Since August 2006, NASA to create lunar and Martian manned spacecraft Orion, the analogue of which, as assure in “Roskosmos” is “Federation” (“eagle”), spent 16.7 billion, the report said the inspector General of the space Agency Paul Martin.
Total spending on Orion, including the serial manufacture of spacecraft, to the end of 2030, as estimated by the inspector, will be $ 29.5 billion, that is, cost almost 12 budget of Roskosmos for the year 2020 (in the open section, i.e. without taking into account the defensive order).
According to the document, the majority of these funds went to the world’s largest military-industrial Corporation Lockheed Martin, engaged in the development and production of Orion. Funding is not included in the service module of the spacecraft that is created by the European space Agency (ESA).
Martin says that the program to create the Orion encounters cost overruns, payment of excessive bonuses and the lack of planning. In the document inspector finds that some expenses related to the lunar-Martian ship, were not included in directly related financial securities and was recorded in other programs. NASA, commenting on the report of the expert, agree only with the part of the financial assessment that is not associated with the canceled Constellation program, in which began the creation of lunar and Martian spacecraft.
In July, NASA announced the readiness of the spacecraft for the first mission in the framework of Artemis, planned for 2021, during which Orion launched super-heavy rocket Space Launch System (SLS), have unmanned to orbit the moon.
The first test launch of the Orion (without astronauts on a heavy rocket the Delta IV Heavy) took place in December 2014, when the spacecraft departed from earth at a distance of 5.8 thousand kilometers and crossed the radiation belt (van Allen belt) of the planet.
The reusable spacecraft Orion, designed for manned missions into deep space (to the moon and Mars), created by the American company Lockheed Martin. The total mass of Orion exceeds 20 tons, the height of the cargo module conical shape — more than three meters, a base diameter of about five meters. Orion is able to carry up to six astronauts.
Unlike the Orion, is ready for series production, the Russian lunar spacecraft “Federation” created more than ten years of Rocket-space Corporation “Energy”, because of its unwillingness until now never fly because there is no assembled. Initially, the launch of the “Federation” was planned to carry out on the rocket “Soyuz-5”, however, after Dmitry Rogozin was appointed Director General of Roskosmos, has made the decision to launch a spacecraft to a more expensive “Angara-A5”, rename it to the “eagle” and the dismissal of the “negligent comrades” working on it. The first test launch (earth version) this spacecraft is to be held in 2023 from the cosmodrome East.
