Orion... America and Europe's first step to Mars, launches Today!

[Skroe]

Thursday is an important day:

The Orion Space Capsule, which has been in development since 2005, will finally launch on top of a Delta IV. It will orbit the Earth twice, ten times further away than the Space Shuttle or ISS do. It will be the furthest a man-rated vehicle (though unmanned in this test flight) will have flown from Earth in 40 years. It's return trajectory will simulate a high-speed Mars reentry to test it's heat shield.

Orion, though it looks like the Apollo Capsule, is substantially more advanced and much larger and roomier. It is also reusable. It will be the US's Space Vehicle through the 2040s at least. Canadians, the CSA is playing a big role in the larger program, along with the ESA. This is the only time Orion will launch on the Delta IV though. Future flights will be on the much larger Space Launch System, which debuts in March 2018.

So Thursday is a pretty history day for space exploration. Although called "Exploration Test Flight I", when Apollo did this, it was called Apollo 4. You can watch the launch live here :

http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv


http://www.theguardian.com/science/l...p-live-updates






Launch is scheduled very shortly (2 hour window today, likely in the next 10 minutes).

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Explanation of what the mission is about:

[Deleted]

Awesome! Thanks for the reminder

[Mayhem]

what does the word man-rated mean?

[Nerraw]

Launch is currently on hold due to ground winds. Still another 2h14m in today's launch window.

[Skroe]

The capsule is actually black by the the way, because I'm sure people are wondering (if comparing to the "silver" Apollo).

That is because Apollo was covered in thermal blankets when examined closely. Orion, designed for higher velocity reentry from a trip to Mars, is covered in thermal tiles like the bottom of the space shuttle in order to endure the higher thermal stress.







The silver is actually tape over the blankets.

[Cathfaern]

what does the word man-rated mean?

"In spaceflight, a human-rating certification is the assurance that the space system accommodates human needs, effectively utilizes human capabilities, controls hazards with sufficient certainty to be considered safe for human operations, and provides, to the maximum extent practical, the capability to safely recover the crew from hazardous situations." (source)

[Mayhem]

"In spaceflight, a human-rating certification is the assurance that the space system accommodates human needs, effectively utilizes human capabilities, controls hazards with sufficient certainty to be considered safe for human operations, and provides, to the maximum extent practical, the capability to safely recover the crew from hazardous situations." (source)

thank you very much, so this thing could be manned, impressive

[Nerraw]

New launch time is in 8 minutes!

[Skroe]

what does the word man-rated mean?

There are two types of space vehicles. Man-rated and not man-rated.

Man-rated vehicles are built to certain (very high) specifications have have more sensors, different types of valves (and more of them), and tighter tolerances, to decrease the probability of launch causing death or injury of an occupant. Building a man-rated vehicle is always more expensive than building one not meant for people. NASA's review of designs is extremely stringent, and many argue today over engineered for safety (to the point of increasing costs too high). "Man rating" a vehicle means that it has successfully met all the qualifications for safe human transport in NASA's estimation by successfully implementing the man-rated list of requirement and passing the reviews.

Non Man-rated (a term not used) is everything else. These are vehicles meant for launch of sattelites or payloads. While they are built to standards to ensure safe launches, things that are not relevant to human health and welfare are allowed higher standards (for example, unmanned rockets may vibrate beyond what NASA allows for man-rated vehicles).

Now to be clear about a couple things:

-Human beings probably could launch on every vehicle of size with a capsule that is "not man-rated". Man-rating is a engineering standard. It is a list of things NASA decided out of it's experience. Today's standard is the highest it's ever been. Orion's standards are 10 times the shuttles. It is higher than Apollo, Gemini and Mercury. But because the standard is high it just means it is RELATIVELY unsafe as opposed to absolutely unsafe.

-Connected to this, while the Orion capsule being launched today is manrated (though it has no chairs and displays internally), the Delta IV Heavy launching it IS NOT man-rated. 10 years ago Lockheed and Boeing proposed that NASA's next manned launcher would be, well, exactly what you're seeing - a new capsule on top of a Delta IV heavy. This was disregarded for a lot of reasons, most of them political (but also the Delta IV heavy is $480 million a launch and really too expensive for this purpose). To have made this possible though, the Delta IV Heavy would have required 400+ changes to "Man-rate" it. Thus, ULA (the manufacturer) would have produced two versions of the Delta IV heavy - one for satellites and one for people, and they would be different in subtle but important ways.

-But despite this, let's be clear, yes, you could put an Orion with seats on top of ANY Delta IV heavy and it would be fine for taking people to space, were man-rating standards ignored. It would be less safe for sure, from an engineering standpoint a man-rated Delta IV would have a lower chance to fail than a non-manrated one, but there is no physical reason why it couldn't put a capsule with people into orbit. These modern launchers are of course, far more reliable than Apollo, Gemini or Mercury launch vehicles. But equally our standards for man-rating have been raised over the decades.

Much of Man-rating refinement actually is in the engines of vehicle in question. The RD-68 on the Delta IV is much more modern and simplified than it's direct predecessor, the RD-25D aka the Space Shuttle Main Engline, and it's predecessor, the Apollo era J-2. But it was never manrated, unlike the RD-25D. And although it could be done cheaply and quickly ($300 million and 2 years), it was never done for several reasons, even though it was and still is, being explored. In fact, it still may be.

