Blue Origin Thread (merged)

[PB666]

This from the beeb.........

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34767799

Back end.

[Motokid600]

2018 is freaking ridiculous... That should be the manned flight and 2023 should be the first mission.

[architeuthis]

2018 is freaking ridiculous... That should be the manned flight and 2023 should be the first mission.

Could you please expand a bit on your reasoning? Why is 2018 ridiculous?

[PB666]

Given that it will be 2016 before this back end is fitted to the capsule, then thevfittings and back end will undergo more design so . . . . . for the unmanned test flight.

[Motokid600]

Could you please expand a bit on your reasoning? Why is 2018 ridiculous?

Sorry I forgot about this post It's ridiculous because we're talking 8 years instead of 1. Apollo 4 in '67 was the closest equivalent to Orions last mission. (Or was it AS-101? ) Apollo 7 launched in '68. 2023 for Orions manned mission.

Glaciers move faster.

Edited November 13, 2015 by Motokid600

[Rune]

From its inception, Orion was designed for "Apollo on steroids" missions, i.e. The Moon. In the current scheme, it has been repurposed for trips to Lagrange points and cislunar trips, but it's still limited to 21-days of on-orbit life with limited living space and only 700m/s of dV.

Its only role in a Mars architecture is as a 22-ton dinghy for transferring to and from the MTV, which is a role that could be taken by a slightly beefed-up 11-ton Dragon or CST-100 for half the mass and without using a precious SLS for the launch.

Holy boop, you have no idea how refreshing it is to hear you say that. I'm so in agreement with that statement, I've been repeating it every time I discuss Orion for years now.

Rune. Don't forget the 17 billion dollar pricetag. It's an expensive, overweight, redundant dinghy.

[Nibb31]

Sorry I forgot about this post It's ridiculous because we're talking 8 years instead of 1. Apollo 4 in '67 was the closest equivalent to Orions last mission. (Or was it AS-101? ) Apollo 7 launched in '68. 2023 for Orions manned mission.

Glaciers move faster.

Apollo had unlimited funding and tens of thousands of people working on it. Orion gets trickle money and the number of people working on it is in the hundreds.

[Motokid600]

As I said. Pathetic. When in comparison with Apollo at least.

The civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. A much more perilous time in the US then today and we still put men on the moon at a relatively fast pace. Granted not for the best of reasons.

So what's our excuse this day and age for NASA's absurdly low funding?

[benzman]

Nobody else is competing with us, and it doesn't make money.

Our nation is ruled by corporations.

Ergo, we do just enough to keep the population happy.

Damn, that was SO close to a haiku...

This is my first attempt at a haiku

no competition

and ruled by corporations

blind but happy

[fredinno]

Nobody else is competing with us, and it doesn't make money.

Our nation is ruled by corporations.

Ergo, we do just enough to keep the population happy.

Damn, that was SO close to a haiku...

Since space bugets probably won't increase significantly, significant increases in budgetary efficiency are unlikely due to the want for pork, and Space Race 2.0 is practically impossible. International cooperation (INCLUDING Russsia and China) and encouraging commerical privatisation of near-space is probably the most likely way we will see deep space exploration any time soon. Unfortunately, I'm worried politics will get in the way of both.

[Hcube]

Yeah, our military-industrial overlords have decided to pick another fight with both of them to show how awesome we are.

The only way we get into another space race is to find a new weapons system using deep space, like targeted asteroid bombardment....

(oh god... I might have just given them an idea)

Luckily that is forbidden... Otherwise i'm pretty sure LEO would already be crowded with orbital weapons

[architeuthis]

SLS was not my first choice. IMO the Augustine commission tried to kill Constellation for good reasons. Clearly, a big part of its raison d'etre, at least as far as the U.S. Congress is concerned, is naked political patronage of the old shuttle suppliers. I have always favored the alternate model for manned space exploration based on commercial medium lift/orbital propellant depots/on-orbit servicing and assembly which I see as much more robust and sustainable under the present and likely near-future circumstances than huge heavy lift rockets.

...That said, I find the profound pessimism about SLS widespread amongst my fellow space nerds (as sometimes evidenced in these forums), to be counterproductive. And a bit depressing besides. SLS will fly, probably as early as 2018. As far as putting boot in the martian regolith is concerned it is the best thing since the Saturn V to actually leave the realm of fantasy and PowerPoint presentations. In fact NASA has a solid plan for actually getting us there by the mid-2030's. A plan that doesn't make ridiculous assumptions about flight rates, game-changing technologies, 'Kennedy moments', or massive budget increases. This is exactly the kind of incremental planning NASA should have continued to pursue since the Apollo landings (instead of having to restart from scratch every new Presidential administration). Apollo seems more and more like science-fiction with each passing year. This is the closest we've been in decades to actually being able to manifest manned missions beyond LEO. I'm extremely inspired by SpaceX's achievements and their huge ambitions. They need to help Americans remember how to 'think big' about space. But Elon Musk is not the messiah. John Galt, (or at least his shareholders) will only go to Mars if there is a compelling business case for doing so. SpaceX is not profitable enough to fund MCT from retained earnings. They may never be (even with perfect reusability of Falcon 9). The launch services market is simply not that big.

