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NASA Won't Fly Astronauts On First Orion-SLS Test Flight Around the Moon (space.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: The first flight of NASA's next-generation heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), is now scheduled for 2019 and will not include a human crew, agency officials said today (May 12). As of 2016, NASA had planned for the SLS' first flight to take place in 2018, without a crew on board. But the transition team that the Trump administration sent to the agency earlier this year asked for an internal evaluation of the possibility of launching a crew atop the SLS inside the agency's Orion space capsule. Robert Lightfoot, NASA's acting administrator, said during a news conference today that, based on the results of this internal evaluation, a crewed flight would be "technically feasible," but the agency will proceed with its initial plan to make the rocket's first flight uncrewed. The internal evaluation "really reaffirmed that the baseline plan we had in place was the best way for us to go," Lightfoot said. "We have a good handle on how that uncrewed mission will actually help [the first crewed mission of SLS] be a safer mission when we put crew on there." SLS' first flight will be called Exploration Mission 1, or EM-1, and will send an uncrewed Orion capsule (which has already made one uncrewed test flight, aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket) on a roughly three-week trip around the moon. The first crewed flight, EM-2, was originally scheduled to follow in 2021.
Not loading down the spaceship with useless baggage is always a good idea. Hopefully Orion will continue to be unmanned.
Seceal servicemen already, now he wants to kill astronauts to make his name bigger.
vs SpaceseX
They could put some private person on it, who craves attention tremendously. Sad.
Because aliens.
Or Battlezone.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This will change depending on what China does.
He wins so hard he is probably thinking, 'what could possibly go wrong'.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
No phun intended but today's political climate and hyperbole news, would mean the death of any space program if there was a manned mission incident.
Private space colonization, right?
What an apt name for a cautious man.
From my understanding, Orion is basically a somewhat pared down version of Constellation which was a gigantic pork project for Congressmen (and Senators) to funnel money to their districts. While I wish Obama had raised more of an objection to it, I don't think (as another poster said) it was his baby. While I wish he spent more time on the space program, I think he had other things on his mind (like rescuing the nation from the greatest financial panic since the 1920's and getting tens of millions of Americans health insurance).
But seriously, do we NEED a government funded booster that, to my non-professional eyes, looks like a somewhat rehashed (but much more expensive) version of the Saturn V? Why don't we just pay literally about 1/10 the money to Elon Musk (no I don't own a Tesla or any stock in his companies unfortunately), and get a REUSABLE version of the booster part? If the Congressional Republicans had been serious about cutting down the deficit (and cutting out their own pork projects) this would be a no-brainer (actually, it's probably not just due to their lack of brains but their lack of spines). Of course now, under Trumpism, what was black is now white and they merrily supported his $1 Trillion infrastructure proposal (which of course, as one of many many reversals, he seems to have abandoned).
So, are there any TECHNICAL reasons why the SLS booster is better than the booster for the Interplanetary Colonial Transport? While, it has been under development for (far) longer and cost much more, as the delays keep piling up it might not get finished before the ICT. Like, is it safer? (though I doubt it with the use of solid rockets in its heavy version). While the ICT booster doesn't go all the way to orbit, the fact that it will be REUSABLE (there I said it again), makes me think the the overall system will be far cheaper than the SLS.
(I wrote a previous comment on this subject here): https://slashdot.org/comments....
Before SLS. Seriously, it is time for spacex to work with Bigelow to get funding to send a habitat to the lunar surface followed by a crew of 3-4 to stay there for 1-4 weeks. It should be possible.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
...
That's leaving a lot of work to be done to get someone landed on Mars in the remaining time of Trumps first term! /s
I wouldn't want humans aboard either. They're too high maintenance and squishy
OMG when will it happen. If this was the 60's we would of already been on the moon, but here in the 2000's with more technology and hitech tooling NASA can not pull these all together. SpaceX is going to beat them.
You'd have to be crazy to put people in your vehicle's first flight.
.:Semper Absurda:.
"Umm... possible? Not really, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are not powerful enough for manned moon missions, not without many orbital rendezvous and other trickery. Don't be fooled by the moon tourism flyby mission, its a free return flight, Dragon capsule will not enter lunar orbit let alone attempt landing, it doesn't have enough delta v for it. ITS is in very early development stage and probably still couldn't do moon missions, despite having awesome lift mass the second stage relies on atmospheric breaking and onsite refueling, both impossible on the moon."
Not disputing your space facts but your phrasing. Not landing on the moon, a flyby, can also be considered a mission to the moon. Or what has NASA been doing with all its space probes to Jupiter, Saturn and the former planet with the same name as Mickey the Mouse's dog? Sci-fi scenario: a billionaire wants to take snapshots of the Maria showing proof that NASA buried the monoliths somewhere in the lunar regolith.