Test Flight For NASA's Orion Capsule Slated for December 4 59
Space.com (which will also carry live web-cam coverage) reports that the Orion capsule is scheduled for a test flight, sans passengers, on Thursday, December 4th. For this test flight, Orion will make two orbits of Earth, with the second lap taking the capsule 15 times farther from the planet than the International Space Station. Officials have attached more than 1,000 sensors to the spacecraft to monitor its systems during flight.
Orion will also beam down images from its cameras as it is flying through space. NASA will use the information gathered during the test flight to make improvements to the spacecraft before humans set foot onboard.
The Houston Chronicle has an article with some excellent diagrams of the planned flight, the Orion capsule itself, as well as some of the technological and political history behind the project.
Finally! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Interesting)
More like 30 years ago this should have been happening. Certainly a test flight like this should have happened some time within a couple of years after the loss of the Challenger. The singular failure of NASA to develop a system that will put people back into space has been an embarrassment for decades with dozens of systems that have been developed and even had "bent metal" like the Orion is right now. Yet except for the Shuttle, nothing has actually made the trip into space since Apollo. Even the Shuttle program had numerous set backs and budget cuts that nearly kept that from going into space.
Keep in mind, the Orion still hasn't gone into space, and the current configuration on a Delta Heavy isn't practical for anything other than possibly a mission to Low-Earth Orbit. I'm not even sure it can make the trip to the ISS with a crew with this configuration. When it is on the SLS, the ISS will never be a destination as there are no missions planned on that platform going there and certainly nothing funded by Congress.
Now, the question is, is there really any practical reason for manned deep-space flights at this point?
For that, you need to ask if space exploration in general is something worth doing? Presuming that there is something worth doing in space at all, you need eventually to put a crew there.
A far more important question to ask about Orion though is if this particular is a practical method of travel into space in the first place? At a price of $1-$2 billion per flight, it seems there ought to be a much cheaper way to get people into space.
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However, unmanned missions to scout (and possibly mine) elements and minerals from asteroids, etc. will likely be necessary within our lifetimes given how we are just consuming resources on Earth l
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Meteorite impact sites are in fact the locations that we mine lots of valuable minerals:
http://www.univie.ac.at/geoche... [univie.ac.at]
The heavy, denser metals largely sank deep into the Earth when it was still forming. This is thought not to be true for many asteroids, although we don't know for sure. Estimates of mineral value range from billions to trillions (at current prices) for even small metallic asteroids.
Necron69
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I agree that money could be better invested in some fashion but I don't think it needs to come out of NASA. We could have bought health care for everyone in the country for just the air conditioning bill of troops in Iraq during the peak of the invasion and occupation.
Really in the end a lot of this is about prioritization or distribution of the available funds. Wealthy neighborhoods have better schools because they raise local taxes to augment baseline funding. This makes perfect sense for the neighborhood
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We are completely and totally fucked as a species if we do not figure out how to live independently of Earth. That means manned spaceflights. That means colonization of the Moon, Mars, and possibly elsewhere. The sooner we begin this work the better chance our species has for survival. The trouble is getting our current anti-science government to believe it.
Totally agree. I can't comment on whether the government is anti-science - it's not my government - but I would also like to subscribe to your newsletter.
And, of course, good luck to the ground crew with Orion. May you be rewarded with success!
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So... The two of you are in agreement that we're completely fucked unless we follow your path.
However, you seem to disagree strongly about what that path is, save that yours is the "right" one.
Here are two cricket bats. Beat on each other until one of you is unconscious or you reach a consensus.
The rest of us will continue blundering our way to the future while you have it out. Hopefully, by then the answer won't matter anyway.
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For that, you need to ask if space exploration in general is something worth doing? Presuming that there is something worth doing in space at all, you need eventually to put a crew there.
What makes you think that?
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It was Carl Sagan who introduced the meme of robotic exploration being so much superior to crewed exploration. The unfortunate problem is that it is important to actually send researchers eventually to these locations or at least somewhat close to them for more timely and relevant scientific investigations. Some people are suggesting that artificial intelligence may be the key, but like nuclear fusion, warp drive, teleportation, and several science fiction concepts, artificial intelligence is always 30+ y
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The unfortunate problem is that it is important to actually send researchers eventually to these locations or at least somewhat close to them for more timely and relevant scientific investigations.
So it is said - without proof. The point of investigations is to get the outcomes of those investigations back to earth since information stored locally on a hard drive (be it actual hardware or wetware) is useless.
