Alternative Orion Missions Proposed 137
skywatcher2501 writes "Lockheed Martin, the company producing NASA's new Orion spacecraft,
published three videos (news article in German) showing alternative Orion missions. Great efforts are made to show Orion's flexibility as a space transportation system beyond the goals of the Constellation program." The three videos, respectively, illustrate ISS missions with cargo in low-Earth orbit; autonomous use of the service module; and maintenance missions from low-earth orbit to geosynchronous orbit.
Maintenance in GEO would be pretty useful (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Maintenance in GEO would be a game changer... (Score:5, Interesting)
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If you can maintain satellites in GEO, you can BUILD satellites in GEO. Hello Space Based Solar/Beamed Microwave, and We Win The Game! Pournelle has written extensively on this, e.g.:
For some reason I read that as "Hello Kitty" satellites.
That, and you made me lose the game. =(
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No!
Never!
The Orion game *must* continue to involve taking out the guardian; there can be no "alternative mission."
No game changing, or I'll sic the Bulrathi on you! :)
hawk
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For some reason I read that as "Hello Kitty" satellites.
That's okay, I misread the title as "Alternative Onion Missions Proposed".
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When you have construction crews in GEO building power stations, where exactly do you think they're going to go on long weekends and vacation?
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Going to the moon or earth every long weekend would just be too expensive for many.
Build a good enough recreational space station and maybe tourists from the Earth would pay lots of money to visit it.
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Until there is 'blackjack and hookers' up there, you are doomed to watch them pass you by on their way back to Earth for R&R.
Re:Maintenance in GEO would be a game changer... (Score:5, Insightful)
Pournelle has written extensively on this, e.g.:
Stating opinions as facts does not make them facts. Let's assemble some actual facts:
1 There are a lot of commercial satellites
2 There is a market for commercial launches
3 There have been a few sucessful commercial launches
4 Commercial companies have not taken over the scene
5 The space shuttle is the only vehicle which has ever been capable of servicing Hubble.
I do not know where this bizarre delusion that all commercial companies must be necessarily better than all governments comes from. I can only assume it's by people who have never worked for a large company. Or at a small/medium sized one for that matter...
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I don't know where to get statistics for this but a commercial launch is something very common place.
You can see a list of recent worldwide launches here:
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/tracking/launchlog.html [spaceflightnow.com]
As far as the US goes, the only non-commercial launches are the Space Shuttles, and there's quite a few commercial launches per Space Shuttle launch.
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Not stupid (Score:3, Informative)
We still don't have a good solution to the radiation problem, which is one of the major obstacles to practical moon bases and Mars missions. Leave the satellite m
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I like Robert Forward's idea of using highly charged tethers to clean up radiation belts - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiVolt [wikipedia.org]
Of course, the tag 'whatcouldpossiblygowrong' is applicable here.
Pick a new name assholes (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Pick a new name assholes (Score:5, Insightful)
The real Orion unfortunately can't exist due to the cold war era treaty banning nuclear tests in space. Orion based on closed nuclear reactor designs on the other hand may do the trick. Even using a decent sized reactor to power either plasma or ion engines would likely get around the treaty restriction.
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Yeah, cause the US gives a shit about international treaties.
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Not this one. The Russians make a point about being pissy about any details that shows them to not be the Soviet Union, anymore... :-)
(Excuses in advance if I mangled the slang idiom.)
All non-democratic states needs to get external enemies, so it is generally a good idea not to give them excuses. (Unless the local democratic leader also needs a conflict, sigh.)
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At a minimum it doesn't publicize violations. And, when violating them publicly, it announces the fact rather than getting caught with its pants down. Play fair. The US does give a shit about appearing to honor international treaties.
Re:Pick a new name assholes (Score:4, Interesting)
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Orion [the original project] was never designed to reach orbit from Earth but in fact was only meant for space travel owing to its use of nuclear weapons being detonated behind the ship sequentially.
Re:Pick a new name assholes (Score:5, Informative)
Project Orion was certainly designed for planetary launch. They even did an analysis of how many people it would kill per launch due to fallout.
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Project Orion was certainly designed for planetary launch. They even did an analysis of how many people it would kill per launch due to fallout.
That's so metal.
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I believe the estimate was something like 10 people would die per launch, but I'd have to find the figures.
