Kissing Orions

[tplank]

I'm not in the aerospace industry. Just a fan of big dreams. But, am I the only one that finds this utterly, bone-crushingly depressing?

Somebody please tell me how wonderful this is. I'm sure I just don't get it.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Not really depressing. Any pragmatists realizes the Moon is decades away, And Mars many decades away.

The mission this image is from, visiting asteroids might at least happen in my lifetime:

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/09 ... ssion.html

 

[doom_shepherd]

Sorry, but a mission to the Asteroids is just the first part of my "big dream," which involves catching a small one one, mining its trillion-dollars-plus-worth of metals, and using them to construct habitats in space.

That's a BIGGER dream than landing on the moon, if you ask me.

Not to mention learning enough about them that we can figure out better ways of deflecting dangerous ones than the impractical solution of trying to nuke them.

I wholeheartedly support a manned mission to an asteroid.

 

[tplank]

I appreciate the glass is half full outlook from those of you who know far more about this stuff than I ever will.

I on the other hand fear what we have become as a nation. Can-do Yankee ingenuity is rapidly being replaced by bean-counter reactionaries.

If I thought for a second that this was a stepping stone to greater things, I could be excited. But this looks, smells and and quacks like the wheels coming off our national psyche. :shock:

 

[radarredux]

Not really depressing. Any pragmatists realizes the Moon is decades away, And Mars many decades away.

Sadly, I do consider that depressing. After 46 years of economic growth and technological advancement, and it will take us ~3 times longer to get back to the Moon.

 

[SpaceKiwi]

I'm not in the aerospace industry. Just a fan of big dreams. But, am I the only one that finds this utterly, bone-crushingly depressing?
Somebody please tell me how wonderful this is. I'm sure I just don't get it.

As both a dreamer and a pragmatist, I do hear you tplank. When you consider the historical achievements of a similar looking spacecraft many moons ago, and you consider the seemingly incredible advancement of technology into every corner of our lives today, you might wonder why there isn't 'more' to look forward to than that illustrated by the graphic.

Unfortunately, until we can get both oars rowing in the same direction here on Earth, there are always going to be obsticles to making rapid advancement in space. In this current age, exploration of the heavens will be seen by most as a noble but utimately expensive luxury, barely affordable in a world filled with numerous more immediate problems.

So, the pragmatist in me feels the much maligned capsule is okay for right now. We, and by 'we' I mean 'you' space-faring nations, are making progress. Be it ever so modest, at least you are still engaged in the endeavour of reaching further out into space. And the humble capsule will hopefully prove to be a robust workhorse in undertaking that. They can't all be Ferrari's or Aston Martin's or DeLorean's.

I understand and share your frustration that we aren't further along in the journey, but Space has its own scale in every sense. Forty or fifty years versus fourteen billion. Not even the blink of an eye.



SK

 

[Ruri]

I think it's good NEOs are getting serious consideration as mission targets.
They have more volatiles then the moon and are very easy to reach destinations which makes them better refueling stops.
Also NEOs are one object in the solar system that could end civilization so we better learn as much as possible about them or we risk suffering the same fate as the dinosaurs.

A Bigelow Sundancer BTW would have half the mass of a second Orion while a BA330 would have close to the same mass.
Though the choice of what to use probably will depend more on distance and mission time then anything else.
If the mission is short then two Orion's would have enough room for a small crew.
Maybe setup one as mostly habitation but have some sling type seats that could be installed if it needed and the other setup for EVA.

Also have a toilet in both vehicles to avoid the ISS problem and if possible use the shuttle's design as it seems more reliable then the Russian unit on ISS.

As for science of course bring back samples several hundred lbs worth if both Orion's are ok you could bring back a ton of samples if you wanted.
Equipment to bring a radar transponder to leave on the asteroid, a core drill for deep samples.
Also place several seismographs and set off some explosives to get a look at it's interior structure.

The EDS if it still has fuel or has been fitted with a propulsion module could be rammed into the NEO to get information about it's interior.

