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Lockheed Martin Wins Contract to Build Mars Lander
Lord_Slepnir writes "Lockheed Martin has won a contract to build the Orion crew exploration vehicle that will eventually take humans to the moon and then on to Mars. This vehicle will hopefully also replace the aging space shuttle fleet. According to NASA the vehicle will have manned missions by 2014 and moon missions by no later by 2020."
Lockheed Martin has won a contract to build the Orion crew exploration vehicle that will eventually take humans to the moon
Great, the US will finally make it to the moon.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
...those firms that lost the bid were awarded the Uranus probe contract.
Libertas in infinitum
Of course yes, there is a whole different social reason to go there and whatever, and times have changed..
Obliterate advertising!
"NASA told the contractors to build a capsule that looks just like Apollo"
Extra points were awarded to Lockheed for their proposal to use vacuum tubes.
Considering that GW Bush's "vision" of human space exploration of the moon is crowding out much more productive and waaaay less expensive robotic exploration and even basic research at home, I'm even less convinced this is the right way forward. We could also consider the source, but we wouldn't want to get distracted by other failed visionary projects (such as democratizing the middle east by attacking Iraq) when evaluating a plan on its merits.
Certainly, human exploration is much more flashy and is the only type of exploration that captures the imagination of the average population. But what can we possibly learn from doing yet another moon mission? If you're looking to explore the universe, more systems like Hubble will do fine. If you're looking to explore the solar system, robotic probes go farther for a lot less. If you're looking for a microgravity environment, the ISS will do fine. If you're looking for a launch platform to Mars, the ISS or - for that matter - any old orbit around earth is much closer to home (read inexpensive).
Perhaps I'm missing. If so, I'd be happy to hear about it.
The title of this story is wrong -- Lockheed Martin just won the contract for the Orion Crew & Service Module (CSM). The CSM is the party which will transport astronauts around in space, and land them back on Earth. The actual lunar lander, the Lunar Surface Access Module (LSAM), hasn't had its contract awarded yet, to say nothing of a "Mars Lander."
Of course, all this is rather confusing. I follow space news more closely than most, and I often get confused myself. Fortunately, Wikipedia's article on Project Constellation (the overall architecture) has a nice overview of what all the pieces are and how they fit together.
That said, I really wish that NASA would spend this money on the Commercial Orbital Transportation Systems program instead, accomplishing the same objectives in a more cost-effective manner. With COTS, companies only get paid if they succeed. NASA will instead be spending $3.9 billion (assuming there aren't cost overruns) just to get a capsule, while giving a total of $500 million (split between 2 companies) to COTS in order to get both rockets and capsules. To top it off, the COTS vehicles are scheduled to be completed years before the Lockheed Martin capsule is ready.
The Space Frontier Foundation has an interesting whitepaper arguing for why COTS should get they money instead of the Orion program.
Before taking the submitters/editors to task - you yourself should get your facts straight. This contract is for the Orion CEV - analogous to the Apollo CSM. It won't land on either the Moon or Mars - it's an orbiter.
Technology is certainly not where the old predictions had anticipated. Where is my flying car!
Well, you're going to have to let a German scientist hack your foot off. Then, while you're unconscious, he and his friends can have their way with you. All for the flying car.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
> That's my opinion. I believe I said, if we're basically giving up our lead role in space, it's not a bad choice, if overly expensive, to basically downgrade to this.
Instead of using a capsule for reentry and orbital transit, what do you think NASA should be doing instead? And what is it that other countries are doing which puts them in the lead?
In some ways it is better than the shuttle. For one, the design concept (cargo and especially re-entry shield as far away as possible from the explosive stuff and things that fall off) is inherently safer. It is more versatile in that it's mass and re-entry concept does not limit it to low earth orbit. It is thermally a better overall re-entry design. Even the landing is simpler, although it may not seem so at first review (the shuttle has only 2 or 3 landing options and it comes in really fast).
And there are ways that it's inferior. It can't return a large cargo to earth. It can't support major missions on it's own (like Columbia's last mission, where it carried a pressurized science module with over 100 experiments). It can't serve as nearly as effective work platform (think Hubble repair), lacking an airlock and that cool robotic arm. It will only look pretty darn awesome instead of freaking, amazingly awesome when taking off and landing. Etc.
