Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Orion

46 Comments

I’m not as excited about this flight as NASA and its booster want me to be, certainly not enough to get up at 4 AM. It just passed apogee, and things seem to be going well.

Meanwhile, PBS (with Miles O’Brien, of course) is the only major network to look at the serious programmatic problems. Lori doesn’t hold back.

[Update a while later, as the post-flight presser is about to start]

The Empire strikes back, briefly, but it won’t last:

The Orion launch has been be a triumph of engineering, hiccups and delays aside. But the Empire may not love the sequel. SpaceX is planning a historic launch of its own next year – the rocket is called the Falcon Heavy. Yes, Musk named his rocket after the Millennium Falcon of Star Wars, and he promises it will take twice as much payload into space as the one Nasa launched on Friday, and at one-third the cost. So far his claims about SpaceX have come true, and soon he’ll be fighting, with the lobbyists and the politicians who play favorites, for satellite contracts worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Combine that kind of force with Elon Musk’s capsule full of actual people returning to space – under a Nasa contract to deliver astronauts to the International Space Station – and you have a private startup that can beat Nasa or any other government agency back to the moon, if it so chooses.

And so far, it does seem to so choose, though Elon will try to skip the moon and go straight to Mars, unless someone pays him for a lunar mission.

[Update a few minutes later]

No Sarah Zhang, Orion is not the answer to our space stagnation, it’s a continuation of it.

[Saturday-morning update]

Lori on MSNBC.

46 thoughts on “Orion”

  1. Normally, I’d be all for competing systems for getting humans into space, but I can’t help but worry that NASA will find reason after to reason to delay Dragon’s manned deployment to protect Orion from competition.

  3. It is so disheartening the amount of money that was wasted on this test. So the purpose of this test was to send the capsule up to a high orbit and bring it back to test radiation levels and shield. If so, couldn’t dragon do the same thing with less payload. I’m no engineer, so correct me if I am wrong.

    What is the point of this capsule?!?! Is it a return capsule from a Mars spaceship. If so, it should be a dragon or something bare bones. This is a Ferrari for a grocery run. NASA should focus on 2 things: basic research that private companies don’t have the budget for, and providing a market for certain services that private companies can compete for. We don’t have the technologies to get to Mars!! Focus on that, and let private companies deal with, as Tyler Vernon would say, the “fiddly bits.”

    And that is my rant

    1. To expand on my earlier comment, which I wrote while at work, at one point the announcer said, “Orion is about to enter the atmosphere for the first time in its history.” To me anyway, it gave the impression that Orion is going to be such a vital part of America’s manned space efforts in the coming decades that we will all remember where we were and what we were doing during this historic first flight. The whole webcast was like that.

  5. So, is this the same Guardian that published that confusion-of-the-year-worthy item the other day saying that because Lockheed was a “commercial” company, a failure of Orion’s flight after the Antares/SS2 incidents would be fatal to private spaceflight?

    No, not really, because the newer item was written by Joe Pappillardo of Popular Mechanics.

  6. It was a surreal experience to find myself completely unexcited about today’s flight. If this is now non-space-fans feel *all* the time, no wonder NASA isn’t getting budget increases.

    1. “If this is now non-space-fans feel *all* the time”

      People think space is important but not enough to follow developments in depth like they would their local sports team. They just assume that NASA hires the smartest people in the country and that because they are so smart, they will do a good job when no one is looking.

      The disconnect is that while you were unexcited for this launch due to your knowledge of what is really going on, the average uninformed person was really excited by it because of their ignorance of what is really going on. NASA is grubering people on this and it may pay off in the short term but if/when the program fails, there will be some people who remember NASA’s claims and it will damage support for the agency.

      Maybe we are already seeing this happen.

      1. NASA is grubering people on this

        Brilliant. I wouldn’t say I was totally unexcited (it was a space flight, after all), but you’re right that people who don’t follow spaceflight closely were much more excited about it than those of us who do.

        1. I didn’t become a space cadet until after the Ares I launch and it wasn’t until reading the arguments and counter arguments that were taking place at the time that I learned that launch was also just grubering PR rather than progress. It pisses me off a little that NASA did it again.

          On one hand, kids may get inspired to go into STEM fields but when they learn NASA lied to them, they will lose their idealism and become jaded. In the long run, stunts like this will damage NASA’s reputation with the people who matter the most for NASA, their future work force.

  7. Not a fan of Lori Garver (though even a blind squirrel finds an acorn). But I’m glad PBS asks the hard questions and points out the hard realities in this report, rather than cough up a puff piece on Orion.

