In article om,
says...

On 2017-04-28 07:54, Fred J. McCall wrote:
OK, it's official. NASA has owned up to the claim by GAO that there
is no way they can have first flight of SLS/Orion in 2018, whether it
is manned or not.

Oh my God ! Nobody saw that coming. What a surprise !


If the first flight is sufficiently delayed, doesn't that incrtease the
odds that it might be manned?

Absolutely not. It would take far longer to certify the upper stage and
put all the ground infrastructure in place needed for manned flights.
EM-1 will be unmanned, unless the Administration wants to wait years
more instead of months more.


NASA may have been smart is dicussing "first flight may be manned" ahead
of admitting first flight is to be delayed. This makes it easier to
swallow if first flight will be more if delatyed than if it were on-time.

This "idea" almost certainly came from clueless people in Trump's
administration. Like good little managers, the NASA people said
something like "we'll look into it" knowing full well that they wouldn't
like the huge delay it would cause.

Jeff
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