Ares I-X sits on launch pad 39B. Credit: NASA

At 8:00 a.m.* EDT tomorrow, October 27, NASA will launch a test rocket called Ares I-X from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The rocket is the first new launch vehicle to be tested in nearly four decades and the test will gather data critical to the design and development of Ares I--NASA's new rocket designed to replace the aging space shuttles and take humans to the moon, and possibly to Mars and beyond as part of the Constellation program.

Last week it took engineers almost seven hours to roll Ares I-X to launch pad 39B where it completed its flight readiness review. Now NASA's biggest concern for lift off is the weather. The agency has a four hour launch window, and while it only needs 10 minutes of clear skies for a "go", the forecasters are calling for 60 percent chance of clouds. If the launch is scrubbed, engineers will try again on Wednesday.

The test flight comes at a trying time for NASA, after its plan for the future of human exploration underwent an independent review and the outcome did not favor the Ares I. Despite these findings, NASA officials support the test flight, saying the data gathered will be useful for the design of any future rocket.

"This is the first time in more than 30 years that NASA has built a vehicle in a new configuration so this has been a valuable learning experience," said Doug Cooke, associate administrator for NASA Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in a press release."This test will yield important data to support the nation's next steps in exploration. There is no substitute for hard data--flight testing clarifies the distinction between imagined outcomes and real flight experience."

Follow the launch on Twitter, and the Ares I-X blog, then return to Delta-V for a post-flight analysis.

*Update 8:49 a.m, 10/27.: The launch has been delayed, scheduled for 9:24 a.m.. A rain shower is expected to pass over the launch pad at 9:50 a.m., which could cause further delays if not launched as currrently scheduled.

*Update 9:39 a.m.: There is a cargo ship in the Atlantic Ocean "danger zone", so launch is now scheduled for 9:49 a.m.

*Update 9:54 a.m.: NASA is now waiting for a break in the clouds for flight. The weather aircraft is making its flight and NASA will announce a new launch time in 5 minutes.

*Update 10:35 a.m.: New launch time is 10:54 a.m., but weather forecasters not so confident the skies will hold.

*Update 11:26 a.m.: Today's launch attempt has been scrubbed due to weather. NASA will try again tomorrow, October 28, starting at 8:00 a.m. EDT.

Today's release of the final report of the Augustine Commission--a blue-ribbon panel charged with reviewing America's human spaceflight program--contains a laundry list of possible future options for the White House and Congress to consider. While making explicit recommendations was outside the Commission's charter, the panel's members managed to make their feelings clear on at least a few points.

For example, take the Ares-I, the light launcher intended to ferry crews to the International Space Station. Pictures of the feasible future are painted in the report, pictures in which the Ares-1 is conspicous by its absence. Instead, the Commission appears to believe that commercial companies should fly crews and cargos into orbit, but it if they fail to deliver, a combination of the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and a cut-down human-rated version of the Ares-V heavy-lift launcher (both intended for exploration missions beyond low Earth orbit) could fill in. Noting that crew transport to low Earth orbit requires a vehicle not much more complex than the Gemini spacecraft that was developed in the mid 1960s, the report states that a commericial crew launch service could be in operation as early as 2016.

An artist's impression of a rocket destined for a journey beyond Low Earth Orbit being refueled at this space depot designed by Boeing.

On the positive side, the panel is clearly taken with the potential of in-space refueling technology, which enables spacecraft to tank up in low Earth orbit. With this technology smaller (and cheaper) rockets could be used for missions that would otherwise be outside their weight class and larger rockets would have their capabilities considerably enhanced. For example, without in-space refueling, a launcher derived from today's smaller expendable rockets could launch 26 tonnes towards the Moon. With in-space refueling that figure would more than double to 55 tonnes. For missions using the Ares-V, which will be able to launch 63 tonnes to the Moon unaided, in-space refueling could bring the capacity up to 130 tonnes.

The panel also claims that pursing this technology could provide a boost to the private space sector, if NASA purchased fuel in orbit from commercial companies which would operate refueling tankers or possibly even permanent depots. (It's not too much of a stretch to imagine that tourist facilties could be combined with these depots, creating multiple revenue streams for future orbtial entreprenuers.)

The report is a big vote of confidence in a technology that has been somewhat neglected by the U.S.. Russia has been performing in-space refueling of its space stations using Progress vehicles since 1978, but the U.S. has conducted only a handful of research projects over the years in this area. Most notable of these is the military's Orbital Express mission in 2007, which demonstrated the in-space refueling of a satellite, and work done at the Creek Road Cryogenic Research Complex at NASA's Glenn Research Center, which is developing ways to refuel spacecraft in orbit with high-energy cryogenic fuels such as liquid hydrogen and oxygen.

So while the arguments rage about one launch vehicle over the other, or one destination versus the next, we hope that funding becomes available to develop this eminently feasible technology which has the ability to enhance America's future in space, whatever direction is ultimately chosen.

Last week the panel charged with reviewing the future of U.S. human spaceflight went before Congress to discuss its summary report (which we covered here).

The Augustine panel took quite a bit of heat from the House Committee on Science and Technology, which was dismayed that the panel had not been more specific in its recommendations. Some chair members were also disgruntled that the panel had provided alternative options to NASA's current exploration plan even though it did not find any evidence of mismanagement or technical problems.

It's clear from the panel's report that NASA needs more money if it is to send humans to other bodies in the solar system--even if the agency uses the commercial sector--and that the Obama administration has some hefty decisions to make on the future of U.S. space exploration in the coming weeks.

The Space Review's editor and publisher, Jeff Foust, has written a nice article here analyzing the one question that needs to be answered for NASA to receive its desired funding (an additional $3 billion per year): Why should the U.S. have a human spaceflight program at all?

The "real reason why we continue to do civil human spaceflight," says Foust, is "because we have for nearly 50 years, starting with that incredible surge in the 1960s when we raced the Soviet Union to the Moon and won."

Foust continues:

If we were to stop doing it, the reasoning goes, we would look weak and lose prestige, regardless of what else we decided to do in space or elsewhere instead of human spaceflight. It's not an exciting argument to starry-eyed space enthusiasts who dream of going to the Moon and beyond, but it does explain a great many things.

In addition, Foust argues that the benefits of "the frontier"--traveling into the solar system--need to be brought back to the people so that civilians understand the value of space travel.

While Foust says it may be too late in the near term for a compelling argument for human spaceflight to be made to the public so that NASA can get the $3 billion (the administration does have more pressing issues like healthcare to deal with), there is hope for the future, assuming the administration gives NASA just enough to sustain its current program.

He concludes:

If NASA's human spaceflight program is to survive, and thrive, its supporters would do well to take that message to heart: to better explain to the public, the White House, and Congress how it is aligned with national interests and provides "better value" (another phrase from [NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver's] speech [at AIAA Space 2009]). To do so may require a shift from the tired old reasons of the past to new ones that put the space agency at the heart of a new mission to open up human spaceflight to a wider range of applications and a greater degree of relevance and importance to all.