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Space EU United States

NASA's Space Launch System Searches For a Mission 53

schwit1 writes: Managers of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) are searching for a mission that they can propose and convince Congress to fund. "Once SLS is into the 2020s, the launch rate should see the rocket launching at least once per year, ramping up to a projected three times per year for the eventual Mars missions. However, the latter won’t be until the 2030s. With no missions manifested past the EM-2 flight, the undesirable question of just how 'slow' a launch rate would be viable for SLS and her workforce has now been asked." Meanwhile, two more Russian rocket engines were delivered yesterday, the first time that's happened since a Russian official threatened to cut off the supply. Another shipment of three engines is expected later this year. In Europe, Arianespace and the European Space Agency signed a contract today for the Ariane 5 rocket to launch 12 more of Europe’s Galileo GPS satellites on three launches. This situation really reminds me of the U.S. launch market in the 1990s, when Boeing and Lockheed Martin decided that, rather than compete with Russia and ESA for the launch market, they instead decided to rely entirely on U.S. government contracts, since those contracts didn’t really demand that they reduce their costs significantly to compete.
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NASA's Space Launch System Searches For a Mission

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  • Re:Ooh I Got One! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Thursday August 21, 2014 @06:14PM (#47724401)

    did Congress tell NASA which contractors to pick for the Saturn V?

    Yes. The Saturn V project contained immense amounts of pork. Almost every congressional district benefited in some way, with congressional leaders grabbing the biggest pieces. The biggest prize (the Houston Space Center) went to LBJ's home state, and former congressional district.

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