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Lockheed Martin successfully powered up the first Orion capsule last week.

Lockheed Martin successfully powered up the first Orion capsule last week.

During the test, operators in the Test Launch and Control Center (TLCC) introduced software scripts to the crew module’s main control computers via thousands of wires and electrical ground support equipment. During this process, the foundational elements, or the “heart and brains” of the entire system were evaluated. The main computers received commands from the ground, knew where to send them, read the data from different channels, and successfully relayed electrical responses back to the TLCC. The crew module power systems will continue to undergo testing for six months as additional electronics are added to the spacecraft.

It is a good thing that NASA has finally gotten this far with this very expensive capsule. However, pay no attention to their claims that the capsule “is capable of taking humans farther into space than they’ve ever gone before.” Any long journey it takes will be quite limited in scope. Humans can’t really travel beyond lunar orbit in just a capsule. You need a real interplanetary spaceship for that, and Orion does not fit this bill.

Genesis cover

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 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

6 comments

  • Pzatchok

    Why do I have the feeling this whole program is nothing more than government funded masturbation?

  • wodun

    Orion isn’t supposed to be used on its own. All the various plans I have seen also use some sort of hab.

  • Craig Beasley

    Wodun is correct, Orion was never meant to go very far by itself. But it is meant to go farther as a manned mission that Apollo did, as part of a larger spacecraft assembly. Right now, nobody has that capability, except on paper.

  • wodun

    The funny thing about it is one of the arguments for SLS is that in-orbit assembly in relation to smaller launchers is too risky and adds needless complications. But here we are with SLS and in-orbit assembly.

  • Pzatchok

    Is the habitat designed and or built yet?

    So what your saying it that this capsule is to do nothing more than carry people up to a habitat and bring them back down?
    Something we were doing with early 1960’s tech. And something we could do again with early 1960’s technology and materials.
    Except for the electronics they could have just used a over sized Apollo capsule and saved themselves about 10 billion in design and development costs. Money they could be using on building and designing this habitation module.
    Hell they could just hand the cash off to Bigalo and have them build the habitat. I bet it would be built and launched before this capsule is ready for manned flight.

  • ken anthony

    Assembly would be two rings with aligned bolt holes in it and an O ring. Docking is what they intend to do.

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