 

[tchad]

Bone-crushingly depressing? Just the opposite. It is the first sign our space program may be moving in the right direction. The goal to put men and woman on the Moon and Mars seems to be based more on the influence of B-movies and pulp fiction than on logic and practicality. We will journey to an extraordinarily inhospitable place, down a deep gravity well, to collect rocks, return, and -- I fear -- lose interest once again. A more logical goal for the President to announce would be to make our presence in space sustainable. Period.

Let our engineers, entrepreneurs and various industries figure out how to do that via space-based solar power, mining the asteroids, helium-3 from the Moon, or some as-yet unimagined option. A National Strategy for Human Space Flight focusing on sustainability would require NASA to collaborate beyond its usual partners in the aerospace. It would need to reach out to the energy and mining industries, build a portfolio of competitive projects with business plans and a vision for sustainability, energize America's entrepreneurs and engineers to dream new dreams, and then go where the most practical and pragmatic of those dreams takes us. Which is probably not Mars or the Moon.

Going to Mars for the sake of going will not galvanize industry or the taxpayers. And it is, ultimately, a misguided goal based on ancient biological and modern fictional biases. Our ancestors evolved on the surface of a planet, so we are preconditioned to think that is where we should go. Our vision is further blurred by a Century of science fiction fantasies, a vision of the future that almost always takes place on other planets or their moons.

Going to Mars will require incremental innovation and an enormous expenditure of treasure and effort to rise up out of one deep gravity well only to fall down into another -- with little to show for it that could not have been accomplished by robotic probes. In contrast, building a human presence in space that is economically and physically sustainable will require breakthrough innovations that may benefit all of us here on Earth. Whatever ultimately makes our presence there economically sustainable will, by definition, have value. New technologies to recycle air, water, food and waste may also benefit a crowded and polluted Earth.

In the long term, making human beings physically and economically independent of Earth is the only goal that reasonable world leaders could endorse, particularly in times of global financial crisis. It might even induce the spacefaring nations to join hands in international collaboration to solve real-world problems. Finally, my sense of this President is that he has real respect for the use of evidence to inform policy. The goal of sustainability, and the ways we might imagine to achieve that, are at least as ambitious as going to Mars. The Committee would do well to recommend an evidence-based approach to sustainability over another one-off flight of fancy.

 

[coolstar1]

Tchad has got it almost exactly right. exploiting space resources is the only way
to build a sustainable human presence in space. the moon? a steppingstone to nowhere
(but a nice place to play once we've learned to exploit and boot-strap from NEOs).
Mars is a great follow-on to missions to NEOs, which is about the only place
I disagree with tchad.

 

[AirSpaceMan]

Instead of kissing spacecraft, I would prefer that we develop a habitat module with an airlock at the end of it for excursions outside the Earth/Moon system. We can use the Spacehab module that was sucessfully used on the shuttle before Columbia's untimely demise. I'm thinking here of a module that can have propulsion system at one end and a habitat at the other with the Orion spacecraft docked at the habitat end. Why have two small capsules with cramped space for six crew members on a 30-day long mission? Skylab had much more room in it than any one of the ISS modules. We need to include the human factor into this equation as well.

 

[littleolelady]

:roll: I am sure Harry Stamper would understand the reasoning for going to an asteroid.

However, I am in agreement with the fact that due to 'economic' mentality in politics these days they are trying to cut the costs of the space program and 'maybe' looking to go to asteroids instead. It is unfortunate that interest is waning in the space program but I do think that some country on this earth (mayber Japan) still has enough vision to care about space exploration. If that is the case the 'real' scientists and physicists will follow wherever that materializes. I am afraid the US has started down the path of disinterest that we will be last on the list of any kind of exploration if saving a buck is the only desire. Depressing, yes. Everything evolves though so I guess we have had our day and now it is up to another country to step up to the plate and take over. I wish them good luck!

 

[Hiberniantears]

Compare the cost of the war in Iraq in this decade alone to the cost of returning to the moon over the long term, and it is evident we have a priorities screwed up. This isn't to be a political statement on Iraq, but rather an honest assessment of the fact that Iraq has cost a lot of money, and we're not likely to recoup those costs in any truly tangible way any time soon, if ever. Whether you find the space program boring, it does have a very long list of real, tangible returns on investment, both historically and in the near and long term future. Many of the things we do as a nation are a waste of time and money. Seeking to spread our species, and the massive variety of Earth based life beyond our orbit is not one of those wastes. In fact, the cost to take the greatest step in the history of Earth-bound life are miniscule in relation to so many things. For the cost of a few life demolishing wars the United States could instead propigate our biosphere into space and ensure that the miracle that happened in our lonely little corner of space isn't just a flash in the pan of the Universe's timeline.