Re:Pick a new name assholes (Score:4, Informative)
according to this site [oriondrive.com]. you're correct. I quote:
"In the early 1960s, Freeman Dyson estimated that each launch from Earth would cause, on average, 10 fatal human cancers among the population of the entire planet (some people argue that these figures may be an over estimate because of the particular mathematical model used). "
From what I recall from the Project Orion book, they managed to get the estimated death down a bit, but still. A solution would be to only use the orion drive while in space, and only when outside earth's van allen belt as the magnetic field would drag some of the fallout back to earth.
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Project Orion was certainly designed for planetary launch. They even did an analysis of how many people it would kill per launch due to fallout.
That's so metal.
God was knockin', and he wanted in bad...
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God was knockin', and he wanted in bad...
Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham!
Glad I'm not the only Footfall fan out there.
Re:Pick a new name assholes (Score:4, Informative)
Its a little more complicated than that. The reason you use a lot more fuel to get out of the atmosphere than you use once you make orbit, even on interplanetary missions, is that you've got to carry all that fuel with you out of the atmosphere.
Spacecraft sizing is like a Russian nesting doll. If you required a 4:1 ratio of propellant to spacecraft mass to get to the moon, and you were able to reduce it to 2:1 propellant ratio, you could get away with about half the launch vehicle because you don't need to launch all that propellant. The equations defining this (Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation) are all exponential with Delta-V.
Now as you can imagine, doing a return trip is even harder... imagine a Mars sample return mission. You have to have enough fuel in Martian orbit to get your sample and re-entry vehicle from there back to Earth. You have to have enough fuel on the surface to get that fuel and the sample into orbit. This means you have to send all of that fuel to the surface in the first place (requiring more for the entry burns), and of course this defines the amount of fuel required to leave Earth and get to Mars, which in turn defines the size of the initial launch vehicle. Minimizing one of the steps is enough to fit the mission onto a much smaller LV. This is why concepts like using ion engines, leaving return vehicles in orbit (like in Apollo), and extracting fuel from the target (ISRU) are so important, even though the amounts of propellant are small compared to the initial LV.
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Treaties aren't natural law, they can be changed. I'd imagine you could get it amended to allow nuclear tests beyond a given distance (say GEO), particularly if you made it an international mission with Russia as a partner.
And you're absolutely correct, a fission powered spacecraft would have no trouble with the atmospheric test ban treaty, since you're not detonating weapons above ground. The similarity between a fission reactor and a fusion bomb is about the same as the comparison between a gasoline eng
I was thinking the exact same thing :-( (Score:2)
I was going to post the exact same thing. :-(
It would be hard to use for launches today, because it'd fry some satellites, but check this [nextbigfuture.com] out, if you haven't seen it.
Call it ULC (Score:2)
Unnecessarily Large Capsule.
The only Orion I care about (Score:2, Informative)
Of course this type of nuclear propulsion is just made of lulz, NERVA's are the way to go.
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It can not melt down, but it very well can disperse in its gaseous form. Right through your rocket's nozzles. And given that rockets are not noted for being very reliable, it'll be only a question of time.
One possible idea to mitigate it: only use clean uranium fuel, this way the amount of fission by-products in the fallout will be minimized (uranium itself is not that nasty).
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Keep in mind that there's no massive quantity of explosive fuel in this type of rocket. The propellant could even be seawater.
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You have a heated uranium plasma, separated from rapidly flowing fuel only by a thin (thinner than in a lightbulb!) fused silica wall. All this is subjected to multi-G acceleration, pogo vibrations, malfunctions, etc. And don't forget than the maintenance of the reaction chamber will be quite difficult because of neutron-activated materials there.
So, of course, it will be perfectly safe! Not.
I'm about as pro-nuclear as it gets (even though I live less than 100 km from the infamous Chernobyl powerplant), but
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Pity, because they could easily outlift any chemical rocket we could mak
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UV-lightbulb has to be very thin, I did some calculations earlier (about 2 years ago when I first saw nuclearspace.com site). It's transparent, but not entirely transparent and we're talking about multi-GW per square meter power densities.
Even with a very thin lightbulb it'll still be near the limits of possibility.
So I think we'll need something like launch loops space planes to leave the atmosphere.
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Actually, Orion is downright sane compared to something like a nuclear salt-water rocket [wikipedia.org].
It's like Orion with a single continuous nuclear explosion. Inside the ship.
Welcome to the Moon! (Score:3, Interesting)
As much of a fan of NASA as I am (and have been, since the mid-70s), I am seriously beginning to doubt the agency's ability to get back into the business of taking big trips. Even if NASA gets us back to the moon, we're likely to be greeted by the Chinese, or some commercial operation's management (welcome to Bigelow at Tranquility!).
