NASA's Constellation Program

[Jcsthird]

With administration changing every 4 years (8 if we're lucky) it is difficult for NASA to have anything set in stone.

[HumanToMars]

COULD AN AIRLINE PILOT FROM CZECH REPUBLIC BECOME AN NASA OR ESA ASTRONAUT?

[2242bzo]

I'm still waiting to see an astronaut survive while gong through the Van Allen Radiation Belts. I know...I know...the Apollo missions. Yeah, right. Blah, fucking blah.

[juuliuuz]

amazing

[VulcanXL]

I just don't get why this "New" spacecraft looks and works like the old one. You'd think we'd have more advance design now then we did when we first started the damn space program.

[tdawg598]

it will have to work like the old one because it is an advanced apollo craft and you have to use the same steps to get to the moon

[VulcanXL]

Well, you'd think with more space experience, we'd have figured out a better method. Instead of just improving old technology to modern time, you know?

[acsial]

A ballistic capsule, with an ablative heatshield and expendable launch vehicles...

Sad and kind of pathetic, really: just how far backwards they've gone. The '60 Dyna-Soar was more advanced.

NASA is not going to allow the development of a reusable system that would lead to gutting their bloated workforce (10-20k, to turn-around the Shuttle). You U.S. taxpayers get to piss away billions more on some stupid Kennedyesque moondirt stunt.

At this rate, TRULY routine space access will never happen.

[astrorider]

ballistic capsule is the most efficient vehicle config for long duration space travel. Wings will add extra mass.

Orion IS reusable.

I'm not a US taxpayer ^^

[acsial]

A. The most efficient is to split the roles. Vehicle to LEO, another vehicle for DS: you leave the wings in LEO. I'm not an engineer (or even remotely smart!), but...

B. Only the actual pressure hull of the capsule is reusable. Everything else goes to the bottom of the sea. The heatshield is ablative.

C. Your lucky. Pitty the U.S. taxpayers, their children and GRANDCHILDREN, who will get to pay off this pointless porkbarrel programme, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.

[chulahagh]

Barack Obama's early education and K-12 plan package costs about $18 billion per year. The early education plan will be paid for by delaying the NASA Constellation Program for five years, using purchase cards and negotiating power of the government to reduce costs of standardized procurement, auctioning surplus federal property, and reducing the erroneous payments identified by the Government Accountability Office, and closing the CEO pay deductibility loophole.

[FacultyFan]

Thats stupid. Why delay NASA?! Space Exploration is the MOST important human endeavor! how about ending the Iraq WAR!

[joshatkins94]

He's reversed that, and will now provide extra funding for education by cutting unnecessary funding in other areas, so all's well.

But I agreed completely with your sentiment, and it's exactly how I felt when I heard the news about the delay.

The Constellation delay was actually the single disappointment about Barack Obama's campaign for me. But they reversed it just in time to make history and bring change.

[FacultyFan]

Really?! haha I might change my pinion about Barack Obama. :)

[acsial]

I'm sure some of BO's multimillion PAC donors from the unions and aerospace companies in Blue State districts will make sure they get some of that trillion dollar 'stimulus' pork.

[WrasslinRyan]

the shuttle is such a great design tho

[apuz5]

I saw this video at space camp

[maverick1o1]

omg me2

[apuz5]

i went to the one @ Huntsville, AL is that where u went?

[maverick1o1]

nah i went to ksc

[CheeseyConstipation]

i went there, it ROCKS.

[sparta25789]

they should have cut the space shuttle a long time ago then we wouldnt have had all those accendents

[TimH1955]

Sparta25789 if you can't even spell simple words correctly then don't make ridiculous comments!  And to say we should end the space exploration program(s) and NASA is incredible and doesn't even deserve a response! Why don't you go live in one of third world countries that doesn't have reliable electricity much less a space exploration program??

[astrorider]

if they didn't invent cars we wouldn't have any accidents. If they didn't invent guns we wouldn't have any murders. If God didn't create man, you won't be saying this.

[tekhnofiend]

if retards did not exist, you wouldn't have posted that comment

[joshatkins94]

No, tekhnofiend, if that was case, it would be you who wouldn't have posted your comment.

We could sit here for thousands of years herding cattle and eating vegetables, and living in homes made of straw and mud, and that would work just fine, and we wouldn't have global warming, or unnatural death.

But it'd be awful boring.

Pointless, even.

[acsial]

Because, somewhere on a sterile sattelite circling the Sun, soil is waiting to be scooped up by an Astronaut's gloved hand...

Fear Not! We'll still live in (chipboard and gypsum) homes and eat (overpriced, frozen) veggies, whether-or-not we dust off half century-old technology to send a couple of dozen people to some dirtpile orb in the sky...and, in the process, ensure that shareholders of LockMart can afford really nice houses in Martha's Vinyard.

[joshatkins94]

lol

[Xellos07]

I think i like the ares rockets they are bigger better and cheaper than the spaceshuttle in other words they rock.