December 12, 2014 • 45 mins
The Orion space vehicle recently passed a major flight test. How will Orion fit into NASA's plans for the future of space exploration?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking, and Welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast that
looks at the future and says he's just a guy
made of dots and lines. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren
(00:20):
foc Obon, and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey, guys, how are
you doing today? I'm out of this world? Oh I
see what he did there. We're talking today about Oriyan
the spacecraft. Yeah, the constellation, though someone might be led
to believe the constellation because I think you were just
talking about connecting dots and lines. Maybe that might have
(00:43):
been a song about it. Well, what is the Orion spacecraft?
Because I saw some people going nuts about it on
the internet the other day. Yeah, including coworkers. Absolutely. Well, okay,
so myself, you saw yourself. It was an out of
body experience. Um yeah. Yeah. On on Friday December at
(01:06):
seven oh five a m. The Orion Exploration Flight Test
one launched from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Yeah.
This was an important step in a very long and
winding Uh. Well, I would say road, but really, spacecraft
don't take those that often well, in this particular test
flight was not a very long and winding road, was it,
(01:28):
I mean where it didn't go out to Jupiter or something. Uh? No,
it circled the Earth twice uh and then splashed down
the Pacific Ocean off the coast Baja California at a
mirror four hours later at nine am at Eastern Standard time.
So I was so excited to watch that I was
actually watching it live streaming. I was feigning my ignorance,
I was. I was sadly I was talking about it
(01:50):
on camera without being able to actually watch it. I
knew that I knew it had been successfully launched, but
I had not been able to actually watch it. That's
the that's the futurist equivalent of being a sad clown.
Isn't it talking about you can't watch the present because
you're talking about the future. Yeah, that was you know,
that was kind of where I was going with that. Um.
(02:11):
I also like to have my portrait on on velvet thing.
I like, Well, anyway, this test flight I thought was
really inspiring and exciting. And you might be asking, what's
the big deal? They were just flying some space vehicle.
Wasn't like there was anybody in it. Right, Well, to
know what the big deal is, you got to know
some history. So so we got to back up and
(02:33):
then we'll get to the big deal. Right. So December nineteenth,
nineteen seventy two, was a momentous day, an important day
in the world's space exploration work. It was the day
when the Apollo seventeen spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific. Now,
this marked the end of a mission that sent astronauts
(02:55):
to the Moon. Those astronauts being John Young, Charles Duke Jr.
And Stewart Russa. And they were the last human beings
to ever go beyond low Earth orbit. That's right, So
not just the last human beings to go to the
Moon so far, but the last to go more than
a few hundred miles beyond the surface of the Earth. Well,
(03:18):
let's talk about what low Earth orbit means, because there's
there's it's terminology that isn't I mean, like orbit is
pretty high, right, And and also just the fact that
you know, things like definitions like space outer space, where
does that begin? They all get a little fuzzy because
there's not like a you know, there's not like a sign.
And if do you pass a certain point, the science
(03:38):
has welcome to outer space. But but these are the
designations we have given specific areas of orbit around the Earth.
So low Eer the orbit, that's where a lot of
our space stuff is, Like the International Space Station, the
Hubble Space Telescope, these are all in low Earth orbit.
They're not further out, and that ends at about two
thousand kilometers out from the US of the Earth, so
(04:00):
one thousand, two hundred forty three point seven miles. I
always forget how close exactly the International Space Station really is.
It's it's only a mirror like four hundred and thirty
one kilometers a k a. Two hundred and sixty eight
miles above the surface of the area. Yeah, it's close
enough where you can actually see it when it passes overhead. Yeah,
it's very close. Especially it is zoomed out view. If
(04:23):
you were to step way back from the Earth and look,
it's sort of like in the upper sky. Yeah, it's
pretty amazing that how close it is relatively speaking. Next,
that we have the medium Earth orbit, because if you
have lowerth orbit, there's got to be something else, right,
There's gotta be some other designation. Medium Earth orbit extends
out to thirty five thousand, seven six kilometers or twenty
(04:45):
two thousand, two hundred thirty six miles. So from two
thousand kilometers to thirty five thousand, seven six that's medium
Earth orbit. We're talking about a much larger area than
lowerth orbit, right, and you're gonna notice that every time
we go a little further out the actual area that
we designate gets larger. So is this where you would
find geosynchronous satellites exactly? This is where satellites that are
(05:08):
in geosynchronous orbit inhabit, and those were placed there by
unmanned missions. It's not like we flew some spacecraft out there,
astronauts popped out plopped to satellite into geosynchronous orbits. That
all right, good work, boys, let's go on home, clock out.
That's not the way that works. Uh. Further out from
there you have high Earth orbit, which goes way way
(05:29):
out where you know, including things like the Moon, which
is three hundred eighty four thousand, four hundred kilometers or
two nine hundred miles away from the surface of the Earth.
So that's you know, a really good johnt. And like
we said, space Shuttle program only stayed in lower th orbit.
Never went beyond it. Only twenty four human beings have
(05:52):
ever been beyond lowerth orbit, and those are the people
who are in the Apollo program. Now, this is kind
of weird if you were a space enthusiast and you
don't often consider the fact, but it has been more
than forty years since humans went beyond I think the
farthest they've been since the end of the Apollo program
was to service the Hubble Space Telescope. I think you
(06:14):
might be right on that. I could be wrong if
you're a NASA geek out there with awesome knowledge about
anybody went a little bit farther than that. But definitely,
no one's been beyond low Earth orbit. Right, we have
stayed really really close to the surface of the Earth
for more than forty years humans have. Yeah, yeah, and
and the question yeah, of course. We meanwhile have Voyager
leaving the Solar System. So it took us like six
(06:37):
or seven tries to say, okay, voyagers left the Solars.
Wait wait, wait, wait, alright now, now Voyager left the
Solar System two years ago, right, exactly the part right,
the best part. I was like, Okay, we can now
confirm for a fact that two years ago. But the
interesting thing to me is that imagine that, you know,
we're none of us were alive when the Apollo mission
(07:00):
went to the Moon. Even even me, despite what you're
going to hear in a future podcast, I was not
alive in nineteen seventy two. But can you imagine if
you were alive during that era where we were sending
missions to the Moon, and sent multiple missions to the Moon,
that would you imagine that for the next four decades
(07:20):
we wouldn't send anyone further out. That seems like that
was going backward. Yeah, it's like we've retreated from battle
with space. Yea space space right, space slapped us around
a little bit, and we said, you know what, we
need to figure this out before we try it again.