[Nerraw]

3 minutes to go.

[Skroe]

thank you very much, so this thing could be manned, impressive

The capsule is built to be manned. It's intended launch vehicle, the Space Launch System, launches in March-May 2018. It will be the largest launch vehicle ever in it's final form... far larger than the Saturn V.

The Delta IV Heavy launching the capsule today is one of the US Government's two standard heavy lift launchers (along with the troubled Atlas V). It is the most powerful and largest active launcher in the world (along with the most expensive). It was designed, by the Air Force and ULA, in the late 1990s/Early 2000s, specifically to launch Space Shuttle-sized cargos, without relying on the Space Shuttle.

Use of the Delta IV is a one off, albeit an ironic one, because what we're seeing is something that ULA proposed in 2005 before NASA said no. As I said, this is a test flight, basically NASA's Mars/Asteroid initiative's version of Apollo 4.

The next launch of it will be on a vehicle three times the size of this Delta IV. And the one after that five times the size.

[Nerraw]

Another hold. No clue why yet.

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Alright, wind again.

[Skroe]

[Osmeric]

Remember the "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska?

This is a capsule to nowhere.

There is no funding, now or planned, to actually make all the other parts of a Mars mission. Nor is the capsule that is flying actually capable of handling a Mars-return trajectory (the heat shield isn't up to it). The capsule's interior volume is an order of magnitude too small to support a Mars mission.

And as capsules go, the vehicle has been horrifically expensive to develop ($9 billion and counting). For missions in cis-lunar space, derivatives of Space X's Dragon will be much cheaper and available much sooner.

All Orion was is a means of delivering pork barrel dollars to certain states. For all the actual good it will do, they might as well have taken the money it consumed and burned it in a fire.

[Nerraw]

Whats that ''flight window'' thing and why there is a limit to when they can launch spacecraft?

The flight window is a timeframe where Earth is in the correct position to facilitate the launch mission under the given parameters it has.

[Skroe]

Whats that ''flight window'' thing and why there is a limit to when they can launch spacecraft?

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And which part is the capsule ie where people will live/work and whats the rest (first post image with that long structure) ?

The launch window is due to many factors. It is sized the way it is for time of day, weather conditions, and for it to reach it's "target" at it's scheduled time. In this case the target is the Pacific Ocean after a 4 hour flight and 2 orbits. If this were a rocket going to the International Space Station, the launch window would be based upon the window of time that the rocket has to launch, orbit the earth and "catch up" with the ISS. Launching at the wrong time means it wouldn't catch up with the fuel load / in the time required.

People live inside the capsule, the black part.

Behind that is the service module. It is the cylinder about as long as the capsule is.

Behind that is the propulsion module... a rocket.

Specifically look at my post above, #14. The components are connected with various interstages, which are computers/sensors and joining segments.

[Deleted]

I thought this was about cookies

[Mayhem]

compared to the saturn V how big is the ariane 6 going to be?

[Skroe]

Remember the "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska?

This is a capsule to nowhere.

There is no funding, now or planned, to actually make all the other parts of a Mars mission. Nor is the capsule that is flying actually capable of handling a Mars-return trajectory (the heat shield isn't up to it). The capsule's interior volume is an order of magnitude too small to support a Mars mission.

And as capsules go, the vehicle has been horrifically expensive to develop ($9 billion and counting). For missions in cis-lunar space, derivatives of Space X's Dragon will be much cheaper and available much sooner.

All Orion was is a means of delivering pork barrel dollars to certain states. For all the actual good it will do, they might as well have taken the money it consumed and burned it in a fire.

With all due respect, we've been hearing that nonsense since 2005. And how it would never launch. And how it would fall behind schedule and never be funded.

And here it is, about to fly, with it and the SLS funded every year. In fact the only major schedule delay this thing ever experienced was when it was "suspended" when Obama tried to kill it as a launch vehicle until Congress saved it from him.

Commercial Space and Government Space are two different solutions to two different destinations. The Commercial Space people - and don't get me wrong, I love commercial space - are very wrongly paranoid about government funding (ironically enough) and have waged a Scorched Earth campaign against Orion/SLS for years.

Well stop. It's not going to work. It's never going to work. And the US Space program will be far better for for NASA doing it's thing with Orion in deep space, while SpaceX and co commercialize LEO on contract.

The false choice between the two is seriously the narrative in spaceflight. It's just the latest iteration of the old dumb my-way-or-no-way Scorched Earth campaigns that made this thing launch in 2015 rather than 2011. Before there was commercial space there was the DIRECT crowd. Before the DIRECT crowd was the Space Shuttle Forever Squad. And that ignores the crazies who lose their shit at the mere prospect that *gasp* ATK dare gets to provide Solid boosters for the SLS over their beloved new liquid booster dream.

My position on Orion and SLS for the past year has been to stop reasoning with people against it and just say: It's record speaks for itself, and it's been fully funded and on or ahead of schedule and under budget every year. It's happening and if you don't like it, too damn bad. You're living in a world where it will fly, no matter what you want.

I've said that to ex-NASA engineers and enthusiasts alike. Because it needs to be said: every year this thing gets funded, and every year it takes a another step towards completion, and every year the doomsayer's predictions are pushed another year into the future.

[Nerraw]

New launch time at 13:26 UTC. Which is in about 5 minutes.

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New hold. Sounded like a fuel situation.