The Flight of Orion

11 Responses to The Flight of Orion

1. Paul Newton says:

   December 2, 2014 at 7:10 pm

   Paul, you mention at one point in the Orion post that it has a crew capacity of 7 (later in the blog you change that to 4). Originally Orion was to have carried 7 but it was downsized to no more than 4 because of mass issues. I’ve heard that initial missions will probably fly with no more than 2 crew.

   You also state that there really is no technical problem with Orion except for its lack of a mission. I would disagree. Orion was originally to have been 7 person crew, reusable, landing on land, lighter as a result of revolutionary new technologies in its heat shield and other systems. None of this came to pass. Now Orion is so heavy it requires a vehicle the size of the Shuttle booster so it can be launched. The revolutionary new heat shield material never materialized, so they went with a heat shield essentially identical to Apollo’s, even made by the same manufacturer This means the vehicle is too heavy, that every launch costs more than Shuttle. It also means that it will carry no more than 4 people, it will land in the ocean requiring expensive and dangerous water operations (remember we nearly lost an astronaut that way-we did lose a hi altitude balloon aviator, Orion will not be reusable. Originally the size was in part based on the requirement for an on-board waste management compartment toilet in the vehicle, but because of mass that is no longer in the design. They’ll be building Orion capsules only at a rate of one every couple of years which means missions will not occur any more frequently, which is itself a hazard because individuals with specific fabrication or assembly tasks will only repeat tasks very infrequently.

   You also did not mention that this week’s launch is only a boilerplate of a small portion of the overall spacecraft, including no ‘genuine’ Service Module. So its a stripped down heat shield test. The first real Service Module is to be built by ESA, based on the ATV, ISS Logistics carrier. So far there is only a single service module under “contract’, in exchange for NASA launch and on-orbit services supporting ISS. There has been a lot of hype about this week’s test including what NASA Calls a service module, but its just a propulsion stage for getting the reentry speed up to 20000 mph (not nearly the 24000 mph of Apollo returns

   With all of the changes from the ‘baseline’ ‘real’ vehicle, it becomes another one-off kluge test, kind of like that test of Ares 1A several years ago-another expensive and meaningless test.. I’d love to see the rationale for developing the one-off hardware configuration, one-off software, all driving an expensive test this week. So while there is a long term problem of no well developed or accepted mission, there is also not a lot of rationale behind this week’s test.
   • Paul Spudis says:

     December 3, 2014 at 3:36 am

     With all of the changes from the ‘baseline’ ‘real’ vehicle, it becomes another one-off kluge test, kind of like that test of Ares 1A several years ago-another expensive and meaningless test

     I would say that is a bit of an overstatement. The principal goals of this flight test are to evaluate the aerodynamic performance of the Orion vehicle, which includes its heat shield (thus, a high-apogee orbital path to create higher than LEO re-entry velocity). This is not a meaningless test — any spacecraft built for human use would require these data. I don’t agree that this flight is comparable to the Ares-X test of a few years ago.

     I also don’t know where you got the idea that the “original Orion” had a nominal crew of seven. That number reflected the concept that in a possible role as an emergency Crew Return Vehicle from ISS, Orion would have to handle seven people during Earth return (i.e., in an emergency). The original ESAS architecture for lunar flights (i.e., what Constellation was designed for) called for a crew of four.

     I agree that both the design and the mission of Orion have changed over time, with the latter being much more important.
   • Joe says:

     December 3, 2014 at 10:48 am

     A couple points about Orion Crew Size.

     The Crew Size was never 7.

     The original requirements were:

     – Crew of 6 to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) for ISS Missions
     – Crew of 4 for Lunar Missions

     The crew of 6 to LEO requirement was dropped for a number of reasons the two major ones being:

     -Mass as already stated
     – Just as important was that to have two different crew sizes would complicate the design of the Crew Impact Attenuation System (CIAS) – the seat pallet. This would even affect structural design of the pressure vessel as the attach points and load paths would have had to be different.

     This kind of change when detailed design is in process is not unusual. You might notice that for a long time the Commercial Crew vehicle crew size was spoken of as 7. When the most recent Commercial Crew contracts were let, that size was (without any acknowledgement) reduced to 5 Also a reduction of 2 for a vehicle designed for a much simpler mission.
2. billgamesh says:

   December 2, 2014 at 8:49 pm

   “The Orion is actually a spacecraft optimized for cislunar spaceflight, missions which traverse the bounds of Earth-Moon space for a duration of a few weeks at most.”

