Space Launch System - Orion
Discussion
MartG said:
I have always wondered how you really test an engine that's designed to operate at say 5g vertical? Surely that will effect fuel flow, and possibly flame pattern.
What's the alternative - not test it all all?
There are lots of factors regarding the engine itself that needs to be checked. Obviously, they can't replicate G-Loading in a static test but there are dozens, if not hundreds, of other criteria that can be measured.
The only way to test an engine under full launch conditions is to actually launch it.
Back in the 50s and early 1960s when there were pretty much unlimited budgets for rocket testing, dozens of rockets such as the Atlas were test fired in various configurations before actual operational use as a satellite launcher or ballistic missile.
By the time the Saturn V arrived, because of its sheer size and cost only limited all up tests could be carried out. Two were launched unmanned before committing to manned launches. However, lots of static test firings were made of the F1 engines which revealsed serious problems that needed sorting.
The same went for the Shuttle main engines. The engines they are test firing now are previously used Shuttle engines which are being upgraded so that they will be able to fire them at higher thrust settings for SLS launches.
There are lots of factors regarding the engine itself that needs to be checked. Obviously, they can't replicate G-Loading in a static test but there are dozens, if not hundreds, of other criteria that can be measured.
The only way to test an engine under full launch conditions is to actually launch it.
Back in the 50s and early 1960s when there were pretty much unlimited budgets for rocket testing, dozens of rockets such as the Atlas were test fired in various configurations before actual operational use as a satellite launcher or ballistic missile.
By the time the Saturn V arrived, because of its sheer size and cost only limited all up tests could be carried out. Two were launched unmanned before committing to manned launches. However, lots of static test firings were made of the F1 engines which revealsed serious problems that needed sorting.
The same went for the Shuttle main engines. The engines they are test firing now are previously used Shuttle engines which are being upgraded so that they will be able to fire them at higher thrust settings for SLS launches.
The biggest effect G loads has on an engine is the supply pressure at the fuel and oxidiser inlets - the higher the G then the higher the supply pressure. IIRC the test stands don't just rely on gravity to feed the liquids to the engines, they pump them to simulate the pressure they would get under acceleration.
Update from Orbital ATK
"We are well on our way to completing casting of the five-segment solid #rocket boosters that will propel EM-1, the first flight of NASA’s Space Launch System and Orion capsule, into space. Here, our technician is seen inspecting the fully-fueled center aft segment prior to removing it from the casting pit. With only three segments left to cast, we are targeting a completion date of May 2017."
"We are well on our way to completing casting of the five-segment solid #rocket boosters that will propel EM-1, the first flight of NASA’s Space Launch System and Orion capsule, into space. Here, our technician is seen inspecting the fully-fueled center aft segment prior to removing it from the casting pit. With only three segments left to cast, we are targeting a completion date of May 2017."
Test of Orion's parachute system yesterday - this was a low-level test to mimic recovery during a launch abort.
Video here https://vimeo.com/207556581
A few pics from Jeff Herold, one of the test engineers...
I think they broke it - expected damage though. Cheaper to carry out tests over land, but manned ones will do a water landing
Video here https://vimeo.com/207556581
A few pics from Jeff Herold, one of the test engineers...
I think they broke it - expected damage though. Cheaper to carry out tests over land, but manned ones will do a water landing
NASA is spending a lot of time and money to develop a lifter inferior to Saturn V, still the world's more powerful and reliable rocket.
They are also spending a lot of time and money solving problems and developing tech that took 2 years flat between 1967 (Apollo 1 fire when nothing worked and Grissom was hanging lemons on stuff) and the 1969-on run of space perfection previously only seen in Kubrik films.
That's 48 years and hundreds of billions spent failing to achieve a fraction of what even Apollo 8 did. WTF?
Even today they are 'tackling' issues that were not a problem back then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBxPSjHzr_w
Back in Apollo 11 if you study the journals they spent a total of 11.25 hours and several orbits in the Van Allen belts - and then in a period of solar maxima travelled happily along playing CME roulette. Even standing for a couple of days in the lunar surface that appears to have suddenly become dangerous in the meantime:
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-n...
And of course sitting inside a aluminium tin can that should have scattered them with secondary radiation.
We know all this talk of radiation is nonsense because the astronauts never contracted any radiation related illnesses and lived long happy lives afterwards, so quite why they didn't just transfer the Apollo/Saturn V plans to computer and carry on is a mystery.
Why is NASA playing Deja-Vu half a century later?
