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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.
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'
>> slated to take place in 2023, rather than the previously hoped-for 2010
I think we knew it wasn't going to be 2010...
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"
Still hoping for a 2010 launch date... there's your problem right there.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
...and /.'s fine, modern comment system deleted the statemnt between the word "shot" and the xkcd reference:
"...while in the 2000s, we announce a project in 2004 to essentially re-build (but update) 40-year-old tech, and the first manned flight isn't for 19 years"
-Styopa
Imagine what NASA could do with the money from one less F-35.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Orion: 10 years and counting (from original Constellation announcement), 1 uncrewed sub-orbital launch, approx. 8 years to the first crewed launch. 18 years from announcement to crewed launch.
The entire Apollo program: 9 years, including 6 lunar landings, 9 total lunar missions, 2 crewed orbital, 10 uncrewed orbital, 6 uncrewed sub-orbital. Also 1 catastrophic event/delay and 1 near catastrophic event which was saved by the ingenuity/resolve of the engineers.
I miss the 1960s NASA (except for the catastrophes of course).
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. :)
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.