Originally posted by moot
Orion a dead end? I've mostly skimmed articles about it, but I never got that bleak an impression.
A lot of people will lay a brick if Bill Stone succeeds in his expedition to Shackleton (10^9 tons of H2O). Mining near earth objects wouldn't seem so far out, then.
Orion is pretty much a un-reusable space capsule much like the Apollo program.
Much the of capsules reentry data has been resurrected from the Apollo program days and throughly updated to today.
UPS and United Airlines cannot stay economically viable in the long run if they throw the planes away after each trip, and so it goes for disintegrating totem poles to Low Earth Orbit and the Moon. Orion can only lead to exploration camps. Not long term lunar development. It will soak up federal dollars for the next 25 years and in the end, will have only been one more federal space program to subsidize the aerospace industry in the United States.
Look at the track record.
Apollo went to the moon: probably the last large scale NASA achievement. Then the program ended, and a few of the last perfectly functional space vehicles ended up as over-sized lawn ornaments when the program was terminated. Over 35 years ago.
Space Shuttle was a technological achievement that was an operational failure. Billed as $100 per pound to orbit with a turn around time of a week - ended up costing $10,000 to $15,000 pounds delivered to orbit, killed the United States expendable launch vehicle industry when Regan decried all civilian payloads would fly on the Shuttle first, before considering other launch vehicles (thus leading to rise in world market share of Ariane and Russian ELVs).
In the end: too big for everyday launch market use (due to USAF /NRO requirements), too expensive and too time consuming for economic launch and turnaround time, too much refurbishment needed between launches. Also so big and heavy to create the problems for reentry (a much smaller/lighter craft would have fewer problems). Far too many congressional budget cuts were instilled into the Space Shuttle program from it's conception to it's first launch to allow it to be a true success. The original design called for two totally reusable vehicles, orbiter piggybacked onto launching mother-ship. One cut after another over the course of a decade give us the current space shuttle design.
National Aerospace Plane. Never really went anywhere. Some new materials and a lot of testing, even a model atop a rocket to test the scramjet, but in the end, and subsidy for aerospace.
Delta Clipper DC-X. Started as a very watered down version of the old
SSX (Space Ship Experimental) aerospike idea (General Graham, Max Hunter, Jerry Pournelle and other members of the old Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy) to support "Star Wars" / Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). NASA got hold of it in it's grasp and literally broke it to kill the program, whether intentionally or not, as it was unwanted competition to CATS (cheap access to space) with NASA"s Venture Star program.
Venture Star. Remember this one? Well, very few others do either. Lot's of pretty graphics came out of this aerospace subsidy program. About it though.
The Space Station formerly known as "Freedom" =
International Space Station. NASA"s white elephant to beat all white elephants. Original designs like Boeing's Space Operations Center was an 8-launch, $8 billion project. Now estimated to cost about $130 billion by 2010 at expected completion and retirement of the space shuttle. The ISS is expected to be closed out by 2017 (that's when NASA zero's out the budget for ISS to spend it on other things) --- and that is with a half dozen modules canceled from the final project.
Last big redesign was called the "A, B, C" design point..... the C version envisioned the use of the shuttle stack to create a heavy lift launch vehicle (much like the Ares of Zubrin's Mars Direct plan).... in the end, they chose "D". The final design and it's orbit were determined by the U.S.A.'s State Department to get Russian onboard so those pesky Ruski scientists post cold war wouldn't be building big bombs for the bad guys (gee...didn't work did it?).
Too much on-board vibration for a lot of the 0-gee research that was touted. Awful expensive for a research station. A bit underpowered. Has been a huge drain on the space exploration budgets of no less than 7 nations.
In short: ISS has taught everyone else how NOT to build a space station.
NOW:
Orion...... a rehash of the Apollo Program from 40 years ago.
Nothing really new here. Even the name Orion is taken from another program... the old Orion concept of tossing nukes under a pressure plate with heavy springs connecting it to a launch capsule above.... Old "band-bang". Max Hunter and G.H. Stine have got to be spinning in their graves over this one. The only plus on Orion's side is that some of it may have applications in an Mars Direct type mission architecture. But as to permanent habitation or economic development, Orion is a dead end.
The old NACA (NASA's predecessor) was a fantastic organization in it's time. NASA managed to win the Space Race which was so closely tied to the Cold War. The post-Apollo NASA has not had any real leadership in it's own ranks, from any Administration, or somewhat realistic or reliable Congressional support since Apollo. It's an agency without a true mission or goal. It has become a monstrous bureaucracy the kind that Chinese wisdom warns against. It's a federal feeding trough for the aerospace industry.
