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Comments: 247 +- Science: NASA Shows Off Mock-Up of Mars-Capable Spacecraft on Tuesday March 31 2009, @07:47AM
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N!NJA writes with this snippet of a report from Reuters: "NASA gave visitors to the National Mall in Washington a peek at a full-size mock-up of the spacecraft designed to carry US astronauts back to the moon and then on to Mars one day. The design of Orion was based on the Apollo spacecraft, which first took Americans to the moon. Although similar in shape, Orion is larger, able to carry six crew members rather than three, and builds on 1960s technology to make it safer."
They're still working on the parachute.
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Nuclear? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Nuclear? (Score:4, Informative)
No - this is a derivative of the 1960s Apollo capsule. But look at the bright side - all the relevant patents have expired by now.
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Re:Nuclear? (Score:4, Insightful)
Current Unixes (Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Darwin, Solaris, etc.) are also a derivative of 1960s technology. And if we were talking about that, the Unix and most of tne Linux guys, at least, would all be saying "yeah, but it's stable because it's so mature."
what's the difference then, with a 1960s Apollo-derived capsule, then?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
We'll be at Alpha centuri in a few years, if all goes well.
Nah, I prefer to win the game by global conquest. It's much more entertaining to pour all of your resources into armies, fleets and aircraft than spaceship components. Those fucking Celts will soon pay for sacking Athens back in 3400 BC, muhahahahahahahahaha.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
They were going to name it SpaceShip Colbert, but their plans were ruined.
Orion? (Score:2)
"builds on 1960s technology to make it safer" (Score:5, Funny)
Would that be the large, unmarked banks of blinking square lights, the female voice that always says "Insufficient Data" followed by a dramatic orchestral chord, or the engine that the chief engineer can only repair 10 seconds before destruction?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'm confused (Score:4, Interesting)
"Although similar, it builds on 1960s technology"? While the old one was build on 1860 technology? I don't get it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Explosives, Medicine, Air/Space Travel.
Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Insightful)
There is really not enough data to attest Apollo spacecraft were much safer than the shuttles. There were less than two dozen Apollo manned launches with one nearly (because the crew got really, really lucky) catastrophic accident and more than a hundred shuttle launches done by a small fleet that went to space a couple times each with two very serious mishaps.
The best one can do is to extrapolate on data from about a hundred Soyuz missions. Soyuz seems to be slightly safer than shuttle and has in common with the Orion both the 60's tech and the mostly expendable architecture (IIRC, some systems are transferred from a used Soyuz to a new one after being recertified).
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Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Insightful)
All of these seem to argue in favor of Orion being safer than Shuttle. There are two obvious downsides:
On balance, I tent to like the KISS approach, so favor the capsule. But you're correct; actual safety comes down to how well all the systems are actually designed and implemented. A simpler approach, poorly implemented, is no safer than a complicated approach implemented well.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"with one nearly (because the crew got really, really lucky) catastrophic accident"
Actually, Apollo 1 went on fire on the launch pad, killing all three astronauts on board, so that makes one-and-a-half catastrophic accidents
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Insightful)
No....I think you'll find it *WAS* rocket science.
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Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed, good example. Although lot of the 1960's stuff wasn't exactly rocket science....for example, the Saturn V's had a problem with instabilities building up on the face of the combustion plate due to the pattern of holes that the fuel/oxidiser was sprayed through. In the end they got a bunch of blank combustion plates and drilled holes at random until they found one that worked without blowing the rocket to smithereens....or at least worked for the eight minutes or so that it took to get to orbit.
People forget that the Apollo project killed off the much more reasonable X-plane [wikipedia.org] development, one of which by 1962 was already flying at an altitude of sixty miles. Progression to space travel was seen as the logical next step. But when JFK decided "HOLY FUCK WE GOTTA GO TO THE MOON!", and the developers told him it might be possible to do deep space stuff by the seventies, he opted to kill the project and go for Wernher von Braun's batshit insane rockets instead.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
People forget that the Apollo project killed off the much more reasonable X-plane development, one of which by 1962 was already flying at an altitude of sixty miles. Progression to space travel was seen as the logical next step. But when JFK decided "HOLY FUCK WE GOTTA GO TO THE MOON!", and the developers told him it might be possible to do deep space stuff by the seventies, he opted to kill the project and go for Wernher von Braun's batshit insane rockets instead.
Um, reasonable in what way? It certainly wasn't useful for putting cargo in orbit. The most efficient and practical way (currently) to put anything into space is an engine strapped to gigantic gas tank strapped to a little bit of cargo. Adding additional stuff like wings, landing gears, rudder (and a frame to support it all) only detracts from the amount of cargo you can launch and seems to have negligible reuse benefits as demonstrated by the space shuttle.
Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Interesting)
Um, reasonable in what way? It certainly wasn't useful for putting cargo in orbit. The most efficient and practical way (currently) to put anything into space is an engine strapped to gigantic gas tank strapped to a little bit of cargo. Adding additional stuff like wings, landing gears, rudder (and a frame to support it all) only detracts from the amount of cargo you can launch and seems to have negligible reuse benefits as demonstrated by the space shuttle.
