Nasa picks deep-space astronaut ship

[Zathros]

I was hoping they would not waste all of that investment. This is stuff NASA was made to do, Deep Space exploration. In my humble opinion.

BBC News - Nasa picks deep-space astronaut ship

[dhanners]

What differences, if any, are there between the MPCV and the most recent iteration of Orion? I've searched and can't find any listing of differences. I know there was a change in the "607" version to include a Service Module with a larger upper section so the Command Module would sit down further inside it, giving the CM's heat shield greater protection against MMOD.

[Zathros]

I have a feeling they are going to use everything on the shelf till it's all gone. Space X has made a statement that it"s Dragon Capsule will be able to do everything that the Orion does, and for much cheaper. Should be interesting. Your knowledge on this far exceeds mine when it comes to Space rocketry and the like. I'll be following to see what you come up with.

[Paper Kosmonaut]

This might get very interesting. Orion is NASA's choice for deep space missions. They might pick either or both competing capsules CTS-100 and Dragon for ISS taxi-services. If SpaceX claims their capsule can do the same as Orion, they create a precedent for commercial deep space flights (non- US, commercial, scientific or perhaps even university- sponsored!) that might hold some reminiscence to the (ant)arctic races of the early 1900s or the discovery of the last white spots on the globe's map. Who will be first?

Some new space race but not as we know it, Jim.

not that is is true but it sure is a nice suggestion..

[Zathros]

A space race without a battle on the horizon would be excellent. I think NASA's intention is to make the "deep" space aspect of the craft, as they stated the Orion will be in a Dormant mode for most of the journey. Nasa has also stated before that they wish to concentrate on new types of engines for this exploration.

[luke strawwalker]

Let's hope so...

OL JR

[Uyraell]

The sad truth is that manned "deep space" exploration pretty much died as a concept in May 1966; even before we'd reached the moon. Deep space exploration was effectively killed off when N.E.R.V.A was cancelled 20 days before Near Earth Orbit testing.
With the death of N.E.R.V.A mankind was going nowhere beyond the moon.

Once the Apollo missions had been truncated at Apollo 17 (Remembering that Apollo 18,19, and 20 had been planned to establish bases on the moon, rather than merely visit it) there was no point in further moon missions (see Proxmire, below).

Which effectively left the Space Shuttle as NASA's only survival option, but also meant the next 40 odd years would be completely wasted in terms of manned deep space or even lunar space exploration.

Blame two things: A Congress with NO vision of the future, which thus denied the funds beyond the Shuttle Program and pretty much strangled even those to death, and :
Senator Walter Proxmire, who set out to (and achieved ) utterly destroy the Apollo Program before it could show any truly meaningful or useful results beyond temporary visits to the moon. Proxmire did this because there were no NASA related jobs in his electoral district. Basically, if Proxmire's electorate got no gravy train from NASA: he was determined no other electorate would do so. He succeeded, and called his cultural and technological act of vandalism "a triumph for democracy", when it was in truth an act of pure vandalism against the whole of humanity.

Which meant the next 40 years, and most likely the next 150 years wasted, in terms of mankind ever getting into space to achieve anything useful.

Don't get me wrong: the Shuttle was a great technological achievement, just as Apollo had been before it.

However: the Shuttle was also an expensive shackle that locked mankind in space to earth orbit, and thus rendered the concept itself to all intents useless.
And useless it shall remain, until mankind again summons up the courage and the funding to explore out among the stars and planetary bodies further afield than the moon.

Why do I say "Useless"? Consider, other than long-term low gravity information on human biology, little is known now that was not known by the time of the Apollo-Soyuz "Handshake in space" mission in 1975. That mission was itself concieved with the exact purpose of using (read: wasting) the last surviving Lunar-Capable Saturn Rocket.
Simply put, we've since learned very damn little about surviving in space that we did not know then.

Respectful Regards, Uyraell.

[Paper Kosmonaut]

First, the last NERVA tests on earth were in the early seventies. The engine was tested and proven to work. The options to cancel the program were due to lack of finance and eventual radiation danger during these ground tests. NERVA however kept being a point of interest in manned spaceflight and is still somewhat in the picture.
*EDIT* here, here and here (PDF) some more information about NERVA.

Originally Posted by Uyraell

Once the Apollo missions had been truncated at Apollo 17 (Remembering that Apollo 18,19, and 20 had been planned to establish bases on the moon, rather than merely visit it) there was no point in further moon missions (see Proxmire, below)

Those Apollo missions were not meant to establish that at all, just a longer stay on the moon's surface. Don't get me that Apollo conspiracy stuff please.
*EDIT* here is some factual stuff about the cancelled Apollo missions, even mentioniong NERVA in 1971.

Originally Posted by Uyraell

Which effectively left the Space Shuttle as NASA's only survival option, but also meant the next 40 odd years would be completely wasted in terms of manned deep space or even lunar space exploration.