It's clearly a case of 'Been there, done that' so the whole Orion project is a rather pointless waste of money. Even the parachute tests and capsule landing tests - why? It's all been solved, proven and done before again and again reliably time after time. Hell, they even took video cameras for rides on moon buggies - Ok so we have Go-pro now - but is that such a big advance?
Orion is a very puzzling waste of money, money they could be spending on better space telescopes. Or even fixing dams in Oroville.
Every time I see anything on Orion I remember the precise bit of Apollo that did it better nearly five decades earlier. Doh!
They are also spending a lot of time and money solving problems and developing tech that took 2 years flat between 1967 (Apollo 1 fire when nothing worked and Grissom was hanging lemons on stuff) and the 1969-on run of space perfection previously only seen in Kubrik films.
That's 48 years and hundreds of billions spent failing to achieve a fraction of what even Apollo 8 did. WTF?
Even today they are 'tackling' issues that were not a problem back then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBxPSjHzr_w
Back in Apollo 11 if you study the journals they spent a total of 11.25 hours and several orbits in the Van Allen belts - and then in a period of solar maxima travelled happily along playing CME roulette. Even standing for a couple of days in the lunar surface that appears to have suddenly become dangerous in the meantime:
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-n...
And of course sitting inside a aluminium tin can that should have scattered them with secondary radiation.
We know all this talk of radiation is nonsense because the astronauts never contracted any radiation related illnesses and lived long happy lives afterwards, so quite why they didn't just transfer the Apollo/Saturn V plans to computer and carry on is a mystery.
Why is NASA playing Deja-Vu half a century later?
It's clearly a case of 'Been there, done that' so the whole Orion project is a rather pointless waste of money. Even the parachute tests and capsule landing tests - why? It's all been solved, proven and done before again and again reliably time after time. Hell, they even took video cameras for rides on moon buggies - Ok so we have Go-pro now - but is that such a big advance?
Orion is a very puzzling waste of money, money they could be spending on better space telescopes. Or even fixing dams in Oroville.
Every time I see anything on Orion I remember the precise bit of Apollo that did it better nearly five decades earlier. Doh!
It's amazing what you can do with unlimited budgets i.e. the Apollo era.
And it shows what you CANNOT do when operating under extremely restricted budgets (i.e. Orion and SLS).
If Orion and SLS had been funded in the same way as Apollo was, then progress would have been much more rapid.
Also, there is no way they would easily reuse the engineering in Apollo.
Would you be happy flying the Atlantic in an Avro Lancastrian compared to a Boeing 777?
Technology and computing has moved on by a factor of multi-generations since the original specifications for Apollo were laid down (much of it dates from the mid 1950s).
You cannot rewind the clock and try to restart technology that is over half a century old. For a start, much of what was used and what was done back then just can't be done today - for all sorts of reasons.
The basic materials may not be available
The people with the knowledge to use and work with those materials and techniques are now retired, old and/or dead
The companies that made the items and materials no longer exist
The "plans" no longer exist(if there ever were plans - in the simple sense).
The knowledge networks and lore of that era no longer exists
You have to go with the knowledge, materials and people you have available now, not yesterday.
OK, you can consult the old plans and the old techniques and talk to the surviving veterans of the previous era and make as much use of their knowledge and experience as you can - but you cannot just lift ancient technology out of its time zone and try to revive it for use today.
And it shows what you CANNOT do when operating under extremely restricted budgets (i.e. Orion and SLS).
If Orion and SLS had been funded in the same way as Apollo was, then progress would have been much more rapid.
Also, there is no way they would easily reuse the engineering in Apollo.
Would you be happy flying the Atlantic in an Avro Lancastrian compared to a Boeing 777?
Technology and computing has moved on by a factor of multi-generations since the original specifications for Apollo were laid down (much of it dates from the mid 1950s).
You cannot rewind the clock and try to restart technology that is over half a century old. For a start, much of what was used and what was done back then just can't be done today - for all sorts of reasons.
The basic materials may not be available
The people with the knowledge to use and work with those materials and techniques are now retired, old and/or dead
The companies that made the items and materials no longer exist
The "plans" no longer exist(if there ever were plans - in the simple sense).
The knowledge networks and lore of that era no longer exists
You have to go with the knowledge, materials and people you have available now, not yesterday.
OK, you can consult the old plans and the old techniques and talk to the surviving veterans of the previous era and make as much use of their knowledge and experience as you can - but you cannot just lift ancient technology out of its time zone and try to revive it for use today.
