Orion Spacecraft On the Path To Future Flight

gilgsn writes "Preparations for Orion's first mission in 2013 are well under way as a Lockheed Martin-led crew begins lean assembly pathfinding operations for the spacecraft. The crew is conducting simulated manufacturing and assembly operations with a full-scale Orion mockup to verify the tools, processes and spacecraft integration procedures work as expected."

Comments

I thought Orion was dead

[roc97007]

Have reports of the program's demise been exaggerated?

Re:I thought Orion was dead

[Sonny Yatsen]

Constellation was defunded (although Congress may block this), but Obama singled out Orion to be repurposed an escape module for the ISS.

Re:I thought Orion was dead

[rijrunner]

In theory, it could be launched on another platform. Right now, there is a lot of development in capsules and the like from various companies. Boeing has its capsule under development. There are a few others in various levels of development.

    Ares is mostly toast now. It will rise or fall under a political fight, but honestly, whether Constellation flies, or not, the Orion capsule is no longer is the only game in town. The problem with a lot of this positioning of such-and-such program as THE next step rather ignores the simple fact that we are no longer in a single path of development. Its no accident that this article was released on PRWire a day after a flurry of articles about Boeing being ready in 2014 with an article claiming that Orion will be ready in 2013.

   

Re:I thought Orion was dead

[Martin Blank]

Current cars and trucks bear more than a passing resemblance to cars and trucks from the 1950s and 1960s, in part because the format works well. However, one cannot honestly say that the underlying technology has not changed dramatically. We can now carry more cargo for longer distances on less fuel with greater comfort, safety, and convenience.

Just because it's an older concept does not mean it cannot work in the present (or near future).

Re:I thought Orion was dead

[camperdave]

Ares required the development of new engines, new tanking, new solid boosters, new everything. Development costs are huge, especially engine development. With the "weird mix of shuttle hardware" you've got fully developed and tested engines, fully developed and tested solid boosters. All you need to do is develop the thrust structure (fairly simple) and stiffen the tank (which is currently thinned down to cut down on weight, so really it is just skipping this step).

Re:I thought Orion was dead

[Teancum]

Can't believe this weird mix of shuttle hardware could work out
cheaper than a new big dumb rocket stack. I suppose the
factories making shuttle tanks and solid rocket booster won't
need retooling, but even so, this beasty looks much more
complex than Ares.

It isn't really cheaper at all. Cost is not a driver here, but rather continuing to employ people in key congressional districts so NASA can gets its appropriations bill passed.

As for the factories making the tanks getting a retooling.... it is going to happen anyway. The external tank production line at Michoud has been shut down.... with a big New Orleans style parade with the final tank going down to the port and sailing off for Florida. The employees have been laid off and most of them have gone on to other jobs. There still is a crew left at the Michoud facility as there were other things going on besides the Shuttle contracts, but that was a major part of the work force there. They were going to be gearing up for the Constellation projects and specifically the Ares V, but I suppose that isn't working out so well either.

As for the ATK rockets produced at Promontory, Utah, those employees have also been laid off and many have moved onto other things. ATK landed a cute little contract for the Air Force that is sucking up those employees that they didn't want to let go and were still receiving Constellation funding (the funding is still flowing the the system).

I suppose the raw engineering has been done and there is a modest saving there, but having to bring back and train a whole new production crew from scratch sounds like an incredibly expensive proposition... especially if the funding for this is as shaky as I've ever seen any sort of project funding.

I don't expect more than a couple of flights with this hardware, even if it makes it to flight status in the first place.

Re:I thought Orion was dead

[Teancum]

In the meantime, the Dragon capsule being designed by SpaceX is making it first real flight next month. Heck, it is already at the cape ready for launch, and all they are doing now is a waiting game to get a launch slot to open... and some last minute tests to take care of some engineering questions they have about the rocket. This is both a test for the Falcon 9 (its second flight) and the capsule, but in this case they are doing some in-orbit testing of the avionics, the Draco thrusters, and the heat shield for re-entry purposes. They are also testing recovery procedures in what is for now an unmanned vehicle.

I'd have to agree that the timing of this is a little suspect, and the rocket that the Orion is supposedly going to be flying on has yet to even be approved for funding in the first place. The Obama administration may be eying a variant of DIRECT right now, but that isn't really ready for prime time. Boeing, on the other hand, is going to be flying their CST-100 on a Delta IV. That is a proven rocket system with over a dozen flights to certify its reliability and to work out the bugs in terms of getting things into orbit.