Manned was indeed not an option but also when NERVA was initiated and first tested in space in, say, 1968, then it would have taken at least another ten years before there would have been one single manned test mission with that engine. Even in 1971, when Apollo was completely cancelled, NERVA still was in its infancy. Those thirty, forty years following would not have made such a huge difference.

Originally Posted by Uyraell

Blame two things: A Congress with NO vision of the future, which thus denied the funds beyond the Shuttle Program and pretty much strangled even those to death, and:
Senator Walter Proxmire, who set out to (and achieved ) utterly destroy the Apollo Program before it could show any truly meaningful or useful results beyond temporary visits to the moon.

Don't forget there was a very expensive war going on and people just lost interest in space travel after Apollo 11. It was not just "killing" Apollo, it was practically shutting down the entire manned space program of the US. Indeed lack of vision but also a shift in priorities.
Especially in a financial point of view people thought money should be spent at things that served the public more.

Originally Posted by Uyraell

Which meant the next 40 years, and most likely the next 150 years wasted, in terms of mankind ever getting into space to achieve anything useful.

This is just plain speculative nonsense. What's with the 150 years?! As if when NERVA would have been continued we would have been at Uranus by now. This would need some serious proof, mister. This is just nonsense. And that's politely put.

Originally Posted by Uyraell

Consider, other than long-term low gravity information on human biology, little is known now that was not known by the time of the Apollo-Soyuz "Handshake in space" mission in 1975. That mission was itself concieved with the exact purpose of using (read: wasting) the last surviving Lunar-Capable Saturn Rocket.

We did gain a lot more knowledge about long duration space missions since 1975. A lot more. Besides: we are only just at the beginning of the second space age. That last Apollo launch, the ASTP mission, was made using a Saturn 1b, which was not at all capable of getting men to the moon. That was the Saturn V and the last one of those was fired lifting Spacelab in 1973. The three remaining ones were displayed as museum pieces. Know your facts.
There is no space race anymore and thus no reason for hastily made decisions and bold plans of exploring new worlds before everything is tested. This has almost nothing to do with lack of funding, it just shows manned space exploration is taking a slower pace. Because of that it is logical to first explore with probes before going there ourselves. This is cheaper and just as effective.
And it is a general idea to do it so, since the shutdown of Apollo, no one has tried to initiate an interplanetary manned mission, not the Americans, not the Russians, nor the Chinese, the Europeans or the Japanese. So it is a bit too simply put to blame just the U.S. government for not getting us to Uranus or wherever.

And lastly:
When NASA is announcing a new deep space exploration ship, manned and all, planned for the next ten years, already in the process of getting the hardware, is deep space exploration dead then?

[dhanners]

In the interest of peace, here's a re-posting of a photo of my build of the proposed "Plymouth Rock" mission to a Near Earth Asteroid, using Ton's 1/96th-scale Orion as a basis. I enlarged the upper diameter of the Service Module, as per the spacecraft's current design (to afford better MMOD protection for the Command Module's heat shield) and I scratchbuilt the proposed Orion Deep Space Vehicle.

As for the other discussion, I'm not sure scuttling NERVA ruined our plans to explore beyond low earth orbit. As with Dyna-Soar, the thing looked pretty good on paper and tests seemed promising, but there's a lot of space, literally and figuratively, between tests and an operational vehicle. For example, there's this from Wikipedia (yeah, I know it's Wikipedia):

"On the initial firings immense reactor heat and vibration cracked the fuel bundles. Likewise, while the graphite materials used in the reactor's construction were indeed resistant to high temperatures, they eroded under the heat and pressure of the enormous stream of superheated hydrogen. The fuel bundle problem was largely (but not completely) solved by the end of the program, and related materials work at Argonne National Laboratory looked promising. Fuel and engine coatings never wholly solved this problem before the program ended."

I, too, lament that we haven't done more to move humans beyond the moon. But we've done what we've done, and our robotic probes have accomplished quite a bit. Placing our backwards-looking faith in "what might have been" programs, though, doesn't get us anywhere.

As for the late William Proxmire, don't forget that he wasn't alone in his budget-cutting zeal. And today, things are far worse, at least in the U.S., because you have elements that question the very authority of government to do anything, let alone run a space program. And we're just getting over eight years of a presidency that doubted (and sometimes ridiculed) science, believed global warming was a myth, thought the Earth was 6,000 years old and wanted to ban the teaching of Darwin in the classroom in favor of Creationism. They were convinced dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth together. And on top of that, in an era of "don't dare raise my taxes," that administration waged a useless war in Iraq (remember the non-existent WMDs?) that cost us billions of dollars and a few thousand American lives.

That type of attitude -- and the disdain and distrust it shows for the intrinsic value of science and exploration -- has done more to impede space exploration than William Proxmire could have ever hoped to.

[Paper Kosmonaut]

Of course it is at least a bit disappointing we still not have a foothold on the moon and on Mars. I just wanted the thread to stay factual.