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Watch That Tiny $74 1.5GHz Android-Powered Thumb-Puter In Action Here’s a classic TED talk by George Dyson, where he shares his father Freeman’s notes on reclassified Project Orion: A cold war spaceship as large as a Marriott hotel powered by 20 kiloton nukes.
NASA is now showing Orion—the spacecraft that will take humans to the Moon and Mars—at the National Mall in Washington. It’s not the real thing, but it looks great (needs more pretty decals).
Accompanying a long piece on the future of NASA’s Orion/Constellation system, the NYTimes threw together a nice Flash graphic detailing the individual components of what may or may not (ahem Financiapocalypse) replace the Space Shuttle.
NASA better come up with some good reasons to keep Ares and Orion alive, because Barack Obama is no JFK: The office of the President Elect has send them a questionnaire asking some tough questions about our favourite space program, Space News reports. You know, the one which is supposed to take Humanity back to the Moon and go to Mars. In fact, the questionnaire goes as far as asking if NASA could redesign the Orion spacecraft so it could be launched by the European Ariane 5 or the Japanese H2A:
As the Constellation program (kind of) goes forward, Nasa is asking itself some really weird questions that may affect the life of the astronauts as they advance towards their three-year mission to Mars. One of them has been commissioned to Steven Pearce, chemist and managing director of fragrance manufacturing company Omega Ingredients: What is life in the Orion spacecraft going to smell like?
It is no secret that NASA is looking to the past to help us go back to the moon and, eventually, to Mars. Today NASA revealed that scientists working on the Orion crew module visited the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum Garber Facility in Suitland, Md. over the summer to unpack Apollo heat shields for the first time in 35 years.
After three fiery failed test launches of its Falcon 1 rocket (the last one carrying NASA’s first solar sail craft and Scotty from Star Trek’s ashes), Elon Musk’s SpaceX is setting up shop at a new launch site–Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40, which is just south of SLC-39A/B, from which the Space Shuttle and Apollo moon missions have headed skyward for decades. There they hope to prepare the first test of their Falcon 9 vehicle, the bigger and badder version of the Falcon 1 rocket that just can’t stop going BOOM.
newVideoPlayer("/ohnorion.flv", 506, 380,""); Filed under the “good thing we tried it out first” department is this recent test of Shuttle-replacement Orion’s parachute re-entry system. Based on the same system used for Apollo, the group of eight parachutes deploys after re-entry, ensuring the Orion capsule glides down back to terra firma for a pillow-soft landing. That’s what’s supposed to happen, anyway.
Back in June we brought you the news that NASA’s astronauts would be wearing brand new-designed space suits when they walk on the Moon next. But now it looks like the firm Oceaneering, who had been awarded the contract, have had the deal pulled by the government after protests about the procurement from a rival suit manufacturer. It’s a US$745 million contract for 109 suits (24 for the moon,) so we get why it’s important. But I hope the mess is sorted soon: you don’t really want astros popping open their space wardrobe and thinking “Oh, I can’t go out tonight, I’ve not a thing to wear.” [AP]
With the dinosaur Space Shuttle set to retire in 2010, and Orion due to be finished (optimistically) by 2015, NASA may purchase the US$131 million unmanned HTV cargo vehicle from JAXA, Japan’s space agency, to guarantee fresh shipments of space-Doritos flowing up to the brave souls on the International Space Station. While they had initially planned to fill this gap by relying on commercial space cargo flights by companies like SpaceX, Reuters is reporting that delays in the private-sector space companies have caused NASA to look elsewhere to avoid being crippled by the Shuttle’s retirement. [Reuters]