And uh, you know, there are definitely conversations to have,
like whether or not manned space exploration is a real
(07:42):
benefit compared to something like the robotics approach. All those
conversations we have had multiple times on this podcast. We
just want to talk about the new approach until once
again go beyond low Earth orbit. And that's what the
Orion spacecraft is all about. Right, So the big deal
is this is how human beings are going to get
(08:03):
way the heck out there in the future, at least
the ones who are going on NASA's time. Right, Yeah,
it's this and listening to Timothy Leary, So the as
an overview of the Orion Crew Vehicle project, you actually
need to go back a little bit too, because it
kind of evolved over time. So in the mid two thousand's,
that's when NASA unveiled a proposal for a continued human
(08:25):
exploration of space, originally called the Vision for Space Exploration. Uh,
this was a big thing during George W. Bush's administration.
It was really inspiring. It was this very ambitious plan,
and then there was a change of leadership at NASA
and it became even more ambitious. It became it was
(08:46):
renamed into the Constellation Project, and as a part of
that renaming, they also decided to rename the the Crew
Exploration Vehicle and call it Orian Exploration Vehicle. I I
don't believe we said, but that was the name that
the shuttle was going to have. Yeah, well his name,
thank yeah, so, but exactly that's what it was going
(09:08):
to be, the Crew Exploration Vehicle. Now it's called Orian. Uh.
And and because again Orian was also a constellation apart
from the place in mythology, and plans were that it
would fly by two thousand fourteen, at least in tests,
which turns out actually came to pass despite a lot
of changes in the program. So originally, before the Orion
(09:31):
was going to be built, there was going to be
another space vehicle called the orbital space plane. And before
that there was going to be any different space vehicle
that was unnamed, but it was going to be built
by lockeed Martin. There was going to be a suborbital
space plane. So those were more like direct Shuttle replacements
than a deep space spacecraft. So just to clarify, I
(09:51):
think what you said is pretty good, But can you
clarify the difference between a spacecraft and a space plane. Sure,
space plane tends to be suborbital or very lower th orbit. Uh,
and so there's altitude only goes out so far. Maybe
as a replacement for the Shuttle program, it could also
be a delivery system for smaller craft that would be
(10:12):
piggybacking onto the suborbital plane. So you would have a
sub orbital plane takeoff, reach an extremely high altitude, and
then you would have a second launch off of the
plane of a smaller craft that would head into orbit,
but those plans were scrapped uh, and the Orion was
the new approach once that had happened. So, in other words,
(10:36):
there was a precedent already for planned aircraft getting canceled
before it got to the full build out stage. So
there was no guarantee that Orion wasn't going to suffer
the same fate. So what's the Constellation project gonna do? Well,
it's not gonna do anything now because well, the the
(10:58):
one of the many one of the one of the
many plans was that they were going to send a
return mission to the Moon by twenty uh. They were
also going to use the under the Constellation program, there
was a completion of the International Space Station planned in there.
Uh and also to extend human presence quote beyond our
Solar system end quote. That's pretty ambitious. Yeah, I don't
(11:19):
know if human presence necessarily means manned mission. Though human
presence maybe this was a man made object that we
sent beyond the Solar System. We're going to throw a ball, really,
unless they're working on warp drive or something, I don't
think we're going beyond the Solar system anytime soon. Right,
But yeah, here's the butt. The butt is that the program,
(11:40):
being incredibly ambitious, was also had problems, budgeting problems, There
were a lot of issues, are some political issues at NASA.
I mean, it got kind of ugly in the mid
to late two thousand's and by President Obama called for
the end of the Constellation program kind of to to
scrap the program m and start fresh with a new
(12:01):
approach um, largely in light of new technologies and discoveries
that had happened since they had started planning the Constellation program.
So it's incredibly disappointing for a lot of people. Others,
Like I've seen some folks comment and say they felt
that the Constellation program wasn't focused enough, and so they
(12:23):
kind of thought, well, it was a terrible thing to
happen to have this program scrapped, but it might have
been the right thing to do. I was not in
a place where I could comment on that one way
or the other. Anytime any program for science gets canceled, uh,
I get a little sad. But at any rate, the
development of the Orion vehicle continued. They decided that there
(12:44):
were certain elements under the Constellation program that were worthy
of of continued funding, and one of those was the
Orion spacecraft. Another was the space launch system, which will
be eventually what brings Orian into space, a heavy lifting rocket.
For now, we're using Delta four rockets, but it'll be
(13:04):
a different launch system further down the line, but that
one's not ready yet at any rate. The development of
the Orion vehicle took place at the Johnson Space Center
UM and now it's called the Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle
the MPCV, although most people just still called Ryan and UM. So, yeah,
that's that's kind of where we're at now. Like we're
(13:26):
at the phase now where it went through all the
design phase. It had been built out, and the test
that we referred to earlier took place, which proved that
the Orion systems are in fact space worthy, which is
pretty cool. That is super cool. Yes, yeah, it is, no,
it's it's pretty I was very excited to see this
(13:49):
thing tested. I was too, I remember. So it was
originally going to be launched on a Thursday morning, right,
and then that Thursday morning there was some weather issues,
there were some boats. I think that we're maybe kind
of too close to the launch site that there was
there was also a technical issue with the spacecraft itself
some of the latches. They couldn't get a read on
(14:09):
whether the latches had disengaged properly, so they had to
they essentially had to do a control all delete on
the system. They really did reboot the system. It was
the It was the equivalent of turning it off and
on again. Um, And they just could not get everything
in line before the launch window closed. Because there's only
in order for them to actually do the missions they
have planned, they have to launch in very specific windows
(14:30):
of time, so they had to scrap it for twenty
four hours. The next launch window opened at seven oh
five a m. On Friday morning, and that's exactly when
they launched. They did not waste any time. So by
the time I went to go and shoot my video
about the Orion spacecraft, I already knew that the launch
was successful, but I did not know if the splashdown
would be. Yeah, we keep talking about this Orion capsule.
(14:54):
Let's get into what's inside of it and what makes
it go. Yeah, I was wondering how similar in the
end it's going to be to the kinds of crew
capsules we saw in the Apollo missions. Well, certainly the
exterior looks very similar, right, yeah, absolutely on purpose. In fact,
the designers and engineers really wanted to mirror that that familiar,
(15:15):
kind of nostalgic design that was used in Apollo, except
you know, update it with the modern materials and technologies
that we have in our hands today, right right, So,
and and I mean those some things on it are
not quite as contemporary as you would think for interesting reasons,
and we'll get to that later. Well, the interesting thing
to me is that, I mean the Apollo spacecraft worked.
