5 January 2007

On this date in 1972 then President Richard Milhous Nixon announced the US Space Shuttle program.

A contract for the construction of a shuttle aircraft was not awarded until 26Jul72.

10 years 10 months and 6 days later, on 11Nov82, Space Shuttle Columbia made the first Shuttle operational mission, STS-5.

On 14Jan04 President George W Bush announced that the Space Shuttles will be retired from service in the year 2010.

The contract for the construction of the first Orion capsule (the CEV) was awarded on 31Aug06.

If development of the Crew Expedition Vehicle, now named Constellation, takes place at the same pace as the first Shuttle there will be no productive manned spaceflights for four years after the Shuttle is retired. The US would only have 4 years from that point to achieve its goal of landing American astronauts on the Moon by 2018.

At present NASA's milestones are an Orion flight (the passenger capsule) to the ISS "no later than 2014" and the "first flight to the moon is planned for no later than 2020", already two years behind the date specified by the President and we haven't heard about cost overruns and missed milestones yet.

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Fog in January brings a wet spring.