Race to Mars!
Lockheed wins huge Nasa contract
Washington (dpa) - Lockheed Martin Corp won the first major contract Thursday for a new era of US space exploration, kicking off an ambitious effort to return humans to the moon and one day launch them to Mars.
… the crew capsule [the Orion] for the next generation of spaceships, which will replace the space shuttle fleet slated to be retired in 2010…Orion’s first flight is due by 2014, but Nasa chief Michael Griffin has said he would like to launch the new spacecraft several years earlier.
With Russia, China and Japan now competing in the space race, Nasa wants to avoid a lengthy gap in launch capability between the shuttle’s retirement and Orion’s debut. ….more …
YES! The atomic spaceship ORION is go!
I love a good race and China and Russia are preparing their Mars Mission. Meanwhile, sad Japan has had of string of losses: their Mars probe has gone AWOL, there’s a 10 year delay on their Moon probe, their Earth observation satellite blew up, and there has been a string of aborts of their rockets with spy satellites. I would not say sadsack Japan and bankrupt Russia (or even developing China) constitute a threat “now competing in the space race” anymore than this the video of the real spaceship ORION, on YouTube.
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