It seems almost silly to be developing a return to space program, when commercial space is doing the same thing, for less money, and is closer to actually ACHIEVING it.
Re:Welcome to the Moon! (Score:4, Informative)
Funny you should mention this [newscientist.com]. Per this source, American manned space flight is in serious doubt. If true, I'd say even unmanned American space flight is in jeopardy as well. Why buy space toys when you can buy votes?
Re:Welcome to the Moon! (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh huh. The news reporting on the HSF review committee has been horrid. The committee has the duty of reporting the options to Congress and the President. Some of those options are affordable, some of them are not, and doing all of some of them isn't affordable either. The mouth breather journalists don't understand the discussion so they latch onto the word "budget" and write a the-sky-is-falling article.
The cheapest option, that no-one is considering btw, is to just give SpaceX the $300m for crew transfer to LEO that they were promised and wait 2.5 years, then pay $20m/seat.. if you want to spend a little more, buy seats from the Russians at $53m/seat. If you want to spend a little more, keep flying the shuttle beyond the current manifest (and hope it doesn't explode). If you want to placate your international partners, keep flying the ISS until 2020, by then it'll be completely unusable, but hey. And after doing *all* that you'll have some money left over to launch an unnecessarily large capsule towards the Moon. But just forget about Mars for now because we don't have the skill or the technology (just don't tell Zubrin that).
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The cheapest option, that no-one is considering btw, is to just give SpaceX the $300m for crew transfer to LEO that they were promised and wait 2.5 years, then pay $20m/seat.
It's not the cheapest option, if they can't deliver. They haven't even launched the Falcon 9 yet. I don't believe this magic 2.5 year claim that keeps surfacing like a mushroom. No offense to SpaceX, but they need to demonstrate first that they can launch people into space reliably before they'll be servicing the ISS.
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The cheapest option, that no-one is considering btw, is to just give SpaceX the $300m for crew transfer to LEO
Actually, it has been discussed by the committee. It is the commercial option for launching humans to LEO suggested in several of their presentations; and, SpaceX is specifically mentioned as a viable option
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What you actually have here is 300 millidollars
All in all, not a bad investment!
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This is because NASA is badly underfunded for the current lunar programme. At least now there has been a public acknowledgement of that by the Augustine Commission, so perhaps something will be done about it.
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While NASA is plainly losing its edge, we shouldn't be so quick to turn to commercial means of space travel. Corporations are ultimately concerned only with turning a profit, not with the exploration of the Universe. We need NASA to be a science and research-centric agency.
The problem is that the current NASA has largely cut back on science and R&D, instead spending the money on trying to build rockets to compete with the commercial sector. What many are suggesting NASA do (including the White House's Augustine Committee) is purchase from the commercial sector for sending cargo (and eventually people) to orbit instead of building its own transportation system, so that NASA can use the money to focus on actual science and exploration beyond LEO.
Your comment is actually a l
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Perhaps more important is having MULTIPLE sources of launching, living, lunar access, etc. Ideally, we need to limit monopolies and count on competition to work. And this can actually LOWER the costs a
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NASA: We need a big rocket to send things into space. But it has to have these 15 compromises so that all the various military branches are happy and these 22 senators get contracts in their distrits.
Private contractors: Ok. Here's 10 different ways of using a big freaking rocket to shoot things into space. None of which are anything revolutionary... mainly because you're still asking us for big fre
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Maybe I'm wrong, but doesn't NASA pay the commercial sector to build rockets to its own specifications?
It's actually even worse than that in the current situation, as NASA essentially decided to have NASA Marshall Space Flight Center act as designer and prime contractor for the Ares I rocket, with the commercial companies acting as subcontractors.
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Ummm... NASA does not build its own rockets. NASA pays the commercial sector to build rockets.
Are you at all familiar with ESAS and the Ares I development? You're describing how things worked under the pre-ESAS plans, but then former administrator Michael Griffin threw those out and basically made NASA its own prime contractor.
