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NASA's Orion Capsule Reaches Orbit
PaisteUser sends word that NASA's Orion capsule successfully reached orbit this morning after a flawless launch atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket. Video of the launch is available on YouTube, and the Orion Mission blog has frequent updates as mission milestones are reached.
Mission managers said the rocket and capsule performed perfectly during the initial phases of the test. "It was just a blast to see how well the rocket did," said Mark Geyer, NASA's Orion program manager. After Orion makes its first circuit around the planet, the rocket's upper stage will kick it into a second, highly eccentric orbit that loops as far as 3,600 miles from Earth. Then Orion will come screaming back into Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 20,000 mph — 80 percent of the velocity that a spacecraft returning from the moon would experience. This particular Orion is missing a lot of the components that would be needed for a crewed flight, and it won't be carrying humans. Instead, it's outfitted with more than 1,200 sensors to monitor how its communication and control systems deal with heightened radiation levels, how its heat shield handles re-entry temperatures that are expected to rise as high as 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and how its parachutes slow the craft down for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
The capabilities of the rocket.
To be pedantic: the rocket's capabilities were known, but the capsule's capabilities (heat shield, rad shielding, chutes, etc) needed testing. Large, complex systems on whose function lives will depend should be checked and tested in at least one realistic run before crews are committed to them.
This is the "trial by fire" they need to see if you can leave earth orbit in the Orion capsule. They're taking it out on a long burn to pass through the inner Van Allen belt which ought to give them all the info they need on radiation exposure and its effects on the capsule's systems. Then they get to find out how well the heat shield holds up on re-entry (at that speed the shield should reach 4000 degrees F).
All of this is also completely automated, which is a bonus feature for safety reasons if the crew ever gets incapacitated.
Most of the command module avionics, control system, fore and aft heat shield, power and thermal subsystem, and recovery systems like the parachute system.
Quite a few things, actually,
Here is a blog reporting lift to the second orbit: http://space.io9.com/will-orio...
They are making sure that their spacecraft actually works before putting people in it. Not that hard to suss out.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
What great news to wake up to! Hoping for many more optimism-promoting successes like this on the road to humans living in space habitats that can duplicate themselves from sunlight and asteroidal or lunar ores.
Here is a PBS NewsHour video with launch footage:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/up...
BTW, that PBS NewsHour Orion article led me to another PBS NewsHour article which formed the basis of my most recent "optimistic" Slashdot story submission on how restoring 1970s overtime regulations could boost the US economy:
http://slashdot.org/submission...
With a stronger economy, maybe there would be even more demand for space-related ventures of all sorts?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
There's certainly some truth to that. We keep hearing this is going to be the vehicle that's going to take us to Mars. Excuse me? Exactly how is a vehicle that can only carry 6 people carry supplies for even one person for nearly a year? Also, it's supposedly designed for missions lasting at most 21 days. They'd better be strapping it to a really fast rocket if they expect to get to Mars and back in 21 days!
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
Capabilities of the space craft being 3600 miles above Earth.
I am a bit disappointed though, I would like to see how she performs at least after a loop or two around the moon. To get Orion out in space for a couple loopty loops around the planet feels like such a waste of taxpayer money. Know, baby steps, but can we at least take a full step rather than this edging forward. When we look at the size and scale of Apollo in comparison to this, we would have already been launching people after the engineering modifications, after barbequing a trio of astronauts.
We have been working on Constellation/Orion/SLS since 2005 or possibly earlier, post Columbia 2003, when we thought the space shuttles were going to need to be retired. Sadly, if this had been Apollo, we would already be seeing Neil on the Moon's surface waving back at us. There should be no reason why we shouldn't be able to get our own people up to a space station largely funded by us. I say we push forward with Orion testing, but also use it as a supply tool for the ISS.
Place something witty here
You HAVE to have wings for space!
Dude, they're not wings, they're "S-Foils." Get with the program.
