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Old March 17th 17, 01:19 AM posted to sci.space.policy
Jeff Findley[_6_]
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Default Musk plans for mars

In article . com,
says...

On 2017-03-15 20:36, Jeff Findley wrote:

get you to Mars. Since Orion is only good for 21 days on its own,
that's not going to get you to Mars and back.



But ! But ! But ! NASA claims Orion is the spaceship to Mars !!!!


It's the taxi to get astronauts from the earth to the HAB module which
will take them to Mars and back. Then, Orion will be the taxi to
reenter the atmosphere to take astronauts back to the earth's surface.

It will be interesting to see how politicians or NASA build the face
saving way to justify cancellation of the programme.


It lives on, at least for one more year.

For the Shuttle, there was the Comumbia report which required major
maintenabnce cycles which increased operating costs and would have
require too much budget to continue to operate the Shuttle.


Not really. We could have kept flying the shuttle if the issues
outlined had been addressed. Besides, nothing is 100% safe.

But for Orion/SLS, NASA and Politicians have refused to admit they were
ships to nowehere, so it becomes hard to admit this as justification for
shutting it down.


I'm sure the Congress knows that. They're the ones that demanded NASA
build it and funded it.

I wonder if instead, they may cut funding and stretch program by 10 years.


I'm pretty sure this budget has SLS/Orion getting a bit more money.

Note that the fact that NASA moved ahead first manned test fight
indicates they know they are under some pressure to deliver something of
face program cut.


They're "studying" it. I doubt they'll do it, because it would only
delay EM-1 even further. The interim upper stage for EM-1 was never
"man-rated". That and there is no crew access arm and the like.
Changes to ground infrastructure was supposed to happen between EM-1 and
EM-2.

My guess is the Administration will see the schedule slip that making it
manned would cause, curse a lot, and then scuttle the idea.

Jeff
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