NASA Shows Off Mock-Up of Mars-Capable Spacecraft 247
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.
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.
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.
Re:I'm confused (Score:3, Informative)
What? Don't you read their blog? (Score:3, Informative)
http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/Constellation/ [nasa.gov]
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.
Re:Looks cosy (Score:2, Informative)
I believe that the capsule will only be the command center/cockpit/bridge of the spacecraft that is planned to go to Mars. The rest of the craft will be assembled in orbit from various Ares V launches.
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.
Re:Yes (Score:1, Informative)
*whoosh* [wikipedia.org]
Re:Looks cosy (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:Bone mineral loss (Score:3, Informative)
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.
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....
Re:How many years have they been working on this? (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 Constellation series of vehicles.
Re:I'm confused (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:I'm confused (Score:2, Informative)
More information at obligatory wiki link [wikipedia.org].