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NASA Mars Space

NASA's Orion Capsule Reaches Orbit 140

Posted by Soulskill from the well-done-folks dept.
PaisteUser sends word that NASA's Orion capsule successfully reached orbit this morning after a flawless launch atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket. Video of the launch is available on YouTube, and the Orion Mission blog has frequent updates as mission milestones are reached. Mission managers said the rocket and capsule performed perfectly during the initial phases of the test. "It was just a blast to see how well the rocket did," said Mark Geyer, NASA's Orion program manager. After Orion makes its first circuit around the planet, the rocket's upper stage will kick it into a second, highly eccentric orbit that loops as far as 3,600 miles from Earth. Then Orion will come screaming back into Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 20,000 mph — 80 percent of the velocity that a spacecraft returning from the moon would experience. This particular Orion is missing a lot of the components that would be needed for a crewed flight, and it won't be carrying humans. Instead, it's outfitted with more than 1,200 sensors to monitor how its communication and control systems deal with heightened radiation levels, how its heat shield handles re-entry temperatures that are expected to rise as high as 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and how its parachutes slow the craft down for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
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NASA's Orion Capsule Reaches Orbit More

NASA's Orion Capsule Reaches Orbit

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  • It's stated capability will be 10 or 20x it's real world capability.

    • When would you expect that we would build and launch a spacecraft that is designed to stay in space, be driven by a nuclear reactor with lots of room for storage and living, scads of power, ion drive, and be used for regular excursions. Seems to me we have all the basic technology required.

      • Do we actually have decent ion drives yet? Last I heard we were working on some that might eventually be capable of even surface-to-orbit launches (which would be *awesome*), but the only ones that are actually working reliably are the ultra-low thrust models only suitable for orbital maneuvers, which are pretty much useless for a manned spacecraft designed for long journeys.

        Once we have those though, then your plan starts to make sense. Well, once we also design nuclear reactors capable of operating in b

    • There's certainly some truth to that. We keep hearing this is going to be the vehicle that's going to take us to Mars. Excuse me? Exactly how is a vehicle that can only carry 6 people carry supplies for even one person for nearly a year? Also, it's supposedly designed for missions lasting at most 21 days. They'd better be strapping it to a really fast rocket if they expect to get to Mars and back in 21 days!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cdrudge ( 68377 )

        I've only ever seen that Orion is to facilitate a mission to Mars, not that Orion itself will go to Mars in it's current incarnation. The Space Shuttle program was never intended to enable asteroids spend months or years in orbit, but it facilitated building the ISS which did allow astronauts to do that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) *

        We keep hearing this is going to be the vehicle that's going to take us to Mars. Excuse me? Exactly how is a vehicle that can only carry 6 people carry supplies for even one person for nearly a year?

        Multiple launches to first put supplies for the trip in orbit, with the last launch bringing the crew up on one of these. Assemble the Mars-bound bits in orbit, then send them on their way. I read something about this the other day, but don't remember where.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sconeu ( 64226 )

        To some point, this is correct. We should be using smaller/existing rockets up to LEO. Falcon9/Dragon, DeltaIV-H/Orion, Soyuz.

        Build something like the originally planned Ares V (or the SLS) to put the heavy crap (the actual spacecraft) in LEO as well. Then dock the crew module with the actual spacecraft. No need to carry *both* on the same booster.

        This also allows for craft that are *LARGER* than a single launch can carry (multiple launches, docked/assembled).

  • I get it confused with the old Project Orion [wikipedia.org]. Plus one of my favorite novels as a kid was Poul Anderson's Orion Shall Rise [wikipedia.org] which featured that propulsion technology.

    • Well, I don't know about confused, but it certainly doesn't seem like a vehicle worthy of inheriting the name of such an awesomely powerful project. That should have been reserved for something based on high-thrust ion drives at least.

      Unless of course that heat shield is a *lot* more robust than they suggest, and there are actually secret plans for this thing :-D

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Duhavid ( 677874 )

        Its more than the heat shield. Mass is imperative.
        If you impart the energy from a nuclear explosion to such a small item, you will accelerate it beyond any possibility that a human occupant could survive.

