Not Good...

[bnaivar]

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/ ... 85467.html

[Boomerang]

Admittedly that looks pretty bad. However we all know the economy is the pits right now. If Obama sticks to promises of continuing the program which is in doubt that may include budget increses. His next NASA budget proposal as i recall did include some increase. Though it isnt enough according to the Augustine commission. I think the best bet will be to wait and see what the final Augustine commission reporst says later this month. Theyy have some interesting ideas layed out for future missions some with Orion others without. I personaly would love to see us go back to the moon and on to mars i think we all would. However as excited as i was when Bush gave his speach about returning to the moon my first thought was it would take several presidents to accomplish the goal and it will likely change. My biggest hope for the program was to atleast get a more robust and safer vehicle than the shuttle with a real escape system for the crew then go from their. Orion meets that criteria even if it mean low earth orbit first then moving on later. I hope they don't give up on any of the goals set forth by Bush completely. But with the money the way it is it may take a longer more stretched out approach to do it or as the Augustine commission pointed out it may take alot more work with private industry.

On that note this is an intresting story i just read this morning on a purely Earth orbit version of Orion designed by Bigelow Aerospace that could be flown with a crew of up to 7 to the ISS launched on an existing Atlas V expendable rocket. This could be a potentialy cheaper stepping stone and has been proposed to Lockheed Martin and NASA and it sounds like possibly the Augustine commission. We will just have to see. http://www.space.com/businesstechnology ... -lite.html

[Mercergl]

I have a couple of thoughts on this: one is that I find it a little disturbing that the first comment on the article is by one of those we-didn't-go-to-the-moon idiots. Second is that there is so much going on in the government right now, with so much of it going so poorly, I'm afraid that too much of the space exploration budget will fall victim to other tremendously expensive endeavors. Without getting too political, I wonder why while we're pouring money into certain financial institutions, we couldn't put some money towards, say, the moon and Mars? Ok, done with that. Anyway, I'm worried that because of the economy, the space program will suffer. The technology that comes out of the space program returns far more than is put into it, though. I agree with pretty much everything boomerang said. If more time is needed, so be it. Let's just hope they stick with that budget increase and have some perseverence.

Edit: I think the "lite" Orion is a near idea, reminds me of Gemini as a step up to Apollo but, uh, mid air capture? Yeah, that idea needs some work.