The question for what the Orion is going to be flying on in order to make this test is a very real question that ought to be asked. Perhaps a heavy launch variant of the Delta IV, Atlas V, or the Falcon 9 might be able to get it up into space, but there was some explicit engineering done on the Orion vehicle to make sure it couldn't fly on the EELVs. Yes, this was by design and it was done to make sure it had to fly on the Ares I rocket. How Lock-Mart is going to refit this to fly on something else is going to be real interesting. I thought they were well past the raw specification stage and were making mock-ups and building actual hardware.

Re:I thought Orion was dead

[camperdave]

The Delta IV isn't man rated. Neither is the Atlas-V. NASA is not going to be sending astronauts up on either of them for quite some time. Dragon/Falcon is man rated, but it is quite a bit smaller than an Orion capsule, or even the CST-100

Re:I thought Orion was dead

[Martin Blank]

I look around at Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Saab, Aston-Martin, and a host of other manufacturers, and I see things that look a lot like the cars and trucks from back then in their basic layout: two people in front, a driver to one side or the other, steering wheel, brake and accelerator pedals...

Even the smaller European models carry the same general form as the vehicles from 50-60 years ago. The format works, and different sizes have come about to handle different needs.

So no, you didn't fix anything. You just showed yourself to be wrong, and probably heavily biased against most things from the US.

Re:I thought Orion was dead

[Teancum]

If you can define man-rated, I'll bite here. Both the Delta IV and the Atlas V have enough thrust to place a capsule like the Orion up into orbit, or at least a manned vehicle.

I should also point out that it was an Atlas launcher (admittedly a predecessor to the current Atlas V) that has already seen service in the manned spaceflight program for NASA: It put John Glenn into orbit! Seriously, the argument that these vehicles aren't man-rated is overblown and isn't even a realistic argument here.

If you are willing to trust sending into orbit billion dollar payloads that represent a million man-hours of effort or more, that is something that at least exceeds the safety margin given for Shuttle launches and is likely to be better. There may need to be some minor tweaks to finish any honest assessment to make these vehicles man-rated, but that is very trivial compared to what is needed to get a brand-new launcher up to speed and rated for carrying astronauts. The NRO wouldn't have been sending their satellites up on these launchers if they weren't reliable.

Re:I thought Orion was dead

[morgauxo]

Hey, the customer is always right. Even if NASA doesn't get a right to define what 'man rated' means by rule of law they still have the choice to buy or not to buy. SpaceX has to build to NASA's requirements because if they do not someone else will. I suppose the FAA could add to the requirements if they wanted to but if both agencies published requirements then SpaceX would have to meet both, not ignore their customer (NASA). They can't just build what they want to build and then expect NASA to be obligated to buy it from them. I suppose there are other customers out there but not so many they can afford to lose NASA. As for the FAA I don't think they would bother, NASA has been doing this for a while without them already. Plus, I think it's only within their jurisdiction until it reaches a certain height anyway. If the Senate bill goes through NASA will not be competing with SpaceX or any of the other commercial companies. Instead NASA will be focused on heavy lift rockets and getting beyond low Earth orbit. If they are doing that then dealing with building another orbiter would be a distraction at best. I'm sure those writing the checkes would be happy to just pay SpaceX or whomever else shows up and be done with it. Now... if the House version of the NASA appropriation bill goes through then things will get strange. NASA would be stuck building another orbiter and buying from SpaceX. Heavy lift and exploration beyond low Earth orbit would get sidelined for another generation or two. I hope that bill dies.

Not the big nuclear spacecraft

[DeWinterZero]

The word Spacecraft & Orion instant brings to mind Project Orion. For a brief moment I thought NASA had gone for something cool & insane. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)

Re:Not the big nuclear spacecraft

[MichaelSmith]

Ah yes, old bang bang. I doubt that one will be launched from Canaveral.

Re:Not the big nuclear spacecraft

[Anonymous Coward]

Al least, not more than once.