        Aside, that is my objection to movies where they show someone falling, then someone swoops in just as they were about to hit the ground and stops their earthward acceleration, changing it to some tangential acceleration. The reason you die on hitting the ground is that your body rips and tears internally

        • So you subscribe to Sheldon Cooper's diatribe about Superman trying to catch a falling Lois Lane. For reference:

          No, no let's assume that they can (i.e. men can fly). Lois Lane is falling, accelerating at an initial rate of 32ft per second, per second. Superman swoops down to save her by reaching out two arms of steel. Ms. Lane, who is now traveling at approximately 120 miles per hour, hits them, and is immediately sliced into three equal pieces.

          • No, no let's assume that they can (i.e. men can fly). Lois Lane is falling, accelerating at an initial rate of 32ft per second, per second. Superman swoops down to save her by reaching out two arms of steel. Ms. Lane, who is now traveling at approximately 120 miles per hour, hits them, and is immediately sliced into three equal pieces.

            Unless, of course, Superman matches speeds before grapping Lois and then decelerates gently. Even a meter or so of deceleration turns this into basically a head-on crash with

            • The conclusion to this part of the discussion is as follows:

              Leonard: Unless, Superman matches her speed and decelerates.

              Sheldon: In what space, sir, in what space? She's two feet above the ground. Frankly, if he really loved her, he'd let her hit the pavement. It would be a more merciful death.

              • In what space, sir, in what space? She's two feet above the ground. Frankly, if he really loved her, he'd let her hit the pavement. It would be a more merciful death.

                She's two feet above the ground in the last panel. We don't actually know how far up she was when superman caught her.

                Besides, this is Superman we're talking about. What's stopping him from simply smashing through the ground to gain more room to maneuver? Also, the comics strongly suggest supe's flying ability is actually a kind of telekinesis

                • It's comic book physics, and things happen differently with superheros. Superman can fly around holding up very large objects with one hand. The Flash can move people around at incredible speeds. Thor can fly by throwing his hammer real hard and holding on to it (without leaving large holes where he started, since this is functionally a jump). The Hulk can grab a tank by the main gun and whirl it around.

                  At the very beginning of Superman 3 (Christopher Reeves), Superman puts out a large fire by flying

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Duhavid ( 677874 )

            Haven't seen it, but basically yes. I had not thought about the issue of how the load would distribute across his arms, I just assumed ( bad, I know ) he/they/it/etc would somehow manage that. I guess I figured he would use his body more...

            Loved the old "Man of Steel, Woman of kleenex" story....

            I also hate the "asteroid about to hit earth, pulverize it with a nuke" scenario. They usually show the asteroid just about to hit, like within a small handful of earth radii, then all that mass being turned into

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dwye ( 1127395 )

              Well, yes, if you convert it from one big rock to a big bunch of pebbles too small to survive passing through the atmosphere, it WILL help a lot. Still years without summers, but not a total extinction event. They never show the effects of all that particulate matter on the sunsets, never mind the next winter lasting two years or more (at least in New England), but then rom-cons never show the couple getting bored with each other after a few years, either.

              BTW, "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" was a non-fic

        • Depending on how fast they're going when they snag you, the perpendicular force would actually make it worse, I imagine.

        • That depends entirely on the size of the nukes being used. I'm not sure just how small they can build them these days, but even i you're limited to the smallest suitcase nukes you can find on the black market, that's still going to require a lot less shielding/shock absorbers than the original Orion called for (I think). And speaking of which don't forget those shocks - a bit of a buffer lets you accelerate far faster than using mass alone to limit your maximum.

  • Blog with updates (Score:5, Informative)

    by mdsolar ( 1045926 ) on Friday December 05, 2014 @10:25AM (#48530173) Homepage Journal
    Here is a blog reporting lift to the second orbit: http://space.io9.com/will-orio... [io9.com]

  • In case anyone is interested.
    http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv [ustream.tv]

  • Congrats to NASA on a great launch! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Paul Fernhout ( 109597 ) on Friday December 05, 2014 @11:06AM (#48530427) Homepage

    What great news to wake up to! Hoping for many more optimism-promoting successes like this on the road to humans living in space habitats that can duplicate themselves from sunlight and asteroidal or lunar ores.

    Here is a PBS NewsHour video with launch footage:
    http://www.pbs.org/newshour/up... [pbs.org]

    BTW, that PBS NewsHour Orion article led me to another PBS NewsHour article which formed the basis of my most recent "optimistic" Slashdot story submission on how restoring 1970s overtime regulations could boost the US economy:
    http://slashdot.org/submission... [slashdot.org]

    With a stronger economy, maybe there would be even more demand for space-related ventures of all sorts?

