Aerojet Rocketdyne wins contract from Lockheed Martin to build more Orion engines
Aerojet Rocketdyne announced yesterday that it has been awarded a new $67 million contract from Lockheed Martin to build the Orion propulsion engines for Artemis missions six though eight.
This contract option includes delivery of three additional sets of Orion’s service module auxiliary engines and three additional jettison motors. The eight auxiliary engines each produce 105 pounds of thrust to help maintain Orion’s in-space trajectory and position, and supplement the Orion Main Engine. The jettison motor, located on Orion’s Launch Abort System (LAS), generates 40,000 pounds of thrust to separate the LAS from the crew module during both nominal operations and abort scenarios, allowing the spacecraft to continue on its journey. The jettison motor is the only motor on the LAS that fires during every mission.
These Artemis missions are not expected to occur until very late in this decade, by which time Starship will likely be making regular commercial trips to the Moon. At that time Orion will look increasingly ridiculous next to Starship, and will demonstrate starkly the difference in what government can do versus a free private sector.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Aerojet Rocketdyne announced yesterday that it has been awarded a new $67 million contract from Lockheed Martin to build the Orion propulsion engines for Artemis missions six though eight.
This contract option includes delivery of three additional sets of Orion’s service module auxiliary engines and three additional jettison motors. The eight auxiliary engines each produce 105 pounds of thrust to help maintain Orion’s in-space trajectory and position, and supplement the Orion Main Engine. The jettison motor, located on Orion’s Launch Abort System (LAS), generates 40,000 pounds of thrust to separate the LAS from the crew module during both nominal operations and abort scenarios, allowing the spacecraft to continue on its journey. The jettison motor is the only motor on the LAS that fires during every mission.
These Artemis missions are not expected to occur until very late in this decade, by which time Starship will likely be making regular commercial trips to the Moon. At that time Orion will look increasingly ridiculous next to Starship, and will demonstrate starkly the difference in what government can do versus a free private sector.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The only way I can imagine anything positive about Orion is if it is in fact a phony program, designed to reimburse Lockheed for a top-secret hypersonic SR-72 type airframe. That, they could probably pull off!
These Artemis missions are not expected to occur until very late in this decade
With or without Starship, I’d be beyond shocked if Artemis 6-8 fly before the mid 2030’s, honestly.
The only way I can imagine anything positive about Orion is if it is in fact a phony program, designed to reimburse Lockheed for a top-secret hypersonic SR-72 type airframe. That, they could probably pull off!
For this kind of money, I hope to gosh it’s powered by anti-gravity.
Orion will be flying after Starship is scrapped.
“Orion will be flying after Starship is scrapped.”
If it is, it will amount to a dismal failure for us as a space power.
For $4 billion a pop, we could do 4 Discovery missions and a pair of New Frontiers probes every year. I mean, if *science* is the only pretence we are after (though we all know it’s not); because we’d get far more science out of all that than whatever brief government rock collecting field trips an Orion can lug to Luna every 12-18 months.
Healthy skepticism about what SpaceX can do is one thing; but I swear, some people seem actively invested in its failure.
“…we’d get far more science out of all that than whatever brief government rock collecting field trips an Orion can lug to Luna every 12-18 months.”
And Orion can’t lug anything to the lunar surface, just to lunar orbit. For a few weeks. Using a giant, single-use rocket.