It's amazing what you can do with a proven design, two spare rockets, a skilled workforce and a reliable, powerful design to base your next move on.
Especially when you've just proven it's flexibility with Skylab.
Developing rockets is expensive and dangerous, imagine owning the plans and tooling, R&D all paid, of the world's best rocket, as design that still hasn't been bettered for nearly half a century.
As for mystery 1960s materials - seriously?
Technology and computing has moved on by a factor of multi-generations since the original specifications for Apollo, so There Is No Excuse.
Orion simply doesn't make logical sense. Apollo did it all better, we have the plans and the rockets, why does Orion even exist?
What's NASA going to do - prove we can Orbit the Moon? Whoopee-doo - welcome to 1968. Maybe we should invade Vietnam again?
What next - General Motors not managing to make a car better than the Pontiac GTO?
Apollo makes a joke of Orion. Everyone I mention Orion to comes back with the same smirk and 'Not yet as good as Apollo then?' retort.
NASA. What a bunch of incompetent morons.
Especially when you've just proven it's flexibility with Skylab.
Developing rockets is expensive and dangerous, imagine owning the plans and tooling, R&D all paid, of the world's best rocket, as design that still hasn't been bettered for nearly half a century.
As for mystery 1960s materials - seriously?
Technology and computing has moved on by a factor of multi-generations since the original specifications for Apollo, so There Is No Excuse.
Orion simply doesn't make logical sense. Apollo did it all better, we have the plans and the rockets, why does Orion even exist?
What's NASA going to do - prove we can Orbit the Moon? Whoopee-doo - welcome to 1968. Maybe we should invade Vietnam again?
What next - General Motors not managing to make a car better than the Pontiac GTO?
Apollo makes a joke of Orion. Everyone I mention Orion to comes back with the same smirk and 'Not yet as good as Apollo then?' retort.
NASA. What a bunch of incompetent morons.
NASA are doing this this way because thats explicitly what Congress have told them to do.
They couldnt use the Apollo era capsules they are just too out of date, core memory etc?
The Saturn V is though still a pretty decent booster, a little reengineering of some of it would work.
But thats not NASA's brief. They were told who and what to use for SLS etc.
Its all pork.
They couldnt use the Apollo era capsules they are just too out of date, core memory etc?
The Saturn V is though still a pretty decent booster, a little reengineering of some of it would work.
But thats not NASA's brief. They were told who and what to use for SLS etc.
Its all pork.
It is a common fallacy that NASA 'have the plans' required to build new Saturn Vs - they don't, and probably never did.
Their subcontractors ( and the subcontractor's subcontractors, etc. ) will have had all the drawings required to manufacture their particular part of it - 50 years ago! Many of those companies no longer exist, or have been taken over ( often several times ) in the intervening decades, and no longer have the detailed manufacturing drawings. Nor do they have the specialised tooling required - it will all have been destroyed or recycled long ago.
Many of the components which were off-the-shelf in the 60s are no longer available - replacements would need to be found, then tested and certified and integrated.
Many materials used in the 60s are no longer available - either because they have been supplanted by something new, or because of various regulations making toxic materials illegal. Again replacements would need to be found, tested and certified.
As for Orion being a rerun of Apollo, it isn't. It is designed for much longer missions than Apollo was, further from Earth
Their subcontractors ( and the subcontractor's subcontractors, etc. ) will have had all the drawings required to manufacture their particular part of it - 50 years ago! Many of those companies no longer exist, or have been taken over ( often several times ) in the intervening decades, and no longer have the detailed manufacturing drawings. Nor do they have the specialised tooling required - it will all have been destroyed or recycled long ago.
Many of the components which were off-the-shelf in the 60s are no longer available - replacements would need to be found, then tested and certified and integrated.
Many materials used in the 60s are no longer available - either because they have been supplanted by something new, or because of various regulations making toxic materials illegal. Again replacements would need to be found, tested and certified.
As for Orion being a rerun of Apollo, it isn't. It is designed for much longer missions than Apollo was, further from Earth
The Saturn Vs they have would be very difficult to reverse engineer - years of outdoor storage have taken their toll, especially on the electronics and control systems, and many parts are simply missing.
It would be far simpler and cheaper to build a Saturn V shaped launcher from scratch, using current materials and components
It would be far simpler and cheaper to build a Saturn V shaped launcher from scratch, using current materials and components
Beati Dogu said:
Even Rockwell, who built all the Space Shuttle orbiters as well as the Apollo Command/Service Modules is no longer in existence.
