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Alternative Orion Missions Proposed
skywatcher2501 writes "Lockheed Martin, the company producing NASA's new Orion spacecraft,
published three videos (news article in German) showing alternative Orion missions. Great efforts are made to show Orion's flexibility as a space transportation system beyond the goals of the Constellation program." The three videos, respectively, illustrate ISS missions with cargo in low-Earth orbit; autonomous use of the service module; and maintenance missions from low-earth orbit to geosynchronous orbit.
How about using it to invade some of our galactic neighbours, subduing them with our huge western cocks ... err, guts, and then making them into slaves making iPods for us?
I always thought it was kind of stupid that our premier post-Apollo launch system couldn't get beyond LEO. Maintenance of GEO sats would probably be more useful than putting more footprints on Luna in terms of short-term returns.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Every time I see an Orion story I think project Orion. Actually don't pick a new name, just scrap Constellation and bring back the real Orion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)
Of course this type of nuclear propulsion is just made of lulz, NERVA's are the way to go.
Love the video file names... KeepSoldPart1,2 and 3.
As much of a fan of NASA as I am (and have been, since the mid-70s), I am seriously beginning to doubt the agency's ability to get back into the business of taking big trips. Even if NASA gets us back to the moon, we're likely to be greeted by the Chinese, or some commercial operation's management (welcome to Bigelow at Tranquility!).
It seems almost silly to be developing a return to space program, when commercial space is doing the same thing, for less money, and is closer to actually ACHIEVING it.
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
What's the point of advertising missions to the ISS? The ISS is supposedly being decommissioned a little more than a year after the first manned test flights of Orion begin.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Stop by the Chinese embassy first and get a tourist visa. You need to purchase round trip tickets and environment staples in advance. Emigrants from outside PRC are forbidden.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I was going to post the exact same thing. :-(
It would be hard to use for launches today, because it'd fry some satellites, but check this out, if you haven't seen it.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
A company has issued a press release that speaks of its product in complimentary terms and suggests that we should buy more.
Shocking.
If you can maintain satellites in GEO, you can BUILD satellites in GEO. Hello Space Based Solar/Beamed Microwave, and We Win The Game! Pournelle has written extensively on this, e.g.:
For some reason I read that as "Hello Kitty" satellites.
That, and you made me lose the game. =(
Unnecessarily Large Capsule.
How we know is more important than what we know.
A relevant piece of a recently submitted and rejected article on lessons from post-Apollo to Orion/Constellation. There were many suggestions on Apollo derivatives and follow ups, but only Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz made the cut. Many more could have flown. That fact in itself is a valuable lesson -- build for adaptability.
"With the Apollo 11 lunar landing nostalgia wave over, and the ongoing discussions about keeping, changing or abandoning designs and plans for Constellation, the new Ares rocket and the very Apollo-looking Orion crew vehicle, it is interesting to examine the development, evolution (including evolutionary dead ends) and the many never-were projected possibilities for the Apollo and Saturn components. Encyclopedia Astronautica offers a feast of details about Apollo developments, both successes and failure, in The Apollo Development Diaries http://www.astronautix.com/articles/apoaries.htm . Plans for the vehicles were later not so much lost as is claimed now, but were abandoned as unfeasible, unnecessary, and in the cases of some such as the high jumping Lunar Leaper and slithering Lunar Worm vehicles, just too weird http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/apollo.htm .
As for the actual Lockheed Martin piece referenced in TFA, it's pure PR. But since they feel the need to waive their flag, perhaps there are rumbles from within NASA that they might consider alternatives.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I've never understood this. We should be out there en masse by now. You want to do something about world hunger? How about a way to shrink the populace? That's right folks! Train the homeless to live and work in SPACE!!!!! Then send them to places we might be interested in living, or can make money from exploiting! What a concept eh? Too bad it isn't original. The Americas, Australia, New Zealand, all started with prisoners, the homeless, and other social malcontents. I think we are due for yet another culling of this sort. You don't know how safe the mine is til you take a canary down it. We won't know what riches and wonders are out there, or how we will be able to use it for fun, knowledge, and profit until we get some more bodies up there!
-Oz
The idea of a SDV (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle-Derived_Launch_Vehicle) seems a lot better idea to me than this massive new launcher. Builds on known technology, a lot less up-front cost, fewer unknowns, etc.
To me, these "other uses" are simply PR that's trying to salvage a program concept that's in deep trouble.
The idea of a SDV (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle-Derived_Launch_Vehicle [wikipedia.org]) seems a lot better idea to me than this massive new launcher. Builds on known technology, a lot less up-front cost, fewer unknowns, etc.