    Tom Young is right: the money is not there to go to the Moon, let alone Mars, using NASA’s favored procurement, oversight and mission models. So you either have to find a way to get more money, or adjust your plans to match your budget. And, for that matter, adjust how you plan to meet those goals.

      1. Fair point, Rand.

        That said, given how much moving back and forth there is between NASA and Boeing, it’s hardly clear that many senior NASA managers are that unhappy with it.

  8. I watched part of the first launch attempt before it was scrubbed. At first I was distracted by their press person, thinking “She’s not Christina Ricci, but she has to be a close relative.” Then they showed an animation of what the flight was supposed to look like. In one pretty brief scene they showed the Orion re-entering by coming straight down as it first made contact with the atmosphere. A few moments later they showed it correctly traveling sideways through the air, but by then I was thinking “Everyone who ever worked on Apollo, or even watched Apollo, just threw up in their mouths.”

  9. At first I was distracted by their press person, thinking “She’s not Christina Ricci, but she has to be a close relative.”

    I thought she was pretty cute. But ULA has an announcer that makes her look like Hillary Clinton. I’ve only caught a few glimpses of her during satellite launches, and whoa Nellie.

  10. What we just saw is all Orion will ever be… a dog and pony show trying to justify an inexcusable waste of money.

    $20b and I *bleep’n* guarantee a colony on mars in less than a decade. Without any other plan to pay for it.

    Day one I’d tell Elon he gets $100m the moment he demonstrates landing 2,500 kg safely on mars. While he’s working to get paid for that I’d pay him a few million for designing a refuelable ship to replace the F9R upper stage capable of taking a dozen to mars orbit from LEO.

    With just those two ships, every 26 month I’d send a dozen colonists to mars for $1b per mission until the money runs out. At 5% interest it never runs out. How does Mars One look now if I take all their people for free?

    Starting as soon as perhaps 5 years from today?

    I am so pissed we put on this show rather than doing the real deal.

    1. “What we just saw is all Orion will ever be… a dog and pony show trying to justify an inexcusable waste of money.”

      If only that was all. Orion can’t reenter from Mars. There’s no money for the Moon. There’s no hab module for long-duration flights. The lack of appropriations for the asteroid mission’s robotic half leads me to believe it isn’t a serious proposal. So where can we go with our new space capsule? I know! The ISS!

      The poster who suggested Dragon will be delayed in favor of Orion for US ISS access really got me worried.

      Maybe that’s how the “big boys” will try to do in Elon. ATK ate Orbital, and looks like Boeing did in SNC’s ambitions for Dream Chaser and is eating Blue Origin. If they tried to eat SpaceX, they’d choke to death, so they’ll try to starve it instead.

      Who’s up for billion-dollar crew flights to ISS with Orion on DIV-H?

      (Yes, I’m a pessimist here, but it so often seems true that things can get worse in the space business.)

      1. I share your surreal experience Jeff (great observation) but SpaceX is now beyond the point of being starved to death (even allowing that your fears are correct and they do make the attempt.) Anyone paying attention that isn’t a state shtuper is angry about SLS/Orion. Eventually the push back will get real.

        1. SpaceX is now beyond the point of being starved to death

          I wish I could believe that.

          “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”
          ~Benito Mussolini

          Elon needs to complete his abort tests and put up a manned Dragon ASAP, even if it carries SpaceX employees and just does a few orbits and a splashdown. Just to show he can do it.

          1. He’s already shown he can do it. Now he’s just going to show he can do it better. Let’s not retreat to allow the vaperware argument.

          2. I wish I could believe that.

            You can believe it because if NASA money ended today; he has enough customers to keep SpaceX in profit for years to come and that will only improve in the future. The existential threat is now to everyone else. What we need to hope for is SpaceX gets some real competition this next decade so they have half a chance to keep up.

  11. OK people, somebody educate me. NASA and its Big Aerospace Contracter partners stuck something much looking like an Apollo CM on top of a Delta IV, flew it uncrewed, and everything worked as planned.

    Brian Williams, bless him, reported that putting people in the thing is 6-8 years away. I don’t get this. In the Glory Days, such a shakedown test would be followed by such a flight 6-8 months later?

    Is President Obama going to proclaim (with minor edits) “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this (century) is out, of landing a (person) on the moon and returning (him or her) safely to the earth”?

    What prevents this thing from being used right now as a Space Station crew ferry? The Delta IV doesn’t have engine-out capability in its 3-fold booster stage arrangement? The underpowered Centaur-like upper stage flies a trajectory with no good abort profile? The Orion is a shell standing in a housing subdivision, one lacking kitchen and bathroom fixtures?

