Meet Orion, NASA's next-gen spacecraft

Then Orion is the choice for you. For Kessel Run, the Centurion is a choice.

I, for one, will stay for now with a heavily modified Cobra Mk III.

3 Likes

Come on with a trade now and credits up front, throw in a better engine and shield system!

Still a nice upgrade to my Tarsus. Even with basic options.

Yes! That’s the one. Thanks!

The guy doing the video is too young to remember the moon shots; likely thinks they were Hollywood. Bonus points for using a football field as a unit of measure, though; seeing as nobody is capable of figuring out what meters are. Half a century on, and all we have is a bit faster computer.

2 Likes

Delta IV Heavy, REPRESENT!

Hold down that Afterburner key, and don’t let go.

1 Like

I gave him points for at least qualifying it as an American football field.

Keep in mind, folks, that this is essentially a promo video, not one to relay or document technical specifications. The size of an American football field is easier to visualize than, say, 83.61m^2. “Twice as hot as molten lava” also sounds a whole lot more exciting than “(7002) to (12002) °C.”

Yeah, they can get away with the Delta IV Heavy on this flight because it’s unmanned. The D-IV/H will be a… bit of a challenge… to man-rate. (-:

Putting crew atop a rocket that’s been known to set fire to itself may not be advisable. (-:

Came to scour the comments for just that point. Nice answer @bbfreak. I presume the potency of the Van Allen Belt doesn’t stay constant either, and will need to be measured in its current state.

1 Like

Well, keep in mind the Delta series are famous for failing on the test stand, and even doing horrific things in flight (such as you linked) but they always put their bird in orbit. Well, nearly always… Wikipedia says there have been more than 300 Delta rockets launched, with a 95 percent success rate, and that’s including the short-lived Delta III which was kind of a flop. When I left the industry many years ago, the Delta family were by far the most dependable launch vehicle we had, despite their foibles. I’d totally ride a Delta IV.

But I believe the Orion’s supposed to go on the new SLS for manned flight. And if you think SLS is a dumb name (because it is) at least it’s not Ares or Orion for chrissakes.

2 Likes

The Delta IV was never meant to be a manned lifter - it was just an ‘Evolved Expendable’ for DOD launches - the only reason it’s being explored for manned use is because of uncertainties around the supply of Russian RD-180 engines for the Atlas V.

Orion may be launching on the SLS, but the Delta IV is being eyed as backup for plans to use the Atlas V for both the Boeing ISS crew transport (the CST-100) and Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser spaceplane.

The “sets itself on fire” behavior isn’t really very dangerous, but it does greatly complicate the sensor environment at launch. Makes it hard to tell if the rocket’s blowing up or just setting itself on fire as usual. (-:

And as I’m sure you know, man-rated rockets always want the earliest possible notice that they’re blowing up. (-:

As for the name ‘SLS’, I’m okay with it - it’s fitting for the Frankenstein’s monster of leftover shuttle parts that the initial examples will be.

But at least this time they’ve got the good sense to throw away the SRB casings instead of trying to reuse them.

Thiokol didn’t want to do reusable segmented steel casings joined with O-rings. The design boys wanted case-on-propellant technology - casting the solid fuel first, spraying on the insulation layer, then building the case by wrapping the insulated fuel in complex patterns of filaments and embedding the attachment fittings for the nozzle etc. during the filament winding process. But NASA insisted on reusable boosters, and insisted that they had to use “proven technology” (such as O-rings) even though the disadvantages of the old tech were well “proven” too. I don’t know if the disposable, ultra-light carbon filament case-on-propellant concept ever even reached anyone important at NASA, since their specifications basically ruled out disposables from the get-go. It’s too bad, though - some of the engineers were really fired up with ideas back then. At one point they were experimenting with designs for catalytically inhibited solid fuels, although I don’t think that ever got any traction either. Cool stuff.

Man, that was a long time ago… I got out of the rocket biz while Reagan was still in office, although my father stayed in until he retired, and my brother’s still doing satellite control stuff. All my knowledge is dreadfully out of date! I enjoy conversations with people like you and Xeni who are doing a better job of tracking the current space programs.

3 Likes

Yep, the Shuttle program had a long and painful history of ruling out more sensible designs in favor of Reusability At Any Cost.

And, boy, was that costly. )-:

The follow-on boosters for the later-block configurations of the SLS intend to replace the 5-segment shuttle-based SRBs with ‘advanced boosters’, which may or may not be monolithic filament-wound solids. They might be liquid-fuel - “uncertain is the future” (-:

ATK, the lineal descendant of Thiolkol, uses graphite fiber-wound epoxy composite casings on its GEM (“Graphite-Epoxy Motor”) series of solid strap-ons, which are widely used - in fact, the Delta IV Medium+ configurations use GEM-60s.

3 Likes

I remember hydraulically burst testing predecessors of those at Morton-Thiokol (the organization in between Thiokol and ATK). The concrete test bay was lined with green oak at least four, possibly six inches thick, just in case some air got into the case during the test.

Are the GEMs case-on-propellant, though? We made a lot of carbon wound cases on mandrels and then poured the fuel into them, back in the 80s and even earlier… fiberglass wound rocket motor casings probably go back to the 40s.

1 Like

Please elaborate?

When I heard it the idea was for a ground-launched stand-off missile that would have a tear-off strip marked in miles, and if the enemy pillbox was 53 miles away your soldier would tear it off at 53, and fire the sucker. It’d take a ballistic line of sight flight path that would end 53 miles away, because the remaining fuel would not burn. It would be immune to smart countermeasures because it wouldn’t have any smarts. I don’t know actually how far they ran with it… apparently the chemistry was working, though.

2 Likes

I’ll have to look into the chemistry, brief sniffing around indicates it is interesting.

A possible alternative could be a linear shaped charge that’d blow off the motor (or open its casing, or just blow off the nozzle, the challenge here is introduction of only negligible trajectory disturbance, assuming no guidance in the missile). Safety systems for the Shuttle SRBs had such blow-open charges, AFAIK.

Sure, and you don’t necessarily even need a charge for that; a small gas generator can be used to open a blowout port. This idea was for something that required no control system, though - not even a timer. I thought it was a cool idea (actually I still think it’s pretty cool, which is why I still remember it after all this time).

1 Like

It definitely IS cool.

1 Like