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September 1, 2006
Fly me to the moon in 2020
In a battle between aerospace giants for a lucrative NASA contract to build a manned lunar spaceship, Lockheed Martin emerged as the winner:
"NASA on Thursday gave a multibillion dollar contract to build a manned lunar spaceship to Lockheed Martin Corp., the aerospace leader that usually builds unmanned rockets. The nation's space agency plans to use the Orion crew exploration vehicle to replace the space shuttle fleet, take astronauts to the moon and perhaps to Mars. Reusable and like Apollo and earlier spacecraft, it is perched atop the rocket."
If all goes according to plan, the first test flight of Orion will be September 2014 and astronauts could return to the moon by late 2019 or 2020. However, as the New York Times points out somewhat skeptically, just because Lockheed Martin won the NASA contract for an Apollo-like capsule, doesn't mean people will be flying to the moon anytime soon: "The last time NASA awarded a manned spaceship contract to Lockheed Martin was in 1996 for a spaceplane that was supposed to replace the space shuttle. NASA spent $912 million and the ship, called X-33, never got built because of technical problems..."
Tags: space innovation Orion Lockheed Martin
[image: New York Times]
Posted by dominic at September 1, 2006 5:45 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig
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