Q- What's your job now?...and try to keep it simple. It ain't rocket science. (I've been waiting a lifetime to tell that joke, you hear it...what....twice a day?)
A: I am the Deputy Director of NASA’s Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle Project. It really is rocket science! (and I’ve always wanted to say that!)
We are developing the follow-on human spaceflight program to the Space Shuttle. We have been flying Space Shuttles since I joined the Agency in the early 80s and will retire the Shuttle in about two years from now. The follow-on program is called Constellation and our goal was set by President Bush in 2004. We are going to send humans back to the moon and eventually, on to Mars.
The Constellation Program is the next step, to not only expand our mission and our capabilities,but to build a safer, more reliable system. Our goal for the new Ares-I/Orion system is to be 10x as safe as anything we have flown to date.
The first two “pieces” of Constellation are Ares I – the rocket – and Orion – the human spacecraft. Ares I is what launches Orion into Orbit and Orion is the spacecraft the crew rides and lives in. Initially, Orion will ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, which we will continue to fly with our many partners from around the world. Then, when the additional Constellation flight hardware comes along, such as Altair, the spacecraft that will land on the moon, and Ares V (Ares I’s big brother which is needed to launch and push Orion and Altair to the moon), we will once again send humans beyond earth orbit and to other celestial bodies, first the moon, then to Mars.
Q- So Orion will first be used to take over for the Shuttle in servicing the International Space Station. What's the time frame on that? And Lunar Missions?
A: Our commitment is to fly the first Orion mission to the Space Station in 2015 and back to the moon in 2020. We maintain more aggressive work to schedules internally as this provides us some schedule margin. Our internal schedules have the first Station flight in 2014.