Re:Welcome to the Moon! (Score:4, Interesting)
We had 5 long years in which W and 3 years of neo-cons, as well as 2 years of both parties elected to underfund NASA. Now that we are in SERIOUS economic jepordy, we need to decide WHO we want to meet on the moon; The Chinese OR one of our companies. With Chinese military putting multiple space stations up there (and 1 civilian spacecraft), I think I would rather meet western companies. I have been saying for a long time that we must provide more funding for these companies ESP. Bigelow as well as Armadillo and blue origin. Bigelow is able to provide not just a local space station, but also a living quarters to move between here and the moon. All that it needs it a tug. Likewise, it can provide living quarters on the moon. Importantly, Bigelow WANTS to do this and is funding it. Armadillo and Blue origin have the PERFECT crafts for working on the moon. If we really want to get there SOONER, rather than latter, we will have to have the gov work with private enterprise to build these. That means that we need 1-2 billion to flow to these companies NOW. Fortunately, Augustine sees this and will be pushing it.
So, what do we need?
Basically, with 1-2 Billion NOW, we can be back on the moon BEFORE 2015.
Re:Welcome to the Moon! (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think you can count on corporations to do pure scientific exploration, as there is little profit in it initially. I think you'll always need the government there to perform the "Lewis and Clark" role.
NASA's problem is that it isn't trying to just do the exploration, they're trying to do every single part of it. Space launch is well-enough developed at this point that they should be using commercial offerings at fixed contract prices to get to orbit, and then doing the high-risk exploration thing from there. Anything else is like asking Lewis and Clark to design their own canoe before heading off down the river.
The inefficient cost-plus contracts made sense in Apollo: it was a high-risk, low-reward game at the time. But now that we now its possible to get to orbit, and that there are many profitable reasons to do so, it makes no sense for NASA to develop its own LV... especially after its proven that its so inept at it without much larger budgets.
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Interestingly (and off-topic), Lewis and Clark did design their own canoe... a folding cast-iron boat:
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Re:Welcome to the Moon! (Score:5, Interesting)
I am seriously beginning to doubt the agency's ability to get back into the business of taking big trips.
Spirit? Oppertunity? There have been NASA build robots trundling around on Mars for several years! Their ability of the people and teams at NASA is not the problem. The problem is inteference from higher managment and the legislature wanting their pound of flesh. This problem is shared among many of the national labs (especially Los Alamos). The people doing the good work are generally there for the love of science and engineering. The people running in it for themselves.
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NASA rockets. Designed by robots for robots. Don't accept cheap imitations.
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As much of a fan of NASA as I am (and have been, since the mid-70s), I am seriously beginning to doubt the agency's ability to get back into the business of taking big trips. Even if NASA gets us back to the moon, we're likely to be greeted by the Chinese, or some commercial operation's management (welcome to Bigelow at Tranquility!).
It seems almost silly to be developing a return to space program, when commercial space is doing the same thing, for less money, and is closer to actually ACHIEVING it.
How can commercial entities, who have so far demonstrated only toy rockets, possibly be closer to achieving space flight than NASA, who demonstrated that capability decades ago and has since done it countless times? If it were so easy for commercial entities to do this, why aren't the skies bustling with commercial space stations and commercial flights?
You are arguing to stop investing _before_ there is a credible alternative. The only result of that will be the total loss of access to space for your countr
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Do you want to compare these toys to spectacular successes of NASA-designed NASP, X-33, X-34, X-38, 2GRLV , Shuttle-II ?
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Which commercial toy rockets do you refer to ? Delta IV, Ariane 5, Atlas V, Zenit or Proton ?
Do you want to compare these toys to spectacular successes of NASA-designed NASP, X-33, X-34, X-38, 2GRLV , Shuttle-II ?
Delta 4, Atlas 5: paid for by US taxpayers.
Ariane 5: paid for by european taxpayers.
Zenit, Proton: paid for by USSR taxpayers.
It is not commercial development if it is the taxpayer footing the bill. Show me a company that invested its own money.
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It is not commercial development if it is the taxpayer footing the bill. Show me a company that invested its own money.
You're missing the point. Even if development is non-commercial, what's important is the procurement process. NASA's big problem is using cost-plus contracts for procurement, rather than competitive fixed-price contracts.
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Off the top of my head, I wouldn't want to be on a space-flight where a less expensive, less capable part was used in order to save money. I would also not want to end up free-falling into the Atlantic for the want of a more reliable $500 part. This is where SpaceX and other companies offering low cost space flight get it wrong, using cheap, off the shelf, parts may work for cars and even small single engine aircraft, but they are not reliable or robust enough for large commercial aircraft and especially
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Off the top of my head, I wouldn't want to be on a space-flight where a less expensive, less capable part was used in order to save money.
You're making a massive logic error with your assumption that a part which is more expensive is somehow inherently more capable and safe. Do you also apply that logic to automobiles and airplanes?
