Computer models show the Ares I rocket — being developed to launch the next-generation Orion U.S. spaceship — could come to grief at liftoff, an Orlando Sentinel report said.

Models show the tall rocket could be shoved sideways by a moderate southeast breeze, slamming it into the launch tower and possibly destroying the lifter, the report stated, quoting an anonymous contractor source.

But the report quoted a NASA official as saying ongoing design work can fix the problem.

NASA leaders are hoping the design and development work on the Ares I rocket and the Orion space capsule will go well and not fall behind schedule, because even in a best-case scenario, it likely will be 2015 before the first manned flight of the Orion-Ares system.

And that, in turn, means that the United States, so far the only nation to put men on the moon, for half a decade won’t be able to transport so much as one astronaut to space, not even to low Earth orbit, because President Bush has mandated the space shuttle fleet must retire in 2010.

Meanwhile, NASA will be reduced to having astronauts hitch rides on Russian Soyuz spaceships, assuming the company that makes the Soyuz can solve its major financial problems and continue producing the Soyuz. (Please see story in this issue.)