Here's One Way to Get People to Victory Park: Bring NASA's New Orion Spacecraft to Town

• It's not the Orion. It's not even a real test module. It's a dummy module used in development of the test modules. It's a hollow metal shell with no internal workings. It might as well be a plywood model. Not worth seeing at all. I know, because I was just there.

• According to American Airlines - the Orion craft won't be available until 5:30 for Friday, and that the appearance by Astronaut Patrick is a private event.

• The space elevator will never happen, because you can't put one inside the US or even Russia.  It would have to go somewhere like Ecuador to keep the structure from tearing itself apart as the earth rotates.  But then again, Ecuador is pretty darn close to a seismically active area (think Chile).  Even if that problem isn't insuperable, you have the politics of putting a multi-gazillion-dollar commercial bottleneck in a Third World country.  If the WTC was a tempting target for terrorists, just think about how tempting this would be.  I don't see it happening.

• Anderson and Patrick are both veterans of multiple Shuttle missions. It will be a genuine honor to meet them next weekend.

• It may look that way, but the cost per pound to launch in to space is way lower for high-tech rockets than the shuttle. Plus Congress and the President didn't give NASA much of a choice after giant cuts in their funds. And yeah, we really are biding our time until someone gets a feasible space elevator.

• El Rey, don't let the shape of the spacecraft fool you into thinking this is Apollo all over again. The laws of physics haven't changed since then. This is the shape that works best for the job it's intended for. Inside and out, it will feature the most moden materials, computers, avionics, etc.

•  I wish. But, unfortunately, I don't think we are going to get to see the space elevators construction begin in our life time. Until then, we've got to take the bus. 

• That's a job for a space elevator, not a flying bus.

• The International Space Station and the Hubble Telescope couldn't have been built without the shuttle. The shuttle was massive, and had a far larger cargo bay then anything else we have ever shot up there. The Russians have never come close. These rockets are fine for human exploration -what they are designed for- but we will eventually need another heavy lift vehicle again to replace the shuttles. 

• So NASA is going back to the old reliable design my parents grew up with? That's one giant step in the wrong direction, IMO.

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