Charles Vick

Well, I wouldn't fly in it!

That is what one leading aerospace expert said to me at his office in old town Alexandria in Virginia.

He was speaking as the U.S. space agency NASA launched a prototype rocket designed to replace the aging Shuttle fleet and one day to carry men back to the Moon.

The Ares 1-X blasted off from Cape Canaveral in the southern U.S. state of Florida for a journey that lasted just two minutes before it came down in the Atlantic Ocean.

The flight may have been a short one but there was a lot riding on Ares 1-X including nothing less than the future of NASA itself.