How does this compare to what SpaceX is doing? Does it make sense for NASA to be doing this in parallel with Dragon?
it is called competition - a best known way to get 2 of something at the total cost of 2X when otherwise it would be only 1 inferior version of that something at the cost of 10X
Orion has no mission yet, it's really just a component of a larger system, but that larger system hasn't been designed or funded.
Worse, Orion has several design flaws that limit its usefulness. For example, it's designed with an old-fashioned tractor abort system, a huge solid fueled rocket that will be attached to the capsule during launches. However, in most realistic scenarios the crew for a mission that would use Orion would not actually be launched from Earth on Orion, rendering that feature nearly useless. Except that it's a feature that takes away literal tons of useful hardware from the spacecraft since it is a heavy (7.5 tonnes) component that steals payload mass from the rest of the vehicle.
That sort of issue is endemic to the entire Orion project, and even worse for SLS. It's a hugely expensive hypothetically useful system designed around hypothetical constraints for missions that haven't even been designed, let alone funded, yet. Realistically it'll probably end up not being useful for whatever mission architectures we end up with for future manned interplanetary missions, and more flexible designs or newer systems are, I suspect, far more likely to be useful and practical when that time comes.
Orion is particularly interesting since it's sort of the cornerstone of a potential manned Mars mission. But when you compare it against competing designs such as SpaceX's "MCT" architecture there is about 1-2 orders of magnitude greater cost, significantly greater complexity, and yet less capability. At this point there is a very high likelihood that no human crew will ever end up in an Orion spacecraft, and the more likely outcome is that the project will be abandoned prior to anything interesting happening with it.
Fill in the blank and you've described a good fraction of NASA's technology over the past 20 years.
INTERVIEWER JEREMY HOBSON: Do you think it's possible that the private sector beats NASA in getting to Mars?
BEATTY: Not with people.
Orion uses a parachute to land, Red Dragon will use Super Draco based thrusters to land.
Nasa throws away the tanks used to get Orion to Space, SpaceX will land the tanks and reuse them to lower overall mission cost.
Nasa spent 60 billion dollars to get this far, won't be ready to test its new SLS system for 3-5 years, won't fly a human for 10+ years. SpaceX will fly astronauts to space by 2017.
SpaceX spent 3 billion getting this far and resupplies the ISS. Multiple times.
Beatty is short sighted and underestimates Elon Musk.
Alternatively, SpaceX hasn't launched people into space; NASA has. SpaceX hasn't launched a space station; NASA (and others) have. NASA has larger budgets, but they solve that problem by having larger budgets.
The hardest part about getting to Mars isn't flinging a metal tube off the Earth. That part we know how to do.
The hard part is keeping people alive for 6 months there, 6 months back, and providing all the equipment necessary to do meaningful science on the surface.
This isn't to say that an adequate launch system isn't essential to the mission, but I would be very surprised if SpaceX developed life support systems independently and more efficiently than NASA. More likely, I can imagine a news headline in which a SpaceX rocket sends a NASA capsule and living module to an off-world mission.
The actual spacecraft part is easy in comparison. It's of reasonable dimension, you can test and fiddle with it on the ground, and plenty of common practice is available due to submarines and high-altitude aircraft as well as decades of continuous operation in space.
The history of manned space systems will present plenty of examples of the booster being the pacing element. But we don't have to look much further than the very system we're talking about here. Orion is ready and flying a projected 4 years (and probably longer in reality) before its booster. And that's not because they got a head start.
That's not to say that rockets and manned space craft are similar problem domains; they're not. Any expertise SpaceX will need in that area will have to be developed separately. But the techniques are well known (thanks largely to NASA, who make no secret of it) and are just plain not that hard. They're already flying a pressurized and temperature-controlled Dragon (which spends time as part of the ISS), and are in development of a crewed one.
It is true that SpaceX has yet to operate any space stations, which NASA has, and which are the closest analogues we have to an interplanetary spacecraft. But again, ISS systems are a known quantity, and SpaceX could easily replicate them. Or, if they don't want to bother, could contract with Bigelow, who is currently flying two (unmanned) pressurized space stations, with designs for manned versions ready to go and awaiting a way to get there. SpaceX and Bigelow have already announced plans to partner for orbital station operations.
