NASA Announces SLS/Orion Flight Slide

JF Mezei wrote:

On 2017-05-03 13:15, Fred J. McCall wrote:

It takes a lot longer to get back if you lose pressure on the way to
the Moon. It's not like you can just turn around and come back.


Fair enough. What if first flight was a spin around the Earth where in a
catastrophy, you can basically re-enter in less than 90 minutes?

Would a manned flight around earth have more value than unnamed flight
around the moon from an "experienced gained" point of view (forgetting
schedule).

The trip around the moon does give the higher re-entry speeds to test
heat shield, which you don't get from earth orbit.


This is why EM-1 was originally planned as a Moon loop unmanned. You
get to test everything and you don't NEED people on board for that.
But these things are so crazy expensive and launches will be so
infrequent that there's a push to fly them crewed too early.


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