Orion Spacecraft Complete

marketwatch.com ^ | Oct 30, 2014 3:15 p.m. ET | PRNewswire

[jaydubya2]

"In his first budget proposal, FY2011, which was served upon the nation on February 1st, 2010, President Obama included zero funding for Constellation. Along with that budget, he effectively ended work on every aspect of the program, including Orion. Of course no one in the Congress had a hint that Obama was going to do that. In fact prior to his election he had specifically said that he would do just the opposite. There was immediate outrage in the halls of Congress on both sides of the aisle and the White House soon responded by saying that the president would change the situation when he visited the Kennedy Space Center to speak about space issues on April 15th, 2010. On that day, Obama announced that, although the rest of Constellation was gone by his hand, he would grant new life to Orion… as a “rescue pod.” Indeed his new plan was to have a single Orion, or perhaps two, constructed, flown up to the ISS and attached there to act as a lifeboat. The president then flew off to attend a fundraiser.

Scheduled to be test flown atop a Delta IV Heavy booster on December 4th, 2014 the first Orion vehicle is ready for its initial unmanned test flight into space; the EFT-1 mission. Some of NASA’s highest management are now touting that this mission clearly demonstrates the wisdom of the president who has set us onto a pathway to Mars. In fact, Obama did no such thing. Yet, there is a general feeling in the spaceflight community that the flight will go well, after all, Orion has been underfunded, cancelled, returned as a rescue pod and finally resurrected by an act of the US Congress; it is a very determined vehicle."

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