I haven’t had anything in quite awhile to post on here regarding the space program. After the retiring of the space shuttle program, I honestly started losing some interest. But I think like many, the teasing of returned to manned space flight is appealing.
Today, that fourth era (Mercury/Gemini being the first, Apollo second, and the shuttle program being the third) began with its first actual test flight. While not manned, the massive Delta 4-Heavy blast off this morning marks the beginning of testing for the fourth era — Orion and a bit of a resurgence in interest for me personally.
After typical scrub issues that kept it from going up yesterday morning as planned, the Exploration Flight Test No. 1 (EFT 1) rocketed off the launch pad with 1.6 million pound rocket going skyward assisted by two million pounds of thrust.
This initial Orion spaceship mission is currently in the middle of a two-orbit, four-hour shakedown mission orbiting our planet. The craft is targeted to travel 15 times higher than the International Space Station, eventually re-entering over the Pacific Ocean. It is meant to splash down 600 miles southwest of San Diego at 11:23 a.m. EST later this morning.
Pretty cool, but isn’t amazing how close it all is to the way NASA originally did things? We’re back to the capsule days prior to the orbiter craft days. While all the technology and advancements are huge, it is interesting that the actual concepts stepped back to Apollo/Gemini era setups, albeit with much more advanced tech. Even the launch pad is back to 37B — used for Saturn launches (concluding with an Apollo test flight). It was modified in 2001 for Delta IV launches and has seen most of the launch action since the shuttle was retired.
Delta 4-Heavy blasts off with Orion capsule