Orion Medical Blog

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of this Subcommittee for the opportunity to testify before you today.  My name is Johnny Walker and I serve as Directing Business Representative for District Lodge 166 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.  As the largest union at the Kennedy Space Center, we represent over 2,500 hourly men and women who play a critical role in preparing, launching, and maintaining our nation’s only human launch vehicle, the Space Shuttle.  I come before you today to give voice to the growing concerns of our members and the communities they live in regarding the extended gap between the end of the Space Shuttle program and the beginning of the new Ares/Orion manned vehicle system.  Read more

America’s road back to the moon is getting rougher, and NASA’s leaders are hinting that more delays could mean that the next humans to set foot on the moon might not be U.S. astronauts.

Three years ago, the Bush administration’s “Vision for Space Exploration” called for manned lunar landings “as early as 2015″ and “no later than 2020.”

The early target is already history. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told Congress that the Ares rocket and the Orion crew vehicle, the system being developed to fly humans to the moon, won’t even be ready to fly in Earth orbit until 2015.  Read more