Obama to Revive Orion Spacecraft (Earth, light, moon, life)

[gy2020]

A top NASA official said President Obama will announce plans to continue development of a stripped-down version of the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle for use as a crew lifeboat on the International Space Station.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- A top NASA official said President Obama will announce plans to continue development of a stripped-down version of the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle for use as a crew lifeboat on the International Space Station.
Obama, who is scheduled to deliver a space policy speech at NASA's Kennedy Space Station in [COLOR=blue !important][COLOR=blue !important]Florida[/color][/color] April 15, will also unveil plans to initiate development of a heavy-lift launch vehicle by 2015, NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver told reporters following remarks at the 26th National Space Symposium here April 13.

FOXNews.com - Obama to Revive Orion Spacecraft

[Maineah]

Obama is clueless about most things and I guess we can just add space exploration to the ever growing list. I'm a bit surprised there is not more of a direct protest and outrage from people on this forum and the general population at Washington's quest to gut this program. It's shameful for a sitting President to cancel a program in it's infancy while spending billions on pork programs in the name of restarting the economy. Every welfare recipient I have ever talked to feels the space program is cutting into "their benefits". Get a job. Sure we'd love to see private investors come up with a new machine for attaining low earth orbit. Meanwhile we have a $100 billion space station we built and no way to get there save paying the Russians 51 million per person for a ride. Tell me this country isn't screwed up.

[RocketSci]

Originally Posted by Maineah

Obama is clueless about most things and I guess we can just add space exploration to the ever growing list. I'm a bit surprised there is not more of a direct protest and outrage from people on this forum and the general population at Washington's quest to gut this program. It's shameful for a sitting President to cancel a program in it's infancy while spending billions on pork programs in the name of restarting the economy. Every welfare recipient I have ever talked to feels the space program is cutting into "their benefits". Get a job. Sure we'd love to see private investors come up with a new machine for attaining low earth orbit. Meanwhile we have a $100 billion space station we built and no way to get there save paying the Russians 51 million per person for a ride. Tell me this country isn't screwed up.

Constellation and Orion were not expected to be ready to reach low earth orbit until 2017 at the earliest, more likely 2019. At a cost of about $44B (up from an earlier estimate of $28B). AND, with no guarantee of success. That means that we would have been required to depend on the Russians (or another vehicle) until that time anyway.

Orion to the Moon? Huge food fight at NASA over the last 2 years that Constellation was headed for failure, and continuing to fund it was throwing good money after bad.

Private manned space funding? SpaceX and Orbital have vehicles in development today, and SpaceX is designed to be man rated in the future. AND, there is an X-37 scheduled to be launched by the Air Force this week, which is designed to be capable of runway landings.

Per current NASA funding levels, without the Obama proposed changes, ISS is to be DEORBITED in 2015. The Obama proposal EXTENDS ISS to 2020.

So, if we assume $51M per ride or about $300M per year (6 US crew). That's a total of $2.7B for 9 years. That's a bargain. Also, it may even be cheaper since foreign crews may be responsible for some level of compensation to the US for seats.

Regarding whether this country is screwed up or not, I think that is universally acknowledged, but allegedly that is what makes this a great country.

[sponger42]

The Aries rocket was a astronaut-killer right from the get-go. Solids have directly or indirectly caused both shuttle LOC accidents, while a US manned liquid rocket engine has never killed anyone. Yet what was the replacement for the STS? A manned 5-segment SRB. Never been done before and for good reason; a manned solid is simple insanity.

It's nice to see that someone in this administration actually knows something about spaceflight. Obama himself might not know or care, but whoever is coming up with these decisions is making the right tough choices to eliminate the dangerous "show" programs and do some real infrastructure work which was neglected over the previous 10 years or so.

I'm not wild about the loss of emphasis on the moon or other tangible goals, as I thought that was the one thing the Bush administration got right. I'm not the biggest believer in SpaceX or other private industry.

However, with the ground shifting, there's a good chance we'll see something intelligent happen, like man-rating the RS-68 or RL-10 so our existing EELV medium launchers could be used to carry crew. A heavy-lift development program is always welcome and needed. Keeping the CEV is a smart choice.

And who knows? Maybe a miracle will occur in May and SpaceX won't put the Falcon-9 in the drink.