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NASA Names New Spaceship 'Orion'

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the nasa's-brightest-star dept.

An anonymous reader writes "NASA's new spaceship that will carry astronauts to the moon and later to Mars has been officially named Orion. NASA confirmed the name after it was accidentally leaked to the media. Previously called the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), Orion will be NASA's main human spaceflight vehicle after the space shuttle fleet is retired in 2010. Orion was named after one of the brightest constellations in the entire sky. Earlier this year, the rocket that will launch Orion was named Ares I, and the heavy-lift rocket was named Ares V. NASA hopes the new names will become as familiar as Apollo and Saturn V."

5 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Re:NASA Loves Stargate by AKAImBatman · · Score: 3, Informative
    This is proof! A tribute to the recently cancelled SG-1 (although the Orion was part of the Atlantis spin off)

    Atlantis is assigned the Dadaelus. The Prometheus was Earth's primary defense. The Orion took her place after the Prometheus's destruction.
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  2. Re:Stargate? by d_strand · · Score: 5, Informative

    you kids these days :-)

    Besides a constelation, Orion is also a well known space project from the 70s which dealt with nuclear propulsion (wiki).

  3. Apollo Legacy by McFortner · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Project Apollo mission patch (image at http://www.goroadachi.com/etemenanki/apollo-logo.j pg)has the constellation of Orion in "A" in the center of the patch, so Orion is a continuation of the Apollo legacy and a commitment to the return to the Moon. Michael

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  4. Re:Timeframe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm currently reading Gene Kranz's book "Failure is not an Option." Yes, Mercury flights started in 1961 and we hit the moon with Apollo in 1969.

    The difference is that with the first time around, the government threw TONS of money at it and gave it their full support. I have a feeling that if the Chinese or the North Koreans came out tomorrow and said that they were putting a man on the moon in 5 years, we would see some changes. As it is, with NASA's current budget, I think a man in orbit in 8 years is doable...With what we learned from Mercury-Gemini-Apollo, once we prove to ourselves that the hardware is capable, it should be pretty easy to get back to the moon.

  5. The original Orion spaceship by hpa · · Score: 3, Informative

    Back in the 1950's and 1960's, there was a project to develop a nuclear spaceship named Orion. The basic principle was to operate it by detonating nuclear weapons some 60 m behind the spaceship... over and over and over again. Probably the closest you could ever be to multiple nuclear blasts and expect to live.

    The flipside, however, would have been payload and velocities that would otherwise be way beyond human technology -- we're talking manned mission to Pluto without the crew missing Christmas at home.

    As usual, Wikipedia has an excellent article on the whole thing...