Full scale Orion demo displayed on Mall

[Trooper110]

http://www.reuters.com/article/scien...52T6XH20090330

I find it interesting that NASA actually admits right out that they're not confident in getting to Mars and back without some kind of mission ending problem.

[Duke{CLR}]

They never know how these will wear under actual use. I'm glad they are working on the Mars mission it would be cool to see us go there.

[Rand{CLR}]

They should focus more on building our own waystation up at a LaGrange Point, and assemble the Mars traveller up there. Forget the Moon, there's no real point in going back unless we're taking some mass drivers so we can mine the thing. And they should design the Mars mission with a bigger return module so it can just accelerate out of orbit and come back earlier. Far too much risk of something going wrong with a unit kept up in orbit for 3 years than simply coming back after doing some experiments for a couple of weeks/months.

-Rand

[juneau]

Anybody else sad to see NASA revert back to the 'capsule'? The Shuttle looks so badass.

I agree with skipping the moon. It's surely not even useful as a test before going to Mars.