NASA weighing risk of adding crew to megarocket's first flight-Trump wants crew around the moon 2018

originally posted by: schuyler

originally posted by: Shadowhawk
a reply to: seasonal

This sort of pressure to launch the SLS/Orion with an astronaut crew is not good. About every 15 to 20 years, NASA succumbs to "launch fever" instead of paying attention to safety. The result is the loss of a spacecraft and crew.

EXACTLY what I'm talking about! If Queen Isabelle and Columbus had succumbed to this Nervous Nellie hand-wringing he would never have sailed. This attitude simply sucks road apples.

So if the vehicle is lost for any number of reasons that could affect a first flight, along with its crew, then you'd be happy to personally tell bereaved relatives that its all ok, because finally the people at NASA aren't being "nervous nellies".

You do realise that before the first manned launch of a Saturn launcher came after 16 unmanned launches of the Saturn 1, 1B and V as tests, with two of these being launches of the Saturn V.

Even in a time when NASA was less risk averse that it is now (due in large part to the huge political pressure of the Space Race with the Soviet Union) it knew that it was prudent to test vehicles unmanned before going manned and even with this apparent caution, there was still the death of the three astronauts of Apollo 1 in a ground test.

But according to you, putting a crew on top of the first flight this new vehicle is fine, because... Columbus.

originally posted by: TruMcCarthy
I'm just wondering if Trump believes the moon landings were fake, and his pressure on NASA is about showing we can't make it to the moon. Or maybe he believes we are being sandbagged, and this pressure is his way of trying bring the truth to light. Either way, this is great to see from Trump, space travel was not something I expected him to be pushing, but I'm glad he is.

Trump wants to send people to the Moon during his administration so he can take credit for it. Of course, if they die, he will blame incompetent NASA.

I've been following the Orion program with interest since it's inception and am also quite eager to see humans once again reaching beyond our own Earth orbit, but with as eager as I am I don't think they should be rushing headlong into it either. I feel the unmanned mission to send the Orion capsule and service module around the moon is very important, in lieu of a manned low Earth orbit test.

If President Trump and his cabinet are truly serious about pressing NASA to do more, a big fat budget increase would accomplish more than simply telling them to go faster.