For the X-15 series, you might just be right. But the proposed X-20 was the plane that eventually got the chop. This one had a rocket too, which essentially made it a prototype space shuttle. Reusable. What's more, the Titan rockets they wanted for it had 2.5 million pounds of thrust (11,100,000 force newtons) compared with the Mercury-Atlas' 367,000 (1,600,000). What made them cut the project was that the Atlas rockets were already available whereas the more powerful Titan rockets were still four years away.
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Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Interesting)
"Although similar, it builds on 1960s technology"? While the old one was build on 1860 technology? I don't get it.
You have to realize these guys are journalists. Its big, and vaguely cylindrical, therefore its "the same technology". Rest assured they aren't using discrete transistors and core memory.
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Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Funny)
No, they're replacing the obsolete 1980s technology (shuttles) with modern, 1960s technology. It's progress.
No, no, Progress is Russian:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_spacecraft [wikipedia.org]
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Mock-up! (Score:4, Funny)
"Hey! I just touched it and this piece fell off!"
"Hmm... It's... a Mock-up?... Yeah! It's a Mock-up!"
Yeah well. (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong I hope we get off this rock and have a *real* space program but I suspect that I am not the only person reading this that thinks they were born before their time.
Good luck NASA, I hope it all goes well, this time.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I know you'll probably mod me a troll but I have a sinking felling that me and actually many of the people reading slashdot will never see a real push into space by humanity
We'll see a real push into space by humanity when there is an actual economic incentive for doing so. When Earth becomes completely overpopulated and/or runs into resource shortages, that's when we'll see space flight really take off. As much as I love NASA, as a Governmentally funded agency they are always going to be held hostage to political considerations -- and you just know some Congressman needs some pork^Weconomic development back home more than NASA needs to go to Mars.
Re:Yeah well. (Score:5, Informative)
Space flight is not going to be a solution to overpopulation for a really long time. The cost of getting something to LEO is around $20,000 per Kg, maybe as low as $4,000 / Kg if you go with something with a fairly high failure rate. The cost with a space elevator would be around $220/Kg, just for the marginal costs, assuming that the magical space pixies built the elevator for free, or closer to $2,000/Kg for the full cost.
Assume a person plus their life support equipment (no possessions) weighs around 100Kg, and you've got a cost of $200K to get someone into orbit (using wildly optimistic figures based on technology that doesn't exist yet). Getting them to somewhere where they can live, and including the cost of actually building that habitat, is likely to at least double this cost and more likely add another order of magnitude.
The people who can afford this kind of expense (probably around $2m, more for anything much above subsistence living) are going to be the ones who can already afford a very comfortable life down here. The people who will most want to leave Earth will be the ones who can't afford to.
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Re:Yeah well. (Score:4, Informative)
I have this sneaky suspicion that the overpopulation of humans will 'take care of itself' before we get any significant population in outer space....
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We could be a lo further if we had taken just a fraction of the war budget and let Nasa keep going to the Moon. There is no reason we couldn't have a permanent base by now.
2030 to Mars? Where does this come from. We could have 1 way manned missions to mars right now. Ill bet there would be volunteers.
No, I think Nasa has just become a cash register for the usual defense contractors with no vision.
I am truly sorry we couldn't have had just a little less war, and a little more science.
Princess Leia : (Score:4, Funny)
"You came in that thing?, Youâ(TM)re braver than I thought"
1960s safety? (Score:3, Insightful)
"...and builds on 1960s technology to make it safer."
Ah, am I the only one reading this and questioning just exactly what the hell we have been paying NASA Engineers millions of dollars for over the last 45 years?
I mean, I'm all for K.I.S.S. methodology and all, but damn, 40+ years worth of advances should not be completely looked over for "tried and true". Even that is questionable, given Apollos not-so-perfect track record.
Hell, how many "safety" features are still in use today from the 60's in automobiles?
Guess I better start buying stock in vacuum tube manufacturers...
Re:1960s safety? (Score:4, Insightful)
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The prospect of a mars mission (Score:4, Insightful)
What? Don't you read their blog? (Score:3, Informative)
http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/Constellation/ [nasa.gov]
This seems misleading (Score:4, Informative)
The vehicle in question is an ascent/re-entry craft. It might be sufficient for the trip to the moon (though certainly landing and relaunching will require a second craft as it did for Apollo), but this vehicle is not up to the task of providing suitable living conditions for a trip to Mars.
For a Mars trip this is at best a way to get up to the interplanetary vessel and return to Earth from it. Given that, I can't imagine why you would bother to cart it all the way there just to cart it back.
A little reading, please (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it too much to ask for people who read a supposedly tech site actually read, and perhaps think, before pounding their keyboards with things like "how's that little thing going to get 6 astronauts to Mars?", "NASA is stoopid", and the like?