You should consider applying for a job at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center upper management. You'd fit right in!
This is where SpaceX and other companies offering low cost space flight get it wrong, using cheap, off the shelf, parts may work for cars and even small single engine aircraft, but they are not reliable or robust enough for large commercial aircraft and especially not for use in space flight.
That's a cute example, but do you have any examples of off-the-shelf parts being used which are less than aerospace quality? For that matter, do you have an example from any time in the entire history of
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NASA doesn't build the rockets. They have an army of contractors who build them. Sure, they assemble the shuttle in the VAB; but, the components were almost exclusively all built by someone, not NASA. The shuttle orbiter itself was built by Rockwell and Boeing.
The reason you've not seen a commercial entity launching big rockets, is there's no money in it. The money is, right now, in participating as the contractors to the government which supply the components for the big rocket. IF the economic model
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Huh? Maybe you should look up who builds the Atlas [lockheedmartin.com] and Delta [boeing.com] boosters. Commercial entities have been flying rockets, *big* rockets, for decades.
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Guys, you are all making the same mistake: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Arianespace and all those others did not invest their own money to build its own launchers, they were all paid for by national agencies. Without that investment we wouldn't have _any_ heavy launchers at this time.
When you say that NASA needs to stop wasting money on launchers, what you are saying is that it needs to stop paying those companies for providing launchers. Because that is the _only_ thing that NASA does: it hands out contracts t
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Three paragraphs - three completely incorrect statements.
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How can commercial entities, who have so far demonstrated only toy rockets, possibly be closer to achieving space flight than NASA, who demonstrated that capability decades ago and has since done it countless times?
What are you talking about? The commercial entities launch many (large and small) rockets every year, many times more often than NASA:
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/tracking/launchlog.html [spaceflightnow.com]
Why Bother Advertising ISS Missions? (Score:2)
What's the point of advertising missions to the ISS? The ISS is supposedly being decommissioned a little more than a year after the first manned test flights of Orion begin.
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The political reality is that this is very unlikely to happen.
The US has proposed de-orbiting it in 2016, because we are spending $1.5B/year in support of it's operations (not including the shuttle launches); and, given NASA's current budget, they long ago admitted they could not continue to support the ISS and meet their other objectives.
We are only part owner (a major part) of the ISS. Russia laid the cornerstone, Zarya, along with the US module, Unity. Russia, Japan, Canada, ESA (representing severa
Wow! (Score:3, Insightful)
Shocking.
Recycled Rocketry (Score:4, Interesting)
A relevant piece of a recently submitted and rejected article on lessons from post-Apollo to Orion/Constellation. There were many suggestions on Apollo derivatives and follow ups, but only Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz made the cut. Many more could have flown. That fact in itself is a valuable lesson -- build for adaptability.
"With the Apollo 11 lunar landing nostalgia wave over, and the ongoing discussions about keeping, changing or abandoning designs and plans for Constellation, the new Ares rocket and the very Apollo-looking Orion crew vehicle, it is interesting to examine the development, evolution (including evolutionary dead ends) and the many never-were projected possibilities for the Apollo and Saturn components. Encyclopedia Astronautica offers a feast of details about Apollo developments, both successes and failure, in The Apollo Development Diaries http://www.astronautix.com/articles/apoaries.htm [astronautix.com] . Plans for the vehicles were later not so much lost as is claimed now, but were abandoned as unfeasible, unnecessary, and in the cases of some such as the high jumping Lunar Leaper and slithering Lunar Worm vehicles, just too weird http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/apollo.htm [astronautix.com] .
As for the actual Lockheed Martin piece referenced in TFA, it's pure PR. But since they feel the need to waive their flag, perhaps there are rumbles from within NASA that they might consider alternatives.
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That's more like a badly learned lesson, as Apollo was more than sufficiently adaptable to the tasks demanded of it. Skylab made the cut because it could use hardware made surplus by cancel
Why the obsession with "unmanned" missions? (Score:2, Insightful)
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While I'm all for expanding the frontier and moving more people into orbit (I'm heavily involved in a couple of advocacy groups, pursuing a master's degree in aerospace engineering, and job hunting specifically in the space industry), I don't think that space colonies could ever provide that kind of overpopulation escape valve.