   Those “few weeks” were probably a major factor in the end of Apollo.

   http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stereo/news/stereo_astronauts.html
   The solar storm of August 1972 is legendary at NASA because it occurred in between two Apollo missions: the crew of Apollo 16 had returned to Earth in April and the crew of Apollo 17 was preparing for a moon landing in December.

   A massively shielded space station in lunar orbit (shielded with water brought up from the Moon) is the safest near future scenario for travel directly from the Earth to the Moon. Eventually the first leg of travel from the Earth’s surface into space will be a short radiation bath to a shielded habitat in GEO. Radiation is square one if people are going to be spending most of their professional lives in space.

   The most important feature of Orion is the escape system. The Launch Abort System is quite powerful and if humans are ever to explore BELO, Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit, this is important due to unavoidable requirement for nuclear energy. The escape tower on the Orion is a critical prerequisite system for transporting fissionable material from Earth into space.

   The Heavy Lift Vehicle with a powerful escape system, hydrogen upper stages to transport nuclear material to the Moon, and the water-as-shielding available from the Moon, is the only path to any manned deep space mission. The last piece of the puzzle is the wet workshop concept which allows for the actual construction of true Spaceships in lunar orbit.

   Mars is a fantasy and not a very good one. Dozens of gas giant moons with subsurface oceans await exploration. Instead of the rather ridiculous scenario of settlers landing on a dim cold dead rock, hauling submarines to much better destinations is the future of space exploration.
3. DougSpace says:

   December 2, 2014 at 10:54 pm

   That is a pretty candid description of the current situation we find ourselves in. My guess is that that similar perspectives will be briefly mentioned by the mainstream media when reporting the EFT Mission but that it will be primarily described in positive terms along the lines that NASA is promoting it as.

   Perhaps the situation could be redeemed somewhat by the SLS upper stage being designed to be a reusable cryogenic stage that could also serve as a lunar lander and could be sized (diameter) to be able to be launched on either the SLS or other launchers. Yet I feel like this would be grasping for anything of value when I would much prefer a complete rework of the vision, strategy, hardware, and procurement processes with an early focus on returning to the Moon in a sustainable way.
   • Paul Spudis says:

     December 3, 2014 at 3:42 am

     Doug,

     I don’t think the media will report this honestly — I am already seeing stories such as this one:

     http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2856585/Ready-lift-Nasa-gives-ahead-Orion-capsule-man-Mars-blast-flight-Thursday.html

     It’s always much easier to print NASA press releases than to do any actual research for facts.

     At some point, we will get an Earth departure stage for SLS — they need this even to do the asteroid retrieval mission. But no matter what form it takes, SLS can be used to return to the Moon, in a variety of different architectures. We can make use of both government and commercial launch assets — we just need to know what we are working with.
4. billgamesh says:

   December 3, 2014 at 11:32 am

   “This is not a meaningless test — any spacecraft built for human use would require these data. I don’t agree that this flight is comparable to the Ares-X test of a few years ago.”

   “I don’t think the media will report this honestly —”
   “It’s always much easier to print NASA press releases than to do any actual research for facts.”

   If there was such research done the questions they raise would be incredibly embarrassing. The first one being why hasn’t the Delta IV been man-rated after the years and continuing shame of having to pay the Russians for rides to the ISS. Of course those unbelievably expensive tin cans going in endless circles at very high altitude are a disgrace all by themselves. In my own view the debacle of paying essentially the same amount of money to launch a space shuttle into LEO that was paid to send a spacecraft to the Moon has made the U.S. a joke far beyond the fact that we are now a third rate space nation behind Russian and China. At least we finally retired the astronaut killer after losing a second crew.

   The problem is not where to go, it is admitting that the Moon is the only place to go. The Moon is the gateway to the solar system. It would not be such a hard admission for the President to recant and point us back in the right direction. Unfortunately his advisers are……idiots. I hate branding a group of people like that and using such harsh terms on Dr. Spudis’ blog but this has gone far beyond polite commentary. The possibility that “new space” will finally and permanently kill any chance of a real space program in this century is real and very disturbing to me.