(15:36):
It worked well. I mean the re entry into the
atmosphere like one time, it didn't well more than one time,
if we're going to be truly technical, because Apollo one
was a terrible disaster, but that was that was a
test flight that went terribly wrong. But the the the
design of the craft was and kind of elegant in
(15:56):
its simplicity for the issue of re entry, right, They
had a specific design that allowed it to re enter
the your's atmosphere in a specific orientation, and that was
pretty remarkable. So yeah, yeah, I should have I should
have also mentioned that that it wasn't just that it
you know, looked real cute. They it's also a very
effective shape for a capsule to be exactly. Yeah. So
(16:18):
so if you were to look at the the launch
of this, if you go back and watch the video
and you take a look and you see this rocket,
it's got this tall like tapered spire type uh cap
to it, and you're looking for the Orion spacecraft like
the actual module, you're gonna not see it because it's
actually it is kept. It's kind of think of it
(16:40):
like a cap of a pen. The very top of
the the launch system is actually a launch abort system. Now,
this is a device that is meant to help the
Orion spacecraft um uh escape if something were to go
wrong at any point to the launch, even if it's
(17:01):
on the launch pad itself, So from the launch pad
all the way up into when the separation would happen
between the Oriyan uh, the the well, the service module
and the rocket. Right. So it's got its own set
of thrusters. It's actually got three different motors on it.
One is the jettison motor that's just used to jettison
the launch aboard system from the Oriyan crew module because
(17:26):
eventually you're gonna need to remove that cap if you
want to do something like, I don't know, look out
the window, because otherwise you're just gonna see the interior
of the launcherboard system cap on there. So the adjacent
motor pulls the system away from the crew module once
the two detached, when they reach the proper altitude. Then
you have the attitude control motor that allows for steering,
so if you need to steer at all um you
(17:49):
can use those. And then you've got the abort motor
that's specifically in the case of an emergency, which can
propel the module away from the launch pad or just
the launch delivery system should something really go wrong. It
can deploy in milliseconds. So as soon as a problem
is detected. And they've tested this out already, they've done
tests of the launch a board system, they can activate it.
(18:10):
The thrusters will fire and they're pretty powerful. I mean
they can propel a crew up to a height of
one mile at And this is a quote from NASA
forty two times the speed of a drag race car,
say the average speed of a drag race car. Again
Nessa's Nessa loves to use these analogies for the Ryan
(18:30):
spacecraft in general. They also said that it provides enough
thrust to lift twenty six elephants off the ground, But
I don't know that they actually test elephants. Elephants your
your average every day every every Joe elephant talking elephants.
A yeah. I immediately went to like, is that an
(18:51):
African or European? Of course, the African elephants are non migratory. Yeah,
we're gonna get into a whole money players something now, folks, now,
but then you're right, Um, it is interesting that it
has this very powerful aboard system. Well that's important because
we've seen space launches turn very tragic. Exactly. Yeah, it's
it's it's interesting that it's it's one of the elements
(19:14):
that NASA was very much UM stressing was an important part,
which you know, is kind of a departure from earlier
launch aboard systems which were a little more rudimentary and
not necessarily as effective. So UM, at any rate, once
you get to the point where it it uh detaches,
(19:36):
that's important. You know, you can't have it on perpetually
because that cap actually covers the part of the crew
module where the parachutes would deploy, so you can't re
enter the ourt's atmosphere with that that launch aboard system on.
It has to be able to detach from the capsule
in order for you to be able to descend properly,
to have a controlled descent. Okay, I have another question. Okay,
(19:57):
let's assume you're an astronaut who's incredib bleak claustrophobic. Okay,
it sounds like you've gone into the wrong profession. Not
sure how you got through training. How tighter the quarters
in the new crew module? Okay, So within the crew module,
you have three sixteen cubic feet of space to move
around in. That's about nine cubic meters. It's not a lot. Uh.
(20:20):
And it is a crew module that can hold up
to four astronauts. So with a full component crew component,
you would have four people in three sixteen cubic feet
of space. It's not a lot of space. You would
be working in pretty close quarters for quite some time.
Remember this is a deep space space. You're going to Mars.
You're going to be in a space this big for
(20:43):
eight months better part of a year. Yeah, so that's
a long time to be hanging out in a small
room with three other people. Uh, it's they've got a
ping pong table. Yeah. So the bottom of the crew
module itself, which, by the way, if you look the
animations of Orion flying through space, you're gonna see that
(21:04):
it has this extended area that's got a thruster on
the back of it. That is the crew module and
service module together. Um. Eventually those two separate. I'll talk
about the service module more in just a second. But
when they do separate, when it's time for the crew
capsule to come down. Uh, that's the bottom of the
crew capsule is where the heat shield is. Yeah. The
(21:25):
engineers actually redeveloped Apollo's heat shield material av coat. It's
it's a brew of like fiberglass and plastics, and this
particular coating is on the yourrine is designed to with
stand temperatures up to uh some five thousand, five hundred
degrees fahrenheit. I don't have a translation for that for celsius,
but it's warm um and uh that would be the
(21:48):
re entry temperature for a return flight from Mars for example. Uh.
And then if you were to look at the full
the full component in the launch system, the bottom most
part part that attaches to the rocket through a an adapter, UH,
is the service module. Now the service module was built,
or it will the the Finnish one will finally be
(22:10):
built by the Airbus Defense and Space Company. It was
the one that we saw in the test flight. Was
developed by the European Space Agency, so this was a
partnership between NASA and the e s A. So e
s A developed it and then they've given the contract
to Airbus Defense and Space to do the production for
the later space service modules. This is the part of
(22:31):
the spacecraft that can hold unpressurized cargo, so you can
think of it as like the cargo hold of the
Space Shuttle. It's similar to that. Uh. It also supplies
the crew with oxygen and water as long as it's
attached to the crew. Module, provides propulsion to move the
spacecraft to proper orbits and course settings, etcetera, provides thermal
control to the crew, and it also generates in stores electricity.
(22:55):
Has a solar panel array that it can deploy once
you reach orbit or or you head out going right,
and that solar panel array is what will capture solar
power and convert to electricity for use on the spacecraft.
UM and then once you're coming back for re entry,
that's the part that gets jettison last really until the
(23:15):
and then the uh well that in the fairings around
the Orion spacecraft as well, but all that gets jettison
and then the Orion manipulates, you know, is oriented so
that the bottom faces the surface of the Earth when
it starts to come back in. So that's kind of
an overview of what the systems are. Um. I've actually
looked at some pictures, some mock ups of what the
(23:37):
interior of the spacecraft look like. So when you're in
a launch situation, you're laying flat on your back, uh,
and that's the position you would be in, although you're
in a seated position because you're on a chair, but
your your back is on the what would be the
floor in a world with gravity, you're in a you're
in a diaper change position. Yeah, okay, well well, um
(23:59):
so so you're in that position until the until you're
able to unstrap once you're out in space, and then
you can float around all willy nilly where there is
no real upper down anymore. They probably are wearing diapers. Huh. Yeah,
there's there's stories about it all the seccidence of being
an astronaut kids. Yeah, inclosed spaces with three other people
that you're gonna become real close friends with over the
(24:21):
next several months to a couple of years, depending on
the mission. Um. Yeah, so this is um, it's an
exciting thing. It's interesting. We haven't had any manned flights
and that kind of brings us into what Orion is
going to be used for. You mentioned one of them,
Joe the trip to Mars, although that one's further down
the planned than other. Right. Well, in the old regime,
the Constellation program, they were saying we were going to
(24:43):
what returned to the Moon. In the idea was that
the Moon was going to be our primary objective and
then from there we would then start planning out trips
to places like Mars. Is that still basically the idea
or have we changed our minds kind of kind of
changed things around a little a little bit. I think
I think there's manned flights of it planned for for
(25:05):
testing around. Yeah, that would be the earliest. And the
crew module has a docking station where it can dock
with other spacecraft. The Apollo spacecraft and Jim and I
spacecraft had these sort of things too. Um, So it
may be that we see other types of uses of
the Orion and the the closer future, but seems ambitious.
