4 comments

• MIKE GREEN

  December 5, 2014 at 9:53 am

  I have heard it repeated over and over on the various news services: “The new craft will eventually take astronauts to Mars.”

  How exciting! Not.
• fred k

  December 5, 2014 at 1:48 pm

  Yeah, what a joke. It is ridiculous to imagine orion as reasonable part of a mars mission.
• Edward

  December 5, 2014 at 4:53 pm

  Considering that NASA has recently determined that there is too much radiation exposure during a voyage from the Earth to Mars, I have to agree that the Orion Capsule is not likely to go to Mars. At the least it is unlikely to be adequate to meet NASA’s radiation-exposure guidelines.

  Beyond that, NASA’s studies continually conclude that a large, orbitally-assembled spacecraft should be used to go to Mars (I suspect, however, that privately funded, small-sized, manned spacecraft will make the initial voyages). Further, the president, Congress, and NASA have yet to declare that Orion’s destination is Mars (going to an asteroid is the only official mission, so far — the rest is talk and speculation).

  Robert asked in a previous post: “Why in hell is NASA even bothering with this test flight?” He answered by suggesting that it was in order to help lobby for funding. The problem being that the stated technical reason for this test, to verify the heat shield, is moot, because this one will be replaced by another one for all future flights. Thus the test is useless for the stated purpose and is a wasteful expense. It seems to me that Congress is using SLS and Orion to spread around “pork-barrel” money, rather than do anything useful, such as explore space.

  Although the funding answer is likely correct, I propose a couple of other possibilities, from my experience in the aerospace industry:

  1) This could be a milestone that is mostly a big “check-off” to show progress on the project. (This explanation could also be considered to fall under the “funding” category, as showing progress helps convince Congress to continue funding. Congress likes to see progress on their new toys, and they probably like watching rocket launches, too.)

  2) This could be a milestone that the contractor must meet it in order to receive a contractual milestone-payment. (Although this looks at first glance like funding, it is a contractual obligation rather than a reason for Congress to continue funding.)

  Either way, the reason seems to be financial rather than technical (no wonder this program is so costly). I also like to complain that the service module is also a one-off item, like the heat shield on today’s Orion test. The Europeans are making 1-1/2 service modules as “payment” of their part in support of ISS. Lord knows what NASA is going to do with the spare 1/2 module (probably ask a US contractor to finish it), and what service module will be used after all the European one(s) is used up.

  The Mars references are likely to be attempts to get the public excited. I don’t know how successful this has been, because I was not excited enough to get up at Weird O’clock in the morning to go to my local NASA facility to watch the launch, live, so I don’t know how many from the general public were excited enough to do so, despite all the announcements of the invitation.

  Frankly, this whole Orion/SLS effort (Capsule with no purpose, rocket too expensive to use more than every four years, tests that test … nothing useful) is a cluster-bleep that is not worthy of NASA’s capabilities or talents.

  Congress is squandering NASA’s potential, an amazing and unique resource.
• Pzatchok

  December 5, 2014 at 10:19 pm

  I would love to see SpaceX toss a dragon capsule out farther and recover it.

  Just for the bragging rights.

  Use the first unmanned full test flight of the Dragon V2 and have it land on land or the floating platform just for kicks.