Room for Four

Two to one the shuttle keeps flying.

The existence of a microwave aboard the Orion is surprising information. Is there a link to a source of that information?
Thank You

Who designed it Fred Flintstone? Why arent we sending harrier jet type technology into space yet? It ought to look more like Alien 2 than Barney Rubble. This really is a joke. We need to figure out ways to land on planets and be able to take off and get home (a free standing spaceship) not rocket solid and liquid booster technology. Think of the space shuttle crossed with a harrier jet only HUGE! Sorry NASA but I see more layoffs in the future if this is the best we can come up with. Why not have foreign privatized engineers design it? They seem to be doing better at everything else than us anyway including cars.

I hear NASA is going redesign the calculator next. It’s going to be made out of beads, string and bamboo, and look strangely similar to an abacus.

“Houston we have a problem”. Our management is living in the 60′s and can’t think outside the box.

It’s hard to imagine that in the course of one lifetime (mine) NASA has gone from the Master of the Manned Spaceflight Universe to a beggar, hat in hand, groveling at the feet of Congress for just a few more dollars to keep the aged Shuttle Fleet open for business, or to buy passage on a Russian Soyuz. If it weren’t for the International Space Station, NASA should be dismantled, its robotic missions turned over in full to JPL (Now, talk about a group who’s good at cutting edge space flight!), and we put our paltry few bucks (No bucks, no Buck Rogers) for manned missions into the ESA, or maybe JAXA. I’m so embarrassed about the Orion Project, I hope it never launches.

OK w/microwave – best & quickest way to make a hot dog while you’re rocketing through space but how about a toaster for toaster struddle for that AM sugar boost!
Almost takes me back to my Apollo Test Vehicle Design Group days in Downey, Calif.and long gone North American Aviation, Space & Information Division.
Live long & Prosper!

Seriously, the Soviet Union figured out the weight problem 40 years ago with Soyuz. In truth it was a proposal from GE on project Apollo that they “borrowed”. Make the heaviest part, the reentry module, which needs strong be heavy and strong to survive reentry and landing as small as possible. Instead provide a “living module” (they call it the orbital module) that the crew can move into after launch. It doesn’t need to reenter the atmosphere, so it can be comparatively large and light. Trying to scale up the Apollo command module to twice its size was a flawed concept. And it’s unnecessary. In the end Orion may end up being a Hummer in orbit.

Whatever happened to the developers of the “X” Project? I understand one group was able to build a spacecraft with privatized money. Why doesn’t NASA collaborate with the developers of that project to build a light-weight, re-usable spacecraft instead of an aging, falling-apart space shuttle? Why not use the light-weight craft instead of this Orion, Apollo-era cast-off. We should have been to Mars by now, but do to government mis-management, we have definitely lost the way.

Wasn’t the Orion moonstick project supposed to eventually do a mars trip? Even if NASA had the budget and ability to do stated projects; it would’ve taken too much away from secret ops and military budgets do this that seems unfathomable to both the Republican and Democratic leaderships going long back.

I know how we can get more money for the space program! Convince the Military that we have an immediate need for a manned, moon based weapon of some sort. The cash would surely start flowing then.

Google the words UD-4L dropship and you can get an idea of the concepts I am decribing from the first link.

I think the problem is they are working hard to size the capsule to the booster, instead of the booster to the capsule. Why are we stuck on a relatively inefficient and unsafe solid rocket motor technology when liquids have been demonstrated to be more efficient and safer? Scrap the whole program and go with the Boeing Delta IV launch vehicle. Either that or dust off the drawings and tooling for the Saturn 1B and Saturn V. It’s time we used our heritage in engineering instead of whatever management paradigm NASA is currently employing to design spacecraft.

What has happened to America. It is going backwards in all the spheres of activities. In automobiles GM is lost to Toyota, in aircraft boeing 747 is old compared to A380. And now spaceshuttle is producing its ugly small child. Having so many years of experience of running spaceshuttle NASA should have come with a plan to build a spaceship ten times bigger than the present one as the engineering would be easy. NASA could even go to the extent of going to make it HOTOL.

Space Ship 1, winner of the X-Prize would need about 25 times more kinetic energy to reach a stable orbit, which makes its design not adequate for space travel.
The reason a spacecraft needs so much more thrust than an aircraft is because s/c travel on speeds of magnitudes of 10 miles per second(36,000 miles per hour) much faster than any conventional a/c.
Lastly, the orion capsule would be able to go to GEO Orbit, and the moon while the space shuttle can not leave low earth orbit, it has a fairly low maximum height.

I don’t believe it! Blame the media for switching the new space shuttle with the old Apollo. Or is this one step forward and two staps backward? My faith in NASA just went away. What a disappointment. I’m an engineer and I think even I could come up with a better approach.

Keep in mind the Apollo Project happened in a time when we were in a “cold war” and the NASA budget was HUGE (along the order of 4% to 6% of our annual budget)compared to today’s miserly sum. National pride and much more was at stake. We as a nation were focused on it. The nation was only concerned about coming in FIRST rather than building upon it to the next logical step. Perhaps if this country wanted to think in terms of a collective purpose rather than individual gratification we would once again achieve the goals set down by men of true vision…

Why don’t we just do what we do about everything else we buy? We’ll buy our space ships and rockets from China. China has a space program now. I’m sure they can do it all a lot cheaper than we can. Sad, isn’t it?

People keep asking about the harrier or jet engine option. The problem is a regular jet engine uses the atmosphere as a fuel source. They take the oxygen from the air and mix it with jet fuel to burn and get up to about 100,000 feet (20 miles). To go further you have to take your oxygen with you! And a lot of oxygen is heavy! So you’d need a way bigger vehicle just to get the oxygen up to where you need it (space).
A new Scram jet can go 5000 MPH and probablky reach 100,000 feet (thou it’s classified). To go beyond that you need an entirely different engine, and the weight requirements for a rocket (space)engine is so high .. well you can’t use a jet engine to get the rocket ehgine part way (say to 50,000) and then rocket off from there (they tried that, putting the shuttle on the back of a jet .. remember?)

Blackie, since you mentioned turning 51 at the end of May, I’ll mention I turned *58* June 25th — so I’m in even a bigger hurry than you! ;-)
Earlier I read a story about an idea kicking around NASA, a sanctioned one with upper management’s fingerprints, that could get us back to the Moon of under 20% ($6.6 billion vs. #35 billion) of the Orion program. Using old technology for the horsepower but an Apollo-based-but redesigned (some) capsule, we could get 2 folks per go there. It might be worth considering, since we’ve got so many bills in the tray right now — otherwise, Congress might simply start cutting OUT, not just reducing. (I hope I don’t get flamed on this; I’m not arguing for reduction, just afraid of potential political realities — I want the space program to survive as much and as strong as possible, both its manned and unmanned components).