-segment Ares I SRM has a different thrust profile, a different fuel design and a different burn pattern. Computer simulations currently show that, as currently designed, Ares I's fifth segment will produce violent thrust oscillations, near burnout, that are likely to violently injure, if not kill human crew members.

Furthermore, Ares I-X was not a success -- there is visual evidence that the still-burning SRB first stage recontacted the upper stage simulator after staging separation. That's a big no-no in launching rockets, and, were it to happen on a crewed launch, it would have been fatal, as the launch abort system cannot escape the resulting spin. NASA has been dragging its heels on releasing the on-board sensor data, that would conclusively prove whether or not the stages touched.

The new recovery parachute design, failed catastrophically, with only one of the three canopies opening properly, causing the spent booster to suffer sever damage upon impact with the ocean. It was one of the four primary goals for Ares I-X and it failed. NASA officials knew about the malfunction immediately after it occurred, but refused to acknowledge the problem, or release any of the agency's photos or videos of the booster recovery system failure until after it was leaked to reporters.

The launch also severely damaged the pad at LC-39B, much to NASA's surprise. It's likely that the pad is no longer usable, were it needed for a launch-on-need shuttle mission.

The Ares team, in the wake of the Ares I-X launch, cancelled Ares I-Y, the only full-up test of a five-segment Ares I booster planned prior to the launch of an actual Orion mission, as well as both Aerial Abort test 1 (AA-1) and AA-2, meaning that the highly-experimental system intended to pull the crew module away from a catastrophically-malfunctioning rocket will only have a single test before it flies on a manned mission. (And there are quite a few engineers within NASA who do not believe that the Orion Launch Abort System (LAS) can successfully pull a crew module away from a failing launch vehicle.)

The bladeless fan seems really neat.. but I might be biased since I live in Texas.

@DirectMailFan: Buzz Who? What has he done since 1969? NASA 40 years ago was nothing compared to the worldwide leader in science and effective management that it is today.

Was the Ares rocket really even an invention of 2009? I mean, they've been working on it for a good long time. It was technically "invented" long before this year - it debuted this year. And the AIDs vaccine is still being evaluated, so it's not even debuting this year.

Maybe Time should have renamed the list to the 50 Best Things of 2009. That would have been much more fitting.

This line in the story shows that Time didn't quite get it right: "The answer is the Ares 1, which had its first unmanned flight on Oct. 28 and dazzled even the skeptics."

Actually, the rocket that flew was a scaled down prototype, the Arex 1-X. And, among the critics who weren't dazzled were people like Buzz Aldrin, who knows a thing or two about rockets.