I was reading "Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization" by Spencer Wells this morning. He makes the point that hunter/gatherers tend to walk away from social conflicts, whereas people in large militaristic agricultural hierarchies instead tend to end up fighting wars for resources as they see no other alternatives. I had a lot of youthful optimism in the 1970s stemming in part from the US space program and many space-related TV shows (Thunderbirds, Star Trek, Space: 1999, Lost In Space). To be potentially capable of the military conquest of the planet Earth, a country probably has to be of the scale of WWII Germany or the USA -- having about 5% of the planet's population and land. So that means, ignoring moral aspects and such, the maximum return on military investment for Empire can be at most about 20 to 1 relative to the total resources (including people) you are starting with and essentially gambling. By contrast, investments in Research & Development, such as the space program like with Orion or new energy sources like hot or cold fusion or dirt-cheap solar PV or whatever have the potential to produce much greater returns than 20:1 on investment. Imagine if the USA had poured the cost of the Iraq war (three or more trillion US$ at this point) into fusion research. We might have 1000X as much cheap less-polluting energy to use (including for space launches) than we have now. Increasing human capability to get into space and live there in self-replicating space habitats potentially could produce another 1000X or more return in land area to live in. Even as 100 trillion dollars to make the first such self-replicating space habitat, the ROI is so much higher than that of preparing to fight a global war of empire-building.
Maybe we can see a return to other ideas, like those from back when NASA overall was more optimistic under Carter?
"Advanced Automation for Space Missions"
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/...
"This document is the final report of a study on the feasability of using machine intelligence, including automation and robotics, in future space missions. The 10-week study was conducted during the summer of 1980 by 18 educators from universities throughout the United States who worked with 15 NASA program engineers. The specific study objectives were to identify and analyze several representative missions that would require extensive applications of machine intelligence, and then to identify technologies that must be developed to accomplish these types of missions. This study was sponsored jointly by NASA, through the Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology and the Office of University Affairs, and by the American Society for Engineering Education as part of their continuing program of summer study faculty fellowships. Co-hosts for the study were the NASA Ames Research Center and the University of Santa Clara, where the study was carried out. Project co-directors were James E. Long of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Timothy J. Healy of the University of Santa Clara."
There are probably nuances here regarding how much of the country is at risk in such a military gamble and so on, as well as the value of military investments for deterrence (how much is enough?), but that is the broad brush picture I've always seen based on that early optimism. And given that a supervolcano like Toba (mentioned by Spencer Wells as killing of most humans about 70,000 years ago) or a pandemic (like Ebola) could wipe out most people (from a decade long winter and a new ice age), it seems investments in cooperation to develop productive innovations including space habitats has a much better risk/reward ratio than most military investments which ultimately still don't secure you against supervolcanos or plagues and similar things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
While it has sometimes been called "The Conquest of Space", it is a very d
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Agreed, though it brings up a bigger (albeit personal) bitch-n-moan on my part...
We went from zero to Moon in about 24 years (1945-1969), but then did approximately bupkis in the realm of manned exploration for 45 years after that (okay, Space Shuttle, ISS, etc - but we're talking manned planetary exploration here, not just repeating the same shit we've done over and over again with only trivial increments.)
I remember as a kid anticipating a shot of going to distant worlds as an adult, but damn - by the time they *finally* get around to putting someone on Mars, I'll be damned near retired (and definitely too old for consideration of such a thing.) I just wish NASA would have gotten their shit straight and kept pushing, instead of dropping it in the early 1970s and deciding 'hey, let's make this shuttle thingy!'
Some of us would have wanted to see things happen faster, and sooner - I know I'm not alone in thinking this...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Actually, not so much. The moon has to deal with a month-long days and extreme temperature fluctuations - admittedly both could be avoided by building on the peaks of eternal light, but that puts you a long way from the only suspected water reserves. And does nothing to help with the clinging, razer-sharp dust that will wreak havoc with every gasket and flexible joint in use, while making exploration extremely difficult (that first step is a doozy).
Mars in contrast has much milder temperatures, an almost perfectly Earth-normal day, nice smooth dust, plenty of water, and all the CO2 and nitrogen you could want delivered right to your doorstep - awesomely useful materials readily convertible to air, food, and all manner of cellulose-based construction materials. And it's only about 7% further away as measured in delta-V*. There's also 57% less solar-based radiation, but since both locations have plenty of dirt you could hide under that probably comes down in the moon's favor - solar panels will be similarly less effective.
* delta-V (km/s) from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
Earth -> LEO: ~9.65 (average)
LEO -> Moon: 5.93
LEO -> Mars transfer orbit: 4.3
Mars Transfer orbit -> Low Mars orbit: 2.7
And since Mars has an atmosphere deorbitting is essentially free.