   Another interesting feature of this mission has to do with the launch vehicle. The RS-68A’s are awesome engines yet there are more news articles wailing and gnashing teeth over the “critical need” for a new kerosene engine to replace the second hand Russian model on the Atlas. That’s all an obvious scam to myself and many who visit forums like this but the average citizen is clueless. As far as the man or woman on the street knows the only space program we have is Musk retiring on Mars using his hobby rocket.
   • billgamesh says:

     December 3, 2014 at 12:06 pm

     I would add that many of the lame slogans used in years past are now contributing to the stagnation of space exploration in a big way. While I was happy to patiently sit and watch Jules Bergman on a black and white TV with 3 channels as a child, the popular culture of today is distracted and harried to a much greater degree. They need some basic terminology properly illustrated for them and not mislabeled and spun as false advertising.
     While the famous saying, “Low Earth Orbit is halfway to anywhere in the solar system” still sounds wonderful, it has been proven false. LEO is not space- it is a very high altitude domain below the Van Allen belts. In fact, GEO is more of the halfway point on the journey to outside the magnetosphere where nuclear propulsion can be used. And only nuclear energy can carry humans to other planets and their moons. The re-branding of common terms like “Heavy Lift Vehicle” is another sorry circumstance. HLV meant a hundred tons to LEO and now means something else courtesy of new space entrepreneurs that don’t have a prayer of accomplishing the original feat. So redefining terms for the public should be a priority, “Spaceship” being the first one that needs addressing. In my view a true Spaceship has Earth gravity and radiation levels. This means a massively shielded and spinning vehicle which can only come by such shielding and be able to fire up the nuclear propulsion system necessary to push it around the solar system while in the vicinity of the Moon. In this respect a true Space Station, appropriate for replacing our present GEO satellite junkyard, is just a Spaceship without an engine.
5. JohnG says:

   December 3, 2014 at 5:02 pm

   A comment related to NASA touting Orion as the first step to Mars: Since we are in the throws of football mania, with college bowl games and playoffs for the pros, I thought a football analogy for human space exploration might be fun. One goal line is the Earth, the other goal line is Mars (please don’t get wrapped around the axle with distance conversions etc, this is only for fun). We started human space exploration back in the sixties and made a few first downs with the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo playbook. Steady progress yard by yard. We, then threw that playbook out, and contented ourselves with safe plays, e.g., operations in low-earth orbit, and lost some yardage. Then, a handful of false start and delay of game penalties brought us back near the goal line. So, what to do? As the old commercial would say, “You make the call”. The current Obama playbook relies on only two plays, first a short screen pass called ARM that won’t gain us much ground if any, and then the almighty Hail Mary. The first Hail Mary of 40-50 yards would be out to a near-Earth asteroid in its native orbit around the Sun. The second Hail Mary would get us over the goal line and on Mars. So, how many football games have you seen won like this? A playbook like this would also likely result in a win-less season. The playbook we should be following involves cis-lunar space, the lunar surface, and using lunar resources. Once again, we could make steady progress in an incremental way, yard by yard, first down by first down. Robotic missions to the Moon to prospect for lunar resources; short-duration human missions to establish a presence on the lunar surface and begin the real work of learning how to work and live away from planet Earth; longer-duration human missions on the Moon developing the lunar resources into useful commodities and gaining valuable experience for exploration missions to Mars and elsewhere in the solar system. Yes, the scoring drive would require more plays, and take more time off the clock, but the odds of scoring a touchdown would be much better. I don’t look forward to two more win-less seasons before we can get a new coach.
6. Marcel Williams says:

   December 3, 2014 at 8:05 pm

   After the creation of the Commercial Crew program, I think it would have been more frugal for NASA to have used Orion funds for the development of a reusable lunar lander that could have also been utilized as a reusable orbital transfer vehicle between LEO and the Lagrange points or low lunar orbit.

   But Congress, reasonably, also wanted a back up option to LEO and to the ISS in case the commercial vehicles ran into some difficulties. Still, NASA could have easily funded the development of a reusable lunar lander/OTV with an additional $1.2 billion a year over the course of ten years ($12) (2011 to 2020).

   But Dr. Spudis is correct. The Orion is a cis-lunar vehicle that cannot possibly be used for transporting crews to Mars orbit or back to Earth without some major modifications and a large radiation shielded habitat module add on.

   The safest and easiest way to get humans to Mars orbit is to utilize lunar polar ice resources for air, water, propellant, and radiation shielding for reusable interplanetary vehicles operating between the Earth-Moon Lagrange points and Mars orbit. And such a reusable interplanetary vehicle could easily be derived from the SLS hydrogen fuel tank and upper stage technology.

   Marcel
7. Gary Miles says:

   December 4, 2014 at 8:47 pm

   The real value of the SLS is in the upmass capability of the 130mt rocket version. A capability that thus far is far underutilized by NASA in its spaceflight plans. Orion is nothing more than a footnote at this point without a more comprehensive vision focused on developing a space infrastructure using lunar resources.

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