There’s a story over at the Grauniad today about the dotcom space millionaires, featuring Elon Musk and SpaceX. As usual, the reporter doesn’t understand what Constellation is/was:
His confidence has been boosted following last month’s decision by President Barack Obama to drop funding for the Constellation programme – the Nasa spacecraft intended to replace the space shuttle, which is to be grounded later this year.
Once again, Constellation is not now, and never was, a “replacement” for the Space Shuttle. If anything, it’s a replacement for Apollo. It’s an architecture of vehicles designed to get humans back to the moon, including launchers, capsule, earth-departure stages, and lunar lander and ascent vehicle. And the only parts that are really being cancelled are the Ares I launcher and the Orion crew module, because none of the rest of it was scheduled to start development for years.
Beyond that, the reporter doesn’t seem to understand the difference between suborbital and orbital, saying that Falcon I went to suborbit. Well, the first one did, but the other four went to orbit, albeit only the last two with full success. And all five were intended to.