A Dragon and a Bigelow station would provide a nice ride to Mars. Getting to the surface and back would be a bit of a problem, but a SpaceX/Bigelow team could possibly land on Phobos and return in the next 5 years. And on a darn low budget, too. If you want to walk on Mars without too much tech development, Dragon 2 should be able to land just as it does on Earth. Dunno how you'd get back up, though. Maybe you could land a Falcon-ish booster loaded with a storable oxidizer (like peroxide) on little enough juice that it could get back into orbit. Haven't looked into the numbers there; F9-1 is certainly single stage to orbit on Mars, but down-and-up on the same fuel load seems unlikely. It'd certainly work with ISRU propellants, but that's a nice can of worms.
http://i.imgur.com/CLqdeKf.jpg
People severely underestimate the distance to the moon!
Getting to the moon from LEO takes less than half the delta-v that it takes to get to LEO, and WAY less fuel (because by this time you've dropped so much weight getting to LEO)
So the real problem will always be the stupidly inefficient method by which we conduct space flight. We send all of our supplies out of an enormous gravity well with a thick atmosphere.
Imagine what we could build if we already had everything in space for us already.
The only way we'll be able to become truly space-fairing is if we either become an astroid-mining civilization, or if we build something that lets us virtually ignore Earth's gravity well, like a space elevator.
Watching the launch today, I couldn't help wonder why they don't use standard jets to get the vehicle to a height where a rocket could take over.
The highest a jet has flown is about 37km and LEO is considered to start at about 160km. That 37km though in my mind would be the toughest and most fuel costly to ascend.
Would it not save both weight and money to use jets and fixed wings up through the low altitudes before turning to rockets for the higher altitude ascent?
They are the two big approaches to cheap space being done now. 1) Be cost-effective at making rockets, 2) launch from jets. My money is on #1, which SpaceX is doing, but #2 has some things going for it that could prove me wrong. #2 is also strictly limited in just how big you can make a payload, while for #1 you can get up to around 200 ton payloads before things start working against you.
Since they don't need to achieve anywhere near the required velocity to enter LEO, they can use a much smaller solid-fuel rocket engine and launch from a jet.
LEO isn't that far away, but it goes by _really_ quickly. And getting going that fast requires a lot of propellant mass, and that's judged by the tyranny of the rocket equation.
Because gravity. If you aren't going fast relative to Earth, you aren't going to escape Earth orbit [0]. Heck, if you aren't going fast relative to Earth, you aren't even going to be in Earth orbit [1], you are going to be falling back to the surface.
The difficulty is that we see pictures and videos of our satellites and shuttles in orbit, and they look peaceful and serene. What's missing from those images and videos is a visceral feel that they are going over 17,000 mph. If they went less, they would leave orbit, and hit the Earth.
Objects in orbit are not "outside" of Earth's gravity; they are not just up there, just floating in space. The reason they don't "fall to Earth" is that they are falling to Earth. Constantly. It's just that their horizontal speed relative to the Earth is so large that they are - literally - falling around the Earth.
Basically, if you don't go fast enough, you're going to come back down to earth. Once you get to a speed that's fast enough that you aren't going to come back to earth, you'll find you are now in orbit around the sun, in a path remarkably similar to the one the earth is on. To get to Mars you need to get up into a higher orbit around the sun, so you need to go even faster.
For yet more perspective - an astronaut on the ISS in LEO is at most a couple of hours from the ground-based facilities in an emergency, probably more accessible than researchers at the South Pole. Sending people to Mars (on the order of magnitude of a year round trip, with very limited opportunities for early return) would require them to carry with them not only more expensive redundant systems, but also more advanced medical equipment and repair systems than anyone has had to carry into space before (which requires yet more mass, and hence a bigger and better launcher).
Of course, Orion itself doesn't deal with any of these issues - it's meant to be used for ascent and Earth return only, and to be attached to the larger systems that deal with the challenges of a Mars journey. Which indicates pretty well how little of the engineering work has been done towards NASA's Mars mission.
True, but it doesn't actually cost very much to do so. The cost of fuel for getting into orbit is only 0.3% of the total cost for the rocket [1], so if we could rapidly re-use them, we could potentially launch them every day of the year for not a lot of money.
[1]http://www.space.com/21386-spacex-reusable-rockets-cost.html
if we're talking about probes, the delta V aspect becomes a lot more fun when you consider the web of gravity slingshots that can be pulled off to up your dV
It's a good way to improve space technologies. SpaceX builds on a lot of the research and development NASA did with taxpayer dollars, just as Apple benefited from government subsidy and investment in things like early computers and the Internet.
While for profit sounds great, and does work amazingly well at a large number of US, EU, and multi-national corporations. It also doesn't.