    • I was reading "Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization" by Spencer Wells this morning. He makes the point that hunter/gatherers tend to walk away from social conflicts, whereas people in large militaristic agricultural hierarchies instead tend to end up fighting wars for resources as they see no other alternatives. I had a lot of youthful optimism in the 1970s stemming in part from the US space program and many space-related TV shows (Thunderbirds, Star Trek, Space: 1999, Lost In Space). To be p

  • Unfortunately, "because we can" is the primary justification for this project and eventual Mars mission. If one wants to prove they can establish a long term outpost off earth, the moon is far more practical. But there is no compelling reason to doing so on either.

    • Well actually there is, the earth will be destroyed by our sun. So going to mars will be the only way humanity will continue on. unless you think we should just sit back and do nothing and just die. And I don't think its going to take a few million years as they say I believe it will take afar less time for our sun to make earth uninhabitable it might only have to expand a few hundred yards to make the earth far too hot. And NASA means hopefully more American Jobs. I would hate to think our tax dollars are

      • Well actually there is, the earth will be destroyed by our sun. So going to mars will be the only way humanity will continue on.

        The Earth will be destroyed by the sun five billion years from now, which is a span of deep time longer than it took single-celled organisms to evolve into us. What makes you think that the human race will be in existence for even a tiny fraction of that time? Even if we don't go extinct outright (which is the most probable outcome), our descendants will probably bear no resemblance to us whatsoever. If technological progress continues at anything near the current rate, they will be godlike beings in compar

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Immerman ( 2627577 )

      Actually, not so much. The moon has to deal with a month-long days and extreme temperature fluctuations - admittedly both could be avoided by building on the peaks of eternal light, but that puts you a long way from the only suspected water reserves. And does nothing to help with the clinging, razer-sharp dust that will wreak havoc with every gasket and flexible joint in use, while making exploration extremely difficult (that first step is a doozy).

      Mars in contrast has much milder temperatures, an almost

      • Re:Waste of money and resources (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Spy Handler ( 822350 ) on Friday December 05, 2014 @02:19PM (#48532261) Homepage Journal

        Hey I wanna see people go to Mars as much as anyone here. But let's get realistic: Mars is way harder to get to than the moon. WAY harder.

        And since Mars has an atmosphere deorbitting is essentially free.

        Not even close. Landing a heavy craft on Mars is difficult. In fact the top scientists in the world (including NASA) aren't even sure how we're gonna do it exactly. Smithsonian mag has a lengthy and highly informative article [airspacemag.com] on this.

        So
        Earth -> Moon: 15.58
        Earth -> Mars: 16.65
        Difference: 6.9%

        Yes but that doesn't include the time to get there. Moon = 3 days. Mars = 9 to 12 months. If you're sending a robotic probe then no problem. But if you're sending humans, compare the weight in supplies (food water etc) that you need for a 3 day journey vs. a 10 month journey. That's a gigantic weight difference. And that's not even counting the shielding you will need for a Mars journey.

        • Presumably you send the people on a one-month or less high speed journey - any longer and the mass of radiation shielding necessary starts to get ridiculous. And yes, that's much more energy intensive than getting to the moon in a timely fashion. But it's also a *tiny* fraction of the total mass necessary to build and stock an outpost. Everything else can be shipped slow-boat on a 9-month Hohman transfer at only a slight price premium over shipping it to the Moon.

          As for landing on Mars, by the time we get

          • "presumably you send the people on a one-month or less high speed journey"

            The Orion you are thinking of is hampered by nuclear disarmament treaties.

            • I'm pretty sure I remember Musk saying that either the Falcon X or XX would be up to the job, no orion-drive needed. Pretty much everyone planning a Mars mission is counting on such a rocket existing by the time they're ready for it, and I see no reason to assume it won't.

              • Falcon XX superheavy (or equivalents) would indeed be up to the job _for exploration trips_ - although getting back from Mars in the same time period would be problematic.

                For anything other than "sending 3-6 humans and their supplies", you'd need a fleet of them, which simply isn't practical - and sending that few people to explore means very little will get done that couldn't be done better, faster with much cheaper robots.