We have something which we can't yet see anywhere else in the universe. Maybe we'll find life elsewhere, but what a shame if we are alone and fail to make good on the miraculousness of our existence.

 

[tplank]

Listen, I get the sustainability portion of all of this. I am a long time advocate of the notion that extraterrestrial colonization will be trivial until private enterprise can cost justify it.

The depressing part is hammering a depressingly small vision round peg into and even smaller square budget hole. When the question is simply “what can we do with the budget we have”, then something is fundamentally wrong.

What happened to “what do we dream of doing”? What happened to “what do we want to know”?

My personal love of NASA, like so many others in my age group, is rooted in the spirit of adventure and exploration. The excitement of learning more about our universe and pushing out against our limits. I’m not an advocate of ending manned exploration in favor of robots-not at all. But, I find New Horizons about ten times as exciting as the Kissing Orions. That is real science and I can’t wait to see the first pictures of truly strange and distant lands.

We have a model here in America for growth and expansion. It was an accidental model, but effective and useful none the less. Government has at every turn facilitated growth and expansion through strategic subsidies of the private sector. Think railroad right of ways, international highway system, and the great war manufacturing facility give aways at the end of World War Two.

Just last week, it seems, we were rolling out pictures of moon bases built on microwaved regolith and other similarly creative ideas. I had always assumed that NASA would wear the wagon ruts through the Rockies and the momentum would build. Slowly it is becoming apparent that NASA is being deflated by a coarse combination of political interests and fiscal reality. It appears that the US will not be bootstrapping the future after all and that role will be left to the likes of SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and Bigelow (and a slew of others).

Which is not all bad...as has been better said by others, that is the path of sustainable growth. That is much of the difference between the English and French settlers of North America. But it will be as exciting as watching paint dry and utterly uninspiring to a young generation that we desperately need to become interested in math and science.

At the risk of sparking an inappropriate political debate, I lay this at the feet of our national insensitivity for the need for true leadership. This isn’t a partisan thing for me: ain’t nobody got ‘nuthin, it seems. In the area of space exploration, the lack of national vision is disconcertingly graphic. From greatness to averageness in a single generation.

It should make everyone sick.

 

[WillCarney]

Well if they can use Orion to go to other places maybe it can be adapted to fix Hubble. Instead of launching a booster to dump it in the Pacific that same booster could just keep it in orbit till Orion can visit it for the next round of repairs.

William

 

[CosmicTrader]

As an example of how different people see different things in a photo or story, *my* first thought was, "When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." At the request of former President Bush, NASA has put all of their eggs into the Ares/Orion basket, and are now scrambling to justify every possible mission as a good use of one, the other, or both. And then they have the chutzpah to threaten us with billions of dollars in cost overruns if we don't go along with their flawed plans.

I agree that it is, however, depressing.

 

[freeluna]

Seems like a Hail Mary pass to keep Orion alive. Beware that the specs for Orion have been changing from a 6 seater to a 4 seater. Personally, I would want a bit bigger can to live in for the flight to and from. Also, any such mission would require some degree of shielding against solar flares. Admittedly, though, a mission to an asteroid would be very cool and would be relatively low cost. I just find 'kissing orions' to be the least likely way to do it.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Let me guess, this is now o the SDC frontpage {sigh.... dh owes me a case of cheese sammiches}

 

[radarredux]

Personally, I would want a bit bigger can to live in for the flight to and from. ... I just find 'kissing orions' to be the least likely way to do it.

I always pictured a capsule docked to a hab module like a Bigelow Sundancer. If you are going to go all the way out to an asteroid, I would like to think you would also take a nice laboratory, a collection of bots, and a lot of attachments for the bots with you. Then you fly in formation with the NEO, send a bot with probes and sensors to "touch" the surface and collect stuff, bring the bot back in, and then examine it in the laboratory. Based on what you learn, you attach different probes or sensors to the bot and send it back out, or send the bot to a different location.

