NASA launched Orion, the agency’s newest spacecraft that could eventually take humans to Mars, for a test flight around the Earth on Friday morning.
Watch live coverage below.
If you want to watch from the beginning, check out video of the launch below.
Pretty cool—evidently the final version of the SLS will be as big as the Saturn V. BBC has the launch if you missed it.
SLS + Orion = Colossal waste of money.
For me at least, there is little that is more exciting than space exploration. Robotic probes, telescopes, landers, rovers, radar mapper, manned space flight (with a reason), cosmology, and even the technology of getting there is fascinating to me. What isn’t thrilling is spending billions on a capsule and rocket that is ungodly expensive, and the only current mission will be to go into lunar orbit, and maybe, maybe if we manage to tow an asteroid into lunar orbit there will be a mission to said asteroid. Tens of billions of dollars for that? Why? Oh yes, congress wants it–especially the congress critters who’s States are at the feeding trough for this boondoggle program.
Take a look at program costs for the SLS, and see if your still excited about it. The cost this expendable launcher is mind numbingly high. Orion itself is absurdly expensive.
Holy Shit! We launched a new spaceship! That’s AWESOME!
And the estimated cost of the program through 2025 will be $41 billion for four launches–1 on the Delta IV Heavy (today’s), and 3 on the SLS. Holy Shit, that $10.25 billion per launch!