(25:28):
A lot of people are saying that they doubt that
is going to be when we see the first launches,
not necessarily because of technological issues, but because of financial ones. Politics. Yeah,
so we need to fund these. In fact, you could
argue that the test flight was a test of two things,
the space worthiness of the Orion capsule and NASA's ability
(25:51):
to drum up excitement and enthusiasm for the space program. Both.
I would say, we're really successful. Yeah, if you were
on Twitter on Friday morning when the spacecraft went up,
you could not help but see tons of tweets about this.
Though then again, I wonder if a lot of those
were coming from the kind of people who are very
interested in space anyway. So what does it take to
(26:13):
break through to the person who doesn't really give a
flip about space day to day. I don't know what
I mean, apart from showing just the amazing videos and
pictures that have been taken over the course of the
space program. I'm not really entirely sure. Yeah, that that
really is kind of the golden question there. But getting
(26:37):
them while they're young helps definitely, So That's that's part
of it though, right, because I mean we're talking we're
looking out several years. The people that they're the who
will be the astronauts in one they're in school now,
you know. Yeah. Well, okay, So, as I was saying
a second ago, the Moon landing kind of did it.
I mean, everybody cared about that, and I'm wondering, what's
(27:00):
the thing we should put our feet on that will
get people really excited again. Well, well we've we've the
Ryan Project has moved away from the moon concept. They're
now talking about landing on an asteroid, captured captured asteroid.
That is so cool. I think is the timeline they're
thinking about if all else goes well, and this would
(27:22):
be you know, for multiple reasons. One, I mean, we
have a legitimate interest in asteroids and finding out their
physical makeup other things that we just we don't know
that we don't know, right, I mean, there's stuff we
don't know because we don't know. I'm almost more excited
about asteroids than I am about Mars asteroids. There are
(27:42):
a lot more practical, pretty pretty decent early arcade game too,
And that's also accurately a lot When I was a
kid science. Yeah, so, so this would be kind of
instead of the Moon acting as the stepping stone toward
longer voyages. Uh, the asteroid mission would be in part
beyond doing the basic science of testing the asteroid for
(28:05):
finding out what it's physical makeup is, all that kind
of stuff, it would also be to test the actual
um capabilities of the Orion spacecraft in preparation for longer missions.
And those longer missions would be the trip to Mars,
which is an enormous goal. We have covered it many
times on this podcast to talk about how big a
(28:25):
deal it is to go to Mars, because in order
to just get there, you have to wait until Earth
and Mars are lined up in their orbits so that
you minimize the amount of time it's going to take
to get from Earth to Mars. Uh. That by minimize,
we're talking still between six and eight months, sometimes nine months,
depending upon exactly when the window is. Then once you
get there, by the time you get there, Earth and
(28:48):
Mars are no longer in that ideal alignment anymore, you're
gonna have to wait two years more or less until
you get to those same conditions where you can make
that same return trip from Mars to Earth and not
acquire an enormous amount of fuel that I don't know
where you would get it unless you're actually converting the
raw material of Mars into fuel, which is a possibility.
(29:10):
That's one of the other things that I'm looking into.
So anyway, it's a huge, huge challenge, and the Orion
is supposed to be the spacecraft that will get us.
They're using NASA's approach. Yeah, they're they're hoping that some
time and say the twenty thirties, that might be able
to happen. Yeah, And and so contrast that with the
(29:32):
Mars one Colony plan to get people on Mars by
early next Tuesday. Yeah, it's it's yeah, sorry, I'm being
that was that was overly dismissive. I think we can
be a little dismissive. Um, I mean, I don't. I
don't wish any project to fail. It just seems like
that one is particularly ambitious. It's hard to balance enthusiasm
(29:57):
and a kind of motivating enthusiasm with being realistic because
at the same time, you could have been living in
the sixties and been super critical of Kennedy for setting
up the space timeline he did. Do you know what
I mean. Yet you could also argue that that ambitious
timeline really did motivate us and our scientists to work
(30:19):
harder and to be more inspired and to get it done.
The Cold War didn't didn't hurt. The Space race was
a race. There was a you know, it was it
was a competition in any ways. And part of the
issue maybe that we feel like there's less pressure now,
like there's not this political reason to demonstrate our superiority
(30:42):
of getting things really far where they started. Absolutely I am,
I do think that that's valid. I would be more
apt to be less cynical about the Mars one if
they were choosing to fund it with anything but reality TV,
which just yeah, yeah, yeah, even if you even if
(31:03):
you love reality television, the ability to raise enough money
to send a mission to Mars, that's a that would
have to be the most successful reality television program, right
because we're talking billions of dollars here. It's not cheap.
So I thought it would be fun also to talk
about some of the other things that didn't really fit
(31:25):
into the other parts of the podcast, and one of
those is this is fun facts about it, right, Yeah.
The first one is fun fact Hey do you know,
radiation could kill you. Yeah, we talked about this every
time Mars comes up. So you know, being on Earth
is really nice because Earth is a big umbrella from
(31:45):
all of the energy out there in the universe that
wants to kill us. It's also where I keep all
my stuff. So if we're traveling beyond the protective barriers
provided by Earth's magnetosphere, by Earth's atmosphere, we're in trouble. Right.