Even with a working space elevator, you would be limited to thousands of persons to orbit per day. That's far fewer than the hundred-thousand new persons we have on Earth every day (
Shuttle Derived Vehicles are much more interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea of a SDV (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle-Derived_Launch_Vehicle [wikipedia.org]) seems a lot better idea to me than this massive new launcher. Builds on known technology, a lot less up-front cost, fewer unknowns, etc.
To me, these "other uses" are simply PR that's trying to salvage a program concept that's in deep trouble.
Re:Shuttle Derived Vehicles are much more interest (Score:2)
The idea of a SDV (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle-Derived_Launch_Vehicle [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org]) seems a lot better idea to me than this massive new launcher. Builds on known technology, a lot less up-front cost, fewer unknowns, etc.
A clarification: Orion is a capsule, not a launcher. NASA's current launcher is the Ares I, which has been having some major development problems (and many say fundamental design flaws), and looking likely to be cancelled. However, the Orion can also potentially be launched on a Shuttle-Derived Vehicle, or even a commercial launcher.
Dragon Orion (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Dragon [wikipedia.org]
Or cut Orion and just give SpaceX $40 million a launch. With that kind of money other companies could be formed that would compete with SpaceX for the contract of launching cargo and manned missions.
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IIRC, the Dragon cannot handle a re-entry from straight from the moon. It just isnt built for it.
It's not like this is some sort of unsolveable show-stopper. The Dragon is currently optimized for LEO reentry, but there's no reason it can't be upgraded. Some potential solutions:
* Use more PICA-X heat shield material
* modify the trajectory to use a skip reentry
* make use of in-space tugs and refueling to apply delta-v before reentering the atmosphere
I don't fully understand the Space-X hype. They don't have a good record at all really. Why does everyone want to trust the entire future of manned spaceflight to this one particular group?
I haven't seen anybody respectable seriously propose that. Most of the proposals I've seen have involved including SpaceX in commercial competitions between
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The question I ask is: Once we choose these "commercial" launch companies, do they become just another contractor in bed with NASA, with cost increases, heavy oversight, and get flamed like LM, Boeing, etc frequently are?
As I've mentioned in other comments, even if it isn't particularly sexy, I really believe the way you structure your procurement contracts makes a huge difference. From what I understand, most NASA procurement tends to be cost-plus monopolistic single-contractor contracts, where the cost-plus profit multiplier is just as high for development as it is for the actual product, so there's much less incentive to be efficient or finish the product early; I'm sure the engineers work just as hard regardless of what
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Good point. The Orion itself is a nice little pod for sending up a group of people. The catch is getting that little pod up there! And as another poster points out, there's the Dragon module.
We'll get there, Directly! (Score:2)
Indeed! Stick the shuttle engines on the bottom. Put the Orion capsule on the top, and voila [wikipedia.org], a simple, cheap Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle. The bulk of the systems are already human rated, and there are parts for several of these rockets ready to go. No need to retool any factories. No need to build new crawlers and crawlerways. No need for a new barge.
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The idea of a SDV (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle-Derived_Launch_Vehicle [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org]) seems a lot better idea to me than this massive new launcher
You know that the "massive new launcher" is the Ares series listed on the page you linked to, right?
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Orion is not the problem (Score:5, Informative)
Boldly going........Into a slightly higher orbit.. (Score:2)
I thought they were ripping off the Apollo program, seems like they are going to end up copying Gemini.....
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I don't Orion is very different from Apollo in that respect. Apollo orbital missions were launched without the Saturn V. The CSM-LM cluster was assembled on the way to the moon. Apollo serviced skylab successfully.
They Built The Wrong Orion (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion [wikipedia.org]
It's not only cool because it was quite a developed idea, and feasible, but because it was delightfully absurd.
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NASA Does It Again (Score:2)
Yeah, let's waste another 40 years fucking around in Low Earth Orbit. NASA needs to hire the Duke Nukem team to help them get their useless asses in gear. The Duke wankers only spent 10 years pulling their pricks. That makes them four times less worthless than NASA.
Take the Fithp (Score:2)
The real mission for an Orion style spacecraft is to defend against aliens from Alpha Centauri, who come via Saturn.
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And Michael was his name-o...
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If NASA requires additional funding to achieve its goals, there are going to be problems. The current level of funding is even with what its been historically since the end of Apollo. It seems to me that the current level of funding is the level thats politically sustainable.
Since space projects take years and often decades, any plan that depends on extra funding that is politically advantageous at the time is destined to either fail or be a flags-and-footprints dead end. Programs like Apollo are finishe
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Under this program, how much cash can NASA get for the remaining shuttles?