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The first and second launch of the Space Launch System are likely to be delayed due to budget issues.

The first and second launch of the Space Launch System are likely to be delayed due to budget issues.

“It’s very clear that we could have slips of a year or two,” said [deputy administrator Lori] Garver, referring to both the 2017 launch — which won’t have a crew — and the first planned flight of NASA astronauts aboard the SLS rocket in 2021.

Garver claims that it is insufficient funds for SLS that will cause the delays, despite getting $3 billion per year, or ten times the money the private commercial program is getting.

I’m on a hike today, but so any additional comments about this insanity will have to wait.

Genesis cover

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 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

5 comments

  • wade

    just see my Comments from nearly 2 years ago. then look at my comments from when the SLS was introduced. and then gag on my comments Recently

  • wade

    this bird Will Never Fly. its Design is to funnel money into Other Programs

  • wodun

    I think you mean funnel money from other programs. It is going to suck up all the available money and cannibalize the budgets of other NASA efforts :(

  • Pzatchok

    The more I look at this whole launch system they have envisioned the more I am starting to think it not exactly for what they say it is.

    What military payload would this system allow to be launched that isn’t already being sent to space?

    Any word on if something is in the works that will need launched in the time frame they are talking about? Something big and heavy like some super spy satellite system.

  • Pzatchok

    The initial Block 1 version of the SLS is designed to lift over 154 thousand pounds into orbit.

    The COIL system on the Boeing YAL-1 only weighed in at 40 thousand pounds and had enough fuel for 20 shots or high powered laser shots.

    The SLS could carry something just like the COIL and have enough extra lift capacity for maybe 60 rounds or shots instead of the 20 originally carried on the plane.

    At 50 or 60 rounds it would make a viable space based anti missile system. They would need less than 10 to cover 90% of the Earth. Well at least it would cover the areas that a viable launch would come from.

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