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.
How many years have they been working on this? (Score:2, Insightful)
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?
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:How many years have they been working on this? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:1960s safety? (Score:4, Insightful)
The prospect of a mars mission (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Looks cosy (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:How many years have they been working on this? (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 they did anything else with all that money, like Shuttle launches is it.
Re:Nuclear? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:New definition of "Live TV"... (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.
Re:Yes (Score:1, Insightful)
But humans are violent in nature
I smell bullshit. All omnivores and carnivores could be said to be "violent in nature." However, since we try not to anthropomorphize in science, we just say they act naturally. If you remove our sentience, we revert back to our animalistic selves. Would we then be violent for showing our competitive natures?
Ultimately when you think about this you will reach a point where you will see that peace and violence are man made. This is akin to good and evil, they don't truly exist in the natural world except in the hearts of men.
Re:Yeah well. (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.
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.
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).
Re:That is just fucking stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)
"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 safely parked in Martian orbit as well as an ascent vehicle landed near their working site on Mars that's there since before they leave Earth.
Re:That is just fucking stupid. (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, you retards. It's not rocket science.
Oh, wait, it is. I'd mis-identified the retards involved here.
For the record, there are ways of getting to Mars in substantially less time. However, they're not going to happen, because people don't like hearing the N-word.
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.
Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Insightful)
No....I think you'll find it *WAS* rocket science.
Re:I'm confused (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: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.
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.
Re:Bone mineral loss (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yeah well. (Score:2, Insightful)
I could see the attraction and novety of a three day mars or moon vacation, but beyond that, I'm staying here.
Space vs. population (Score:2, Insightful)
When Earth becomes completely overpopulated and/or runs into resource shortages, that's when we'll see space flight really take off.
How is that, exactly? Population is governed by compound interest. Our population today is 6.6 billion souls. The current growth rate is 1.167% per annum. (Data via CIA.) Do the math. Today there were 213,000 more souls and 6000 tons more human flesh pressing inward on Mother Earth than yesterday. Tomorrow there will be 213,000 more. The day after - another 213,000. In six months that will be 214,000 per day - six months later, 215,000 per day, and so forth and so on. Less than a year from now there will be another 1.8 million tons of human flesh literally shouldering other species into extinction. That's not 1.8 million tons total - that's just the additional growth of skin and hair and sinew and good red meat locked up in your mama's Soylent Green recipe.
For space to matter in the solution of this problem, we have to build a fleet of ships capable of offloading 213,000 people - a new space fleet every day, year after year - forever. A space shuttle carries a crew of seven - so we need 30,000 space shuttles a day or 35,000 Orions. (Of course, that only gets you to low Earth orbit.) Each year we would have to move 1.8 million tons of human cold cuts - that's the equivalent of 18 Nimitz class aircraft carriers of flesh - to some other distant, unwelcoming world.
And then, of course, you've just shifted the horizon of the always looming catastrophe to a collection of planets rather than a single planet. Since this is a doubling issue, colonizing another planet - say, a terraformed Venus - just buys you an additional 60 years. If you want to push the inevitable collapse of civilization off for 240 years (roughly the duration of the American Experiment to date) - well, you need 15 additional Earth clones.
Our population problem will be solved on Earth - one way or another.