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| World Home » Technology » | Fri. May 16, 2008 |
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Water or Land: The Orion Landing Choice MIL/UT, Dec 11, 2007. December 11, 2007 - Work is progressing on designing the new Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), the next generation of NASA spacecraft that will take humans to the International Space Station, back to the Moon, and hopefully on to Mars. But one major question about the spacecraft has yet to be answered. On returning to Earth, will the CEV splash down in water, or land on terra firma? NASA officials discussed various aspects of development that is currently underway for the Constellation program at a media briefing on December 10. The mobile launch platform for the Ares rocket is being built, landing parachutes have been tested and the first capsule structure of the new CEV will be constructed starting in early 2008. Design requirements for the booster rockets have been completed and just ahead are final design definitions for operational capabilities such as ground procedures at Kennedy Space Center, mission control in Houston and other areas such as spacesuit design. Additionally research on the International Space Station has begun to help prepare for long duration spaceflights such as a measurements of microbe growth, a study of the formation of kidney stones, and a nutritional study to help understand what is ‘normal’ for the human body in space. But questions from the media focused mainly on the yet unmade decision of whether the CEV will land in the water or on land. NASA originally explored multiple options for landing in both water and land. After initial studies, the first assessment by NASA and the contractor for the CEV, Lockheed Martin, was that landing on land was preferred in terms of total life cycle costs for the vehicles. But now a splashdown in water seems to be favored. “There are a couple of aspects that pop out at us,” said Jeff Hanley, Manager for the Constellation Program. “One is the safety and the risks involved in landing. Looking at the landing itself, the event of actually touching down, water comes out to be preferable as less risk.” Another aspect is the performance of the Orion vehicle as it is sent to the moon. “In looking at what it takes to get a pound of spacecraft to low lunar orbit in terms of the cost, every pound that you send toward the moon is precious. From an efficiency and performance point of view, carrying 1500 lbs of landing bags to the moon and back when we have a perfectly viable mode of landing in the water near a US coastal site didn’t seem like a good trade in performance. We’ve tended toward updating our point of departure concept to now be a nominal US coastal water landing.” The Constellation program has always considered that for the first few missions, the spacecraft would land in water until the guidance system had been tested thoroughly and proven in actual landings. But NASA is continuing to look at landing on land as a possibility for future flights. “We want to be able to land on land in a contingency and have the crew be able to get out and walk away….There’s limitation of what you can do on land but by the time we get done really looking at what the minimal capability of landing on land and having the crew walk away, we’ll see what the design looks like, and if the design is robust enough we could return to having nominal land landings.” One challenge for the Constellation program has been getting the CEV light enough for the Ares rockets to be able to launch it, and therefore eliminating the 1500 lb airbags for landing has its appeal.
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