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Rob WaughNASA's Mars spacecraft is 'badly designed' says Apollo astronaut
But not everyone is an admirer of NASA's new Orion capsule - including Al Worden, an Apollo veteran who is one of 24 humans to have left Earth’s orbit and journeyed to the moon.
Today NASA is testing the first deep-space capsule since the Apollo missions of the Sixties and Seventies - the first step towards a manned mission to Mars.
But not everyone is an admirer - including Al Worden, an Apollo veteran who is one of 24 humans to have left Earth’s orbit and journeyed to the moon - with only 18 making it to the lunar surface - as the pilot of Apollo 15’s command module.
Worden says, ‘Orion is supposed to be the spacecraft to go farther out than anything before it. I am not a fan. There are much better reentry shapes that could return from Mars.’
The Orion capsule will make its first uncrewed flight test today -- but will eventually carry the first people to walk on Mars.
Worden says that the design of the capsule is problematic because it has to brake on re-entry to the atmosphere - and blames new NASA staff without the experience of the Apollo veterans.
‘This shape incidentally was developed because the people at Houston believed they knew how to do it, since they had done it before. However, not one person is still there who was involved with Apollo. We are reliving the past with Orion, and not adding to the technology to get us to Mars.’
[NASA poised for Orion launch]
Worden was also one of the few astronauts to experience the power of NASA’s Saturn V launch rocket - thought to be comparable to the upcoming Space Launch System, which will boost Orion to Mars.
Again, he is not impressed.
Worden says, ‘I would guess it will be about the same as the Saturn V. It is still not even close to what we will need in the future.
‘We need to get to Mars, but only as another step to the places we really want to explore. It might take us centuries to develop the capability to go to the next life-supporting planet, but that should be our goal.’
Orion is the first new manned spacecraft since the Space Shuttle, and the first built for deep space (the empty regions between planets) since Apollo.
NASA plan to launch the spacecraft aboard a Delta IV heavy rocket, orbit the Earth twice, swinging out to a height of 3,600 miles up, before splashing down into the Pacific.
[ Soyuz rocket delivers new crew to space station ]
The The U.S. General Accounting Office has estimated that the Orion mission will cost up to £14 billion from this test launch until the first manned tests in 2021.
NASA plans to use the craft to land on an asteroid in the 2020s - and then on to Mars.
[ NASA worker claims there was a secret manned mission to Mars in 1979 ]
NASA said in an official statement, ‘In the not-too-distant future, astronauts destined to be the first people to walk on Mars will leave Earth aboard an Orion spacecraft.
‘Carried aloft by the tremendous power of a Space Launch System rocket, our explorers will begin their journey to Mars, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.’
