This morning I was treated to one of the most exciting 97 seconds I have ever experienced. The Launch Abort System for the Orion Program, which Kev has been working on for a couple of years, had a test flight at White Sands at 9:00am. And in spite of some very valid fears, it was a successful flight, seemingly flawless, at least visually. Time will tell, once the flight data is analyzed, but everything looked like it worked according to plan.
As a PA1 team family member, I was invited to a special screening to watch the flight live with Kevin. I dropped off Daphne at school and made it to the conference center at T-Minus three minutes to launch. Whew! It was truly awesome to watch. Everyone in the room clapped and cheered, and I got chills and I'll admit a little teary-eyed. I know how hard these guys have worked on this, and there is just something special about the space program that gets me every time. I am so glad that the launch was a success, as this means it will go out on a HUGE positive note. You see, if you don't already know, our current President has cancelled the program. So, all the hard work, time, and money that has gone into this vehicle has basically been for the love of science, because it seems certain now that it will never actually be used.
I feel like I got to be a small part of history today, and I'm really proud of Kev. If you'd like to see the launch video, check it out here. And please let your representatives know if you oppose Obama's plan. Who knows...maybe there's still hope.
4 comments:
Very cool! Congrats Kev!
Tara,
Sorry -- I'm confused. I thought all the moon stuff was just being cross-applied to the Mars mission. Since the Mars mission will have humans onboard, won't the PA1 still be utilized?
Regardless, good job to Kevin and the team. :)
--GG
Obama's plan is (I think) to farm out the building of rockets for Mars missons to private companies rather than putting NASA in charge. So, this NASA rocket, Ares, on which so much time and money have been spent, is cancelled. The crew module is now possibly going to be sent to the space station to be used as some kind of escape pod, so that part isn't cancelled, but won't be used as intended. Kev could probably explain this better than I can.
T,
Thx for the info.
Call me a Socialist, but I'm always a bit wary of privitization. IMO, private companies #1 priority is to make a profit -- whereas a govt. agency's priority is to get the job done.
--GG
Post a Comment