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Old April 17th 17, 05:25 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Jeff Findley[_6_]
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Default SLS launches likely delayed

In article om,
says...

On 2017-04-16 22:46, Fred J. McCall wrote:
Looks like NASA's first two launches of the SLS for their lunar tests
will be delayed by a year or more. That means SpaceX will almost
certainly be there before them.



The announcement of the first flight being manned may have more to do
with the delay than budgets.


I don't think so. As far as I know, no firm decision has been made to
man the first flight. This article essentially admits that there are no
reserves in the budget to handle anything unexpected. So, anything
unexpected will simply push the schedule further to the right.

In fact, making EM-1 manned would also push the schedule further to the
right independent of anything else that's unexpected. For starters, the
"interim upper stage" is not "man rated" (it's a one-off stage which
won't be used for EM-2). That and there is considerable ground
infrastructure which would need to be in place for a manned flight that
wasn't planned to be in place for the currently unmanned EM-1.

Jeff
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