Opens a ten lane highway for China to conquer Space

The "exciting" new NASA plan
April 16, 2010

After the deletion of the (crazy, galactically expensive, deeply flawed, behind schedule and over budget) Constellation program, the "new" NASA's plan, drawn to replace the old one, is MUCH WORSE since heavily influenced by the (absolutely WRONG and USELESS) Augustine Commission Report and nothing is changed not even after the April, 15 Florida Space Summit and the President Obama speech at KSC that just added the rebirth of the very expensive Orion to build a "lite" version to be used as ISS crews' rescue-capsule.

So, thanks to this "new" and "exciting" NASA plan, that, great part, should rely on the very expensive "commercial space" hardware (that finds its "original" ideas on the web) the americans (and the world) should see several "very exciting" events in the next 30 years, like...

- The "exciting" launch of a small rocket called Falcon-9 in 2010.

- The "exciting" ceremony for the Space Shuttle retirement in 2011.

- The "exciting" layoff of 23,000 people (inside and outside NASA) from 2012.

- The "exciting" launch of half dozen Soyuz in 2011-2013.

- The "exciting" launch of a dozen of small cargo-Dragon and Cygnus in 2014-2016.

- The "exciting" choice of an HLV design in 2015.

- The "exciting" landing of a few rovers on the Moon in 2016-2018.

- The "exciting" launch of two Orion-derived ISS lifeboats in 2016 and 2019.

- The "exciting" test of a new and useless RD-180 class Kerosene/LOX engine in 2020.

- The "exciting" test launch of the first HLV in 2022.

- The "exciting" and uselessly risky mission of Orion to an asteroid (aka "rock") in 2025.

- The "exciting" and risky mission of Orion to a Lagrange point (aka "vacuum") in 2030.

- The "exciting" visit of an american crew to New Beijing City on the Moon in 2035.

- The "exciting" trip of american tourists to Mars in 2040 with the Shenzhou Express.

Thanks to this "new plan", NASA will face a slow and pathetic decline while it opens a ten-lane highway to China to conquer the Space, the Moon, Mars and beyond using the Saturn-5 class rockets that China has already started to develop.

An example of the giant waste of money of the "new" new-plan (after the, small, last minute changes) is the "idea" to "...directs NASA to develop the Orion crew capsule effort in order to provide stand-by emergency escape capabilities for the Space Station..." that means burn $6+ billion to develop and build TWO Orion ONLY to serve as ISS "rescue capsule" while it's much cheaper to buy and dock to ISS a third Soyuz OR develop my idea of a $30 million each Multipurpose Orbital Rescue Vehicle (that I've suggested over three years ago) and launch two of them unmanned with a single Soyuz rocket for about $120 million.

So, since nothing better has been announced about the "new" NASA plan, now we could close all space forums, blogs and the space-related news sites for the next ten years... and, probably, also this article will be the last (or one of the latest) that I write on the ghostNASA blog, since, NASA and the manned US spaceflight, will be officially CLOSED after the Space Shuttle retirement.