Threatened rocket has busy schedule

Although the president wants to kill the Constellation Program and the Ares I, NASA managers in charge of the rocket have put together an ambitious testing program to speed its development, including a flight in November 2014 with astronauts aboard. That would be earlier than NASA's current schedule, which calls for the first manned flight in March 2015, and much faster than the 2017 date predicted by a blue-ribbon panel that reviewed NASA's human spaceflight program last year. (Source: New York Times, 05/16/10) Gulf Coast note: Stennis Space Center, Miss., and Michoud Assembly Facility, New Orleans, are both involved in Constellation and other NASA programs.