Data Response

On October 24, NASA began the first steps toward assembling the Ares Rocket. The association, with the help of twelve tractor trailers, moved eleven steel segments from their housing in Cleveland at NASA's Glenn Research center, and began a twelve day journey down the Mississippi River, where the segments will reach the Gulf of Mexico and sail on to Port Canaveral.
The steel cylindrical segments weigh near twenty-four thousand pounds each. They are meant to be a "simulator" of the upper stages of the Ares Rocket, which will be test launched in April of next year. The exact date and time of the launch have yet to be revealed, but the flight profile can be downloaded from the NASA website. In short, the flight, if all goes well, will last less than a half hour.
The Ares Rocket is part of NASA's most recent programs, the Constellation program, that is the next step in flights to the moon and Mars. While there are ongoing projects that have objectives to identify water on mars, and map the lunar surface, NASA is the only agency in the world that is designing a craft that will take a human crew to Mars.
The less heard of portion of the constellation program is the Orion crew capsule, which will be tested next year as well, in the Arizona deserts. Many NASA experiments have taken place in Arizona, for the terrain in the desert there is much like the surface of the moon.
To summarize, the shipment of the steel segments is the first major step in assembling the Ares Rocket for her deadline of April 1.

Notes

-Ares rocket parts move down the Mississippi River
-No other means of transportation would work
-12 segments in rocket
-Rocket will be assembled in NASA's VAB (or Vehicle assembly building)
-Test flight tentatively scheduled for April 1st
-The parts will take a twelve day trip down the river
-Eleven steel cylinders, weighing between 24,00 lbs and 60,000 lbs
-NASA needed to be sure that the steel cylinders could withstand the rigors of launch.
-"The first ISS (International Space Station) mission is to take place no later than 2015, and the first lunar landing no later than 2020," says a NASA official.