Orion/Ares Stack Moves Preliminary Design
As design of NASA's Orion continues, technical problems remain.
Dec. 10, 2007 — -- With a lot of scrubbing and starting over behind them, engineers working on NASA' Orion crew exploration vehicle and its Ares I launcher are moving into detailed design on a stack they believe can deliver its targeted payload to orbit with thousands of pounds to spare.
On the Orion capsule, prime contractor Lockheed Martin's engineers are beginning to flesh out the latest vehicle concept for preliminary design review next September. The Ares I program is moving into early production on the first of its five-segment shuttle-derived solid-fuel first stages, for a static test on the ground in April 2009, and settling on the advanced tooling that will be used to build the cryogenic upper stage at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.
Technical issues remain open across the stack, including how the Orion will land and how to meld the powerful solid-fuel first stage and capsule. But engineering managers across the Orion/Ares I organizations consider those issues typical of a spacecraft at this relatively early stage of development, and solvable. After two months of reviews and top-level briefings, their bosses at NASA headquarters agree.
"It's very interactive" says Caris A. (Skip) Hatfield, who shepherded the Orion through its weight scrub as program manager. "It's not like you can create a launch vehicle and life is good, without doing any additional assessment. Issues come up as the design matures. And as load cases become more clear, we have to go back and look at them jointly. Changes we make affect the launch vehicle. Changes the launch vehicle makes affect us. But overall we're working very closely together to make sure we mitigate all those, and at this point there are no showstoppers."
But while senior managers consider the technical issues within bounds, money remains the ultimate pacing item for a U.S. return to human spaceflight after the shuttle is retired in 2010. Right now the best estimate for Orion's first docking at the International Space Station is March 2015, at current funding levels.
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