Some people are suggesting that artificial intelligence may be the key, but like nuclear fusion, warp drive, teleportation, and several science fiction concepts, artificial intelligence is always 30+ years away from actually being developed. It is much harder than it appears where computer scientists who predict silly notions of human like intelligence any time in my or your lifetime is just not facing reality.
Some people claim (without proof) that human levels of intelligence are required locally for a mission to be successful. The problem is that premise, which needs to be proven before we worry about how long it will take to invent AI.
No less than the lead investigator for the Mars Science Lab (aka the Curiosity rover) has openly stated he would gladly pay even a premium over the costs spent on that rover simply to have a few scientists there on Mars to perform the scientific studies there. I'll also point out the involvement of Harrison Schmitt who arguably performed more actual scientific studies and investigations outside of the Earth than all of the robotic missions combined. There is a very real need for human researchers in these places for actual space exploration to happen.
What were those arguments in detail? Do the arguments generalise
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What were those arguments in detail? Do the arguments generalise beyond Mars (noting that Mars is the most boring place in the solar system)? I'm disinclined to bow because the pope of outer space made a pronouncement.
The argument is pretty simple: When you have researchers on the Earth running a robotic probe, you have at least a half hour or longer reaction time trying to respond to anything that happens on Mars. It gets worse the further out in the Solar System you travel... simply due to the speed of light. Keep in mind that these robotic probes are moving very slow. There are some systems designed to permit the rovers in particular to respond to things sort of like what Google is using for the driverless cars, b
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The argument is pretty simple: When you have researchers on the Earth running a robotic probe, you have at least a half hour or longer reaction time trying to respond to anything that happens on Mars. It gets worse the further out in the Solar System you travel... simply due to the speed of light. K
But once again - noticeably vague about the exact circumstance in which human levels of intelligence (hampered by the limited human body) would provide a noticeably better result than the types of AI that are currently available. Perhaps if you were to describe a specific circumstance in which a typical space probe - say Mars Orbiter, or Cassini, or Rosetta, would maneuver better if ta human was onboard flying it. Taking into account orbital mechanics, momentum and the like.
I'm merely invoking the MSL researchers because if anybody has a reason to be "robots first!", it would be them. They are obviously folks who are getting paychecks from the robotic missions being run by NASA and have the most to gain by dissing the crewed missions of NASA (like Carl Sagan did). If they instead are pointing out the need for crewed missions, it would seem like a contrary opinion that needs some extra attention.
It seems to me that if these peo
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I'm not trying to perform a doctoral defense here. If you can't stand my opinion, so be it.
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You said that manned exploration is superior to robotic exploration. This flies in the faces of what we observe in the real world - where robots perform amazing feats and bring great increase to our storehouse of knowledge about the bizarre and beautiful world outside our atmosphere. It flies in the face of logic - what would a fleshy, air bre
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What you are demonstrating is a clear belief without objective facts to back up what you are saying. "In the real world" you have robots that work side by side with human technicians performing amazing feats leveraging each other's strengths and abilities. There is a point to doing both crewed and robotic missions, which seems to be the point you are missing.
I am not at all saying robotic missions need to be cancelled, and I am certainly not a luddite. I'm also not delusional to think that mankind is goin
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What you are demonstrating is a clear belief without objective facts to back up what you are saying.
I question your beliefs so must somehow have beliefs of my own? YOU said: Presuming that there is something worth doing in space at all, you need eventually to put a crew there.
We have been trying to uncover the reasons behind that assertion ever since.
My point is that there is a role for crewed missions into space.
No, your point was: Presuming that there is something worth doing in space at all, you need eventually to put a crew there.
There may be some better planning that goes on too with those missions and money might be better spent in some cases on robotic missions too, but it is just flying in the face of logic to say that robots alone can get the job done as well.
Describe SPECIFICALLY what it is that humans can do better than robots in the vacuum of space : And I don't mean meaningless tripe,
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So you base your argument on a set of criteria confined to low earth orbit, as if humans in low earth orbit are exploring.
It would help if you actually read what I wrote:
They use robots with those human in these very difficult situations, and I am suggesting this won't end at the edge of the atmosphere of the Earth either.
That means people can be in the rest of the universe too. The edge of the atmosphere is also known as the Kármán line, which is (usually) the legal definition of space, and I am implying that people don't need to be confined to just living on the Earth. Since you got this so wrong, I need not reply any further.
