Ares 1-X gives Mr Obama something to ponder
The . The 100m-tall, super-slim Ares 1-X rocket has completed its demonstration mission.
Time will now tell whether this event was a giant leap on the road to a new astronaut launch system or just a spectacular side-show.
Nasa wants to use the fully developed Ares 1 to propel its next-generation crewship into orbit, and expects the rocket to be flying in 2015.
A has suggested . It doubts Ares can be made to fly before 2017, and has pointed to potentially easier and cheaper options for getting humans into low-Earth orbit.
Wednesday's launch may not have advanced Ares' cause, but it will not have harmed it either.
The flight went ahead after a series of frustrating from weather officers.
Conditions had seemed benign enough except for some persistent high cloud.
The concern was that if the vehicle had climbed through this cloud, a build-up of static might have interfered with radio signals sent to and from the rocket.
If the flight had gone wrong for some reason and the vehicle had begun to veer out of control, this "" could have interfered with a command to destroy the rocket.
The risks associated with a maiden flight are always higher than with a proven vehicle and so nothing could be left to chance.
The 1-X had an explosive charge running the full length of the booster and officials at the spaceport would not have hesitated in using it if required to do so.
As we now know, the weather finally obliged towards the end of the launch window and the Ares 1-X was given a "go" for 1530 GMT.
The 1-X uses the same booster technology (with modifications) that helps lift the space shuttle off the launch pad. The higher thrust-to-weight ratio of the slender 1-X meant of course that its departure from terra firma had a little more zip about it.
Everything appeared to go pretty much to plan: a two-minute powered flight to more than 130,000ft (45km), with the vehicle moving at almost five times the speed of sound.
Separation of the booster from the upper part of the rocket occurred right on cue.
The booster was flipped by thrusters to slow it, and it fell towards the ocean, deploying a new parachute system during the descent.
The team sent to recover the booster from the water also tried out a method of retrieval not previously used to salvage the shuttle's discarded motors.
One point of note was the way the upper part of the 1-X - a physical simulation of what the top of an Ares 1 should look like - appeared to start its tumble motion earlier than expected.
All of the immediate goals do seem to have been achieved. But it will take months for engineers to assess the data returned by the more-than-700 sensors on the 1-X.
The demonstrator was intended to help verify design assumptions so that when the Ares 1 proper is built, everyone can be confident it will fly as expected.
Which brings us back to the "big question": will the Ares 1 actually be developed?
This is one only President Barack Obama can answer. He also has to find a budget to support whatever solution he proposes to get US astronauts into space once the shuttle is retired.
His expert panel has told him that by Nasa to do anything "meaningful" in the realm of human spaceflight.
The weeks ahead in Washington are sure to be fascinating. The lobbying will be intense, and Congress is sure to want to have a say.
I know science reporters like myself are usually given the "space beat" in the mainstream media, but I'm very aware that the decision which has to be taken is not a scientific one. It's a political one; and given the size of the US space sector, it has major economic considerations.
Many thousands of jobs will hang on President Obama's Ares deliberations.
Watch this space.
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