Artist concept of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) 70-metric-ton configuration launching to space. SLS will be the most powerful rocket ever built for deep space missions, including to an asteroid and ultimately to Mars.
Credit: NASA/MSFC
Posted on 08/28/2014 8:17:24 PM PDT by BenLurkin
After a thorough review of cost and engineering issues, NASA managers formally approved the development of the agency’s mammoth heavy lift rocket – the Space Launch System or SLS – which will be the world’s most powerful rocket ever built and is intended to take astronauts farther beyond Earth into deep space than ever before possible – to Asteroids and Mars.
The maiden test launch of the SLS is targeted for November 2018 and will be configured in its initial 70-metric-ton (77-ton) version, top NASA officials announced at a briefing for reporters on Aug. 27.
On its first flight known as EM-1, the SLS will also loft an uncrewed Orion spacecraft on an approximately three week long test flight taking it beyond the Moon to a distant retrograde orbit, said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the Human Explorations and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, at the briefing.
Previously NASA had been targeting the inaugural launch for Dec. 2017.
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
Good news for a change, gives me hope America has still got it. Let me volunteer to be the first man on Mars, send me now, lol.
What happened to the Nova?
That was the next size after the Saturn.
I guess the Nova, “No va”, as they say in Espanol.
No wonder old Chevys don’t sell in Seville.
That's a half century after we first sent a Manned capsule around (lunar orbit) the moon in 1968.
I hope we’re around in 2018, but it sure doesn’t seem like we will make it
Anything NASA touches costs 100 times more than it should and it takes 10 years longer than it should. Even though they are just government contractors now, the private companies doing rocket development are the only hope for fulfilling humanity’s destiny to live among the stars.
There are plenty of opportunities for making profits in space such as re-fueling communications satellites that otherwise are fully functional to mining asteroids. But I am afraid that once private companies pursue these NASA will try to interject itself and take its cut of the profits.
Given that perspective you’re right. I worked on a flare stack installation at Wright Patterson AFB where I had to pull up the drawings from the 1940’s and saw it was a cryogenic lab (hangar 18) I hope you see where I’m going with this. We should be much further along then we are.
The space shuttle (and ISS) detours cost us way too much time.
Diverting NASA funds for that and other of Obunga's community organizing led to my bailing out of the workforce at an early age.
I am sure no democrats missed my federal income tax propping up their house of cards.
My same situation. To think I had to retire prematurely when it was really time to be turning me loose, a lifetime of aerospace knowledge sent to the nether. Some of the things I got to work on in the 90’s are unbelievable. My layoff was a ridiculous situation in itself. I was sent to salvage a multi-million dollar project for my company only to be let go after making it a success. Some of what passes for engineering these days is incredible, too much reliance on computer programs with no critical thinking, many don’t even bother to verify their assumptions. Engineers back in my day were known for analysis, not trying to be engineer, designer, drafter and a host of other jobs all combined into one.
You go first and let me know if it worked.
http://spaceref.com/sls/using-jedi-mind-tricks-to-sell-nasas-next-big-rocket.html
“...humanity’s destiny to live among the stars.”
Folly, pure folly.
Folly, pure folly.
Our ancestors scoffed at Magellan and Columbus too.
A century from now, the present day will look about as advanced as the 1800s look to us now. Things as yet undreamed of, will be commonplace then.
Folly, pure folly.
Yeah, Columbus. If you keep on sailing west you will fall off the edge of the world.
Our ancestors scoffed at sodomy marriage, too - it is still pure folly, also.
What the heck does that have to do with the price of tea in China??
On second thought, never mind.
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