There is high energy things out in space. There's solar radiation,
there's cosmic radiation, their cosmic rays. Uh, it's not good
(32:08):
for you know, these are things that can cause some
some damage. Sometimes it can be severe damage, and you
want to limit that as much as possible. So you
if you're on a multi month mission to get to Mars,
I mean, once you get to Mars, you still have
to worry about radiation, but just the journey from Earth
to Mars is gonna be problematic. You've got to figure
(32:28):
out how to protect the astronauts from detect yourself with
reality TV. And now in this case, you protect yourself
with pretty much everything that's on board the spacecraft. UH,
the official UH policy or the procedure that you're supposed
to follow. In case the spacecraft detects radiation, then there
are specific sensors on the spacecraft meant to detect cosmic
(32:50):
radiation solar radiation. You get an alert and then everybody
moves to the back. You all go to the aft
section of the spacecraft. It's it's sort of like it's
sort like getting into the seller when the tornadoes coming,
except your sellers is protecting you with all of your
food and water supply exactly, because you become the junk
in the trunk. Yeah, that's true. So you've got that
(33:13):
that heat shielding that Lauren talked about earlier. That's that's
to your back essentially, right, so that that part can
absorb quite a bit of radiation. And then you put
everything in front of you that you can, like, you know,
the water chairs exactly. You you get your stuff. And
the reasoning for this is that if you are already
able to make use of things that are already aboard
(33:35):
the spacecraft, you don't have to add more material and
therefore add more weight to the shield exactly. So it's
kind of a a jerry rigged approach, but if it's effective,
then it's awesome. This is kind of similar to an
approach we've talked about before for long space missions, which
was the idea of using initially water and food resources
(33:58):
as radiation shielding, and then as the mission goes on,
using human waste as radiation shielding, which has high water
content and turns out that provides pretty good shielding. Yeah.
So it's essentially that methodology that they're talking about. Uh.
Then there's also the the part about what do you
do how do you get the capsule once it returns
(34:20):
to Earth? Right, because in the old days we I'm
sure that you've seen footage from the old newsreels of
of navy teams going out and like pulling the astronauts
directly out of the capsule in the middle of the
ocean onto lifeboats, no one really looking very excited about it. Yeah,
and this is this is not necessarily going to work
(34:41):
for some of these longer missions where people have been
outside of Earth's conditions for prolonged periods of time. Like
going to the Moon and back that was several days.
But if you're talking about going to Mars and bag
that's like almost three years total. You know, in space
and on microgravity, and Mars has one third of it's gravity.
So no matter what, you don't have the benefit of
(35:03):
full Earth gravity while you're out there. And there's not
a whole lot of room to put some exercise bikes
on board this this spacecraft. So they're they're real concerns about,
you know, being gentle on the astronauts, making sure you
have the safest way for them to get out of there.
So once it splashes down, and we should also mention
the splashdown thing is is a boon. You might think, well,
(35:23):
that seems primitive, but when you think about it, first
of all, there's way more water on Earth than there
is land. So that's that you don't have to go
and pick out a specific runway for your ship to
return to. If you're aiming for the Pacific, you've got
a pretty good shot. Yeah, So it's the window, the
window of re entry is way larger than it would
be if you had to aim for a specific spot
(35:44):
on Earth. Right, you've got a much larger area to
play with. Um. So, once it splashes down, uh, the
Navy would go out to retrieve it, and first they
would send out some uh, some various boats, either some
rigid inflatable and some zodiac style boats, motor boats. The
teams are called amphibious space specialists amphibious specialist, so they're
(36:06):
frogs that um uh. And if you're an amphibious specialist
and I just used a terrible term to describe you,
I apologize. Some of my best friends are squids. So
if you feel better, that's sub mariners at any rate.
So you go out. They go out there and they
tow the the spacecraft back to a Navy vessel which
(36:26):
has a well deck flooded. Now this is this is
something that can be accessed from essentially the ocean. The
Navy team pulls the the spacecraft into the well deck
which has water in it, and then the water is
drained from the well deck. A platform is brought in
and then there the astronauts are allowed to climb out
(36:47):
of the capsule and then they immediately go to a
medical checkup. As soon as they are out, they go
to be looked over by a doctor to make sure
that they are in good health. The Navy started testing
this procedure around twenty their teen or so, and they
found that it really is the safest thing for for
the astronauts and uh the most efficient process, the best
(37:08):
use of the equipment that they have available, right, Yeah, okay,
so here's another thing. Yeah, I mentioned earlier that not
everything on board the Orion's necessarily the most state of
the art equipment they could afford. In fact, in some cases,
they might be looking back to an older technology to
provide some of these vital systems on board the craft. Now,
(37:29):
why would they do that and what would they what
would they get that wasn't absolutely the newest thing they
could get. So the processor powering the Orion's computer system
is probably what you're you're alluding to. It's like IBM
power PC seven fifty f X, which, for those of
you have been working with computers for a decade or more,
(37:50):
you probably familiar with the term power pc. Those were
found in old Apple computers before they switched over and
changed their their processor types. Um, the IBM power Pc
went on the market in two thousand two, and you're thinking,
it's fourteen. Why are we using a processor that's older
than than a decade? Well, the I found six sold
(38:11):
out really fast. That was one thing, you know, that
six plus everyone wanted one of those. They haven't had
a docking station in the spacecraft. The real reason is
because it's dependable. It's the reason you go with older
technology is that you have a proven history of reliability.
And the worry is that if you go with brand
(38:32):
new technology, like the cutting edge stuff, the stuff that's
just rolling out of Silicon Valley, it may not have
that reliability. And what if you're if people's lives depend
upon the technology, you better make sure it's reliable. And
that's the main reason. What's also kind of interesting about
it is that there are multiple power PC chips. Uh.
(38:53):
They have actually three computer systems on board that are
all redundant. The reason being that if you encounter radiation,
it could require that you reboot a computer system, and
you can't go without a computer system, even for just
twenty seconds, which is how long the reboot process takes.
So you have a backup system. But what if the
backup system goes down, Well, then you have a third
(39:13):
backup or a third system that acts as a second backup.
I guess I should say, and Uh, the odds of
all three systems going down, according to geek dot com,
which talked about this extensively, are one in one million,
eight hundred seventy thousand missions, So the odds are low.
That you would lose all three systems that one. I
(39:36):
would like to think that by the time we start
getting up to a point where statistically speaking we'd be
worried about that, we'd be using a different kind of
spacecraft anyway. But at any rate, the each computer system
has two of these chips, and the chips aren't working
like you know we think of multi core processors. These
are single core processors. By the way, we think a
(39:56):
multi core processors as ways of of taking complex tasks
and dividing them up so that we can do them
more quickly. That's not why the computer systems have two
processors each. They have them so that they are both
working on the same set of data at the same
time and error checking each other. If the if the
findings are coming up uh different from one another, then
(40:21):
they know they need to reboot that system because something
has gone wrong with one or both processors. So it's
kind of an early alert system for when you need
to do a control al delete, which is kind of cool. Also,
the the equipment in general, like the circuit boards, the
the paneling, everything is is much thicker than what you
would find with terrestrial electronics. And again that's to absorb
(40:44):
some of this radiation before it has a chance to
affect the electronic components. So very practical approach, which makes sense, right,
And what's interesting to me is that if you look
at the instrumentation panels, they look, you know, a lot
lots of physical switches, lots of of like oscillating kind
of you know, it looks like nineteen sixties technology. It's
(41:08):
almost precisely the opposite of what you see in Elon
Musk's Dragon capsule mock ups right where it looks more
like an Apple product. So it's really interesting to see
how NASA is taking this approach. They're saying, look, we
want First of all, we want funding, and if we're
going to get funding, we have to prove that this
technology works. We don't have you know, we are not
(41:30):
a private organization, so we have to make sure that
we can prove the things we say are going to
actually be effective. Yeah, and then we want the most
reliable things possible, even if they're less convenient. Then yeah,
it may be it may not be as sexy as
the dragon capsule. But just to me was interesting, like
if you compare the two and you look at at
(41:52):
the interiors of both how different they appear from one another. Um. Also,
you know, kind of on a similar note, I wonder
if the private space industry is going to be an
issue with getting funding for the Orion program, simply because
if I'm a politician and I'm presented with a proposal
(42:13):
from NASA saying we need X billion dollars to fund
this particular mission, and then I look over and I say, well, look,
Elon Musk is over there at SpaceX doing it on
his own dime, and I don't have to spend anything.
