CREW EXPLORATION VEHICLE Update: I’m too lazy to put this in my own words, so I just copied and pasted this from the main NASA website: "NASA has named the launch vehicles that will return humans to the Moon and later take them to Mars and other destinations. The crew launch vehicle will be called Ares 1, and the cargo launch vehicle will be known as Ares 5. Ares is the Greek god associated with Mars, and the "1" and "5" designations pay homage to the Apollo-era Saturn 1 and Saturn 5 rockets that took astronauts to the Moon in the 1960s. The Crew Exploration Vehicle (the cone-shaped capsule at the top of the Ares 1 rocket, shown below), which will succeed the space shuttle as NASA's spacecraft for human space exploration by September of 2014, will be named at a later date."
The Ares 1 Crew Launch Vehicle
Just to reiterate, the name Ares was chosen because it is the name of the Greek god associated with Mars. Sure, Ares is actually the Greek god of war, but do you really think that NASA chose it because the space agency’s full of angry, sadistic people who want to scrap? Being that I don’t work for NASA, of course not. But if I did work for the agency, I’d name the new launch vehicles Reaper...as in THE Reaper. Reapers’ 1 and 5... I like the sound of that.
The Ares 5 Earth Departure Stage
