Will The Next Generation of Spacecraft Land In the Water?

Reservoir Hill writes "Work is progressing on the design of the new Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), the next generation of NASA spacecraft that will take humans to the International Space Station, back to the Moon, and hopefully on to Mars. One major question about the spacecraft has yet to be answered. On returning to Earth, should the CEV land in water or on terra firma? After initial studies, the first assessment by NASA and the contractor for the CEV, Lockheed Martin, was that landing on land was preferred in terms of total life cycle costs for the vehicles. Getting the CEV light enough for the Ares rockets to be able to launch it, and therefore eliminating the 1500 lb airbags for landing has its appeal. A splashdown in water seems to be favored."

Comments

Theyy could always ask Paul Revere ...

[trolltalk.com]

"One if by land, two if by sea ..."

Seriously, why not just do the moon mission, then pick up the landing bags as the ISS on the way home. Better yet, why not have a specialized vehicle just for orbit-to-moon-and-back, and transfer to a special-use re-entry vehicle at the ISS?

Re:Theyy could always ask Paul Revere ...

[2short]

Why involve the ISS (besides politics)?

Just put whatever you want to rendezvous with in whatever orbit is convenient, it won't go anywhere.

Re:One vote in favor of landing on land

[Hemlock Stones]

No, the first manned missions landed on land. The Soviet Union (now Russia) landed and continues to land all of their manned missions on land. If they can do it surely we can too.

Re:Simple Answer

[p0tat03]

There are some very good reasons for building an all-American rocket beyond mere politics. It has everything to do with developing domestic expertise in the field, and encouraging R&D in the country for these technologies, which can only serve as a foundation for developing even more.

Beyond what the other posters have mentioned, brute forcing the problem is also rarely a good solution. Instead of spending tens of million each launch to lift a huge, heavy spacecraft into orbit, its weight should be optimized, both for the sake of proper engineering and for the sake of cost cutting. I won't presume to know the specific technical difficulties of a project as complicated as the CEV, but there's a balance between more lift power and reducing spacecraft weight.