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Describe SPECIFICALLY what it is that humans can do better than robots in the vacuum of space : And I don't mean meaningless tripe, I mean practical tasks to do with the point of going into space: to explore. Show how the need to perform this task justifies the extra expense associated.
[no response]
I take it from you lack of response that you cannot think of anything?
It would help if you actually read what I wrote:
Here is what you wrote: Deep sea drilling even has divers that go underwater for weeks at a time for critical repairs... doing things that are enormously expensive and even approaching costs for sending astronauts into space. I've highlighted the section that caught my eye. How much does going underwater cost? I couldn't find any figures related to the costs of divers going underwater to repair deep sea drilling rigs. I did uncover the
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For that, you need to ask if space exploration in general is something worth doing? Presuming that there is something worth doing in space at all, you need eventually to put a crew there.
What makes you think that?
In the short term, I agree. But in the long term, if we can't work out how to support large numbers of people off the Earth, there's precious little point in going into space at all.
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I'm not even sure it can make the trip to the ISS with a crew with this configuration.
It can't. The DIVH lacks the features required to safely launch humans anywhere. This will be a one-off test. The "real" thing begins with EM1 [wikipedia.org] and the following missions.
Re: Finally! (Score:2)
It would be interesting to see what NASA could do if it didn't have Lucy constantly pulling the football away.
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fuck that, I want that USB hub with 28 ports! I can never have too many USB ports!
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NASA isn't even planning on the first crewed flight until the year 2024 [nasaspaceflight.com]. Yeah, I have faith in the U.S. government getting things right.
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Why bother talking about private sector flights? In 1961 Alan Shepard performed the first sub-orbital crewed flight in America.... something really no more exotic than a Virgin Galactic flight. Less than a decade later he was walking on the Moon.
In that same period of time NASA is going to boldly leap from a test flight of this capsule to sending a crew to an asteroid.... and still won't have the capability of sending somebody to the Moon even if they had to do so. That is the point I'm making, and how N
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If some billionaires can get to the Moon before NASA can return, my hat is off to them.
What's the easiest way to end up as a billionaire in the private space industry?
Start as a multi-billionaire.
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A pox on both your houses.
If we wait to colonize space, we never will! (Score:2)
The only way to ensure human survival is to colonize space. Starting with this solar system but eventually moving on to others.
The only way to colonize space is to fucking START COLONIZING SPACE.
I believe that if we wait to start colonizing space something, space rock, super volcano, radical islamists, pick your poison, will destroy the possibility of survival.
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The problem is, even if we started colonizing space tomorrow, it'll almost certainly be a century or more before we can build a colony that can survive unaided. And if it can survive unaided, all it accomplishes is being a pit down which we collectively shovel endless bundles of cash to no good end. (Well, unless you're foolish enough to th
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And if we do nothing, nothing will get done. Stop judging progress in terms of dollars.
Since you won't, fuck you.
Since we haven't invented a source of limitless wealth, you have to judge everything in terms of dollars. If we spend almost all our resources on building a play tent for half a dozen adventurers on the Moon, and see the rest of the inhabitants of planet Earth revert to a pre-Stone Age existence, would it really be worth it?
the day before Hayabusa? (Score:2)
is it a coincidence that this launch is slated to take place just 24 hours before the rescheduled launch of the asteroid sample return mission?
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sorry, 24 hours after Hyabusa. My bad.
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What kind of cheese will they use to simulate human flesh, like the test flight of Space-X's Dragon. There a new tradition to uphold!
I hope that don't use chedder or god forbid, Velveeta processed cheese product. I am hoping for Welseydale! Wallace is right, it really is the best. NASA can recover the cost by sale it in 100 gram pieces after recovery at Space Cheese premium prices!
Are you insane? Wensleydale is far too crumbly. A dense German processed cheese would be more realistic.
BOOOM! (Score:1)
I predict a fiery death somewhere over the Indian ocean.
Can't wait to watch it (Score:2)
Well I'm going to the launch on some congressional passes with friends and it'll be tons of fun. At least this time the launch is between 7am - 9am rather than 2am as it always seems to be when we attend these launches.
I'm hoping to ustream the launch from the causeway for those who are interested in nerding out.
The Delta IV-Heavy | Orion EFT-1 should be a go and the weather looks (last I checked) good, and my SO and I can't wait.
i dont understand why we dont have station on mars (Score:1)