You’re looking at the wrong metric. It doesn’t matter that the Orion can only sustain four crew for three weeks (12 man weeks), because the measure of a space vehicle is how man man years of employment it can sustain.
Perhaps the Dragon can support 400 engineers for eight years. The Orion can probably support 5000 engineers for twenty years. It’s simply a better, more capable program. Who care if it only flies twice?
Lol! George, I really wish there was a like button on this page.
The design concept of Orion made more sense (but was still very arguable) when its destination was the Moon (Project Constellation).
However, the design tradeoffs for Mars (or anywhere else beyond the Moon) are vastly different in delta/v and flight time. Hauling a huge heat shield/reentry system for Earth all the way to Mars and back is idiotic, when all that’s actually needed is a minimal (Soyuz would be a good example) small reentry vehicle for the crew plus samples. You’re going to need a hab anyway, which renders Orion as worse than useless.
I cannot conceive of anyone actually involved in spaceflight being stupid enough to think Orion is a good idea for actual spaceflight beyond the Moon, so I can only go with George Turner’s view above.
Even NASA has no plans for Orion beyond cislunar space. But they don’t exactly shout that out with the #JourneyToMars hashtag.
NASA’s page on #JourneyToMars claims;
“Human missions to Mars will rely on Orion and an evolved version of SLS that will be the most powerful launch vehicle ever flown.” http://www.nasa.gov/content/nasas-journey-to-mars
Of course, even with a SLS block II, you don’t have the upmass capacity to launch an Orion, hab, and lander to Mars, and Orion’s service module doesn’t have the newtons to do the TEI burn with a hab attached, so Orion to MArs SLS is utterly implausible, unless… I think we’re overlooking the possibility that NASA actually has a firm plan; for 30 billion dollars, we get a hashtag. (that’s 2.3 billion per letter).
My serious take; Orion to Mars is a plan created by members of congress (for pork, the real purpose of Orion and SLS) who chose to ignore the laws of physics and simply told NASA “do this”. NASA thus can’t come up with a serious plan (because, impossible), so they get by on vague statements and hashtags.
Your remark about Soyuz reminds me of a quick concept I had for a larger space capsule.
The re-entry module is only used once, and ideally you would back the astronauts in like sardines. So looking at the outside of a conical capsule, you could take a slice from the top downwards and have a conic section that would form the bottom of a re-entry vehicle, very similar to some of the lifting body re-entry concepts. Instead of sticking that type of vehicle alone on top of a rocket, it’s plugged in as a piece of the side of a much larger cone (or really a frustum), with the heat shield out.
That gives you the full internal volume of the large orbital capsule mated to a very small lifting body re-entry vehicle, and yet the re-entry vehicle could separate from the capsule during a launch emergency just by tipping outwards and blasting away.
You could also of course have several such re-entry vehicles as part of the perimeter of an even larger capsule. And that large capsule could probably also expand as a Bigelow module.
>the measure of a space vehicle is how many man years of employment it can sustain.
Proof that adults are not in charge.
You’re looking at the wrong metric. It doesn’t matter that the Orion can only sustain four crew for three weeks (12 man weeks), because the measure of a space vehicle is how man man years of employment it can sustain.
Perhaps the Dragon can support 400 engineers for eight years. The Orion can probably support 5000 engineers for twenty years. It’s simply a better, more capable program. Who care if it only flies twice?
Lol! George, I really wish there was a like button on this page.
The design concept of Orion made more sense (but was still very arguable) when its destination was the Moon (Project Constellation).
However, the design tradeoffs for Mars (or anywhere else beyond the Moon) are vastly different in delta/v and flight time. Hauling a huge heat shield/reentry system for Earth all the way to Mars and back is idiotic, when all that’s actually needed is a minimal (Soyuz would be a good example) small reentry vehicle for the crew plus samples. You’re going to need a hab anyway, which renders Orion as worse than useless.
I cannot conceive of anyone actually involved in spaceflight being stupid enough to think Orion is a good idea for actual spaceflight beyond the Moon, so I can only go with George Turner’s view above.
Even NASA has no plans for Orion beyond cislunar space. But they don’t exactly shout that out with the #JourneyToMars hashtag.
NASA’s page on #JourneyToMars claims;
“Human missions to Mars will rely on Orion and an evolved version of SLS that will be the most powerful launch vehicle ever flown.”
http://www.nasa.gov/content/nasas-journey-to-mars
Of course, even with a SLS block II, you don’t have the upmass capacity to launch an Orion, hab, and lander to Mars, and Orion’s service module doesn’t have the newtons to do the TEI burn with a hab attached, so Orion to MArs SLS is utterly implausible, unless… I think we’re overlooking the possibility that NASA actually has a firm plan; for 30 billion dollars, we get a hashtag. (that’s 2.3 billion per letter).
My serious take; Orion to Mars is a plan created by members of congress (for pork, the real purpose of Orion and SLS) who chose to ignore the laws of physics and simply told NASA “do this”. NASA thus can’t come up with a serious plan (because, impossible), so they get by on vague statements and hashtags.
Your remark about Soyuz reminds me of a quick concept I had for a larger space capsule.
The re-entry module is only used once, and ideally you would back the astronauts in like sardines. So looking at the outside of a conical capsule, you could take a slice from the top downwards and have a conic section that would form the bottom of a re-entry vehicle, very similar to some of the lifting body re-entry concepts. Instead of sticking that type of vehicle alone on top of a rocket, it’s plugged in as a piece of the side of a much larger cone (or really a frustum), with the heat shield out.
That gives you the full internal volume of the large orbital capsule mated to a very small lifting body re-entry vehicle, and yet the re-entry vehicle could separate from the capsule during a launch emergency just by tipping outwards and blasting away.
You could also of course have several such re-entry vehicles as part of the perimeter of an even larger capsule. And that large capsule could probably also expand as a Bigelow module.
>the measure of a space vehicle is how many man years of employment it can sustain.
Rand, I think your site has a new motto