> I think a test flight is just that, it's a test flight. This happy talk of it being completed—just look at the language, the celebration, NASA's planning, and

> I think a test flight is just that, it's a test flight. This happy talk of it being completed—just look at the language, the celebration, NASA's planning, and so forth for the launch. There is not another test flight planned if this doesn't go perfectly. So then what? You're going to put people on one in two years if the first one didn't go well? I just have never heard anyone talk about that plan. Another reading is that they know it's the last hurrah; succeed or fail isn't relevant. There won't be any more after this anyway; NASA will be relegated to maintenance of extant science missions and maybe a few new ones as pork projects. Any further government rocketry will be military. Possibly the best thing to happen for human use of space travel since NASA was begun.