As Orion makes it’s successful test flight, Elon Musk tweets his congrats to NASA as well as his rivals Lockheed Martin and Boeing:
“Congratulations to @NASA on the flawless Orion flight, as well as to program prime contractors @LockheedMartin and @Boeing!”
…an interesting show of grace and good form, considering his lawyers claim the NASA/Lockheed/Boeing contracts to be “…dangerous, fiscally irresponsible, and offensive to American values of open competition and fairness.” He’s also been an outspoken critic of the whole non-reusable spacecraft as well as splashdown recovery idea, calling it all but quaint and outdated. He has, however, been equally complimentary of NASA, and their efforts to work together in the SpaceX program.
Read more about his thoughts on the efforts on our story, here: Musk: Upsetting Air Force Monopoly
See his CNN video interview describing his feelings on working with NASA, as well as more on it’s partners here: Musk on CNN About NASA Contract, Space-X and Boeing (video)
The purpose of the unmanned flight was to pave the way for a manned flight to Mars, long a focus of Musk:
Orion will open the space between Earth and Mars for exploration by astronauts. This proving ground will be invaluable for testing capabilities future human Mars missions will need. The spacecraft was tested in space to allow engineers to collect critical data to evaluate its performance and improve its design. The flight tested Orion’s heat shield, avionics, parachutes, computers and key spacecraft separation events, exercising many of the systems critical to the safety of astronauts who will travel in Orion.
On future missions, Orion will launch on NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket currently being developed at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. A 70 metric-ton (77 ton) SLS will send Orion to a distant retrograde orbit around the moon on Exploration Mission-1 in the first test of the fully integrated Orion and SLS system
(via NASA PR)
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