NASA delays first Orion manned flight two more years
Surprise, surprise! NASA today announced that the first manned flight of the Orion capsule will likely be delayed two more years to 2023.
Orion has been under development since 2006, and is expected to have cost more than $17 billion when that first mission flies in 2023. SLS, once called Constellation but with a different configuration, has been under development since 2011, and has cost about that much through today. All told, I would estimate that by the time that flight occurs in 2023 (assuming it doesn’t get delayed again) NASA will have spent more than $40 billion.
This is a joke, but a very painful one. It is going to take NASA almost two decades to get one capsule off the ground. Compare that with the 1960s space race, where we went from nothing to landing on the Moon in a little more than eleven years.
If NASA had been spending this money on planetary missions, they might actually have been doing something worthwhile with it. Meanwhile, the private companies, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing, Orbital ATK, are building capsules and rockets that are as capable, if not more so, and are getting them built now for less than a quarter that price, in the range of about $6 to $8 billion.
If our elected officials in Congress had any brains, they would shut Orion/SLS down now, and save the taxpayers an awful lot of money.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Surprise, surprise! NASA today announced that the first manned flight of the Orion capsule will likely be delayed two more years to 2023.
Orion has been under development since 2006, and is expected to have cost more than $17 billion when that first mission flies in 2023. SLS, once called Constellation but with a different configuration, has been under development since 2011, and has cost about that much through today. All told, I would estimate that by the time that flight occurs in 2023 (assuming it doesn’t get delayed again) NASA will have spent more than $40 billion.
This is a joke, but a very painful one. It is going to take NASA almost two decades to get one capsule off the ground. Compare that with the 1960s space race, where we went from nothing to landing on the Moon in a little more than eleven years.
If NASA had been spending this money on planetary missions, they might actually have been doing something worthwhile with it. Meanwhile, the private companies, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing, Orbital ATK, are building capsules and rockets that are as capable, if not more so, and are getting them built now for less than a quarter that price, in the range of about $6 to $8 billion.
If our elected officials in Congress had any brains, they would shut Orion/SLS down now, and save the taxpayers an awful lot of money.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
I am not surprised, just saddened. It is so disheartening to see a once proud organization turned into just another government bureaucracy. I am not old enough to have seen the Saturn V’s fly and part of me wants this to keep going just so I and my children can see the power of the monster rocket fly, but ultimately, you are right. This is a dead end and needs to be shutdown sooner rather than later.
Juan, I *did* see the Saturn V fly, and yes, it was awesome, and no, we have no need to repeat it. Spaceflight as entertainment, or even as global propaganda in a World War, as Apollo was, is a duplicitous drug, that NASA Center politicians and even some Space Advocates are addicted to. It gives them both the spectacle of “the roar” at launch and the votes in States where NASA Centers are located. It fails everywhere else.
It leaves space settlement dead in the water. If you are not doing human spaceflight to advance the settlement of the Solar System, do something else with the money. Since no voting majority is interested in settling the Solar System, private groups must do so on their own. I still hold out some small hope that NASA will be allowed to contribute technology development to that settlement. I have not had hope for 40 years that politicians will allow them to actually participate.
The worst threat, besides the exemplary waste of public funds, that the SLS/Orion coalition poses, is their continuing need to break the New Space companies to their yoke. Last year’s demands for Commercial Crew to move to “normal” Cost + contracting is not going to be the last attempt. Without their usual levers over space industry actors, pols cannot sell the ability to influence subcontractor choices, much less get direct donations. Within the next 5 years, especially if SLS is finally cancelled, I expect they will realize they are “losing control”, and try something gauchely stupid to regain it.