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  • Karma Chameleon
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  • Registered: 2010-07-11
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Topic: Orion Shuttle Launch

Just heard about this on the internet.  So is this the name of a new shuttle class, or something else?

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  • From: Red Deer, AB
  • Registered: 2009-11-23
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Re: Orion Shuttle Launch

From the nasa website.

"The Orion spacecraft will carry astronauts into deep space. Then it will bring them safely back to Earth. Orion will be able to travel to the moon, Mars or an asteroid. Orion also could carry crews or supplies to the space station.

Orion will launch on top of a huge rocket. NASA is building this rocket. It is called a heavy-lift launch vehicle. It will take Orion farther into space than people have been before. "

"Before a spacecraft can fly, NASA must test it. NASA wants to be sure that Orion will do the job well. And it must work safely. NASA already has tested parts of Orion. NASA plans to make Orion's first test flight in the year 2014. This flight will launch from Florida. No people will ride on it during the test. The spacecraft will fly around Earth two times. Then the test vehicle will return to Earth at high speeds. The test vehicle will land in the ocean near California. "

http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudent … on-k4.html

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  • From: Buffalo, NY
  • Registered: 2010-01-08
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Re: Orion Shuttle Launch

The basic idea is low Earth orbit is to be given to private companies, with NASA focusing on traveling farther out. The problem: NASA has no budget to actually do anything. So, they're designing these ships in the hope that once they have them, money for a mission can be begged for.

Assuming the ships aren't scrapped in the next round of budget cuts.

I write stories! With words!
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  • Lamer
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Re: Orion Shuttle Launch

Invid wrote:

NASA has no budget to actually do anything. (...)
Assuming the ships aren't scrapped in the next round of budget cuts.

This is wrong on so many levels  sad

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  • Trey
  • Trey
  • A Grizzled Old Dick With Stories To Tell
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Re: Orion Shuttle Launch

Orion development is still funded, it's the program to make multiple craft and use them a la the Space Shuttle that was canceled.    Unfortunate, but the US has some budget issues right now, we can't afford all the toys we'd like.   And the history of aerospace is full of prototypes that never saw actual service, but useful information can still be gained from the development alone.   

NASA's hardly unable to "do anything" in the meantime, though - they're landing a new rover on Mars in about two weeks, among other things.

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  • From: Kent, England
  • Registered: 2010-02-09
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Re: Orion Shuttle Launch

Well in all fairness, Curiosity was funded and completed years ago (started in 2004). NASA's rather limited in what projects they can start now. They've actually recently had to drop out of a joint Mars mission with Europe.

Orion is a capsule in the mold of Gemini, Apollo and Soyuz (and Dragon as well), billed as a Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV). It's what's left over from the Ares/Constellation program that Bush started and Obama axed (because billions had been spent and there wasn't any hardware to show for it, it was going nowhere fast).

It's now set to be launched by the Space Launch System (SLS) which is the new heavy lift rocket program which will apparently be the largest rocket ever built. It will use converted Ares designs (from Constellation) and modified SSMEs and SRBs from the shuttle launch system (so yeah, lots of recycling going on and yet it's still going to cost billions). It may or may not ever be realised since it's hampered by spiralling costs, politics and design flaws.

The problem is that purpose is often the best driver of design, and the Orion capsule and SLS currently has no clear destination - the Moon, Asteroids and Mars have all been talked about but each of these has very different needs (energy, consumables etc.). So the machines are being designed to cover a variety of purposes and destinations and will likely therefore fall short somewhere (because that's the nature of these kinds of machines). There's no "Moon in 10 years" direction in mind here either, with projections going into the 2030s in some cases. 2030s! Who are they trying to kid, no program can ever have that much support for so long in a political environment as poisonous as that of America.

The tragedy is that billions are going to get funneled into the SLS, limiting money for science missions, and like Constellation it'll be cancelled before the decade is out without any rockets actually being built. And Orion is going to go with it, since having a grounded spacecraft is pointless. And even if it's not, by the time a new rocket system is developed, Orion technology will likely be obsolete.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. - Carl Sagan

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