I worry that's going to become a disincentive to fund
the NASA program. I certainly hope that's not the case.
(42:33):
I think we need both. Yeah, yeah, I hope that
it's going to be more the case of of both
both organizations working together and and kind of helping each
other out. You know, the sort of thing where, uh,
NASA has rented a couple of its launchpads to SpaceX
for for example, and SpaceX has provided some equipment to NASA,
(42:56):
and that they feed each other more more like a
more like a friend ice cream social in low gravity,
um and and less of a competition. And I don't
I don't see I don't think of SpaceX as as
presenting itself as a competitor to NASA. I'm just worried
that people who are in charge of the wallets can't
see it that way. Maybe that's just me being a
(43:17):
little bit of a worry ward personally. I I really
hope that the funding comes through. I found the Orion
launched to be incredibly inspiring. I cry every time there's
a launch, just it's even if I'm not watching it.
I just somewhere I feel it. There's a great diserbance
in the forest, and I just cried. I also got
a little I got a little weepy. Actually, I was
worried that I wasn't gonna be able to get through
(43:37):
a video take without tearing up, but I did. I
did so. Yeah, there are two things I always tear
up at launches and lunches. Two things. Yeah, lunch is
pretty good, lunch is awesome. All right, Well this was
this was fun and of course very timely. I hope
if you guys out there had a chance that you
caught the Orion launched. There our videos obviously of the launch.
(44:01):
If you didn't get a chance to see it live.
I didn't get a chance to see it live, so
I watched the video after the fact. Uh, but very
very cool and really exciting stuff. If you have any
suggestions for topics we should tackle in future episodes of
forward Thinking, why don't you send us an email that
addresses f W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com,
or you can drop us a line over at Google
(44:23):
Plus or Twitter or Facebook. At Google Plus and Twitter,
we have to handle f W thinking. Just search f
W thinking in Facebook. We'll pop right up. Don't forget
to go see f W thinking dot com. That's our
website where we've got all the podcasts, videos, blog posts,
other exciting stuff for you to check out there, and
we'll talk to you again really soon. For more on
(44:47):
this topic in the future of technology, visit forward thinking
dot com. Brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking, and Welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast that
looks at the future and says he's just a guy
made of dots and lines. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren
(00:20):
foc Obon, and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey, guys, how are
you doing today? I'm out of this world? Oh I
see what he did there. We're talking today about Oriyan
the spacecraft. Yeah, the constellation, though someone might be led
to believe the constellation because I think you were just
talking about connecting dots and lines. Maybe that might have
(00:43):
been a song about it. Well, what is the Orion spacecraft?
Because I saw some people going nuts about it on
the internet the other day. Yeah, including coworkers. Absolutely. Well, okay,
so myself, you saw yourself. It was an out of
body experience. Um yeah. Yeah. On on Friday December at
(01:06):
seven oh five a m. The Orion Exploration Flight Test
one launched from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Yeah.
This was an important step in a very long and
winding Uh. Well, I would say road, but really, spacecraft
don't take those that often well, in this particular test
flight was not a very long and winding road, was it,
(01:28):
I mean where it didn't go out to Jupiter or something. Uh? No,
it circled the Earth twice uh and then splashed down
the Pacific Ocean off the coast Baja California at a
mirror four hours later at nine am at Eastern Standard time.
So I was so excited to watch that I was
actually watching it live streaming. I was feigning my ignorance,
I was. I was sadly I was talking about it
(01:50):
on camera without being able to actually watch it. I
knew that I knew it had been successfully launched, but
I had not been able to actually watch it. That's
the that's the futurist equivalent of being a sad clown.
Isn't it talking about you can't watch the present because
you're talking about the future. Yeah, that was you know,
that was kind of where I was going with that. Um.
(02:11):
I also like to have my portrait on on velvet thing.
I like, Well, anyway, this test flight I thought was
really inspiring and exciting. And you might be asking, what's
the big deal? They were just flying some space vehicle.
Wasn't like there was anybody in it. Right, Well, to
know what the big deal is, you got to know
some history. So so we got to back up and
(02:33):
then we'll get to the big deal. Right. So December nineteenth,
nineteen seventy two, was a momentous day, an important day
in the world's space exploration work. It was the day
when the Apollo seventeen spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific. Now,
this marked the end of a mission that sent astronauts
(02:55):
to the Moon. Those astronauts being John Young, Charles Duke Jr.
And Stewart Russa. And they were the last human beings
to ever go beyond low Earth orbit. That's right, So
not just the last human beings to go to the
Moon so far, but the last to go more than
a few hundred miles beyond the surface of the Earth. Well,
(03:18):
let's talk about what low Earth orbit means, because there's
there's it's terminology that isn't I mean, like orbit is
pretty high, right, And and also just the fact that
you know, things like definitions like space outer space, where
does that begin? They all get a little fuzzy because
there's not like a you know, there's not like a sign.
And if do you pass a certain point, the science
(03:38):
has welcome to outer space. But but these are the
designations we have given specific areas of orbit around the Earth.
So low Eer the orbit, that's where a lot of
our space stuff is, Like the International Space Station, the
Hubble Space Telescope, these are all in low Earth orbit.
They're not further out, and that ends at about two
thousand kilometers out from the US of the Earth, so
(04:00):
one thousand, two hundred forty three point seven miles. I
always forget how close exactly the International Space Station really is.
