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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."
Ok so why not ditch the god awful ares I booster for direct launcher then all you mass troubles will disappear. Also you will no longer need the J2X for anything as you would now only have two ground starting RS68s and can use the much more efficient RL60 for the EDS engines . I wonder how many billions this will save I do know it will cut 3 years of development times and produce a far safer spacecraft. Direct also makes use of proven 4 segment SRBs the crew launch vehicle and cargo vehicle now have many common parts vs almost non with ares I and V Failure to much such simple an obvious changes to ESAS is why I've pretty much given up on Constellation. This stubbornness is going to doom the project or at the very least cost the lives of a crew. I now placed most of my fate in a continued US manned space program with new players like spacex.