A clarification: Orion is a capsule, not a launcher. NASA's current launcher is the Ares I, which has been having some major development problems (and many say fundamental design flaws), and looking likely to be cancelled. However, the Orion can also potentially be launched on a Shuttle-Derived Vehicle, or even a commercial launcher.
The Orion spacecraft is not the problem with the current NASA Constellation program. The Ares I launch vehicle is. It does not have the lifting capability, among other problems, to meet the goals of the program so they keep cutting back on the capability of the one thing that its supposed to lift to orbit, the Orion crew capsule.
Sig this!
The idea of a SDV (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle-Derived_Launch_Vehicle) seems a lot better idea to me than this massive new launcher.
Indeed! Stick the shuttle engines on the bottom. Put the Orion capsule on the top, and voila, a simple, cheap Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle. The bulk of the systems are already human rated, and there are parts for several of these rockets ready to go. No need to retool any factories. No need to build new crawlers and crawlerways. No need for a new barge.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Dragon
Or cut Orion and just give SpaceX $40 million a launch. With that kind of money other companies could be formed that would compete with SpaceX for the contract of launching cargo and manned missions.
Orion should have laser guns, not parachutes?!? I guess it's only a spacecraft until reentry.
The $3 billion that Obama just set alight with the 'cash for clunkers' program could have been used to accelerate the Constellation program, not to mention the hundreds of billions pissed away on the 'porkulus'. Perhaps some of it can be rescinded by the next congress and transfered to NASA.
an ill wind that blows no good
I thought they were ripping off the Apollo program, seems like they are going to end up copying Gemini.....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
we dumped as much money into NASA as we do for defense and campaigning for public office we could quite possibly be on Mars by now...
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They're not doing either, they're doing something far more interesting. Orion is a simple capsule, and in that sense it's similar to Gemini. But the point of Orion is that it's a lot more flexible than any previous space capsule. Apollo got to the moon by assembling the entire capsule, lander and earth departure stage on earth and putting them on top of a giant rocket. Constellation promises to produce another giant rocket (Ares V), but you no longer have to cram everything onto the top of it because you can assemble everything in space. So where Apollo was limited by the lifting capacity of the Saturn V, you can launch several large components on top of several Ares V's, assemble them all in space into a much larger vehicle, and only at the very end launch your crew up to it in an Orion capsule.
Modular construction is fantastic, and could prove to be a huge advance in human spaceflight.
Here is my dream: a Mars transport vehicle, assembled in space, consisting of a nuclear reactor and VASIMR or ion engines. You can fly this thing to and from Mars over and over, and all you have to do is launch up a tank of propellant on board an Ares V every trip. There's no need to throw the thing away since it's not tied to a crew module, or anything else.
I don't Orion is very different from Apollo in that respect. Apollo orbital missions were launched without the Saturn V. The CSM-LM cluster was assembled on the way to the moon. Apollo serviced skylab successfully.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
There was and is a good reason to keep manned spacecraft in LEO. Radiation. Geosynchronous satellites are outside the protection of the Van Allen radiation belts, and any astronauts traveling outside that protection are subject to high doses of pretty nasty radiation under normal circumstances, and outright lethal doses when solar storms occur.
We still don't have a good solution to the radiation problem, which is one of the major obstacles to practical moon bases and Mars missions. Leave the satellite maintenance to robots. How about a robotic craft that could grab a satellite and ferry it to the ISS for repair? Now THAT'S a worthwhile mission...
This is the Orion spacecraft they *SHOULD* be building:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion
It's not only cool because it was quite a developed idea, and feasible, but because it was delightfully absurd.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Good point. The Orion itself is a nice little pod for sending up a group of people. The catch is getting that little pod up there! And as another poster points out, there's the Dragon module.
That pile of instantly-updated-with-bullshit garbage website doesn't need MORE fucking Google juice.
There are perfectly good websites for Lockheed Martin and the Orion project, with real information that wasn't put there by a ten-year-old who wishes you to know that Lockheed is first in the production of COCKS or that the Orion will go 5.5 times the speed of light.
More dangerously, we have the idiots who spend hour after hour making sure that we don't call Macedonia "Macedonia," the idiots who spend hour after hour trying to get global warming to coincide with the views of the oil companies, or the idiots who spend hour after hour adding New Age religious bullshit to science articles.
So. Stop. For the good of that child in Africa that Jim Wales is always bullshitting about.
