New Orion capsule heat shield a “breakthrough” for NASA

[Woggles]

Perhaps it can be used for other space craft projects.

"The Orion crew capsule as a shining example of new technology development? Well, that’s the latest word from Lockheed Martin which on Monday hailed the space capsule’s new heat shield structure as a breakthrough."

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_s ... -nasa.html

 

[SpaceTas]

Kawabunga ! If this resin has a strength similar to titanium maybe Lockheed Martin can make way cool surfboards or that mini sub I always wanted.

 

[Woggles]

First Orion Capsule forming rapidly.

The first Orion crew capsule is rapidly taking shape as assembly work to construct the skeletal framework of the first pathfinder Orion capsule – the Ground Test Article – or GTA, is nearing completion.


http://www.universetoday.com/2010/05/25 ... g-rapidly/

 

[kelvinzero]

Haha.. love that image in the first link.. I wonder if it has already appeared on a UFO conspiracy site

Shouldnt this be in Space Business and Technology?

 

[Woggles]

First Lunar Orion Test Capsule Built

Article includes photos of the inside!

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1400

 

[csmyth3025]

From the Orlando Sentinel news article:

After five years and at least $9 billion spent on the development of the new spaceship...

What sort of crew orbiter vehicle do you suppose Burt Rutan would have come up with if he had $9 billion and five years to work on it?

Chris

 

[Woggles]

What sort of crew orbiter vehicle do you suppose Burt Rutan would have come up with if he had $9 billion and five years to work on it?

Chris

Something more spacious!!!! :lol:

 

[ZenGalacticore]

"...it is lighter than the titanium heatshield..." But they don't tell us how much it weighs. What are the weight specifications? What are the estimates of how much the whole capsule will weigh?

I'm just wondering because if the heat shield itself is very light---though I doubt as light as the ceramic heat/shield tiles on the shuttle--then that means we're getting close to viable, single uniform heat shields for all spacecraft where needed. Which, obviously, would be safer than thousands of individual tiles. Each one of which can come lose and fly off, causing you-know-what upon re-entry.

 

[neilsox]

The shuttle tiles can survive surface temperatures as high as 3000 c = 5432 degrees f, usually without cracking. I can't picture a resin that can get that hot, without rapid deteriation, so Lockmart may be exaggerating. Neil

 

[ZenGalacticore]

The shuttle tiles can survive surface temperatures as high as 3000 c = 5432 degrees f, usually without cracking. I can't picture a resin that can get that hot, without rapid deteriation, so Lockmart may be exaggerating. Neil

Probably, my friend. But what bodes for the future!

 

[csmyth3025]

The shuttle tiles can survive surface temperatures as high as 3000 c = 5432 degrees f, usually without cracking. I can't picture a resin that can get that hot, without rapid deteriation, so Lockmart may be exaggerating. Neil

From the original article about the heat shield structure:

The problem is that the new heat shield has not been accepted yet by NASA to be officially part of Orion because the titanium shield is still considered the baseline design. A procedure is underway to change that, Sipe said. Either structure though, he added, is only as good as the ablative coating that will cover it and do most of the job protecting the capsule from the heat of reentering the Earth’s atmosphere.

My read on this is that the "shield" is the base for the ablative tiles (or coating).

Chris

 

[stevekk]

All of these capsule designs are UGLY.

When are we going to get a decent heat shield technology, so we can design better looking space craft ?

 

[docm]

Form should follow function in spacecraft crew modules, and for LEO taxi's and light cargo up/down mass the best form is the capsule be it Gemini, Apollo, Soyuz, Dragon, CST-100 etc.

Spaceplanes look cool and have advantages (runway landings, cross range etc.) but their liabilities have huge costs - not to mention much of their structure is totally useless beyond LEO and reduces up/down payload capacity for a given launcher. Still, there is a role for something like Dream Chaser: med evac - an injured/ill crew member at ISS or a Bigelow station could be brought down to a gentle landing and gotten to a medical center much better than with most capsules.

Now - if you want to talk spacecraft that stay up while crew capsules do the taxi work, again form has to follow function just to keep the mass down.

 

[vulture4]

Form should follow function in spacecraft crew modules, and for LEO taxi's and light cargo up/down mass the best form is the capsule be it Gemini, Apollo, Soyuz, Dragon, CST-100 etc.

Spaceplanes look cool and have advantages (runway landings, cross range etc.) but their liabilities have huge costs - not to mention much of their structure is totally useless beyond LEO and reduces up/down payload capacity for a given launcher. Still, there is a role for something like Dream Chaser: med evac - an injured/ill crew member at ISS or a Bigelow station could be brought down to a gentle landing and gotten to a medical center much better than with most capsules.

Now - if you want to talk spacecraft that stay up while crew capsules do the taxi work, again form has to follow function just to keep the mass down.

This is a common misconception even among NASA managers. It's true that it takes energy to carry the Shuttle's wings into orbit. But that energy costs almost nothing. Actual propellant hydrogen at Complex 39 costs 98 cents a gallon. LOX is 60 cents. It's cheaper than gasoline! What costs money is building a new booster and spacecraft for every flight. The cost of fuel is less than half of one percent of the Shuttle mission cost, and most of that is for the SRB fuel; for a lquid-fueled rocket is it even less. Yet fuel is the only thing a fully reusable launch vehicle really needs.

The Shuttle remains our only launch vehicle that is even partly reusable; to say that it "proves" RLVs are impractical as many leaders of NASA do is like flying only the Wright "A" flyer until 1930 and then concluding that heavier-than-air flight is impractical and going back to balloons. As for going beyond LEO, most of the structure of a capsule is also unneeded; consider the Lunar Module.

As to the heat shield, it's just PR to keep Constellation going indefinitely despite its extreme cost and lack of any meaningful mission. The metallic tiles used on the X-33 or the flexible RCC developed recently at Ames may be more important.

 

[Valcan]

.

.

If we want to make a RLV like the shuttle that can fly back and land it needs to be small and designed for just going up and back not 2 week stays in orbit to conduct test and experiments.

Somthing like a large version of the Airforces Recon ship they put up.........and thats what it probably is not a uber space fighter.

The shuttle failed when they decided to make a uber ship. THATS JUST WHAT WE DONT WANT.

 

[vulture4]

Agree. A prototype RLV should not be designed to carry any cargo or crew, just demonstrate and test the critical technologies. One problem with the Shuttle was that we had just built the Saturn V and we were convinced we could design anything on paper and it would work just as we imagined.

 

[stevekk]

Form should follow function in spacecraft crew modules, and for LEO taxi's and light cargo up/down mass the best form is the capsule be it Gemini, Apollo, Soyuz, Dragon, CST-100 etc.

Spaceplanes look cool and have advantages (runway landings, cross range etc.) but their liabilities have huge costs - not to mention much of their structure is totally useless beyond LEO and reduces up/down payload capacity for a given launcher. Still, there is a role for something like Dream Chaser: med evac - an injured/ill crew member at ISS or a Bigelow station could be brought down to a gentle landing and gotten to a medical center much better than with most capsules.

Now - if you want to talk spacecraft that stay up while crew capsules do the taxi work, again form has to follow function just to keep the mass down.

Every capsule design I've seen looks like you are shoving 7 people in pressure suits into a clown car. You mention payload capacity, but the cone shape reduces the available volume of payload that can be shipped back and forth to LEO. Orbital's cylinder shape is actually a better cargo container.

I can't imagine using a capsule for a long-duration mission, unless it was only 1 of several modular portions of the spacecraft.