14 thoughts on “Why A Lifeboat?”

  2. Seems like a vehicle that could sit in zero-g storage for at least 6 months before dong a re-entry (even from earth moon lagrange points) would be helpful for an architecture based on prop depots…

  4. It serves the function of detaching the Colorado delegation from the ones arguing for retaining Ares. And it’s a lot cheaper than keeping Ares. Obama is hoping to retain CO in 2012. He has no hope of taking UT or AL.

    Lifeboat Orion is the leg that must be chewed off to get out of the trap.

  6. Silly, that’s in case the space station hits an ice berg.

    Don’t laugh, could happen. That’s basically what a comet is. Of course, the velocity would be such that there wouldn’t be any time to evacuate…

  8. Mini-Orion? Did they actually say anything about making it smaller?

    If so that means starting more or less from scratch… which means even more BILLIONS than just keeping the current size craft. It also negates the already highly speculative notion that the lifeboat Orion could easily morph into a “deep space” manned craft.

    Anyone want to take a bet? Fifty bucks says that this Orion lifeboat will never be launched to ISS. Just more billions down the toilet.

    If Obama were serious about commercial space he would outright cancel Orion and Ares. He would then SET A GOAL and propose a monetary incentive to industry to meet that goal.

    How about $10 billion tax free dollars for a human settlment on the Moon before 2020? PLus a million dollars a day for each man-day spent there. And/or a million bucks per 100 square feet of habitat built on the Moon? And/or a million bucks per ton of H2O “harvested” on the Moon? Or how about the same scenario but with a ten fold increase in the prize money for the same results but on Mars?

    But Obama didn’t do anything like that. He simply killed one launch vehicle, neutered the crew vehicle, promised a multi-billion dollar 5 year study of another launch vehicle and said that NASA would purchase crew launch services to ISS commercially (which was already a goal under Bush BTW). Oddly enough all of his grandiose plans (as some seem them at least) only come into play either after his first and only term is over or (God forbid) well into his second or most likely, given how these things always get pushed out, after it as well.

  9. The idea of not allowing Orion to launch crewed struck me as a pretty clever way to keep NASA purchasing rides into orbit instead of new spacecraft for day-to-day ops. I’ve heard the capsule referred to as ‘Orion-lite’ in many electronic forums, but don’t know enough to. It could be kept the same size, just with smaller on-board consumables and no toilet (did it really have one?) As long as there are connections open to the outside, the consumables could be augmented from another module if needed.

  10. “Don’t laugh, could happen. That’s basically what a comet is.”

    That sounds like one of those “in Soviet Russia” jokes: “In International Space Station, iceberg hits you.”

  11. “Anyone want to take a bet? Fifty bucks says that this Orion lifeboat will never be launched to ISS. Just more billions down the toilet.”

    I’d love to take up the bet here, but I would have to agree with you. Any such lifeboat would go the way of the CEV, DC-X, and many other designs that have come and gone through the years. To me the amazing thing isn’t that Constellation or perhaps something like this “Orion-light” vehicle have and will get canceled, the wonder is that the Space Shuttle actually got to flight status…. three times including two times when it looked like it was dead in the water with a catastrophic failure. The previous manned vehicle to go from proposal to actual flight status was the Gemini capsules (Apollo was already being developed with bent metal when Gemini was originally proposed).

    That doesn’t look good for any proposed manned spaceflight system from NASA when you go back 50 years and see how many were proposed and how many actually got built. I certainly wouldn’t hold my breath on this proposal either.

  12. Bob Walker, commenting on Obama’s speech at NSS, said that the Orion development was particularly clever politically. His reasoning was that the current budget directs that development money be spent specifically on Constellation. In order to continue spending on something that furthers his policy — including the “technology developments” associated with things like extended life — he keeps one thing that is Constellation legacy. This will allow NASA to keep going even on continuing resolution (which is what is expected this year).

    Bob was a Member of Congress, and speaks from some depth of knowledge.

  13. he Orion ‘lifeboat’ is pork. The HLV ‘R&D technology project’ is pork. I imagine all the ‘enabling technology’ work will end up pork as well, doing nothing more than keeping the various NASA centers busy and never used in an actual mission.

    Because the real objective of the new NASA plan is keeping the ISS aloft, indefinitely. It’s back to the Clinton years, with the ISS replacing the role of the Shuttle, as a permanent NASA institution.

    I expect ISS will still be creaking along in 2025, while the supposed 2025 asteroid manned mission will by then be ten years behind schedule, in large part because of the cost of supporting the ISS.

  14. Brad, look at this description, excerpted from from NASA budget documents on the “flagship demonstrators. You can also follow the provided link to a NASA collection of pdfs — click on the one that says “exploration” to see the original document.

    http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum39/HTML/000243.html

    Prop depots, inflatable modules, closed loop life support, aerocapture and landing tech for mars vs low-g worlds, ISRU, Advanced in-space propulsion, better spacesuits (including gloves!), radiation shielding, spacecraft power generation.

    You can scoff and call it pork. Maybe you’ll turn out to be right that it never gets used, but I just want to make sure you know what you are scoffing at.

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