Frank Glover has a depressing comment over at Space Transport News, on the latest news that the Orion capsule has been reduced from six to four crew, for only fifty billion in development costs:
In almost any other form of flight, descending on parachutes, landing in the water and waiting for a branch of the service to come get you, would mean something had gone very *wrong.*
That’s what you get when you decide to do “Apollo on Steroids.” Except it looks more like “Apollo on Vitamins.”
[Update a few minutes later]
A good comment:
More like “Apollo on Placebos”. At least vitamins are good for you.
Sigh…
[Really late update]
Another comment: “Geritol”
I laugh, so I don’t cry…
It is even more depressing when they cannot achieve a capability (landing a manned capsule) which even the Chinese have, let alone a gliding landing on a runway.
More like “Apollo on Placebos”. At least vitamins are good for you.
apollo on steroids is exactly right. You look great for a while then you go crazy and vital organs start to shrink. 4 passengers is shrinkage.
Geritol.
It appears to me that NASA’s last manned spacecraft design to ever fly has already flown.
I assume that with saltwater “landings,” these capsules are no longer reusable as was baselined (kinda-sorta-promised) back in ’05?
“I assume that with saltwater “landings,” these capsules are no longer reusable as was baselined (kinda-sorta-promised) back in ‘05?”
Yes. I deal with a number of apologists for this in the time sink that is Space.com:
http://www.space.com/news/090427-orion-ocean-test.html
(all posts by ‘Delphinus100’ are me)
And to be fair, the SpaceX Dragon would also operate much as I described, but it’ll have the major saving grace of taking nothing like $50bn (of government money, no less) to get there…
Assumption: Orion is a bust and eventually NASA turns to SpaceX’s Dragon to access the ISS and LEO generally.
Question: How long until the Cape Canaveral Congressmen proposes regulations that effectively require SpaceX to assume the same cost structure as NASA in order to “protect jobs” at KSC?
To be fair, that fifty billion includes Ares 1. Or are you assuming that the projected cost for Orion alone is going to grow to that number?
Okay, I haven’t been paying attention to all this precisely because I’ve seen and heard too many of these advanced-tech stories that go nowhere, so forgive me if I’m noticing this for the first time:
They’re going back to non-reusable spacecraft!!??
Thank you. Carry on.
You’re right. I simply went with the given figure without considering that. Apples-to-apples would have to include Falcon-9 development costs, some of which (especially engines) overlaps with Falcon-1.
And Ares isn’t ‘clean sheet’ either, being a Shuttle SRB derivative.
Though Falcon’s intended to launch many (probably mostly) non-Dragon payloads. Ares may never have the justification of lifting anything but Orion (which means not very frequently), as noted in this very blog about a year ago:
http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/2008/04/what_fresh_hell.html
So, barring any major problems ahead, Elon is likely to get much more for his money…
Steroids… vitamins… geritol… Well if there is one thing we all agree on it’s apparently that Orion is Apollo on drugs.