NASA's Bolden Touts Mars by 2030s as Space Exploration Goal

a ^ | February 10th 2010 | Mark R. Whittington

[GonzoGOP]

Scrap what I just said about continuing Orion. I just found out it catastrophically failed a drop test this morning. So like Ares I and Ares IV it has proven to be a giant waste of time and money.

I have had the privilege of having met two of the Apollo astronauts, Gene Cernan and Jim Lovel, and cannot imagine that the hero's of my childhood will not be replaced by others who are doing more and going farther. The hero's the world holds up today for my kids are people who talk on TV, wright fiction books, or pretend to be someone else in movies. I just keep trying to tell them, there was a time of greater men and worthy quests. And know how those living in Post Roman Brittan felt when they watched the barbarians coming and told tales of the Knights of the Round Table.

I wonder if there will be a day when people no longer believe we went to the moon. When it will just be a legend that everybody has heard but nobody believes any more.

[Favor Center]

“The primary shock wave (the dark line) is the one you use to fly the capsule. The secondary wave (light gray line) is the one that keeps the heat away from the sides.”

The primary reason why the Apollo was a blunted cone was for a lifting reentry. The capsule reentered at an angle of attack.

The bow shock (what you call a “plasma shock wave” isn’t going to “rejoin” the vehicle.

Blunt nose cones make sense from several perspectives. On the way up, they are effectively the nose cone of the booster. On the way down, they are aerodynamically stable, maximize drag, and minimize heat transfer - but that’s due to the blunt base, not the sidewalls. That thin gray line is just the wake. (The really thin line at the angle change from base to sidewall is an expansion). Soyuz is also somewhat like a blunted cone, just not as pronounced as Apollo or last-iteration CEV. Earlier CEV designs looked quite a bit like Soyuz.

Entering at a zero angle of attack, as shown in the Schlieren images you provided, would generate no lift.

On the Orbiter, the only very high TPS was on the leading edges. The straight sidewalls of the fuselage were protected by the low temperature TPS system that had nothing to do with the failure of Columbia.

[Favor Center]

“Scrap what I just said about continuing Orion. I just found out it catastrophically failed a drop test this morning. So like Ares I and Ares IV it has proven to be a giant waste of time and money.”

That’s why we call them “tests”. If everything always worked fine from the get-go, there’d never be a need for a “test”.

[chimera]

Don't get discouraged. That's why you have a testing program, to try things out and fix them if they don't work. A lot of our early rocket tests blew up in pieces on the pad or shortly after launch. You can see a lot of clips of them on YouTube. Grumman snapped the legs off any number of LEM mockups during the design phase, but they got it right in the end. We lost two engines on the S-II stage of Apollo 6 but it still kept going, and we were able to man-rate the S-V for Apollo 8 and keep the program on track. The worst thing would be to quit after a setback.

[GonzoGOP]

That’s why we call them “tests”. If everything always worked fine from the get-go, there’d never be a need for a “test”.

But when the program is on the chopping block and desperately trying for good news a crack up that plays well on YouTube might just be enough to kill the program. From what i heard (read) the parachute didn't open when it got dropped out of the C-17. Not a problem with the Orion or the parachute, but I doubt the Obamabots and congresscritters are going to care about something like facts. They will just see the video of the boilerplate making a new crater in the desert.

[Jack Hydrazine]

They are a for-profit company that has the goal of going to Mars. They are going to use the profits they make from launching satellites as well as astronauts to the ISS to fund going to Mars.

[Jack Hydrazine]

So they can be first!

[Favor Center]

“They are a for-profit company that has the goal of going to Mars. They are going to use the profits they make from launching satellites as well as astronauts to the ISS to fund going to Mars.”

They’ll be saving money for a very, very, long time, then.