[X] My Assistant

[Bill Harris]

From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 31 Lockheed Martin won a multibillion-dollar contract from NASA on Thursday to build the nation's next spaceship for human flight, a craft called Orion that is to replace the space shuttle and eventually carry astronauts to the moon and beyond.

"Orion" is an odd name to have selected. That is a 1950's concept spacecraft powered by a series of atomic bombs exploding behind a blast shield attached to the ship. Too Dr Strangelove-ish for my tastes...

--Bill

[dvandorn]

Trust me, Bill, they didn't name Orion after the defunct atom-bomb-powered spacecraft concept. It was named after the constellation, just as the Apollo 16 Lunar Module "Orion" was named after the constellation.

And while Voyager was originally the name of a Saturn V-launched probe to land on and search for life on Mars, no one seemed to think it inappropriate that we actually sent two Voyagers to the outer planets.

Although, speaking of re-using names over the course of both proposed and actual spacecraft, I think that NASA would be wise to retire the space shuttle Endeavour before the other two. You see, the two shuttles that have been lost were named Challenger and Columbia, each name having been used for Apollo modules (Columbia was the Apollo 11 CSM and Challenger was the Apollo 17 LM). Endeavour, in addition to being the last space shuttle built, was also the Apollo 15 CSM. If the two-point graph pattern extends to a third point, the fallacy of statistics suggests that Endeavour will be the next shuttle to be lost...

-the other Doug