Re:Not the big nuclear spacecraft

[genican1]

No, it's the Orion spacecraft they are referring to, not Project Orion

Re:Not the big nuclear spacecraft

[shess]

I totally want them to make a Footfall movie and really use a Project Orion craft. Usually they just have a technobabble solution for how the humans beat the aliens, but in that case you didn't need to use technobabble. The humans really did have a big stick, they were going to kick your ass, and there wasn't anything you were going to be doing about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footfall

The link wouldn't work for me, but...

[Unkyjar]

I found another one: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/orion-spacecraft-on-the-path-to-future-flight-2010-09-21?reflink=MW_news_stmp It appears that they've brought all the manufacturing and testing facilities to Kennedy Space Center, which makes cost saving sense to me. I guess Orion is still going forward despite reports to the contrary.

Finally, we're moving into the future

[Just_Say_Duhhh]

Hmmm, the link looks like it has been slashdotted, but since it says "archives," it might not even be the right one. Maybe they meant this one?

As inspiring as the STS program was, it's time to move on. Thinking about a craft that weighs several thousand tons being used to move crew and cargo into space on the same ride just doesn't make sense. We can send an unmanned cargo ship into orbit quite easily, without needing all of the protection that a "human cargo" would require. Having a tiny Orion spacecraft bring the people makes a lot more sense.

How did we get into the "combined crew & cargo" paradigm? Perhaps it was because of the difficulty in providing unmanned vessels that made it to the specified destination, or perhaps it was because the Gemini and Apollo astronauts really hated being compared to the "chimp in a suit" and forced NASA's to put people on every ship.

I'll just be glad when I see something smaller than a double-wide mobile home being used to ferry the humans into space.

Re:Finally, we're moving into the future

[camperdave]

How did we get into the "combined crew & cargo" paradigm?

Why not? The only time you need to separate the crew and the cargo is during an abort. The cargo is expendable. The crew, not so much. Where the shuttle failed is that it did not have a crew abort mode.

Re:Bad name?

[BJ_Covert_Action]

They reused the name. Specifically, Lockheed-Martin, the prime contractor on this system, chose to name their system Orion, while NASA had previously named on of its own projects Orion. So really, there's the Lockheed Orion and the NASA Orion. The Orion referred to in the article is here.

Re:Not a good namesake if we're being honest

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Well to be fair, in the myths you are referring to, Orion is the best hunter that ever lived according to the Greeks. He died by scorpion sting in most variants of the myth due to either boasting about his hunting abilities, or threatening to kill every beast on the surface of the Earth because he was such a great hunter. As such, various gods (usually Artemis or Gaia) designed the scorpion (either giant or tiny, depending on the variant of the myth) to prevent him from doing just that. So the only reason Orion was killed by a scorpion (in the variants where he is killed by a Scorpion) was because he was too much of a bad ass for the gods to risk leaving alive. I'd say that's a pretty cool reputation to have.

Besides, Orion is one of the most prominent and all around epic constellations in the night sky. I'd say the name has plenty of good publicity going for it. Besides, even the movie company you listed produced quite a few good films (Silence of the Lambs, Terminator etc.)

Re:Bad name?

[louden obscure]

i prolly need to get my eye glass prescription changed... on first glance i read it as being named "onion."

Lockheed Press Release Link

[Waste55]

Since the summary link is dead.

Includes video: http://www.lockheedmartin.com/news/press_releases/2010/0921_ss_orion.html

Re:They need to rename it

[Teancum]

There are a lot of people (mostly Baby Boomers who haven't kept track) that think NASA is still receiving about 5%-10% of the federal budget. NASA used to be listed on IRS publications like the 1040 instruction booklet for where tax dollars are being spent. It became such a minor budget item that it was dropped altogether and lumped under "miscellaneous appropriations".

It should also be noteworthy that NASA isn't even the largest space agency in the U.S. Federal government at the moment, as that honor goes to the National Reconnaissance Office. Other agencies such as NOAA and even the Department of Agriculture (mainly with the Forest Service) are even involved with spaceflight.

Re:Your FIRST lesson?

[camperdave]

The ISS could have been done with four or five Saturn launches instead of the 40+ shuttle launches it has taken so far, and the thing isn't even finished.

Re:They need to rename it

[TheRaven64]

Omitting the mars landers and the Jupiter / Saturn flybys, as well as the out-of-system probes shows a selective memory. So does omitting Skylab, the ISS, and so on.