What’s sleek and sexy, 327 feet tall and waiting to go on the trip of a lifetime this week?

At Kennedy Space Center in Florida, one of the most beautiful rockets ever built is sitting atop the mobile launch platform at Pad 39B, hoping to do its initial test flight today, Oct. 27. It’s NASA’s new Ares booster, destined to be the replacement for the old space shuttle fleet. There hasn’t been a rocket this tall at The Cape since the Apollo missions, and even so, it’s the tallest rocket on the planet right now.

While this is only the first test flight, it should be pretty spectacular. Whether it fails or succeeds — a lot of noise, smoke and fire is guaranteed for onlookers. Unlike the shuttle, the Ares is a single-use rocket. In this day and age of recycling as a way of life it seems like a huge step back in rocket science, so let’s take a quick look at the reasons.

The shuttle has many flaws. Originally it was supposed to be entirely reusable, but that proved way too expensive, leading to the fiery demise of every single orange external tank ever flown on a mission. The intended two week turnaround period was completely unrealistic; something that has to undergo such tremendous stresses as are present during a launch, journey through space and re-entry has to be properly serviced and tested before it goes up again.

Being the most complicated machine ever built, the shuttle takes a long time to be checked out, and you can’t skip any steps and take shortcuts because human lives are at stake. And this is the shuttle’s true Achilles Heel: there is no escape for the crew in the event of a malfunction.

The Challenger crew perished partly because there was no way for them to get off their ship. The old Moon rockets all had escape systems in the form of small rockets attached to the crew capsule, which would have propelled the precious human cargo away from danger in the even of a problem during launch.

Furthermore, the shuttle orbiter is quite a complicated shape hanging on the side of the booster system, and this increases the chance of damage or failure, such as with Columbia, where a piece of foam fell off the external tank, struck the leading edge of a wing and doomed the crew during re-entry when superheated plasma quickly destroyed the orbiter’s exposed fuselage.

The moon rockets sat at the very top of their rocket — nothing could fall and hit them, and the precious life-saving heat shield was safely tucked away inside the rocket.

But, you may say, it was reusable, and isn’t it cheaper to use things more than once?

While that’s true for many things, it doesn’t work quite that way all the time. All the refurbishing and testing of the shuttle components costs way more than a brand new single-use rocket. It’s hard to wrap your brain around that one, but the numbers don’t lie.

That brings us to our next question: Why not just re-use the old moon rockets? They were well-proven technology, not a single one ever failed, and we already have them, right?

Wrong.

Believe it or not — the dies used for manufacturing the Apollo rockets were destroyed long ago. We couldn’t make another one even if we wanted to; we’d have to start from scratch. And just because they worked so well doesn’t mean they can’t be improved with new, lighter materials, better, more efficient engines and more versatile electronics, which we have at our disposal today.

The Ares is in many ways a vast improvement over the Space Shuttle. Personally, I am very fond of the old orbiters and hate to see them go, but I am also concerned about the safety of the aging spacecraft, which were never meant to fly for this long. Mind you, I’d still go tomorrow if I were asked!

The shuttle fleet is slated for retirement in a year, and by then the Ares will be far from ready from taking over its tasks of ferrying personnel and supplies to the International Space Station. Until it’s done, NASA has to buy seats on the Russian Soyuz, at $50 million a pop. Nobody wants to see that happen, but unless the shuttles have their contracts extended, there’s just no other way.

And what about the trips to the moon? Right now, there’s just not enough money. When former President Bush gave NASA the new mandate to return to the moon, the space program didn’t receive sufficient funds to actually make that happen. It’s like your boss giving you $5 and telling you to rent a ballroom and cater your company’s holiday party with that. Something’s got to give.

The so-called Augustine report has just been made public, outlining possible directions for NASA in the event the necessary money doesn’t materialize. It’s looking rather grim at the moment. Ultimately, it will be up to the current administration to decide what to do.

Let’s hope that there is a bright place for one of our nation’s biggest accomplishments and sources of pride for global leadership: our space program.

Beate Czogalla is the associate professor of theater design in the Department of Music and Theater at Georgia College & State University. She has had a lifelong interest in space exploration and has been a solar system ambassador for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/ NASA for many years. She can be reached at our_space2@yahoo.com