The point that I really want to make with this post is that we are still number 1, although I wish we had needed to work twice as hard to maintain the lead we have over anybody else. Instead Russia, the historic embarrasser of riches, is hanging onto the success of their Soyuz design and doing almost nothing else. Off the top of my head I can't think of a mission not related to the ISS in years, aside from commercial launches. China is talking big, but at this point has launched 3 people on two manned missions and has an unmanned lunar mission in the works. Europe as a whole is looking good, with several major ISS modules to their credit, the Mars and Venus Express probes plus a few smaller missions like SMART-1, and a healthy commercial market, but no real ambitions for growth. Japan has stayed on the down low, catching headlines for the ill-fated but ambitious missions to an asteroid and Mars, but backing away from their original intent to contribute a laboratory module to the ISS. Only the EU and Russia have together proposed a new manned spacecraft, the Klipper, but have not yet committed any real money to it.
In the meantime, the US has continued to carry the bulk of the ISS (although as much due to our own desire to as to any other partner's avoidance of it). The shuttle has successfully returned to flight. Its replacement is well underway. Unless I'm forgetting something, with Hubble, Chandra, SOHO, and Spitzer we're the only nation managing major space-based observatories. We have probes on their way to Mercury (Messenger) and Pluto (New Horizons), a fantastic probe returning tons of data on Saturn (Cassini), and three orbiters around Mars. Then there's those indominatable rovers, which have been operating for over 10 times as long as their design goal and are soon to be joined by the Phoenix Polar Lander, followed by the impressive Mars Surface Laboratory in 2009. Don't forget Deep Impact or Stardust either, the former of which looked inside one comet, while the latter collected samples from another. As far as the moon goes, the Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter will launch in 2008 with follow-ons to be designed based on research over the next five years.
And the private side of things looks good, too. The Boeing and Lockheed's Delta and Atlas lines are maintaining a reasonable market share. Investors are excited about Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites. Orbital Sciences in holding up the small end of orbital things, with SpaceX coming up fast behind. Speaking of SpaceX, they're looking quite sharp with the Dragon capsule and Falcon IX well under development for the COTS program (and Orbital Sciences is subcontracting for the other COTS winner).
I think the progress is frustratingly small, but it's there, and it's certainly not backwards.
1. CO2 (from atmosphere) + 4 H2 (from Earth) -> CH4 (rocket fuel) + 2 H20
2. 2 H20 (from 1) -> 2 H2 (feed back into 1) + O2 (oxygen for rocket fuel)
You fly to Mars with just enough fuel to get you there, create your own fuel from the Martian atmosphere, and fly back. To make things less risky, we send the first one unmanned, so there's a return vehicle on the surface of Mars all fueled up when humans arrive.
The 300 tons is only if you insist on bringing the fuel for your return journey along with you.
This is clearly described in The Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin. Surprised more people haven't read that.
Zubrin's very well-written book makes a compelling argument that a bit of cleverness and rational analysis would go a lot farther than the "drive your truck to Mars" approach (perfect "feel good" weekend read). As far as I remember, Zubrin was one of the people who got the possibility of going to Mars on the media radar. He also founded the Mars Society.
The only way out of this dilemma is to look for phenomenon that goes beyond our current understanding of physics. One possibility is the new model (of physics) developed by Burkhard Heim. He postulated additional dimensions beyond the 4 known ones: 3 spatial dimensions plus time. Using these additional dimensions, he rewrote general relativity in a quantum framework.
From this model, Heim developed a theory that enabled physicists to accurately calculate the masses of the fundamental particles. Unfortunately, this theory is the only part (of his work) that has been peer-reviewed in a journal.
Is the rest of his theory true? If it is true, it would have incredible ramifications. It means that we can build a hyperdrive to power a spacecraft to mars in about 3 hours. The hyperdrive would shove the spacecraft into a strange place which is outside of our standard universe of 4 dimensions; in that strange place, the speed of light is much faster than that in our universe. The hyperdrive would then push the spacecraft along one of those additional dimensions (beyond the basic 4 dimensions), powering the spacecraft towards Mars along that other worldly dimension.
The American military thinks that Heim's model is valid and is actually attempting to build a prototype of the hyperdrive.