Yeah, let's waste another 40 years fucking around in Low Earth Orbit. NASA needs to hire the Duke Nukem team to help them get their useless asses in gear. The Duke wankers only spent 10 years pulling their pricks. That makes them four times less worthless than NASA.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
The lunar base isn't going to happen. There isn't a market. The space tourism for the ultrarich is in its infancy. I doubt there are enough to keep the lunar base in business.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Pournelle has written extensively on this, e.g.:
Stating opinions as facts does not make them facts. Let's assemble some actual facts:
1 There are a lot of commercial satellites
2 There is a market for commercial launches
3 There have been a few sucessful commercial launches
4 Commercial companies have not taken over the scene
5 The space shuttle is the only vehicle which has ever been capable of servicing Hubble.
I do not know where this bizarre delusion that all commercial companies must be necessarily better than all governments comes from. I can only assume it's by people who have never worked for a large company. Or at a small/medium sized one for that matter...
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I think what's interesting in the vids is the proposal to service Hubble -- again. The fix the satellite biz never panned out for the Shuttle but from a pure science perspective the fix of Hubble is among the biggest science return of anything NASA has ever done. Humans in space can build and service stuff, we have an entire century of planet hunting to do...with limited budgets we ought to go with our strengths. --5-3-7
3 There have been a few sucessful commercial launches
No, there's a plenty of commercial satelittes launches every single year. ULA, EADS Astrium, Orbital to name a few.
I don't know where to get statistics for this but a commercial launch is something very common place.
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
When you have construction crews in GEO building power stations, where exactly do you think they're going to go on long weekends and vacation?
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
is what I'm most looking forward to. Two Orion modules together would be enough for a mission lasting a few weeks, the almost complete lack of gravity would mean no lander would be necessary nor a rocket for the way back, and it would technically be the farthest we had ever gone. Plus the fact that understanding asteroids will help them not kill us. A binary asteroid would be best.
http://www.pagef30.com
As the other poster noted, your "facts" aren't really facts. Also, I wonder why you bothered to take that last bash at private enterprise. Among other things, it completely mischaracterizes the benefits of private industry over public. Private industry isn't better because it is always better than the corresponding government agency. It is better because 1) The profit motive means they have incentive to reduce costs and provide useful services, especially in a competitive environment, and 2) we don't have to care if it succeeds or not unless we happen to be buying the product or chose to have a stake in the business.
The idea of a SDV (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle-Derived_Launch_Vehicle [wikipedia.org]) seems a lot better idea to me than this massive new launcher
You know that the "massive new launcher" is the Ares series listed on the page you linked to, right?
But then again, I could be wrong.
The launch vehicle in question, as has been pointed out, _is_ an SDV. This is part of the problem. The Shuttle has a lot of hardware problems that are being carried over. Some are being made noticeably worse (the extended stack SRBs is a case in point), which is a major reason the entire Constellation project is in such a bad position.
The real mission for an Orion style spacecraft is to defend against aliens from Alpha Centauri, who come via Saturn.
On August 18, 2006, NASA announced that SpaceX had been chosen, along with Kistler Aerospace, to develop crew and cargo launch services for the International Space Station. The plan using SpaceX's Dragon capsule calls for demonstration flights between 2008 and 2010. SpaceX may receive up to $278 million if they meet all NASA milestones. Kistler failed to meet its obligations with NASA, and its contract was terminated in 2007.[4][5][6] NASA decided to re-award its contract after a competition.[7] On February 19, 2008 NASA announced that it had chosen Orbital Sciences as the new winner.[8]
I don't fully understand the Space-X hype. They don't have a good record at all really. Why does everyone want to trust the entire future of manned spaceflight to this one particular group?
Earth? I mean at least until the casinos open up on the moon.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
For long weekends how about recreational space stations? With various stuff like small parks, swimming pools, flying areas (wings available for rent), and fun "low/intermediate G" environments.
Going to the moon or earth every long weekend would just be too expensive for many.
Build a good enough recreational space station and maybe tourists from the Earth would pay lots of money to visit it.
IIRC, the Dragon cannot handle a re-entry from straight from the moon. It just isnt built for it.
It's not like this is some sort of unsolveable show-stopper. The Dragon is currently optimized for LEO reentry, but there's no reason it can't be upgraded. Some potential solutions:
* Use more PICA-X heat shield material
* modify the trajectory to use a skip reentry
* make use of in-space tugs and refueling to apply delta-v before reentering the atmosphere
I don't fully understand the Space-X hype. They don't have a good record at all really. Why does everyone want to trust the entire future of manned spaceflight to this one particular group?