  • Congratulations, NASA. I'm pleased to see this launch go off without a hitch (as long as you don't count the scrub of the launch yesterday...)
  • Going to the moon was really cool, for sure. And we were very lucky. Hard to justify doing it again, even to Mars, with taxpayer dollars, considering the serious needs for health, defense, and infrastructure down here. Before robotic instruments were so capable, sending people to explore was the only way. Now we have had those two geology robots on Mars for YEARS and they work wonderfully. When everyone with a PC can Skype across the country so easily, it is hard to justify sending people on dangerou
  • Back in 1991, this was to be the year to launch to Mars: http://articles.latimes.com/19... [latimes.com]

    • That was never gonna happen with that kind of budget requirements. $500 billion in 1991 dollars? That's close to a trillion today. Might as well wish for unicorns to bring world peace.

      Instead of trying to ramrod monstrously expensive programs through, what we should've been concentrating on is lowering the cost to get stuff into orbit. Get cheap enough space access and a Mars trip will happen easily and naturally. Unfortunately all the players involved were making good money from the existing system so ther

  • Spare me NASA's PR Hype (Score:3)

    by thrich81 ( 1357561 ) on Friday December 05, 2014 @01:31PM (#48531795)

    I'm glad to see this flight finally, but the flight trajectory of this flight was eerily similar to the first launch of the Saturn V. That mission also tested the Apollo spacecraft reentry characteristics at higher than LEO speed. Well, plus testing the largest booster ever built in all-up configuration on its first flight. So NASA has basically taken an off the shelf military booster (Delta IV Heavy) and launched an uncrewed Orion spacecraft and it worked -- great. So their PR release should have said, "We have now almost achieved the same capability with Orion as we had in 1967 with Apollo." Instead, the official commentary from Mission Control is, " 'There's your new spacecraft, America,' " Mission Control commentator Rob Navias said as the Orion capsule neared the water 270 miles off Mexico's Baja peninsula. Navias called the journey "the most perfect flight you could ever imagine." In 1967 the commentary from Mission Control would have been something like, "The vehicle performed nominally" One of the things I miss about the old NASA was their understated PR at the time -- just the engineering description of events, little fluff. Now I get the feeling that a division of PR hacks are crafting every word of commentary ahead of time.

    • Walter Cronkite's live description of the launch ofApollo 4 [wikipedia.org]: "...our building's shaking here. Our building's shaking! Oh it's terrific, the building's shaking! This big blast window is shaking! We're holding it with our hands! Look at that rocket go into the clouds at 3000 feet!...you can see it...you can see it...oh the roar is terrific!...".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dwye ( 1127395 )

        Yes, but Walter was a huge fanboi, as he would have admitted if he had ever seen the term. I always thought that ABC had the better scientific info, but watching Cronkite just plain gush was more fun. Adding in Schirra after his Apollo flight made CBS the better choice, all around.

    • It's "eerily similar" because they are testing the same test points they did before. The fact that a previous spacecraft built with 50's aerospace technology managed to do it doesn't mean that much. We know what to expect, but you still have to actually build what you are planning to fly, and then fly it and see. You can't just simulate everything, assume the simulation is correct, and then shoot it off with 3 people in it on national TV.

      In many ways, the added complexity made possible

    • You to realize that the first Apollo fight was supposed to be manned, and it killed all three astronauts on board? NASA realize it was being too aggressive and ran a series of unmanned Apollo/Saturn fights before launching the first manned mission.

      You don't build an entire rocket system and try to do everything on the first mission.

      • I agree that the OP is not getting it right but that is not the case. In fact, there were numerous Apollo-related unmanned test flights before the fire, and there were several planned after the nominal launch of AS-204 (renamed Apollo 1 later). In particular, what was later termed Apollo 4 was always planned to be an unmanned mission, as was 6. The only mission definition changes were to remove all the Block I CSM missions in favor of the Block II (which was already in planning, but were also altered due to

        • I'm not trying to start something here, but where exactly did the OP (me) not get it right? The first Saturn V flight (to which I was comparing this Orion flight) was never intended to be manned, so that disposes of the post you responded to. And one of the test points of that Saturn V flight was to test the Apollo capsule (admittedly a Block I but with some Block II modifications) at reentry speeds faster than those of low earth orbit, which seems to be a talking point about the Orion flight. Just sayin

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