Its proposed use is to carry up to 6 astronauts to the space station, and from there, 4 to the Moon. For the Moon missions, Orion will travel along with the Altair lunar lander.
For Mars missions, "Orion could rendezvous in low Earth orbit with vehicles that will take explorers to other destinations in our solar system such as Mars." http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/306407main_orion_crew%20_expl_vehicle.pdf [nasa.gov]
These Mars-bound vehicles will be assembled in low Earth orbit. There is no reason to believe that 4 or 6 astronauts would be confined to the small Orion capsule for the duration of a Mars voyage.
On a side note, I was 5 years old when I watched the first manned landing on the Moon. It's amazing to me that a manned Mars mission may happen when I'm in my 70's. Certainly not how I imagined things when I was young.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I'm having a little trouble believing that's going to be an adequate space-craft for going to Mars. For a several day trip to the moon, ok - but being bottled up in that thing for 2-3 years? And where are you going to store several years worth of supplies in there?
I think somebody is smoking something.
Re:Looks cosy (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps in the large, cylindrical service module which will be launched by Ares 5 before the crew takes off? The crew capsule is just for earth takeoff and landing. They dock with the rest of the spacecraft in earth orbit before leaving for elsewhere.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
So, they'd tow it to Mars?
Like a freakin family on Vacation to the Catskills?
I hope they shape the trailer like one of those old Airstreams....that would be cool.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Except they opened up the lander after docking, made sure it was OK, and then sealed it up again until they got to the moon...
How Apollo Flew To The Moon [google.com]
Re:Looks cosy (Score:4, Funny)
Not sure that I would want to be stuck in that with 5 other people for two years.
With enough viagra, lube, and toys, a crew of 3 guys + 3 gals might just survive. Exhausted, to be sure, but in pretty good spirits.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bone mineral loss (Score:4, Insightful)
Except you can keep rotating for free, while constant acceleration using chemical (or even fission) power requires completely insane amounts of fuel.
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Re:Bone mineral loss (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Good point, yes, obviously making a spacecraft to carry six people to Mars is as simple as just coming up with the idea "make it bigger". It's not like it's rocket science, is it. They should have just read your comment here on Slashdot, we'd be there by now.
What a waste of those tax dollars, if only we hadn't spent all that money funding NASA this past five years we could have had enough for, I don't know, almost an extra year of war in Iraq ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget [wikipedia.org] ). And it's not like t
Re:How many years have they been working on this? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm more worried about my tax dollars - the ones wasted on your education.
In real world engineering, form follows function. Just like the Airbus 380 [wikipedia.org] is basically an enlarged Boeing Dash 80 [wikipedia.org], the Orion is an enlarged Apollo. For both functions there's only so many forms that work, and no particular reason not to choose something proven. This isn't fad and fashion driven product design (like the latest iCoolthing), but something people's lives will depend on.
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Re:How many years have they been working on this? (Score:5, Insightful)
I (for once) RTFA, and from what I gathered, they've developed this module and updated launcher to provide an effective round trip mechanism for Moon expeditions, where they will practice the operations that will be required when a full scale Mars mission is executed (sometime around between 2020-2030). I think the important point is that NASA is realizing that the shuttle is not an effective mission system for the next generation of Moon missions, which are a pre-req for any future Mars missions.
To me, this actually sounds like a sober assessment - and one that is long overdue.
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Re:How many years have they been working on this? (Score:4, Interesting)
* Moon-Mars is basically unfunded. NASA has to steal from other missions just to study Moon-Mars
* The moon is a lousy steppingstone to Mars. Think about it: to land on a planet with an atmosphere, you can slow down with a parachute. To overcome your delta-V for a moon landing, you need to carry enough fuel to decelerate and to re-launch! If you just skip the moon entirely, you don't have that horribly expensive deceleration phase followed by that expensive acceleration phase.
Face it, most of the actual science done in space has been done by robots and will continue to be for the forseeable future. Humans in space is not a bad idea, but Bush didn't fund Moon-Mars and it's unlikely to get funded any time in the forseeable future. Personally, I've always thought Moon-Mars was a cynical political ploy to win a slice of the nerd vote. But that's just me.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The capsule will only be for the trip to/from orbit.
Similar to the moon missions any Mars mission will have at least 1 and likely 2-3 other modules that will rendezvous in orbit and make the trip to Mars as one craft.
You'll note the heavy lift rocket portion of Constellation can carry far more weight than any US rocket to date. The whole reason for that is lifting large modules for a larger craft. (lunar lander, mars lander, mars transit habitat, whatever).
The Orion capsule is just one part of the entire C
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
when we get to watch em die light minutes from earth in space.
Even with that risk, I'd sign up as the first to go.
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"I feel sorry for the crew who has to spend all that time in that shit box."
They won't. And you can really consider that capsule is more or less the escape pod from the real spaceship. Other way to think about it is the "shipping container for the crew and return samples".
I suppose most of the time the crew will have more spacious quarters, specially when en route to Mars. The capsule will also never get to the Martian surface - they will probably have a descent vehicle either with them since Earth or safel