Just about all of the systems being developed for NASA's Constellation program that will take astronauts back to the moon are beefier than those developed for manned space flight in the 1970s-including a crew capsule that holds twice the number of astronauts and a lunar lander three times the size of the Apollo lander.rnThat is also true for the many engines being developed for the program-the Ares stage-one and -two rocket engines, the Orion service module engines, and the Altair lunar lander engines.rnFor the vast majority of propulsion engineers, it is the first time in their careers that they have been able to not only test-fire new engines but then have a continuous funding stream to take those test results and build follow-on engines.rn"The Space Shuttle was the last to go through this process and fly," said Mark Klem, Project Manager for Propulsion and Cryogenics Advanced Development at NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC). "The shuttle first flew in 1981, so you had to work in the '70s to have been part of it.rn"We've all worked on other little projects, but for this one we are very hardware focused. We're building hardware and testing hardware; we're not doing paper studies all the time."
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