Mark Knopfler

For all those interested in Space (the Final Frontier… sorry), NASA’s drive to produce the Constellation Program before 2013 would have been of great excitement. The announcement in August that the project’s launch was likely to slip two years back 2015 would have been met with bitter disappointment by many.

There was other recent news from NASA, though, as it was announced that the powerful Ares I rocket had passed its initial design review successfully. Ares has been painstakingly scrutinized by over 1,100 specialists at the Marshall Space Flight Center. If you think that this sounds like a lot of people doing a lot of work, then you would be right. There is a lot more work to be done on the Ares design though, and this initial review is but one of many. There is a lot more to come, so don’t hold your breath for a build program just yet.

This caution might irk those among us who dearly want to see Ares power into the sky, but it’s going to reassure the Orbit shuttle’s crew and their families: if you’re planning on hurtling hundreds of miles a second into the sky then you will probably welcome all the checking input that you can get. Once you’re in the air it’s far too late to start making running repairs to something like the Ares rocket!