Jon Goff attended an interesting meeting at SwRI last week.
While a dual-Orion mission may be doable for a two-person crew, I still think that it’s more of a stunt than a serious mission, and I actually question the value of sending people to a NEO early, other than to demonstrate and practice deep-space capability. I’d also send an “armada” of two. I’m not sure you get sufficient redundancy from a single dual-Orion mission, due to potential common cause for the two docked vehicles. With two separate “ships” flying in a loose formation, you’d have a lot more depth in safety.
Of course, Orions won’t be cheap. Maybe Dragons instead. Then you’d get the bonus of having an asteroid map with the words, “Here be Dragons…” 🙂
But as Bigelow said, what you really want is an expandable habitat, and just take the capsule along for the entry, as (I suggested to Keith Reiley at Boeing yesterday on the phone) a motor home drags a car along for short excursions. Also, I can’t speak to what Boeing plans, but if I were them, I’d be scarring CST for deep space.
[Update a while later]
Now that I think about it, if you really want to eliminate common cause (other than a major solar flare), your armada would consist of a CST-based craft, an Orion-based craft (if you could afford it) and a Dragon-based craft.
Personally, I find LockMart’s Lunar far-side Orion mission to be a more serious study/mission. It also has the advantage of demonstrating how to do BEO without HLV.
I see very little value in a Plymouth rock mission, unless it uses a refuelable and reusable spacecraft, in which case it would have enormous value.
Rand,
I do not know about the Dragon, as I have seen no details of their systems; but my understanding is that the Boeing vehicle is being designed around LEO “taxi” requirements (Example: Their ECLSS single fault tolerant requirement is met for the cabin air circulation fan by “blow down” from their breathing gas supply rather than a redundant fan. A good trade where you will never be more 90 minutes from an emergency de-entry burn, but not for a mission where it could be weeks or months away). I also do not know if they are allowing for scarring for upgrades for BEO missions.
For once I will play the radical. If your architecture involves a real Multipurpose Crew Vehicle (that is orbit to orbit) and it had all the proper redundancy, why would an upgrade to the “taxi” be required (beyond survivability for mission duration)?
Additionally, since “some assembly will be required” (orbit to orbit module, propulsion stage, etc.) would it really be necessary to take the “taxi” (re-entry heat shielding and all) all the way to the destination and back. Why not return to the assembly point (presumably in LEO – ISS?, Bigelow station?) and catch a ride home from there?
Joe
The taxi can serve as a lifeboat should something bad happen to your other vehicle. It may also be a safer place for the crew to retreat to in the event of a solar flare. Giving the taxi a heat shield sufficient to handle reentry from deep space instead of just LEO allows for handling a situation where systems failure or other emergency doesn’t give you the option of entering LEO first. You could also have the crew come straight into the reentry phase and have the habitation module attempt an orbital insertion maneuver (burn and aerobraking or aerocapture with aerobraking) without the mass of the crew or the crew module. In short, taking the taxi capsule with you adds a level of redundancy and mission flexibility that wouldn’t be possible without it.
Larry J,
All good points. These definite safety advantages vs. cost mass complexity increases would make good points for a trade study.
For what it is worth i suspect saftey would win. 🙂
Joe
Once thing my experience flying satellites taught me is that Murphy’s Law works in space. Bad stuff happens no matter how well you plan or build your systems. If you design a system where everything has to work properly, you’re designing for failure and in this case, crew loss.
I actually asked Josh about Dragon or Sundancer-based options. He said they had actually considered them, but there just wasn’t enough info available to evaluate them.
That said, while reasonable people can disagree on the details (and honestly, I’m probably closer to Rand on this one), I’m glad that a big aerospace company is providing credible, well-thought-out alternatives to the ridiculous NEA missions that NASA’s HEFT group is currently investigating.
~Jon
I’m glad that a big aerospace company is providing credible, well-thought-out alternatives to the ridiculous NEA missions that NASA’s HEFT group is currently investigating.
I agree. I think that HEFT should be terminated with extreme prejudice.
MPM Says:
December 14th, 2010 at 11:01 am
“I see very little value in a Plymouth rock mission, unless it uses a refuelable and reusable spacecraft, in which case it would have enormous value.”
^^
HEFT serves a very valuable role. It shows that, even with a DIRECT-like SDHLV, exploration missions aren’t just magically going to follow right away. The launcher development and operation budget postpones the mission hardware development well into the 2020s.
Lots of people seem to think that the money works this way:
Step 1) Built J-130 (or whatever) and Orion
Step 2) …
Step 3) 2020: Lunar landings! NEOs!
Why is it that the pro-Direct folks post as Anon?
Anon looks anti-direct to me.
To paraphrase Malcom X, ‘We need to land on Plymouth Rock before Plymouth Rock lands on us!’
Hadn’t heard of HEFT. Now that I have [channeling my sixth sense] I see stupid people. They don’t know their stupid.
You don’t need a heavy lift. It’s Orion with an engine stage. Isn’t that the second stage of an F9/Dragon? (with less capability?)
Put a real spaceship in orbit with a decent amount of fuel and go anywhere you like with plenty of internal volume to move around enroute. Take a Dragon or two with you. We don’t have to design anything new and we don’t need heavy lift. We even know the price to orbit (not counting fuel) of $300m for just one BA330 and an F9 upper stage. Add as much fuel (in collapsible tankage) as the mission requires.
But Ken, they want heavy lift in the worst way, and that’s exactly how they’ll get it.