BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. -- NASA approved the Ares 1-X Rocket for a Tuesday morning test launch. The rocket could eventually take man back to the moon. But the first launch comes at a cost of $445 million.

The test will last 5 minutes, 308 seconds from lift-off to splash down, and cost more than $1 million per second.

The mission management team wrapped up its meeting Friday afternoon, earlier than expected. They are very confident in the rocket. They may have just one shot at proving it worthy of continuing with Ares.

The test rocket baked in the October sun as the launch team checked off their to-do list to make sure it was ready.

"It's been a very good day for them. Everything is going very smoothly for them. No issues," Lynnette Madison, NASA spokesperson said.

All eyes will be on launch pad 39 Tuesday morning. The rocket won't be manned and won't even make it into orbit, but some believe it could carry the future of the space program on its back.

"I hope there's a future with this rocket going up. I hope it's the beginning of a new phase," resident Connie Allen said.

With the shuttle fleet on the verge of retirement, Allen believes NASA needs to prove to the president the new rocket will work as planned in order to secure more funding and save space jobs for all her neighbors.

"They're nervous and they feel like there's a promise broken because they had a lot riding on it," she said.

The test launch is designed to prove you can take solid rocket booster segments from the shuttle program and fly them with a capsule on top. Even if the test works, there's no guarantee. There will however be a second test flight.

A manned mission will still be seven years away, a trip to the moon even further out.

NASA's going to get whatever data it can from the test flight, because for the time being the space agency is flying without a road map.

The only things standing in the way are any last minute technical problems and the weather.

Meteorologists are forecasting a 60 percent chance rain or wind which could delay the launch Tuesday.