I haven't seen anybody respectable seriously propose that. Most of the proposals I've seen have involved including SpaceX in commercial competitions between multiple providers and creating a robust market of LEO transportation potentially including companies like Orbital, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, etc.
I don't know where to get statistics for this but a commercial launch is something very common place.
You can see a list of recent worldwide launches here:
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/tracking/launchlog.html
As far as the US goes, the only non-commercial launches are the Space Shuttles, and there's quite a few commercial launches per Space Shuttle launch.
Agreed on it not being a showstopper for Dragon in general, I just don't see as a replacement for Lockheed's Orion (personal opinion there - I'll admit I'm probably biased since I work on Orion). There *could* be reason's that it can't be beefed up however, such and added weight, mass etc becoming too much for its launch vehicle. But that's not to say that it can't be upgraded at all.
Also agreed that I haven't seen anyone *respectable* propose "Space-X is our only hope" either. I mostly see these comments online packaged with more doom and gloom for NASA and Constellation. And with Space-X's performance record, I don't see why Orbital (per se, they aren't perfect either) doesn't get all the hype.
As far as commercial LEO transportation, I'm pretty much all for it. Constellation is meant for exploration in my eyes. And the longer we keep shuttle, the more money is drained from CxP.
The question I ask is: Once we choose these "commercial" launch companies, do they become just another contractor in bed with NASA, with cost increases, heavy oversight, and get flamed like LM, Boeing, etc frequently are?
Until there is 'blackjack and hookers' up there, you are doomed to watch them pass you by on their way back to Earth for R&R.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
The question I ask is: Once we choose these "commercial" launch companies, do they become just another contractor in bed with NASA, with cost increases, heavy oversight, and get flamed like LM, Boeing, etc frequently are?
As I've mentioned in other comments, even if it isn't particularly sexy, I really believe the way you structure your procurement contracts makes a huge difference. From what I understand, most NASA procurement tends to be cost-plus monopolistic single-contractor contracts, where the cost-plus profit multiplier is just as high for development as it is for the actual product, so there's much less incentive to be efficient or finish the product early; I'm sure the engineers work just as hard regardless of what type of contract they're working under, but it makes a big impact on the way a project is managed. You also have to deal with substantially more red tape on a cost-plus contract.
Things would be much improved by going for fixed-cost milestone-based contracts, sourced to multiple competing contractors. In that scenario management structures projects to be competitive and nimble, and if a company is underperforming, suffering overbloated costs, or not meeting its milestones, you just switch to one of its competitors. Of course, the problem is that you don't necessarily know beforehand which congressional district will be getting the funds, so that could make things more problematic from a political perspective (heck, just look at Sen. Shelby's opposition to diverting a miniscule fraction of some of the Constellation funding to COTS).
No!
Never!
The Orion game *must* continue to involve taking out the guardian; there can be no "alternative mission."
No game changing, or I'll sic the Bulrathi on you! :)
hawk
For some reason I read that as "Hello Kitty" satellites.
That's okay, I misread the title as "Alternative Onion Missions Proposed".
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The problem with prizes is that it's very difficult for politicians to get their cut, or ensure that the prize goes to the right person (the one that made the fat campaign contribution). Ergo, no politician will ever support prizes, and you can forget about it.
Using currently existing (or near future) commercial launch capability for manned space flight seems more interesting to me. Namely, the Delta IV Heavy, Atlas V Heavy, and Falcon 9.
I think the current Russian proposals show a better & more wide ranging analysis of the task. But who am I to comment on such vast potentials and tecnicalities. Have a quiet read of http://www.russianspaceweb.com/maks2009/index.htm, and recall that almost the entire low earth orbit achievements for the last 10-15 years have been enabled by the Russian engineer's pragmatism, and auto docking/manual reversion enabled supply vehicles. Yes a lot of heavy lifting has been done by the shuttle, but lots of small bricks can do the same job, and probably more cheaply. If only we could somehow just give the world's engineers a measured bucket of finance, and say âCan you do this for us?â(TM) Then step back. Hard for politicians to do. Personally I believe the engineers (EU, Russian, USSR, & US of A) have been doing some stunning work for years, on such very tight budgets, with their developed, and developing robotics, to marvellous effect. Thanks gals ân guys. Way to go, as far as Iâ(TM)m concerned. Totally productive; flaws only hurt budgets, no-oneâ(TM)s bodies; stunning returns to date. (And please - >someone tell me how to insert a line spacing Return at this xyz blog! Please?)
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