Just in case something goes wrong with Orion’s launch, NASA included a pretty sweet abort system that would, with any luck, bring the crew safely down to Earth. This render shows that ejection is also a very pretty sequence.

The “Launch Abort System” would go into effect when the attached Aries rocket breaks away from the ship, and mostly uses parachutes to guide the crew back down safely. Check out the video, it explains what would ideally happen (if everything before the abort system’s triggering goes wrong, of course). [Technology Review via Dvice]

MLAS—named after Maxime Faget, the designer for the Aerial Capsule Emergency Separation Device in the Mercury program—is an alternative abort launch system concept developed by a team of NASA engineers. The Orion abort system will remain the same. According to NASA, however, this concept has potential for future missions:

MLAS is of potential interest because it is theorized to have aerodynamic performance benefits, weight savings and be relatively simple in some spacecraft applications. Much of the potential gains would be accomplished by eliminating the launch abort tower, which also means eliminating the attitude control motors.

[NASA]

This is the full scale Orion model at the Johnson Space Center’s anechoic chamber, where it’s body and antennas were recently tested to see how they absorb sound waves and electromagnetic energy as if it was in space.

And yes, this would make one big badass Margarita. [NASA]

From my earlier post:

Given the time frame, the planners on the Orion had even built in defence systems meant to retaliate against the Russians. This project was the first contract funded by DARPA. In this video, George also steps through passenger acceleration profiles, emergency plans if Orion failed to clear the atmosphere and the not so cool 700 rads of radiation you’d get while riding it. George’s final take? If an asteroid headed for our planet, an Orion type ship is one of the only emergency plans that NASA could depend on, “off the shelf.” And that’s why NASA bought roughly 1700 pages of the notes he collected on Orion from him.

[TED, Amazon]

Get Me Off This Rock: This week, we’re celebrating the dream of human life in space.

[NASA's Orion at Gizmodo]

While the written piece prods and pokes at the budgetary and bureaucratic challenges (shocker!) NASA is jumping through to get their plan for Constellation (which includes the Apollo-like Orion capsule, a lunar lander and two rockets, the Ares I and larger Ares V) off the ground, the graphic is a great 90-second summary of what will probably be our main space vehicle system for many years to come. [NYTimes]

Estimate the feasibility of designing a resized Orion capsule that could be launched by international launch vehicles such as the [European] Ariane 5 or the [Japanese] H2A.

I don’t know about the feasibility of that, I–even while I am not American–doubt about its convenience. After all, even if the economy is broken, wouldn’t government investment in the aerospace industry help it come back and help the US as a whole, just like the Apollo program did, generating thousands of jobs and creating new technologies that put the US ahead of every other country in the planet?

Fortunately, it seems that some people think this is not really a setback, even while the questionnaire doesn’t ask about the cancellation or scaling of any other programs currently under progress or in the drawing table. John Logsdon, a space expert at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, has hope:

After all, these are the questions that everyone is asking, and the transition team certainly must get NASA’s best answers to them. I would not overinterpret and come to any conclusion regarding what direction the team may be headed — after all, there is still almost two months left in the transition.

Maybe he is right, maybe he is not. After all, during the campaign, Obama pledged to inject two billion dollars into NASA. However, he may not be interested in taking us to Mars but improving our understanding of Earth climate, beaming solar energy from space, and defend Earth against asteroids and comets. I hope his space advisors are aware about the fact that it only takes a bunch of guys from an oil perforation rig to do that. I mean, even Dick and Condi know that the oil industry are the only ones who can save us against global scale wars and doomsday meteors. [Space News via Slashdot]

For them, what comes across is a smell of fried steak, hot metal and even welding a motorbike.

There you have it, fried steak and hot metal. Much like my apartment. Omega Ingredients–probably an Spectra subsidiary–is working on this space fragrance based on the testimonies of the astronauts who have been in space. You know, all those guys and girls who went into the Moonraker program. The resulting meat-and-metal eau de cologne could–according to them–be used by Nasa to increase the realism of their simulations. [Daily Mail]

“We started working together at the end of June to track down any Apollo-era heat shields that they had in storage,” said Elizabeth (Betsy) Pugel of the Detector Systems Branch at NASA Goddard. “We located one and opened it. It was like a nerd Christmas for us!”

Specifically, the team is hoping to gather information on how to build next gen shields by examining the design of the carrier structure that connected the shield to an Apollo capsule that flew in Low Earth Orbit. They are also interested in the shields thermal response.

Honestly, every time I watch a documentary, read an article or visit a museum dealing with early spaceflight I am reminded of how brilliant the engineers behind these accomplishments really were. This is yet another example. [NASA and Science Daily]

The Falcon 1 rockets have all been launched from Kwajalein, in the US Marshall islands in the Pacific. Moving to the Cape will allow SpaceX to work more closely with NASA, which is still planning to rely on private systems like Falcon 9 to carry the Space Shuttle’s burden of ISS service and orbital insertions after it retires by 2010, and until Orion can take up the mantle in 2015 (which many see as an optimistic time frame).

Honestly though, we admire SpaceX. They’re pushing private-sector space operations further than most would ever dare–let’s just hope they get a break soon. For Scotty. [Space Ref via /.]