    1. Paul, your description is IMHO apt.

      The closest fit that I can see is Apollo mission AS-201, which was the first unmanned space flight of a block 1 command module, and also of a block 1 service module. It occurred on Feb 26, 1966.

      There were some key differences between Apollo AS-201 and the first flight of Orion. Both had high apogees to help test the heat shield, but AS201 had a mission duration of 37 minutes. AS-201 had a service module, whereas Orion had nothing.

      Your final paragraph sums it up pretty well IMHO, but I’ll add a few other reasons; Delta IV in any configuration isn’t human rated and can’t be; insufficient design margins being one big reason (Of course, Shuttle wasn’t human-rated, either…) . Atlas 5? Doesn’t have the throw weight. Plus, using Orion (even if complete and available) as an ISS taxi would be much akin to using a disposable Ferrari every time you wanted to cross the street in front of your house; certainly possible, but an astronomical waste.

      IMHO, Orion might find some uses, but only if it was more than an order of magnitude cheaper. As is, it’s a solid gold, diamond-encrusted pig without a mission or a non-corrupt purpose..

    2. To add a couple more reasons, it doesn’t have a life support system, the heat shield is going to be replaced, and there may be some quality control issues with how it was constructed.

  12. The Orion from yesterday was configured much like the Dragon test flight from 2010. There was no ECLSS or crew accommodations, nor were there solar panels. According to report IG-13-022 by the NASA Inspector General, NASA expects to have spent about $16.5 BILLION on Orion, just the capsule alone, by 2021.

    Let that sink in a little bit.

    And there’s nothing for it to do, except recreate Apollo 7 or 8, or carry crew to ISS, because there’s nothing but capsule and launcher being built. There is no funding appropriated for any other hardware, like hab modules or landers.

    SpaceX has, I believe, developed the Falcon 9 launcher *and* Dragon for less than $1 billion.

      1. I don’t agree with that at all.

        She understands that mass and payload constraints are what’s hobbling real exploration. The JPL folks just want to keep chain-smoking Delta II sounding rockets Dan Goldin handed out like a motorist hands lollypops to kids in the back seat to keep them from screaming. JPL is–after all–Pasadena’s pork.

        Webb is going to wind up costing as much as several SLS cores. Also remember SLS is not just the rocket–it is the infrastructure–pad work Musk doesn’t have to pay for.

        “Always use the other guy’s money”

        Space is always going to expensive. frankly it might be the “pork” that is the reason we have spaceflight at all. From one standpoint, it might make sense to close all NASA centers, and move everything to Florida.

        But while that might save money–it costs you political capital.

        Much better to flush all the Ayn Rand propaganda down the toilet–and just make space the vested interest of as many congressmen as possible. That’s why F-35 can’t be killed. I want space to have that level of support.

        If Musk were to somehow inherit everything, some democrat would just lament how his tax dollars are propping up some internet billionaire, and Republicans want to kill all gov’t for tax breaks–except NASA–due to it being mostly in the solid south. That is why NASA BRACs are a bad idea. It will backfire on you: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/341/1

        I don’t think very much of Lori going on Chris Hayes’ ALL IBprogram on MSNBC either. Trying to make this all about Richard Shelby. There was no love lost between Shuttle-derived heavy lift advocates like myself and the EELV lobby that is trying to slit Elon’s throat, even though both have supporters in Alabama, which, contrary to Lori’s lies, will lose a few jobs:
        http://www.spacenews.com/article/financial-report/42617boeing-layoffs-target-130-jobs-in-huntsville-elsewhere-as-work-shifts

        Webb is going to be costly because shroud diameter hasn’t really changed. Even Falcon Heavy will not have a much greater shroud diameter than Delta IV.

        There have been advocates of shuttle-derived heavy lift even before Congress ever started to listen to them. We have been on the outside looking in for too long–when real boondoggles like Venture Star were floated. Now there is a program which deserved the hate that a simpler SLS is now getting from folks who purport to be space advocates.

        One last thing.

        Every dollar that goes to SLS helps Musk–the leading candidate in helping humanity go to the stars.

        He doesn’t have to fix Stennis or the 39 series pads on his own dime. Who knows, he might even pick up Michold for a song, now that the vertical weld tool is in use–something he didn’t have to pay for. Remember the Very Light Jet debacle? Some venture capitalists on the vanguard of the air taxi service got burned–and once the debt was discharged. Now the VLJ is making a comeback–but only as a private jets for folks who can’t afford a Gulfstream. CERN, ARPANET, IBM, AT7T–all this had to exist before Musk’s paypal could be profitable. SLS pays for pads, and then Musk uses them. Wink wink!

        On the other hand, every dollar spent propping up those Damn EELVs DOES hurt Musk.

