NASA's New Shuttle

j0ugh writes "NASA releases plans for a new spacecraft (Audio stream contains the meat) that would replace the space shuttle. The vehicle is part of a system that will be capable of putting astronauts on the moon by 2018, laying the groundwork for space travel to Mars. NASA says the new system is designed to be 10 times safer than the space shuttle"

Comments

Re:Why fly...

[Foobar of Borg]

When you put a date of '2018' on something, being at least two US administrations away, isn't that akin to basically saying "maybe, one day, but I wouldn't count on it"?

The problem with the date being 2018 is more to do with funding from Congress, rather than the presidency. Anyone remember the superconducting super-collider we (the US) were going to have? A bunch of imbecilic Repubs referred to it as "Jurassic Pork" and cut the funding. They were too stupid to understand the value of high-energy physics research, and they probably figured that they weren't getting the votes of people who are even slightly intelligent, so it wouldn't affect them.

Math isn't Rocket Science

[Doc Ruby]

With only 2 lethal failures in 25 years, a Shuttle has to be only more than twice as safe to be nonlethal over the next 13 years to 2018.