If you are going to just show astronauts putting their feet on the NEO and collecting a very small sample to return to Earth for examination, I think that would be a waste. Unmanned probes would be just as good at that. But having humans on site, doing science on site, and changing the mission on the fly as things are learned -- that is what makes sending humans out there useful.

Todd

 

[TC_sc]

This design would surely be a good shakedown mission to test the Orion on long voyages. Until all the the hardware is ready for moon missions, why not go play in the rock pile? We can do some real test, such as seeing if we can get a small asteroid to to follow Orion. If we can do this successfully, we have some real world numbers in case Earth is threatened. Going to visit asteroids is a waste of time if we just go there to get rock samples. We pretty much know the mineral content of asteroids. Everything in the solar system is made up of the same things. We need to try and move some of these rocks around for when the day comes and Earth is truly threatened by asteroids or comets.

It sure beats flying around in LEO. When I first read the story, I was like, "How sad is this?" After some thought, I am for something like this until we can productively go to the moon .

If we want to go to the moon or Mars, then NASA will have to focus in one direction, manned space travel, otherwise there will never be enough money.

 

[tplank]

I'll bet Kissing Orions gets a cooler patch

 

[amoebaman]

I am not a space expert, but a fan of the science fiction produced by authors such as Stephen Baxter, Gregory Benford and Larry Pournelle. They envisage us (the human race) soon populating the NEOs, the Asteriod Belt and eventually the Kuiper Belt, thereby allowing us near infinite room to grow, and near infinite resources (volatiles and water) to grow with.

I think the Kissing Orions is a first step to going there, and a wonderful compromise. And the ISS is a first step to staying in space. We've been to the moon, we're not ready to go to Mars, lets go elsewhere, and get at least some of the way to Mars.

Additionally if the Hubble is anything to go by, the James Webb Space Telescope could benefit from several upgrades and repairs in the course of it's life, and if we can go to the L2 points we should be able to do that. Hopefully imaging and other technology will move on considerably during the lifetime of the JWST as it has for the Hubble.
That too should benefit science and therefore mankind too.
The naysayers will kill the space program if compromises are not made. They will find ways of ensuring programs that are too ambitious are dragged out for years and never reach fruition, due to budgetary constraints.
Well done to whoever conceived of the idea.

 

[cheapseats_in_space]

There are really at least two issues here: 1) whether or not visiting a comet is a worthwhile mission, and 2) whether or not this is a practical spacecraft to do so, or just a kluge project to find a use for the Orion capsule (which is in danger of being a spaceship without a launch platform.) The following attempts to summarize the salient points of the above commentators, plus add my own spin; the second part is more entertaining.

1) Since my big dream is to have space travel become relatively affordable for "normal" people, preferably within the next 40 or so years I hope to live, I'm all in favor of this as a mission. It may be the smartest thing NASA has proposed in years, and the single most important factor in making space accessible to the rest of us. Depending on who's figures you choose to use, it costs $5000 to $15000 get a pound of mass into low earth orbit; for practical space-faring considerations, any long-term lunar or interplanetary mission fiscally implodes based on the amount of hydrogen, oxygen (for air, water and rocket fuel) and other supplies needed, if you are lifting them from the surface of the Earth. Prospecting for those resources on the moon raises other problems: A) they haven't found large quantities of water ice on the moon yet; B) the oxygen and hydrogen that they have found will require a lot of energy to process a large amount of ore, which is slow and expensive; and C) then after you process the stuff, you have to use more energy to get the usable products off the surface of the moon. Near Earth comets are the cheap, elegant solution, as they're already in high orbit and they're already mostly water, so they'd be really simple to process. I think it may turn out that a permanent moon-base will be better served by landing cometary resources, rather trying to prospect and process locally. Similarly, cometary resources would enable a much larger space station, with manufacturing and processing facilities of its own, possibly hydroponic farms, and maybe even the dream of a space hotel, where you could take a real shower.