        That’s your USAF for you.

        Remember when SD HLLV advocates were attacked by the depot fools? The EELV lobby talked about how NASA didn’t need to be in the rocket making business ( I disagree with that of course)–and that they should go commercial, meaning ULA of course.

        But here comes Musk!. And the next thing you know, The Aerospace Corporation floated that “white paper” saying that commercialization wasn’t quite ready, and that independent in-house capability needed to be protected. But that was Mike Griffin’s point in supporting Ares V. And it was Mike who wrote a textbook on spacecraft design–not Garver.

        So it is the EELV lobby that is the real threat all the alt.spacers should hate on.

        2. The EELV lobby talked about how NASA didn’t need to be in the rocket making business ( I disagree with that of course)

          I don’t know why you disagree with that. It’s true. Launch is pretty much a solved problem. NASA needs to focus on getting beyond LEO.

      1. Ken, I meant the little picture show at the end of the trekbbs link, not Garver. The author of a post in the thread showed pictures of newspace vs oldspace: the Grasshopper, Antares, and SS2 accidents, vs the Orion launch. Whether intended or not, it was a taunt, and the author was dancing on a grave. I doubt too many of us here would have celebrated a LOCV accident if Orion had gone up with crew and was lost.

  14. I see Lori Garver has settled in neatly in her new role as skunk at the garden party. Having succeeded in only crippling NASA’s space exploration efforts from the inside, it looks like she is having a go at finishing it off altogether from the outside, appropriately using the air at MSNBC, with a lot of specious claims and misleading rhetoric.

    1. Just as ab addition, on Bloomberg, Garver invoked her inner Helen Caldicott and actually said that flight testing hardware like Orion consisted of “boys and their toys.” It is a wonder she did not accuse NASA and supports of space exploration of having “missile envy.” I think that the Internet Rocketeeer Club needs to disavow her if it means to retain any tatters of legitimacy.

      2. Let’s be fair – it was the commentator who called it “boys and their toys” not Garver. She didn’t even take the bait and agree with him, but rather explained this (in her opinion) wasn’t the best way to advance into space. She also wasn’t the one who blamed this on Shelby – that was Chris Hayes. She went out of her way to spread the blame appropriately to Florida, Texas and Colorado. While many here don’t like the fact that she is a Democrat – this issue is obviously not partisan and she has been on the correct side of this one for a very long time.

  15. Miles said the re-entering Orion endured 80% of the heat of a capsule returning from the moon. This is incorrect. Re-entry from a 5800 km apogee is bout 8.8 km/s,. Re-entry from a lunar distance apogee is about 10.8 km/s. The speed was about 80%n. But kinetic energy scales with speed squared. So I would put the heat at more like 65%.

    Re-entry from Mars is about 11.3 km/s. 8.8 km/s is about 78% of the speed. Energy about 60%.

  16. Orion was designed from the start to operate in cislunar space for lunar missions of up to a few weeks. Despite all the changes since 2006, that’s what it remains.

    But we’re told the Moon is out – which it certainly is from a budget point of view, given what it would cost to put boots on the Moon under the current procurement model. So we’re keeping Orion while touting it for missions it is woefully underengineered and lacking vast amounts of additional hardware for (Mars) or missions it is ridiculously overengineered for ( backup access to ISS).

    ARM makes a depressing kind of sense because, one-off stunt flights to lunar space aside, this is just about the only kind of remaining mission profile Orion could actually be somewhat suited for – though even that assumes that NASA can get the funding for the asteroid retrieval hardware, and that cost overruns and development delays don’t kill Orion and SLS first.

    This being the case, it’s hard to see how Orion/SLS doesn’t suffer the same fate as Constellation before it. Until Congress finds some new unfeasible program to keep the contractor jobs in place, at least.

  17. Space is always going to be expensive.

    Those banking on dramatic cost reductions don’t seem to get this. Even worse they think government is the answer (as a source of funds… it isn’t.)

    SpaceX and others are opening up possibilities but don’t quite get there either. Not until we come to grip with the fact that if we require colonists to pay their own ticket, ignoring the ridiculous abundance of assets that could easily pay for everything… it ain’t going to happen and this debate will continue for another century. The past fifty years went by pretty fast.

    Those that ‘went west’ didn’t wait for government blessings. …and yes, Thomas, space is the final frontier, or a frontier, at any rate. Liberals always exaggerate.

  18. SpaceX … developed the Falcon 9 launcher *and* Dragon for less than $1 billion. NASA expects to have spent about $16.5 BILLION on Orion, just the capsule alone, by 2021.

    Let that sink in a little bit.

    NO.

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