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Alternative Orion Missions Proposed

Posted by timothy on from the things-I-did-not-ask-for dept.

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.

35 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. Maintenance in GEO would be pretty useful by localroger · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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:[.]
  2. Pick a new name assholes by SBrach · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:Pick a new name assholes by wizardforce · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The real Orion unfortunately can't exist due to the cold war era treaty banning nuclear tests in space. Orion based on closed nuclear reactor designs on the other hand may do the trick. Even using a decent sized reactor to power either plasma or ion engines would likely get around the treaty restriction.

      --
      Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
    2. Re:Pick a new name assholes by QuantumG · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yeah, cause the US gives a shit about international treaties.

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
    3. Re:Pick a new name assholes by Kratisto · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Ion engines would be impractical for a launch system, since they don't function in an atmosphere. I imagine that the vast majority of fuel used by a rocket is used escaping from Earth's gravity, rather than outside of the atmosphere where ion drives are viable.

      --
      Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
    4. Re:Pick a new name assholes by wizardforce · · Score: 2, Informative

      Orion [the original project] was never designed to reach orbit from Earth but in fact was only meant for space travel owing to its use of nuclear weapons being detonated behind the ship sequentially.

      --
      Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
    5. Re:Pick a new name assholes by Atlantis-Rising · · Score: 4, Informative

      Project Orion was certainly designed for planetary launch. They even did an analysis of how many people it would kill per launch due to fallout.

      --
      "It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
    6. Re:Pick a new name assholes by MichaelSmith · · Score: 2

      Project Orion was certainly designed for planetary launch. They even did an analysis of how many people it would kill per launch due to fallout.

      That's so metal.

      God was knockin', and he wanted in bad...

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    7. Re:Pick a new name assholes by Nyeerrmm · · Score: 3, Informative

      Its a little more complicated than that. The reason you use a lot more fuel to get out of the atmosphere than you use once you make orbit, even on interplanetary missions, is that you've got to carry all that fuel with you out of the atmosphere.

      Spacecraft sizing is like a Russian nesting doll. If you required a 4:1 ratio of propellant to spacecraft mass to get to the moon, and you were able to reduce it to 2:1 propellant ratio, you could get away with about half the launch vehicle because you don't need to launch all that propellant. The equations defining this (Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation) are all exponential with Delta-V.

      Now as you can imagine, doing a return trip is even harder... imagine a Mars sample return mission. You have to have enough fuel in Martian orbit to get your sample and re-entry vehicle from there back to Earth. You have to have enough fuel on the surface to get that fuel and the sample into orbit. This means you have to send all of that fuel to the surface in the first place (requiring more for the entry burns), and of course this defines the amount of fuel required to leave Earth and get to Mars, which in turn defines the size of the initial launch vehicle. Minimizing one of the steps is enough to fit the mission onto a much smaller LV. This is why concepts like using ion engines, leaving return vehicles in orbit (like in Apollo), and extracting fuel from the target (ISRU) are so important, even though the amounts of propellant are small compared to the initial LV.

    8. Re:Pick a new name assholes by Nyeerrmm · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Treaties aren't natural law, they can be changed. I'd imagine you could get it amended to allow nuclear tests beyond a given distance (say GEO), particularly if you made it an international mission with Russia as a partner.

      And you're absolutely correct, a fission powered spacecraft would have no trouble with the atmospheric test ban treaty, since you're not detonating weapons above ground. The similarity between a fission reactor and a fusion bomb is about the same as the comparison between a gasoline engine and napalm.

      Mission planning-wise, I wouldn't say that the two are very comparable either. An ion drive has a specific impulse of around 4000s, and something like VASMIR will give you 15000s (if I remember correctly, haven't looked in a long time). However, something like Orion, where you're detonating explosives against a big plate, has an estimated specific impulse around a millions seconds, again if I remember correctly. The scales are so different you're talking about the difference between 10-person missions and 1,000-person colonies.

    9. Re:Pick a new name assholes by fredrik70 · · Score: 3, Informative

      according to this site. you're correct. I quote:

      "In the early 1960s, Freeman Dyson estimated that each launch from Earth would cause, on average, 10 fatal human cancers among the population of the entire planet (some people argue that these figures may be an over estimate because of the particular mathematical model used). "

      From what I recall from the Project Orion book, they managed to get the estimated death down a bit, but still. A solution would be to only use the orion drive while in space, and only when outside earth's van allen belt as the magnetic field would drag some of the fallout back to earth.

      --
      if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
  3. The only Orion I care about by Hubbell · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:The only Orion I care about by camperdave · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What you really want is a gas core nuclear rocket. Because the core is gas, as opposed to solid or liquid, it cannot melt down. It can also reach higher operating temperatures, meaning more energy into the propellant.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    2. Re:The only Orion I care about by Rakishi · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Actually, Orion is downright sane compared to something like a nuclear salt-water rocket.

