NASA Shows Off Mock-Up of Mars-Capable Spacecraft

Posted by timothy on Tuesday March 31, 2009 @12:47AM from the kick-the-tires-check-the-fluids dept.

N!NJA writes with this snippet of a report from Reuters: "NASA gave visitors to the National Mall in Washington a peek at a full-size mock-up of the spacecraft designed to carry US astronauts back to the moon and then on to Mars one day. The design of Orion was based on the Apollo spacecraft, which first took Americans to the moon. Although similar in shape, Orion is larger, able to carry six crew members rather than three, and builds on 1960s technology to make it safer." They're still working on the parachute.

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Re:I'm confused by Anonymous Coward · 2009-03-31 05:00 · Score: -1, Redundant

There is really not enough data to attest Apollo spacecraft were much safer than the shuttles. There were less than two dozen Apollo manned launches with one nearly (because the crew got really, really lucky) catastrophic accident and more than a hundred shuttle launches done by a small fleet that went to space a couple times each with two very serious mishaps.
You forgot about Apollo 1. I'd call that catastrophic, even if it didn't actually launch.