The One Paragraph Spec
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^There’s no way Ares 1 and the Orion crew capsule should have cost anywhere near what they were costing, or take anything like as much time as they were taking, to get up and fly. Whether the problem lies within NASA, or with the government procurement rules within which NASA is constrained to operate, is a question that needs answering. But the end result is the same: another decade lost, and American astronauts sitting by the side of the road with their thumbs out, waiting for the next Soyuz launch. ^