Exploration Flight Test 1 Orion

[Pawelk198604]

It was long time since i was here on forum Mainly because i have lot study at university, i have very little time to play me beloved KSP

But recently I came across a very interesting news, and this forum is full of space geeks like me, it is perfect place to share this news:D

Apparently, NASA is preparing to flight test new capsule Orion, the one that is to be used in future missions to the moon.

http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/space-flight-news/orion/exploration-flight-test-1/booster-for-nasas-eft-1-mission-rolls-out/

This mission is to be unmanned, and is to be held in September.

I wonder when I will take a manned mission with astronauts. The first test of the Space Shuttle mission STS-1 was the manned mission right away, there ware no unmanned mission.

[Streetwind]

That's because the space shuttle couldn't fly unmanned. It was completely reliant on a human pilot. Also, because they gave it those unnecessarily large wings (designed for a secret mission that ended up never being flown - likely related to a potential war-with-soviet-union scenario) it was possible to perform extensive atmospheric flight testing before the actual first space launch. That's something you can't do with a pure spaceship like the Orion capsule, so it isn't as safe to go manned right away.

However there is a thread here on the science forums that discusses whether or not the first Orion launch should be made manned.

[DonLorenzo]

Hey that makes me wonder.. could the space shuttle reasonable take off from a runway?

[Kryten]

Hey that makes me wonder.. could the space shuttle reasonable take off from a runway?

No. It didn't have any capability to hold fuel for the main engines, and there's no way the OMS engines would have had enough thrust. The soviets managed to achieve horizontal takeoff with their enterprise-equivalent for Buran, but only by strapping jet engines to it.

[Nibb31]

There are only 3 flights manifested for Orion:

EFT-1 in 2014: This is a quick two-orbit high apogee test. The idea is to simulate a high-velocity re-entry similar to a trip from the Moon. It will really only test the heat shield and the avionics, because all of the rest will be dummy placeholder equipment.

EM-1 in 2017: This will be an unmanned circumlunar flight with a real spacecraft, including a real service module, and launched on SLS.

EM-2 in 2021: This will be the first manned flight. It will probably be combined with the Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM), involving loitering at EML-1, rendez-vous with the ARM spacecraft, several EVAs, and a return burn. That's a lot of "firsts" for a new spacecraft, but my hunch is that ARM will be delayed and EM-2 will just do a lunar orbit or something.

Further missions are undefined and there have been no orders to build more service modules. The reason for the first manned flight to come so late is because the ECLSS (life support system) will not be ready before 2021 for budgetary reasons.

[SargeRho]

Kryten, wasn't Buran built so that it could have Jet Engines mounted to it?

[Nibb31]

One of the Buran prototypes had Jet Engines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK-GLI

They used those instead for their gliding tests, because the AN-225 wasn't capable of doing drop tests. It was the equivalent of NASA's Enterprise, so it wasn't spaceworthy. The Jet engines and fuel took the place of the OMS.

Of course, the actual Buran orbiters weren't designed to have jet engines mounted.

[check]

EM-2 in 2021: This will be the first manned flight. It will probably be combined with the Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM), involving loitering at EML-1, rendez-vous with the ARM spacecraft, several EVAs, and a return burn. That's a lot of "firsts" for a new spacecraft, but my hunch is that ARM will be delayed and EM-2 will just do a lunar orbit or something..

My thoughts too. Have they even begun any work on ARM? I mean, if they're going to use ion thrusters like they've said they're gonna need to launch within the next two years to make the 2021 target...

[mdatspace]

My thoughts too. Have they even begun any work on ARM? I mean, if they're going to use ion thrusters like they've said they're gonna need to launch within the next two years to make the 2021 target...

Many politicians want the moon as our primary BEO destination. In my opinion, private companies should be focusing on the moon, not NASA.

[Nibb31]

There is no such thing as a private space program. There is no return on investment in commercial space exploration.

[Rakaydos]

There is no such thing as a private space program. There is no return on investment in commercial space exploration.

SpaceX is doing well enough for itself...

There can be two paths that lead corporations to space- Transportation infrastructure in the short term (like SpaceX, where other people pay them to take stuff places) and once that aspect gets large enough, Space based manufacturing to remove launch costs from both the transportation and payload.

[Headhunter09]

There is no such thing as a private space program. There is no return on investment in commercial space exploration.

A "private" space program would probably involve mining water and selling it to other people in LEO. There is no direct ROI from doing space exploration, so you have to rely on other people putting a dollar amount to the exploration's intrinsic value.