NASA is fighting to rebuild its credibility with fiberglass and Velcro—the materials holding together a mock-up of the agency's upcoming manned space capsule, the Crew Exploration Vehicle. The skeletal model is the first hard evidence of NASA's plan to send humans back to the moon, then on to Mars.
Since President Bush endorsed this agenda in 2004, NASA engineers have been moving full steam ahead, drafting everything from launcher to space suit. Sending humans on an extended expedition to the moon will require the launch of a 1.8-million-pound rocket. The ship must then operate reliably in orbit there, unmanned, for up to six months while its lander carries the crew to the lunar surface and back. The proposed main rocket is powered by liquid oxygen and methane, which could theoretically be extracted from soil on the moon or Mars. Whether this novel fuel can do the job is being sorted ...
