Fire up the Power Point! Set the viewgraphs to boundless optimism!

[james_davis_nicoll]

A worthy successor to GHWB's Space Exploration Initiative and GWB's Vision for Space Exploration: NASA's crewed rockets are absolutely, positively going to Mars; please don't bring up all the previous times they promised that and it didn't happen.

Comments

[redbird]

They're really calling it Orion?!

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

If they actually had an Orion drive spacecraft I'd give them a very good chance of getting to Mars. Mars orbit, anyway; landing the thing is left as an exercise for the student...

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

I've never really understood how that's supposed to work myself... :)

[w. dow rieder (from livejournal.com)]

I think your best bet is to get into your chemically powered shuttle rocket, and save the Orion drive vehicle for deep space.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

If nothing else an Orion should be able to pick a wide variety of landing sites. Come down anywhere you like; it'll be flat when you get there.

[redbird]

Getting to Mars orbit, maybe, if they made it as far as Earth orbit, rather than the people of Florida attacking and destroying the Kennedy Space Center well before they could launch the thing. There are still people in that area who remember when Khrushchev made what looked like a plausible threat of nuking Florida; they wouldn't be any happier about being nuked by Washington.

[andrew barton (from livejournal.com)]

Come on, really? We FINALLY have a chance to nuke Florida and you want to just pass it up?

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

As Jo Walton says, "I always nuke Miami."

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

Yes, they've been calling it Orion for almost a decade now.

[(Anonymous)]

The "Orion" name was chosen as part of the Constellation/Aries program of the GWB years. I remember a lot of people complaining about it at the time on the basis that "Project Orion" was, of course, something else. Most of Constellation got cancelled, Aries got replaced by SLS as the proposed launcher, but the Orion capsule was the bit of Constellation that survived intact.

NASA is spinning developing this thing without a funded mission as prudent infrastructure development, but that was what they said about the Shuttle as well. It'd be nice to have something in the pipeline. I'm skeptical that the asteroid-retrieval mission will actually happen, given that nobody with control over funding seems particularly enthusiastic about it.

Matt M.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

When they opened with "In the not-too-distant future", the MSTK3000 theme started playing in the background of my head, which really didn't help me take what followed seriously.

'If you're wondering how they eat and breathe / And dodge the suns radiation attacks / Then repeat to yourself 'It's just a promo, / I should really just relax.'

[w. dow rieder (from livejournal.com)]

There are a number of things relevant to a possible future crewed Mars mission that NASA might reasonably test--but that's not what they are talking about. I hope they don't waste too much money on planning for something congress will never, ever give them money to actually do.

[marfisa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, even before Congress began behaving as if its main business was to ensure all gridlock all the time, I doubt it would have been too keen on spending billions of dollars in order to do something as unglamorous as grabbing an asteroid and positioning it in a stable orbit around the moon.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

Perhaps if it were sold as also preventing asteroid strikes?

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

If you want to prevent asteroid strikes, the program looks like this:

(1) Build telescopes (some in space) to catalogue all potential impactors

(2) Check the orbits of those found in (1) to see if any will hit Earth in the next century

(3) Only if (2) gives a non-empty set is money spent on diversion.

The ability to diagnose the problem before spending money on curing it is politically fatal, since the most likely outcome is "no great amount of spending is needed".

Already done

[(Anonymous)]

We've already catalogued pretty much all potential impactors over 1 km in diameter. By 2025 we'll have catalogued pretty much all down to 300 m in diameter. 150 m by midcentury seems entirely reasonable.

Note that we've long since got all the dinosaur-killers and civilization-enders. We're working our way down through the "year without a summer" and "one city or province has a really bad day" categories.

(This is not widely appreciated. Most people have no idea how thoroughly we've scanned the inner Solar System in the last 15 years.)


Doug M.

Re: Already done

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

AIUI mapping asteroids is one thing, but there's always surprise comets. Though by the same token they might not be subject to slow gravity tugs.

Re: Already done

[dbdatvic.livejournal.com]

so you're saying there really is no stealth in space?

--Dave, next you'll be saying polydactylous cats can't mine lunar He3!!1!

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

The lack of an n-body solution prevents complete confidence there are no false negatives. Should one turn up, having the asteroid-diversion technology proven and skilled users on staff would be advantageous.

[(Anonymous)]

...actually, over civilizational timescales -- thousands to tens of thousands of years -- we can be very very very close to certain there are no false negatives.

Most asteroid orbits are not chaotic over those time scales. And the odds of your average asteroid suddenly finding the delta-vee to dramatically move its orbit? comparable to the Moon suddenly jumping out of the Earth's orbit. viz., theoretically possible, but don't hold your breath.


Doug M.

[seawasp]

I'd really like to see someone step foot on Mars in my lifetime, but I'm not enthusiastic about this latest claim.

I'd also like to see them look into the dusty plasma sail for real; it needs at least a test in high orbit, not labs, to make it a yea-or-nay for sure.

A good, reengineered NERVA-style rocket might get them there in reasonable time, and I've seen they're asking for significant research in the area of nuclear rocket propulsion, so maybe.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Tomorrow's flight is Orion EFT-1.

In 2009, NASA flew Ares I-X, a mission that launched a live first stage for a putative Orion launcher plus dummy upper stages out into the Atlantic. In doing so it substantially replicated SA-1, the first test flight of the Saturn I first stage. Which had taken place 48 years earlier.

EFT-1 will fly an operational Orion capsule on a high-orbit mission with a high-speed re-entry test. In doing so, it will replicate elements of two Apollo missions: AS-201, nearly 49 years ago, and Apollo 4, 47 years ago. Like AS-201, it will use a launcher smaller than the one planned for operational use, and like Apollo 4 it will launch into an elliptical orbit to achieve a fast re-entry, albeit much slower than Apollo 4 managed. Unlike either AS-201 or Apollo 4, the Orion capsule will not be attached to an operational service module.

So, NASA is fairly consistently repeating missions from about 48 years earlier, albeit with rather fewer test flights in the process. However, current plans depart from that schedule significantly; there is certainly no prospect of a lunar landing in 2017, and at present the first mission with a crew aboard (comparable to Apollo 7 or 8 from late 1968) is tentatively scheduled for 2021.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

Joel Achenbach is pretty much on target about this.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/achenblog/wp/2014/12/03/nasa-has-a-spaceship-but-where-will-it-go/

(I drive to the store and buy an onion. I drive home and cut it up and put it in a big pot on the stove and then go watch television. Someone asks me, “What are you doing?” and I answer, “I’m making gumbo.” And the someone says, “What about the garlic, the peppers, the celery, the fresh okra, the andouille sausage, the grilled chicken, the fish, the shrimp, those special blended peppers you always use, and the roux, not to mention the fresh French bread on the side?” I answer, “I can’t afford that right now.”)