It's it's only a mirror like four hundred and thirty
one kilometers a k a. Two hundred and sixty eight
miles above the surface of the area. Yeah, it's close
enough where you can actually see it when it passes overhead. Yeah,
it's very close. Especially it is zoomed out view. If
(04:23):
you were to step way back from the Earth and look,
it's sort of like in the upper sky. Yeah, it's
pretty amazing that how close it is relatively speaking. Next,
that we have the medium Earth orbit, because if you
have lowerth orbit, there's got to be something else, right,
There's gotta be some other designation. Medium Earth orbit extends
out to thirty five thousand, seven six kilometers or twenty
(04:45):
two thousand, two hundred thirty six miles. So from two
thousand kilometers to thirty five thousand, seven six that's medium
Earth orbit. We're talking about a much larger area than
lowerth orbit, right, and you're gonna notice that every time
we go a little further out the actual area that
we designate gets larger. So is this where you would
find geosynchronous satellites exactly? This is where satellites that are
(05:08):
in geosynchronous orbit inhabit, and those were placed there by
unmanned missions. It's not like we flew some spacecraft out there,
astronauts popped out plopped to satellite into geosynchronous orbits. That
all right, good work, boys, let's go on home, clock out.
That's not the way that works. Uh. Further out from
there you have high Earth orbit, which goes way way
(05:29):
out where you know, including things like the Moon, which
is three hundred eighty four thousand, four hundred kilometers or
two nine hundred miles away from the surface of the Earth.
So that's you know, a really good johnt. And like
we said, space Shuttle program only stayed in lower th orbit.
Never went beyond it. Only twenty four human beings have
(05:52):
ever been beyond lowerth orbit, and those are the people
who are in the Apollo program. Now, this is kind
of weird if you were a space enthusiast and you
don't often consider the fact, but it has been more
than forty years since humans went beyond I think the
farthest they've been since the end of the Apollo program
was to service the Hubble Space Telescope. I think you
(06:14):
might be right on that. I could be wrong if
you're a NASA geek out there with awesome knowledge about
anybody went a little bit farther than that. But definitely,
no one's been beyond low Earth orbit. Right, we have
stayed really really close to the surface of the Earth
for more than forty years humans have. Yeah, yeah, and
and the question yeah, of course. We meanwhile have Voyager
leaving the Solar System. So it took us like six
(06:37):
or seven tries to say, okay, voyagers left the Solars.
Wait wait, wait, wait, alright now, now Voyager left the
Solar System two years ago, right, exactly the part right,
the best part. I was like, Okay, we can now
confirm for a fact that two years ago. But the
interesting thing to me is that imagine that, you know,
we're none of us were alive when the Apollo mission
(07:00):
went to the Moon. Even even me, despite what you're
going to hear in a future podcast, I was not
alive in nineteen seventy two. But can you imagine if
you were alive during that era where we were sending
missions to the Moon, and sent multiple missions to the Moon,
that would you imagine that for the next four decades
(07:20):
we wouldn't send anyone further out. That seems like that
was going backward. Yeah, it's like we've retreated from battle
with space. Yea space space right, space slapped us around
a little bit, and we said, you know what, we
need to figure this out before we try it again.
And uh, you know, there are definitely conversations to have,
like whether or not manned space exploration is a real
(07:42):
benefit compared to something like the robotics approach. All those
conversations we have had multiple times on this podcast. We
just want to talk about the new approach until once
again go beyond low Earth orbit. And that's what the
Orion spacecraft is all about. Right, So the big deal
is this is how human beings are going to get
(08:03):
way the heck out there in the future, at least
the ones who are going on NASA's time. Right, Yeah,
it's this and listening to Timothy Leary, So the as
an overview of the Orion Crew Vehicle project, you actually
need to go back a little bit too, because it
kind of evolved over time. So in the mid two thousand's,
that's when NASA unveiled a proposal for a continued human
(08:25):
exploration of space, originally called the Vision for Space Exploration. Uh,
this was a big thing during George W. Bush's administration.
It was really inspiring. It was this very ambitious plan,
and then there was a change of leadership at NASA
and it became even more ambitious. It became it was
(08:46):
renamed into the Constellation Project, and as a part of
that renaming, they also decided to rename the the Crew
Exploration Vehicle and call it Orian Exploration Vehicle. I I
don't believe we said, but that was the name that
the shuttle was going to have. Yeah, well his name,
thank yeah, so, but exactly that's what it was going
(09:08):
to be, the Crew Exploration Vehicle. Now it's called Orian. Uh.
And and because again Orian was also a constellation apart
from the place in mythology, and plans were that it
would fly by two thousand fourteen, at least in tests,
which turns out actually came to pass despite a lot
of changes in the program. So originally, before the Orion
(09:31):
was going to be built, there was going to be
another space vehicle called the orbital space plane. And before
that there was going to be any different space vehicle
that was unnamed, but it was going to be built
by lockeed Martin. There was going to be a suborbital
space plane. So those were more like direct Shuttle replacements
than a deep space spacecraft. So just to clarify, I
(09:51):
think what you said is pretty good, But can you
clarify the difference between a spacecraft and a space plane. Sure,
space plane tends to be suborbital or very lower th orbit. Uh,
and so there's altitude only goes out so far. Maybe
as a replacement for the Shuttle program, it could also
be a delivery system for smaller craft that would be
(10:12):
piggybacking onto the suborbital plane. So you would have a
sub orbital plane takeoff, reach an extremely high altitude, and
then you would have a second launch off of the
plane of a smaller craft that would head into orbit,
but those plans were scrapped uh, and the Orion was
the new approach once that had happened. So, in other words,
(10:36):
there was a precedent already for planned aircraft getting canceled
before it got to the full build out stage. So
there was no guarantee that Orion wasn't going to suffer
the same fate. So what's the Constellation project gonna do? Well,
it's not gonna do anything now because well, the the
(10:58):
one of the many one of the one of the
many plans was that they were going to send a
return mission to the Moon by twenty uh. They were
also going to use the under the Constellation program, there
was a completion of the International Space Station planned in there.
Uh and also to extend human presence quote beyond our
Solar system end quote. That's pretty ambitious. Yeah, I don't
(11:19):
know if human presence necessarily means manned mission. Though human
presence maybe this was a man made object that we
sent beyond the Solar System. We're going to throw a ball, really,
unless they're working on warp drive or something, I don't
think we're going beyond the Solar system anytime soon. Right,
But yeah, here's the butt. The butt is that the program,
(11:40):
being incredibly ambitious, was also had problems, budgeting problems, There
were a lot of issues, are some political issues at NASA.
I mean, it got kind of ugly in the mid
to late two thousand's and by President Obama called for
the end of the Constellation program kind of to to
scrap the program m and start fresh with a new
(12:01):
approach um, largely in light of new technologies and discoveries
that had happened since they had started planning the Constellation program.
So it's incredibly disappointing for a lot of people. Others,
Like I've seen some folks comment and say they felt
that the Constellation program wasn't focused enough, and so they
(12:23):
kind of thought, well, it was a terrible thing to
happen to have this program scrapped, but it might have
been the right thing to do. I was not in
a place where I could comment on that one way
or the other. Anytime any program for science gets canceled, uh,
I get a little sad. But at any rate, the
development of the Orion vehicle continued. They decided that there
(12:44):
were certain elements under the Constellation program that were worthy
of of continued funding, and one of those was the
Orion spacecraft. Another was the space launch system, which will
be eventually what brings Orian into space, a heavy lifting rocket.
