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NASA Delays Orion's First Manned Flight Until 2023
The Verge reports that the first manned flight planned for the Orion crew capsule has been delayed, and is now slated to take place in 2023, rather than the previously hoped-for 2021. The delay is based on both budget and design considerations; Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for human exploration at NASA, said at a press conference yesterday that several changes have been made to save weight in the capsule, including reducing the number of panels that make up the craft's cone. The article notes So far, Orion has met most of its major milestones. The spacecraft made its first uncrewed test flight in December 2014. The engineering team also recently demonstrated the Orion could land safely despite the failure of two of its parachutes. NASA hopes to eventually launch the Orion on top of the Space Launch System (SLS) — a giant rocket the space agency is currently building to go beyond lower Earth orbit. The plan is to send astronauts on the Orion to Mars sometime in the 2030s.
to go basically nowhere. It's a vacuum, fools, not some mythical "final frontier".
"rather than the previously hoped-for 2010."
8^)
I don't know how many times I tried to click on it before I finally realized that it was just some text surrounded by otherwise empty tags
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
... is now slated to take place in 2023, rather than the previously hoped-for 2010...
We regret to inform you that the delay announcement has been delayed as well.
Where's the Kickstarter link?
2010 eh?
Proofreading - it's not just for college papers.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
>> slated to take place in 2023, rather than the previously hoped-for 2010
I think we knew it wasn't going to be 2010...
> NASA Delays Orion's First Manned Flight Until 2023
Thank you and please continue to cancel it outright! The last thing mankind needs is to pollute the celestial firmament with nuclear bomb explosions fallout and have us punished by advanced alien civilizations for such sheeniganship. Even GT999 steam is better than Project Orion.
So the only reason any organization ever does anything is because they'd suffer negative consequences if they don't do it. If a company doesn't do anything, they go out of business. A government agency can embarrass the elected officials in charge, so that the higher-ups get fired and replaced.
None of that is likely to happen to NASA. No administration since Nixon has given half a squat about our space program. Half of the taxpayers are so short-sighted that they don't see any good reason to ever bother exploring the other 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of the universe when we could instead use that money to increase their Social Security benefits by 0.001%.
The date will slip again, and keep slipping, until some future administration axes the program, or until some bookkeeping snafu accidentally allows some team of engineers to be left alone long enough to actually engineer something.
The only reason that they didn't push the "deadline" back to 2050 in this announcement is that they're trying to boil a frog. The frog, in this example, is us.
Luckily, Dragon will be flying a bit sooner.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
And the pursuit of 'perfection' will lead to an F-35 style mess.
Just launch something already.
So...
In the 1960s we could take basically an untried technology and build it (from C-1 to C5), deploy it, and use it for a lunar shot in https://xkcd.com/1133/ (up-goer five)
-Styopa
no doubt they will push that date back to!
Well there's why it's taking so long, they've got to wait for the time machine specified in the design to be invented .
Congress : "You're getting pork! And you're getting pork! And you're getting pork! EVERYBODY'S getting PORK!"
"Sorry, no spaceship for you... we can't afford that."
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
And yet some fools in Congress continue to push for Commercial Crewed Services to be defunded when they would probably be flying crews by now had the program been given the paltry funding they initially requested (about $800 Million a year). That funding is starting to come up to the requested levels, probably because of SLS's failures, but for the first 3 years they were basically running on half of the requested budget.
But Orion will get their medal too. Because the differently-abled have feelings too.
Orion first made an uncrewed test flight in 2014. They hope to make the first crewed flight by 2023.
And then send a crew to mars in the 2030s.
Really? 9 years to go from test to *first* manned flight, then 7-17 years to a manned Mars mission?
They just make this up over Starbucks?
A Dragon will go to Mars before Orion at this pace. Any living Apollo engineers must be gagging on such progress. Let them get their slide rules out and build this with an Android smartphone for a computer and two trips on a Saturn V. Sheesh. We are losing the ability to do big things.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
They were obviously so inspired by the movie The Martian, they thought they could go back in time and get the program launched a few years ago. Give them some more time and they might just pull it off. :)
So from Kennedy asking Congress to commit to putting a man on the Moon and returning him to Earth (25 May, 1961) to Armstrong's "one small step" on 20 July 1969, was just over eight years. That required designing and building an entire infrastructure and two generations of spacecraft. Now NASA wants nine years to go from an already test flown vehicle to the first baby steps manned flight of said vehicle.
NASA, the "no output division" of manned space, where old bureaucrats and obsolete engineers go to die.
EM-1 is not actually delayed to 2023 yet. Just expecting it will be eventually because usually these projects have unforeseen delays. Currently they are still working to do 2021.
Yes, I am biased, I like commercial crew and I like having more than one commercial crew provider because I think it leads to a more sustainable future in spaceflight. That said, I'm OK with big long range government programs in theory. Unfortunately it's virtually impossible to do sustained government projects (like put humans on Mars) because the people that fund those projects have to worry more about where the money is spent rather than the actual outcome of the project. And the person that chooses the project changes every 4 or 8 years and usually doesn't want to look like they support anything the last guy did. Meanwhile the guy(s) that decide where the money goes hang around forever, so the money goes to the same people, just for a moving target of a goal. Which is why we are going back to the Moon, no Mars, I mean capturing an asteroid but still giving lip service to Mars, but not really. Or something like that.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
The ISS will de-orbit by the time Orion flies.
We'll be hitching ride with the Russians for the next 20 years (trust me on that, the timeframe will be pushed back even further). Of course that assumes we're not at war with the Russians by that point.
Meanwhile; corporate, privately-funded access to space will be ahead of NASA... While it may take 30 more years, space-X or virgin galactic will have a re-usable SSTO craft by that time.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Time to shit can the whole thing and put Musk and Bezos in charge.
"the Orion crew capsule has been delayed, and is now slated to launch ... " at Infinity and Beyond!
If we don't wipe out Islam, civilization won't last long enough to escape this solar system.
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