News media pounces on transmission mistake
Posted 08.23.2006 at 5:39 pm
5 Comments
Who leaked the new name of the spaceship NASA plans to fly to the moon by 2020? It wasn't Jeffrey Williams, a flight engineer living aboard the International Space Station. Sure, Williams taped a video message in which he held up a model of the spacecraft. “We’ve been calling it the crew exploration vehicle for several years, but today it has a name…Orion,” he said.
However, Williams was just following the instructions of his PR handlers on the ground. His message wasn’t supposed to air until next week, when NASA had planned to announce the new name along with a decision about who will build the spaceship. Lockheed Martin is vying with a consortium of Northrop Grumman and Boeing contractors for the project.
The plan was to transmit Williams’ message from the space station to the ground on a private channel, and record it for later distribution. Instead the NASA public affairs office transmitted the message on an open channel, where it was intercepted by the Associated Press. After the cat was out of the bag, NASA issued an official press release “announcing” the new name. In typical fashion, NASA made no mention of what really happened.
The Orion name isn’t news to everyone. The website collectspace.com reported the new name last month after discovering Orion in a search of federal trademarks. Although NASA still hasn’t unveiled the Orion logo, collectspace.com reports that a logo with that name has been marked “approved” in NASA internal documents. —Dawn Stover
Link via collectspace.com
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Hi,
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Kyle
I was born in 1968 and looking at Orion it depresses me a bit, because by now I would expect much more impressive space vehicles would exist (remember 2001 the movie?), but I guess this is better than nothing.
i love science, what kills me is all the money that is wasted could buy all seniors perscription needs.
If it wasn't for the wasted money in science, you would have a very limited number of those prescriptions you need.
We easily forget the great things that Nasa has done for us. We even easier forget that rarely do we ever know of the advances they make.
To me its sad we don't put more money into this.
Any relation to the origional Orion project? I remember reading they might be bringing that back