So
Earth -> Moon: 15.58
Earth -> Mars: 16.65
Difference: 6.9%
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Its not a waste.
Making a "couple loopty loops" is a required step along the way.
The Apollo project didn't start by going straight to the moon. There was a lot of testing before
Earth orbit testing
Lunar orbit testing
Then landing on the moon.
emt 377 emt 4
NASA could only do what Congress gave them the money to do. Same could be said with the SSC. The Luddites we kept sending to Congress made sure that the money Congress appropriated for federal spending, federal subsidies, and federal tax relief benefited the "people" who put them there. As in - not us, but - their real financial contributors. Remember - you get the NASA and the Congress that you pay for!
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
did approximately bupkis in the realm of manned exploration for 45 years after that
But some fantastically AWESOME things in the realm of unmanned exploration. Which got us all the useful aspects of space exploration which the big price tag or the trouble of launching from mars. Downside: No martian space heroes.
Give it a rest grandpa, robots are the future.
I'm glad to see this flight finally, but the flight trajectory of this flight was eerily similar to the first launch of the Saturn V. That mission also tested the Apollo spacecraft reentry characteristics at higher than LEO speed. Well, plus testing the largest booster ever built in all-up configuration on its first flight. So NASA has basically taken an off the shelf military booster (Delta IV Heavy) and launched an uncrewed Orion spacecraft and it worked -- great. So their PR release should have said, "We have now almost achieved the same capability with Orion as we had in 1967 with Apollo." Instead, the official commentary from Mission Control is, " 'There's your new spacecraft, America,' " Mission Control commentator Rob Navias said as the Orion capsule neared the water 270 miles off Mexico's Baja peninsula. Navias called the journey "the most perfect flight you could ever imagine." In 1967 the commentary from Mission Control would have been something like, "The vehicle performed nominally" One of the things I miss about the old NASA was their understated PR at the time -- just the engineering description of events, little fluff. Now I get the feeling that a division of PR hacks are crafting every word of commentary ahead of time.
Durring the Apollo days, I bought a TI SR11 pocket calculator, it could do arthimatic, squares, square roots, and had a pi key and cost me $104.00! Now your car is probably 1000X electronically more capable than an Apollo capsule, Onstar would make that more like 100K. The Apollo Guidance Computer had a CPU that was made out of 2,800 dual 3-input NOR gates hand wire-wrapped and bedded in epoxy, 2K of 16 bit read-write magnetic core memory and 36 kilowords of read-only core rope memory.
So most of what you are calling a trace, was actually a 40 gage silver plated copper wire.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Hey I wanna see people go to Mars as much as anyone here. But let's get realistic: Mars is way harder to get to than the moon. WAY harder.
And since Mars has an atmosphere deorbitting is essentially free.
Not even close. Landing a heavy craft on Mars is difficult. In fact the top scientists in the world (including NASA) aren't even sure how we're gonna do it exactly. Smithsonian mag has a lengthy and highly informative article on this.
So
Earth -> Moon: 15.58
Earth -> Mars: 16.65
Difference: 6.9%
Yes but that doesn't include the time to get there. Moon = 3 days. Mars = 9 to 12 months. If you're sending a robotic probe then no problem. But if you're sending humans, compare the weight in supplies (food water etc) that you need for a 3 day journey vs. a 10 month journey. That's a gigantic weight difference. And that's not even counting the shielding you will need for a Mars journey.
You got a source for that decrompression bit? The Wikipedia article doesn't mention any in-flight problems, but then again their whole coverage of Buran is pretty sparse.
(This article is in fact #3 in a Google search for "Buran decompress")
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
There is also no excuse for using a tiny little capsule
Weight.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Haven't seen it, but basically yes. I had not thought about the issue of how the load would distribute across his arms, I just assumed ( bad, I know ) he/they/it/etc would somehow manage that. I guess I figured he would use his body more...
Loved the old "Man of Steel, Woman of kleenex" story....
I also hate the "asteroid about to hit earth, pulverize it with a nuke" scenario. They usually show the asteroid just about to hit, like within a small handful of earth radii, then all that mass being turned into large rocks instead of one rock is somehow supposed to change things from "nothing much will survive" to "oh, look at the pretty light show".
emt 377 emt 4