      It's like Orion with a single continuous nuclear explosion. Inside the ship.

  4. Welcome to the Moon! by pjt48108 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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!
    1. Re:Welcome to the Moon! by jamstar7 · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

      Funny you should mention this. Per this source, American manned space flight is in serious doubt. If true, I'd say even unmanned American space flight is in jeopardy as well. Why buy space toys when you can buy votes?

      --
      Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
    2. Re:Welcome to the Moon! by Darkness404 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The problem is NASA has a ton of data that is of course funded by -our- tax dollars but is locked away, lost (remember the moon tapes?), forgotten, or otherwise not allowed for everyone to see. Because of this either A) All info NASA has researched should be released to all US citizens (unlikely due to the similarities between ICBMs and spacecraft, though philosophically ideal) B) NASA releases most of its information to US contractors (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Virgin US, etc) to get commercial spacecraft off the ground than fades in the background or C) NASA continues to do its thing and private companies continue to do their thing.

      Commercial space travel has made great strides in recent year but ends up having to deal with all the problems that plagued even government spaceflight, only with a lot less funding and must be a lot more safe than government spaceflight because they have to make a profit and people are more apt to sue.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    3. Re:Welcome to the Moon! by Kratisto · · Score: 2, Insightful

      While NASA is plainly losing its edge, we shouldn't be so quick to turn to commercial means of space travel. Corporations are ultimately concerned only with turning a profit, not with the exploration of the Universe. We need NASA to be a science and research-centric agency. I don't want to live in a world where I must pay for the Hubble's incredible images, or one in which the Hubble doesn't exist at all due to a lack of profitability. If NASA were to end their manned missions program, I wouldn't shed a tear, but its robotics are invaluable.

      --
      Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
    4. Re:Welcome to the Moon! by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Uh huh. The news reporting on the HSF review committee has been horrid. The committee has the duty of reporting the options to Congress and the President. Some of those options are affordable, some of them are not, and doing all of some of them isn't affordable either. The mouth breather journalists don't understand the discussion so they latch onto the word "budget" and write a the-sky-is-falling article.

      The cheapest option, that no-one is considering btw, is to just give SpaceX the $300m for crew transfer to LEO that they were promised and wait 2.5 years, then pay $20m/seat.. if you want to spend a little more, buy seats from the Russians at $53m/seat. If you want to spend a little more, keep flying the shuttle beyond the current manifest (and hope it doesn't explode). If you want to placate your international partners, keep flying the ISS until 2020, by then it'll be completely unusable, but hey. And after doing *all* that you'll have some money left over to launch an unnecessarily large capsule towards the Moon. But just forget about Mars for now because we don't have the skill or the technology (just don't tell Zubrin that).
       

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
    5. Re:Welcome to the Moon! by WindBourne · · Score: 3, Interesting
      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!).

      We had 5 long years in which W and 3 years of neo-cons, as well as 2 years of both parties elected to underfund NASA. Now that we are in SERIOUS economic jepordy, we need to decide WHO we want to meet on the moon; The Chinese OR one of our companies. With Chinese military putting multiple space stations up there (and 1 civilian spacecraft), I think I would rather meet western companies. I have been saying for a long time that we must provide more funding for these companies ESP. Bigelow as well as Armadillo and blue origin. Bigelow is able to provide not just a local space station, but also a living quarters to move between here and the moon. All that it needs it a tug. Likewise, it can provide living quarters on the moon. Importantly, Bigelow WANTS to do this and is funding it. Armadillo and Blue origin have the PERFECT crafts for working on the moon. If we really want to get there SOONER, rather than latter, we will have to have the gov work with private enterprise to build these. That means that we need 1-2 billion to flow to these companies NOW. Fortunately, Augustine sees this and will be pushing it.
      So, what do we need?
      1. First, spend some more money on getting launchers into space. We need it for cargo AND humans.
      2. Once started, they need a place to go in addition, to NASA to make money. That means that we need to get another space station or two up there. Buy a bigelow sundancer and attach it to the ISS, followed by a BA-330. Use the Sundancer for storage. This will allow Bigelow to start the production line.
      3. To get to the moon as well as GEO cheaply and constantly, we need a tug and fuel depot. Come up with specs for tugs that can work our orbit and another for lunar work (perhaps the same, but I do not think so). The orbital tugs can clean up OUR junk in orbit. Ideally, other nations and companies will pay to clean up their junk.
      4. Pay Armadillo and Blue origin to get working systems to land and take off from the moon. That should be far less than what we paid for COTs.

