[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Haha even easterbrook an nfl writer agreed with me about Orion being bullshit..

before Space News From The 1960s: Last week NASA conducted a successful unmanned flight of its new Orion space capsule, launching one into high orbit and then recovering the capsule following a water landing. Good for NASA! But there was a lot of commentary nonsense about a "new era in space flight" when last week's mission was, for intents and purposes, a reenactment of the Apollo 4 mission that occurred 47 years ago. That 1967 mission sent an unmanned version of the Apollo capsule into high orbit, bringing it back for recovery in water. The new Orion capsule and service module differs only marginally from Apollo hardware -- a little bigger, better electronics. It's nice that the Orion's first try was a success, but all the mission did was replicate something the United States could do nearly half a century hat NASA administrator Charles Bolden declared the flight to represent "a major step in meeting President Barack Obama's bold challenge, supported by Congress, that America send humans to Mars by the 2030s" shows how hopelessly out of touch NASA senior management is. There is no chance, none, zero, that Orion hardware will ever go to Mars -- orbit of the moon is likely to be Orion's operational limit. The longest Apollo mission lasted 12 days -- there's no way the slightly larger Orion could be sufficient for a 520-day Mars trip, nor does Orion have any ability to touch down on Mars and blast off again.

TMQ noted in September that a pretty basic Mars mission would weigh about 4,000 tons at departure from Earth orbit. That's about 160 times the mass of an Orion. That the NASA administrator claims Orion has anything to do with Mars flight suggests either that he lives in a dream world or is reading from a political script that, at best, is misleading.. .