February 18, 2009

NASA's Constellation Program: Back To The 60s and 70s

How does NASA plans to reach the Moon again and even Mars? You can forget about Star Trek type ion engines or any of the other stuff you see in sci-fi shows. No new ramjets X-33 Venture-star like vehicles. No, it's back to the 60s and 70s, man.

What a sight for sore eyes. Basicly what they did was combine elements from the Apollo and Shuttle missions to go into the 21th century. Solid rocket booster here, Saturn top section there. 5 year old kids with NASA lego pieces could have come up with this design. A person can argue that NASA sticks to what it knows and what has been proven to work, but come on. NASA plays it safe, you can make a case for that but at this rate of modernization we Earthlings will reach the nearest star in our Galaxy (Alpha Centauri 4 lightyears away) in about a 1000 years.

The Altair Lunar Lander, or as I like to say 'two tanks in a cheap frame for the price of one'. What a piece of crap. Will NASA install a 16 bit CPU in the lander for nostalgia sake as well? Geesh. I think NASA should quit the program immediately and sack the designers on the grounds of poor imagination.

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