They didn't just build the Command/Service Module either. They also built the SII stage of the Saturn V.What should have happened, of course, is that Saturn V production should never have been closed down. Production could have been scaled back so that one or two were available each year for specific heavy lift requirements. If the production had continued, then the V would have evolved over time with new materials and technologies being ontroduced over the decades - much as has happened with the Russian R7 rocket and the American Delta and Atlas family.
But, that didn't happen and the last components for Saturn Vs were more or less completed before the end of 1970 - almost half a century ago,.
You just can't put something of that scale back into production after such a long gap in time.
Why back engineer the Titanic when you can have the Queen Mary II?
Eric Mc said:
Why back engineer the Titanic when you can have the Queen Mary II?
Exactly !It would have been a different matter if the Saturn family had been kept in production, with evolutionary improvements being introduced over the years, and obsolete equipment being upgraded.
As it is NASA is at the mercy of the federal government which decreed not only that certain elements of the STS design be retained ( e.g. 8m core diameter, Shuttle style SRBs ) but also hold the purse strings. NASA did try to go back to the 10m core diameter, same as Saturn V, with the Ares V design which was killed by the Obama administration. They also wanted to dump the SRBs and go for liquid fuelled boosters with updated F-1 engines, but ATK's political clout put an end to that too
MartG said:
Eric Mc said:
Why back engineer the Titanic when you can have the Queen Mary II?
Exactly !SaturnV performed 8 (IIRC) flawless heavy launches with total reliability.
Then NASA - still with the plans and knowledge of Saturn V - scrapped it (and actually threw 2 perfectly good rockets away!!) and spent a great deal of time and money developing the lower power, more expensive, less reliable Shuttle launch platform. There were two Titanic moments with this unreliable platform - one where the solid booster failed and lost the craft + crew, and one where a chunk of ice from this Heath Robinson contraption struck and fatally damaged the shuttle.
The Shuttle system was so bad that for Orion they dumped it and started on the 3rd clean sheet of paper.
The scrapping and purging of the reliable, heavyweight, moonshot capable Saturn V can have only two reasons:
1) Saturn V didn't really work and it was a scam, best hastily buried ASAP before too many people noticed.
or
2) Apollo management and engineers are completely barking mad and are obsessed with re-inventing (inferior) wheels, rather than exploring space.
Neither conclusion is particularly savoury.
In the 1960s you had an organisation setup buy the CIA employing ex-Nazis, fighting a propaganda war with the Russian space program, distracting people from the disasters in Vietnam, and showing some results in a period of civil unrest for the huge amount of money spent. so 1) has legs.
But 2) also has legs because sometimes organisations - especially large, compartmentalised DOD organisations - are prone to making insane choices and pursuing self destructive agendas. They have however passed over Saturn V TWICE now, and so are doubly stupid, especially as Orion is supposed to go into deep space and would fit perfectly on a Saturn V.
BTW It's a great deal easier to re-make a machine you've already made and can dismantle and measure than to do pure R&D and learn all those lessons again, pure R&D in rocketry is well know to be very expensive and dangerous.
And yes, the Apollo capsules are too old now, but 48 years later we are still capable of simply making an updated version. Since 1968 we've managed to build a number of new aeroplanes etc - it's hardly difficult is it? Today we have 3D printing, CAD, experience from thousands of satellite launches, GPS, Google Space, advanced aerogels and plastics, better suits, better cameras, better batteries, better computers, 48 years of experience. The idea we can't re-make Apollo level tech is total b
ks.So why are the Orion team re-inventing the wheel and celebrating each time they manage to under-achieve something that Apollo already did, better, nearly 50 years ago? Orion was announced in 2011 and it's now 2017 so they've had 6 years of the best current technology money can buy. So far 0 men in space.
In 1967 the Grissom crew died and the Apollo was dead in the water. 2 years later Buzz and Neil were prancing about on the moon.
What's going on? Half the stuff I read about Orion blathers on about radiation - WTF - there IS no radiation, Apollo conclusively proved that. So where's the progress? We should have revisited the moon at least 2-3 years ago but still no one's even got inside the capsule?
ETA: From wikipedia: he first mission to carry astronauts is not expected to take place until 2023
So 2023 - 2011 = 12 years to achieve what Apollo did in 1. Wow.
ETA: Testing began in 2007 for Orion, so that's 2023 - 2007 = 16 years to (re)develop what Apollo did in 1. IF it stays on schedule..
Double wow.
Something's not right here. Why is Orion taking 16x longer than Apollo 48 years later?
Edited by Globs on Thursday 16th March 10:39
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