Orion scheduled for 2014

From NASA via DVICE.COM comes word that the Orion crew capsule is indeed scheduled for a 2014 flight! Now before you start dancin a jig, let's qualify this first mission:

• The plan is to send the capsule through two orbits, ending up farther from Earth than any craft intended for human transport has been since 1973. Then, Orion will return for a splashdown in the Pacific.

Now this does sound a bit anticlimactic, like the article stated, it is further than anyone has gone for a very very long time. Far enough to start thinking....are these guys crazy? None of the tech looks any more advanced than 60s era Apollo and the are flying it into deep-space and then come back at 20k mph to splash down in the Pacific ocean? Let me show you why that makes me nervous.....

Now granted, this was test one and it looked too high, too fast and the angle of attack much to high....still....ugly AND scarey! If you go a bit further, test 2's results are much easier to watch!

Russian Resupply Craft Crashes

A Russian Progress M-12M resupply unmanned capsule crashed 325 seconds into its flight when one stage of the Soyuz-U rocket shut down prematurely. the Progress capsule carried three tons of equipment, food, and fuel. This failure highlights the bottleneck the ISS is operating under with the Shuttle program now finished and SpaceX not yet ready to begin servicing the station. This also means that the crew exchange due September 22 may not take place and the on station crew may have to stay longer than they expected and there are already whispers circulating that the crew may need to be "reduced" to put less stress on the ISS' equipment and supplies.

Gizmodo article

Boeing Plans New High Occupancy Capsule

Boeing has announced its plans to produce a low-cost, high-occupancy passenger capsule called the Crew Space Transportation-100 vehicle. Early estimates predict that it could be ready by 2014. The new crew capsule would be used to ferry crew to the ISS and Boeing says that it would be compatible with and very likely could ferry people to the Bigelow's inflatable space stations

Dvice article