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

Re:Simple Answer

[sm62704]

Don't they still have plans for the Saturn laying around somewhere? That was one bigassed machine capable of hauling a lot of real heavy stuff up there. The only two Saturns I ever heard of blowing up were the Apollo 7, which wasn't the rocket itself but the crew capsule catching fire, and the Apollo 13 that they actually got all th eastronauts home in one piece despite its mishaps.

The Apollo program that sent men to the moon had a much better safety record than the Shuttle, which lost two crews, one on takeoff and another on re-entry.

-mcgrew

If weight reduction is the issue....

[Fallen Kell]

How in the WORLD can it be lighter for the vehicle to land on "terra firma" then in the water? Landing gear, tires, hydrolics, electric motors, brakes, etc., etc., all weight a LOT. Certainly more then 1500 lbs that they are stating for the air bags for a water landing.