The Apollo shield was small (just covering the nose) compared to Orions.

http://www.spacefellowship.com/news/art41880/orion-takes-big-step-before-moving-to-the-launch-pad.html

Add this disposable shield to all the ones going to be installed on the service module and you have a huge amount of wasted weight and space junk to worry about.

Adding these on when the shuttle didn’t need any ( or at least didn’t use any) does not make sense.
The excuse that they will cut down on vibration and noise is a little thin since they could have just made the Orion capsule that same shape and lived with the noise.

The next time you watch the movie “Apollo 13,” look for the sun to shine through a window into the CM just as the escape tower jettisons. That is the Cover coming off with the tower.

If I understand right there actually was a LAS ‘cover’ of some sort over the top of the command module on the Apollo flights. Best I could scrounge up with a little google searching was: http://www.apollosaturn.com/boost.htm

I don’t know how solid or how heavy this was, but I recall reading something about having a pair of hatches while sitting on the launch pad, not just the CSM hatch. I think this got improved following Apollo I in some fashion as well, but I’m unclear on the details.

I have some concerns and uncertainties about the SLS path. I can see the benefits of having a super heavy launcher, but a low flight right and high cost per flight are significant downsides for a wide range of reasons. In a way I have tended to see it as trying to keep open the possibility of recovering an Apollo-era style program, but one which would need larger than current budgets to be functional. Plenty of other things I dislike about various aspects of the architecture and design, but it seems a set path that DC wants us to pursue, so I think it’s the path we’ll keep working on for the foreseeable future.

I’d honestly be okay with a budget reduction if the rest of the federal budget took similar or reasonably larger diets too. I’m honestly tired of science and engineering investments getting crunched while other sections of the federal budget continue to expand with surprisingly efficiency and speed. It perhaps is one thing Government is actually good at. Rapidly bloating budgets. Not that such could be called a good feature, unless your interest is in political power and ability for kickbacks and payoffs. Bit out of my field of expertise though. I’m not a fan of an ever growing national debt. Just don’t consider NASA to be a statistically significant cause.

I do hope that if we stick with the SLS we at least use it for some useful projects. Likewise, if Orion survives the coming of the COTS vehicles I hope we’ll use it for useful projects that help expand our ability to live and work in deep space. Not going to argue it’s the most theoretically cost effective path, but I’m trying to be pragmatic. If it’s the program we’re tasked with, I hope we can at least make productive use of it.

Since they are using thin, light heat tiles on the outside of the capsule, is that why they have an ejectable shell on it for lift off?

Something Apollo never seemed to need.

Your points are well taken. I appreciate them.

Though I have always recognized that some good engineering data will come from this Orion test flight, the overall dishonesty surrounding the SLS/Orion program just infuriates me beyond words. For the amount of money we are spending on this rocket and capsule, neither of which will ever accomplish any of their stated interplanetary goals, we could have fully funded three privately built manned spaceships, given the unmanned planetary program more money than it knows what to do with, and still reduced NASA’s budget by a couple of billion, thereby helping to reduce our debt.

Instead, we get this Potemkin village of a rocket. It makes me sick.

The argument in favor of this version of the heat shield still being a valuable test is that the ablative mix being used for the honeycomb design is the same they’d intend to pre-build in blocks for installation. It’s sort of like if they’d flown a Shuttle flight with hand-done small tiles, then decided that larger tiles would work better, and adjusted the design to improve the operability. This does not mean you can’t learn actual useful technical knowledge from the flight, as you’re still finding out if the shape and the material itself perform as expected. I’d note that my hypothetical is somewhat less than one, as some of the layout and design of the Shuttle underside did indeed evolve over the course of the program. Some manual processes were indeed replaced with manufactured designs. This didn’t mean earlier flights weren’t useful.

While I’m somewhat biased by working directly on the program, I think it is absolutely fair to be critical about how we’re spending your tax dollars. Only way we’ll do better is by listening to critiques and doing our best to learn from them and find ways we can improve.

I just think in this particular case you are going a couple steps farther down the “useless experience” trail than is truly fair. Fine to argue it’s a capsule to nowhere, but if we do use it, this test flight does give us some actual engineering data to help with subsequent flights.

My two cents at least. Appreciate your thoughts, critical and otherwise!

On Orion they would be protected inside the assembly until the time of re-entry. Thus much safer.