/sci/ - Science & Math

I’ve got a few questions, mainly about why everything is taking so long

1) Holy shit Dragon 2 is gonna fly people before New Shepard. But how? New Shepard flew before Dragon 2 even went into production. It’s a simpler ship, too. But why tf is Dragon 2 flying crew. Keep in mind New Shepard has flown like 10 times at this point too and already has validated its abort motor at all altitudes. What’s taking Blue so long? It’s literally a tin can all it has to do it take people up and down for fifteen minutes it’s not like it needs solar panels or advanced hypergolic engines or a docking port. I mean Jesus Blue blew a huge lead. They could’ve been the first to return Americans at least “to space”, but they decided “Nah we still haven’t flown New Shepard enough yet” even five years after it started flying and after many many flights and reuses. What the hell! Bloody Christ mate!

2) What’s taking Orion so long? I remember back in the 2000s they said it would fly in 2013, then 2015, then 2016, then suddenly it jumped to 2021, then kinda got stuck at 2022. How did this happen? Did the designers see that SLS was getting delayed so often they decided “ah yeah we can take our time wouldn’t want to be ahead of schedule haha”?

Also one last thing: Even though the Constellation program was probably a bad idea, yku have to admit that the Ares Rockets were pure kino. I watched the Ares I-X launch when I was younger LIVE and it was amazing.

Would we still be in this spot today if DIRECT Jupiter was chosen? Even with delays, I could see us still flying Orion regularly. Plus the Jupiter rocket was also designed for NRO payloads, so I could see some $$$$$ and lobbying in its favor.