Complex scientific programs can have developmental studies measured in decades. Which even very healthy multi-nations can't stomach. Selling a 50+ year ROI R&D program is really hard, and will likely get you laughed out of the boardroom.
But this is ultimately something that happens in academia. Due to largely public funding. Because as an charitable entity profit doesn't necessarily interfere with development and/or research of new ideas. Your goal is literally to piss away money experimenting on things.
While business and innovation to go hand in hand very happily. Business by definition don't transcend profitability. It is their goal. So while they do join hands for the short term, this is a short fling, not a life long love affair.
:.:.:
Also SpaceX does seem impressive. But everything they've currently done was done in the 1960's, without modern computing, or even integrated circuits. I like SpaceX but they are literally riding NASA's coat tails.
A structural analysis of a rocket engine can be done in a CAD simulation. Instead of by 5 guys with slide rules, and an IBM batch processing computer barely performing 100 KFLOPS.
has been for now. Significant differences though start to appear -
1. their rockets are modular from the start (even Russia has trouble to get similar system - Angara - off the ground)
2. GrassHoper - self-explanatory
3. "Raptor" full flow staged combustion engine - once they get that one, they will become way ahead of any previous development.
So you confirm my argument.
> their rockets are modular from the start (even Russia has trouble to get similar system
I'm glad a US company can do in 2014, what a cash strapped USSR couldn't in 1970/1980. Luckily there have been few technological innovations in the past 30 years to allow this to be a fair comparison.
>3
Once again, we are hedging our bets on what may happen. Not what has. Until it happens its vaporware.
actually it is cash rich Russia which is trying to do it today with much less success than SpaceX.
>So you confirm my argument.
my point here is that while the both functions have the same value, the SpaceX's has much higher first derivative at present and that, for all practical purposes, guarantees that it will be well ahead tomorrow
The issues with Russian space isn't money. It is widespread corruption which is able to drain any amount of money and lack of educated professionals. The "old guard" is retiring and new people are too young/inexperienced. People who should have come into the industry during the 199x are pretty much missing. Add to that especial Russian government and near-government corporate ineptitude, lack of modern technological base across the country, especially in electronics/communication...
You should read how US (DoD) buys rocket engines from Russia - US buys them from Florida 5-guys shop (all guys are very well connected Russian guys, some of them are even officially sanctioned by US :) for say $10/engine while the Florida shop buys them from the Russian state corporation at $1/engine while the cost of the engine is something like $2/engine, so the Russian state is something like losing the money here :)
Russia has put people in orbit on a yearly basis since the 60's. SpaceX is successful at coming up with promising designs, but it's quite a bit early to call them more successful than Russia.
Not for long: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Climate_Observatory
I've not heard whether or not SpaceX has done the on-pad abort test they were planning for last month.
"NASA just tested Orion — a spacecraft that might someday carry people to Mars" [2]
"NASA and its commercial partners are designing Orion to take astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid in the 2020s, and to Mars and its moons in the 2030s" [3]
"Orion will facilitate human exploration of the Moon, asteroids, and Mars." [4]
"This time, the rocket was unnamed, but the craft is designed eventually to carry humans to Mars" [5]
[1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/12/05/368652770/a-s...
[2] http://www.vox.com/2014/12/3/7322909/orion-test-flight
[3] http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/splashdown-orion-spaces...
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_%28spacecraft%29
[5] http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/dec/05/nasa-launches...
The Orion has less than 214 square feet of room. This isn't enough for 4 people to live in for 6 months.
NASA says it's for Mars because it gets people excited. But Congress has not instructed them to do a mission to Mars, and Congress is in charge, for better or for worse. There is no mission to Mars.
http://www.universetoday.com/88434/human-mission-to-an-aster...
And to be 100% clear, Orion is not capable of making the journey to Mars. Orion is envisioned as potentially being a key component of a larger system that could be used for Mars exploration, but by itself it is perhaps only maybe 10-20% or so of what would be needed for such a trip.
"Red Dragon is a modified SpaceX Dragon capsule for low-cost Mars lander missions using Falcon Heavy rockets. Plans call for a sample return rover to be delivered to the Martian surface while also testing techniques to enter the Martian atmosphere with equipment a human crew could eventually use."
[1]: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/2012001...
Spacex was from its start conceived by Musk to develop low cost systems that will be used to colonize Mars. He has said this from the start.
Nasa contracts were never necessary for SpaceX to succeed as they have contracts world wide to lift payloads to space for many nations. These contracts help to accelerate the company timeline for crewed missions to the Moon and Mars.