2) So while I'm totally sold on going to comets and learning how to exploit them, I'm not sure the twinned Orion is the way to do it. Does this even need to be a manned mission? It would be faster and cheaper, (especially since it looks like Ares 1 is going to be delayed, if they can even get it to work), to send a robot prospector, which in concept might be the lowest tech space ship ever flown. A mosquito-like robot would land on the comet, insert a water heating probe, suck off the gasses and liquids, and then inflate a large bladder using a blast of steam. The bladder would be allowed to freeze, creating a giant tank, which would then be filled as the water heater keeps running. You would end up with a kevlar bag around an ice cube. The robot would then use some of the water as fuel to get back to the International Space Station. A variation would be to catch the precipitate as it comes off the comet, which would be more complex, but less likely to destabilize the comet's orbit. Regardless, as a test project, if the robot only delivers about a ton of ice, which would be about a 264 gallon volume by my calculations, it would be worth between $10 to $30 million. Potentially, this could be the first spacecraft--who's primary function isn't to process data--to ever directly pay for itself; especially since the robot prospector would be reusable, and after the first outbound mission, provide its own fuel. A Ron Popeil flash, "wait, there's more": If you filled a kevlar bag with snow and/or gas, and attached a propulsion unit, (basically, a retired robot prospector), it could serve as a cheap catcher's mitt/airbag for all that space trash, which is becoming more dangerous. “And if you order now”, you could make a robot sled to retrieve satellites that need repair and upgrades, and return them to high orbit, using the comparatively cheap cometary water as fuel. (Given the cost of building and launching satellites, I’m surprised that they haven’t developed this capability already). Here's a new dream: maybe someday NASA will reward ideas with seats on spaceships.

All of this comes down getting to the comets as soon and as efficiently as possible.

 

[The_Courteous_Quickster]

Kissing Orions might make me pucker up, but not with passion, rather because it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

A few concerns...

1. Just how does one conduct an eva out of the docked double-Orion complex? Yes, I guess you can pop the hatch on the side, but I can't imaging that being a very easy egreess or ingress and not a very big door at that. It's also a lot of volume to decompress and repressurize. You really need an airlock to do this properly.

2. I also note in the graphic that they show a spaceman on the asteriod, presumably taken there by an MMU. But that begs the question where did they stow the MMU in Orion and how did they get it out the door.

Honestly, the graphic seems like a desperate measure by Lockeed-Martin to help ensure that Orion does not get the budget axe as they feel Ares will. I don't think they have a grand vision to send Orion to the asteriods, they just want to ensure they don't lose their lunch... so they support any launch they can.

 

[jjuzz]

Hay come on guys I think the idea is amazing.
What is it with this fixation with going back to the moon, its just a BIG asteriod circling the earth.
Lets get real Orion is only 6 to 7 years away and Ares is only on paper.
So if we really wanted to in 8 years man could do his first deep space flight in Kissing Orions.
Where as going to that bigger Asteriod is going to take Billions of dollars and years more. FOR WHAT!
Come on world wake up and smell the roses Orion as an amazing piece of kit and its almost built WHY NOT USE IT!

 

[supag33k]

Well if we want to get serious about space exploration the missions to asteroids are a side show not the main event as we cannot develope the asteroids or base research facilities on them either. The moon gives us an advantage in terms of long term exploration of the solar system - just think how daunting our future as a space going race would be if we did not have the moon.
Yes we should go to the asteroids at some stage - but only after we get to the moon. Indeed we should go Moon, near asteroids then Mars as a logical sequence of human spaceflight this century.
The biggest problem with the space program at the moment is the rampant profit taking by the aerospace corporations, with Boeing at the head of the queue. Basically a fixed price space delivery system is the only way to go, so there must be some leverage applied to NASA to deliver and not make excuses and manufactured delays.
So a delivery system is not man-rated - pppffttt - so what ?? Obama should say by presidential authority that all delivery systems capable of carrying an Apollo sized or Orion sized capsule are automatically man-rated. Also he should state that the SRB based Aries system is unacceptable from budgetary, environmental, and engineering - that vibration issue - constraints.
What is wrong with licencing the Soyuz design from Russia and just getting on with the job?
Finally - make no mistake - we are going to lose astronauts over the next 20 years in 2 or 3 vehicle mishaps, this will happen with both the outgoing shuttle missions and the new delivery system whatever it turns out to be.