NASA needs coherent political support to advance its mission. We should all stand behind them. They're goddamn amazing.

Things are somehow incredibly finally looking up. Why can't we just appreciate it?

Edited November 13, 2015 by architeuthis

[Hcube]

Don't make me laugh like that, it hurts..

There is absolutely nothing forbidden in war. See the US/Russian national stashes of chemical, bio, and nuclear weapons.

Well, non-nuclear weapons aren't forbidden but there are a few things called international community, Outer Space Treaty, UNOOSA and COPUOS that make it pretty hard to militarize space.

Putting weapons in space today would backfire pretty badly

[Kryten]

Don't make me laugh like that, it hurts..

There is absolutely nothing forbidden in war. See the US/Russian national stashes of chemical, bio, and nuclear weapons.

US chemical and biological weapons production was stopped on order of Nixon in the 70s, and the biological weapons destroyed at the same time. Russian BW and CW and American CW were removed from military readiness in the 90s and the last of both are both are being destroyed currently.

[Kryten]

If you're going to start throwing around claims that nations are breaking international law, at least try to provide some proof? There's not even a motive to keep them, these are weapons neither country could actually use within current doctrine.

[davidy12]

Honestly, why are we still speculating it will fail? Apollo had MUCH bigger problems and still went to the moon. Granted, we aren't going to mars by the end of the next decade (unless maybe one of the future presidents sets a presidential imperative), but still, I'd be extremely surprised if Orion doesn't fly. Plus, unlike Constellation, the SLS is officially go for production, whereas Ares V never proceeded beyond wind tunnel and concept tests. So yeah, I'd be willing to bet my college career that the SLS will fly by 2018.

[Kryten]

They only need a couple months delay to push it out of 2018, so I wouldn't say that. Certainly they'll be up before the end of 2019 barring something catastrophic.

[fredinno]

I think you could say that it's like a disappointing child. We want, more than anything for the modern NASA to be amazing, but they simply cannot stop shooting themselves/getting shot in the foot. VERY few, if any, on these forums would ever say that they're hoping for NASA to fail. We just can't stop thinking of what they could have been by now...

I think after Constellation, NASA went from being overly optimistic about schedules to overly careful....

[JJJacksonTyler]

It's...the name of the Apollo 16 LEM?

Oh right. The underfunded spacecraft.

[CptRichardson]

Honestly, why are we still speculating it will fail? Apollo had MUCH bigger problems and still went to the moon. Granted, we aren't going to mars by the end of the next decade (unless maybe one of the future presidents sets a presidential imperative), but still, I'd be extremely surprised if Orion doesn't fly. Plus, unlike Constellation, the SLS is officially go for production, whereas Ares V never proceeded beyond wind tunnel and concept tests. So yeah, I'd be willing to bet my college career that the SLS will fly by 2018.

Because the US government is fickle and stupid with funding, and because it has to pass through a presidential handover. It will most likely get canned in 2017.

[Bill Phil]

Honestly, why are we still speculating it will fail? Apollo had MUCH bigger problems and still went to the moon. Granted, we aren't going to mars by the end of the next decade (unless maybe one of the future presidents sets a presidential imperative), but still, I'd be extremely surprised if Orion doesn't fly. Plus, unlike Constellation, the SLS is officially go for production, whereas Ares V never proceeded beyond wind tunnel and concept tests. So yeah, I'd be willing to bet my college career that the SLS will fly by 2018.

Apollo actually had a good purpose though (at least for politics, but that's neither here nor there). It was to show the rest of the world that the USA is awesome. It worked, too.

But SLS has no support anywhere near Apollo's. It's only here because they wanted to actually do something. But it's a waste. SLS might fly once, twice, thrice, but no more.

Orion, however, has already flown.

[Aethon]

[IMG]http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/silver_entry.jpeg[/IMG]



Highly relevant (to KSP) and ripped from todays' headlines. Heat management.


[URL]http://www.nasa.gov/feature/engineers-refine-thermal-protection-system-for-orion-s-next-mission[/URL]



[IMG]http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/sc15_iotd_sls.imagefeature.png[/IMG]



..And simulating booster separation.


[URL]http://www.nasa.gov/ames/image-feature/simulation-sls-booster-separation[/URL] Edited November 19, 2015 by Aethon

[rtxoff]

[B]NASA Orders SpaceX Crew Mission to International Space Station[/B]


[URL]http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-orders-spacex-crew-mission-to-international-space-station[/URL]


I hope this news fits into this thread, didn't want to open a new one.

[RainDreamer]

Soon we will see if there will be a replacement for Soyuz.

[Streetwind]

These vehicles (Crew Dragon and Starliner) will not replace Soyuz, but rather fly alongside.

Instead of purchasing seats from Russia, NASA will barter seats. Some US astronauts will continue to fly on Soyuz, and some Russian cosmonauts will fly on US commercial crew vehicles. This is done so that no vehicle leaving the station will take all members of either party down to Earth when it leaves, which would result in a situation where one of the two segments of the station is without native crew during layover.