Thursday, May 26, 2011

Infographic - yep, this is the next NASA spacecraft.

Like it or not, it now seems that Orion is officially not canceled like the rest of the Constellation program.  Here is an infographic of the future of NASA manned spacecraft after this summer when the shuttle is grounded and distributed to some strangely chosen museums.
The Orion spacecraft development has been moving along while the booster has been canceled.  Remember that single bottle rocket flight of the Aries 1x a while back?  So the shuttle will be gone, and this will be it.  At least its something, but some kind of booster still needs to lift this.  Falcon 9?  Outsource to ESA's Ariane?  Giant beach-based trebuchet on what's left of complex 39?
It will be interesting to see what happens at least!  Possibly around 2016.  Click on the image and admire that large, graceful, ghostly image of the shuttle behind the next generation of small spacecraft (Apollo is include there since it will always be the coolest of the "capsule" types).

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