      Basically, with 1-2 Billion NOW, we can be back on the moon BEFORE 2015.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    6. Re:Welcome to the Moon! by Nyeerrmm · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I don't think you can count on corporations to do pure scientific exploration, as there is little profit in it initially. I think you'll always need the government there to perform the "Lewis and Clark" role.

      NASA's problem is that it isn't trying to just do the exploration, they're trying to do every single part of it. Space launch is well-enough developed at this point that they should be using commercial offerings at fixed contract prices to get to orbit, and then doing the high-risk exploration thing from there. Anything else is like asking Lewis and Clark to design their own canoe before heading off down the river.

      The inefficient cost-plus contracts made sense in Apollo: it was a high-risk, low-reward game at the time. But now that we now its possible to get to orbit, and that there are many profitable reasons to do so, it makes no sense for NASA to develop its own LV... especially after its proven that its so inept at it without much larger budgets.

    7. Re:Welcome to the Moon! by serviscope_minor · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I am seriously beginning to doubt the agency's ability to get back into the business of taking big trips.

      Spirit? Oppertunity? There have been NASA build robots trundling around on Mars for several years! Their ability of the people and teams at NASA is not the problem. The problem is inteference from higher managment and the legislature wanting their pound of flesh. This problem is shared among many of the national labs (especially Los Alamos). The people doing the good work are generally there for the love of science and engineering. The people running in it for themselves.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    8. Re:Welcome to the Moon! by johannesg · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      How can commercial entities, who have so far demonstrated only toy rockets, possibly be closer to achieving space flight than NASA, who demonstrated that capability decades ago and has since done it countless times? If it were so easy for commercial entities to do this, why aren't the skies bustling with commercial space stations and commercial flights?

      You are arguing to stop investing _before_ there is a credible alternative. The only result of that will be the total loss of access to space for your country.

    9. Re:Welcome to the Moon! by lxs · · Score: 2, Funny

      NASA rockets. Designed by robots for robots. Don't accept cheap imitations.

    10. Re:Welcome to the Moon! by khallow · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The cheapest option, that no-one is considering btw, is to just give SpaceX the $300m for crew transfer to LEO that they were promised and wait 2.5 years, then pay $20m/seat.

      It's not the cheapest option, if they can't deliver. They haven't even launched the Falcon 9 yet. I don't believe this magic 2.5 year claim that keeps surfacing like a mushroom. No offense to SpaceX, but they need to demonstrate first that they can launch people into space reliably before they'll be servicing the ISS.

    11. Re:Welcome to the Moon! by chadplusplus · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Maybe I'm wrong, but doesn't NASA pay the commercial sector to build rockets to its own specifications?

      NASA: We need a big rocket to send things into space. But it has to have these 15 compromises so that all the various military branches are happy and these 22 senators get contracts in their distrits.
      Private contractors: Ok. Here's 10 different ways of using a big freaking rocket to shoot things into space. None of which are anything revolutionary... mainly because you're still asking us for big freakin' rockets.

      I think the idea of going to corporations for transport is thus: NASA says, "Ok, as soon as one of you private companies gives us a reliable and safe means of transport to orbit, we'll use your services and give you a prize check for $x,000,000,000." Then all the individual companies are free to come up with their own ideas of how to do that, whether its Virgin's big plane to rocketship plan or a space elevator or whatever. The patents that company will earn during that R&D will lock them in as potential monopoly for a number of years increasing their incentive to "win".

      My history is probably way off here, but it took state incentivized individual entrepreneurship to get us to the new world. It took state incentivized individual entrepreneurship to get the transcontinental railroad laid.

  5. Re:Maintenance in GEO would be a game changer... by mikelieman · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.:

    Prizes reduce market uncertainties by providing a floor. If the US were to offer a $1 billion prize for the first American company to fly a ship to orbit and bring it home 6 times in one year, we would probably have reusable space ships within five years, possibly sooner: a billion is a pretty good market incentive. And if the US were to offer $10 billion prize for the first American company to put 31 Americans on the surface of the Moon and keep them there alive and well for 3 years and a day, we would have a Lunar Colony within 7 years and probably sooner.

    The neat thing about prizes is that we spend no money unless someone wins.

    --
    Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
  6. Wow! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A company has issued a press release that speaks of its product in complimentary terms and suggests that we should buy more.

    Shocking.

  7. Recycled Rocketry by DynaSoar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
  8. Why the obsession with "unmanned" missions? by Ozlanthos · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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

  9. Shuttle Derived Vehicles are much more interesting by Pvt_Waldo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  10. Orion is not the problem by actionbastard · · Score: 4, Informative

    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!
  11. Not stupid by S-100 · · Score: 2, Informative

    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...

  12. Re:Maintenance in GEO would be a game changer... by serviscope_minor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  13. Re:Maintenance in GEO would be a game changer... by vbraga · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.