For now, we're using Delta four rockets, but it'll be
(13:04):
a different launch system further down the line, but that
one's not ready yet at any rate. The development of
the Orion vehicle took place at the Johnson Space Center
UM and now it's called the Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle
the MPCV, although most people just still called Ryan and UM. So, yeah,
that's that's kind of where we're at now. Like we're
(13:26):
at the phase now where it went through all the
design phase. It had been built out, and the test
that we referred to earlier took place, which proved that
the Orion systems are in fact space worthy, which is
pretty cool. That is super cool. Yes, yeah, it is, no,
it's it's pretty I was very excited to see this
(13:49):
thing tested. I was too, I remember. So it was
originally going to be launched on a Thursday morning, right,
and then that Thursday morning there was some weather issues,
there were some boats. I think that we're maybe kind
of too close to the launch site that there was
there was also a technical issue with the spacecraft itself
some of the latches. They couldn't get a read on
(14:09):
whether the latches had disengaged properly, so they had to
they essentially had to do a control all delete on
the system. They really did reboot the system. It was
the It was the equivalent of turning it off and
on again. Um, And they just could not get everything
in line before the launch window closed. Because there's only
in order for them to actually do the missions they
have planned, they have to launch in very specific windows
(14:30):
of time, so they had to scrap it for twenty
four hours. The next launch window opened at seven oh
five a m. On Friday morning, and that's exactly when
they launched. They did not waste any time. So by
the time I went to go and shoot my video
about the Orion spacecraft, I already knew that the launch
was successful, but I did not know if the splashdown
would be. Yeah, we keep talking about this Orion capsule.
(14:54):
Let's get into what's inside of it and what makes
it go. Yeah, I was wondering how similar in the
end it's going to be to the kinds of crew
capsules we saw in the Apollo missions. Well, certainly the
exterior looks very similar, right, yeah, absolutely on purpose. In fact,
the designers and engineers really wanted to mirror that that familiar,
(15:15):
kind of nostalgic design that was used in Apollo, except
you know, update it with the modern materials and technologies
that we have in our hands today, right right, So,
and and I mean those some things on it are
not quite as contemporary as you would think for interesting reasons,
and we'll get to that later. Well, the interesting thing
to me is that, I mean the Apollo spacecraft worked.
(15:36):
It worked well. I mean the re entry into the
atmosphere like one time, it didn't well more than one time,
if we're going to be truly technical, because Apollo one
was a terrible disaster, but that was that was a
test flight that went terribly wrong. But the the the
design of the craft was and kind of elegant in
(15:56):
its simplicity for the issue of re entry, right, They
had a specific design that allowed it to re enter
the your's atmosphere in a specific orientation, and that was
pretty remarkable. So yeah, yeah, I should have I should
have also mentioned that that it wasn't just that it
you know, looked real cute. They it's also a very
effective shape for a capsule to be exactly. Yeah. So
(16:18):
so if you were to look at the the launch
of this, if you go back and watch the video
and you take a look and you see this rocket,
it's got this tall like tapered spire type uh cap
to it, and you're looking for the Orion spacecraft like
the actual module, you're gonna not see it because it's
actually it is kept. It's kind of think of it
(16:40):
like a cap of a pen. The very top of
the the launch system is actually a launch abort system. Now,
this is a device that is meant to help the
Orion spacecraft um uh escape if something were to go
wrong at any point to the launch, even if it's
(17:01):
on the launch pad itself, So from the launch pad
all the way up into when the separation would happen
between the Oriyan uh, the the well, the service module
and the rocket. Right. So it's got its own set
of thrusters. It's actually got three different motors on it.
One is the jettison motor that's just used to jettison
the launch aboard system from the Oriyan crew module because
(17:26):
eventually you're gonna need to remove that cap if you
want to do something like, I don't know, look out
the window, because otherwise you're just gonna see the interior
of the launcherboard system cap on there. So the adjacent
motor pulls the system away from the crew module once
the two detached, when they reach the proper altitude. Then
you have the attitude control motor that allows for steering,
so if you need to steer at all um you
(17:49):
can use those. And then you've got the abort motor
that's specifically in the case of an emergency, which can
propel the module away from the launch pad or just
the launch delivery system should something really go wrong. It
can deploy in milliseconds. So as soon as a problem
is detected. And they've tested this out already, they've done
tests of the launch a board system, they can activate it.
(18:10):
The thrusters will fire and they're pretty powerful. I mean
they can propel a crew up to a height of
one mile at And this is a quote from NASA
forty two times the speed of a drag race car,
say the average speed of a drag race car. Again
Nessa's Nessa loves to use these analogies for the Ryan
(18:30):
spacecraft in general. They also said that it provides enough
thrust to lift twenty six elephants off the ground, But
I don't know that they actually test elephants. Elephants your
your average every day every every Joe elephant talking elephants.
A yeah. I immediately went to like, is that an
(18:51):
African or European? Of course, the African elephants are non migratory. Yeah,
we're gonna get into a whole money players something now, folks, now,
but then you're right, Um, it is interesting that it
has this very powerful aboard system. Well that's important because
we've seen space launches turn very tragic. Exactly. Yeah, it's
it's it's interesting that it's it's one of the elements
(19:14):
that NASA was very much UM stressing was an important part,
which you know, is kind of a departure from earlier
launch aboard systems which were a little more rudimentary and
not necessarily as effective. So UM, at any rate, once
you get to the point where it it uh detaches,
(19:36):
that's important. You know, you can't have it on perpetually
because that cap actually covers the part of the crew
module where the parachutes would deploy, so you can't re
enter the ourt's atmosphere with that that launch aboard system on.
It has to be able to detach from the capsule
in order for you to be able to descend properly,
to have a controlled descent. Okay, I have another question. Okay,
(19:57):
let's assume you're an astronaut who's incredib bleak claustrophobic. Okay,
it sounds like you've gone into the wrong profession. Not
sure how you got through training. How tighter the quarters
in the new crew module? Okay, So within the crew module,
you have three sixteen cubic feet of space to move
around in. That's about nine cubic meters. It's not a lot. Uh.
(20:20):
And it is a crew module that can hold up
to four astronauts. So with a full component crew component,
you would have four people in three sixteen cubic feet
of space. It's not a lot of space. You would
be working in pretty close quarters for quite some time.
Remember this is a deep space space. You're going to Mars.
You're going to be in a space this big for
(20:43):
eight months better part of a year. Yeah, so that's
a long time to be hanging out in a small
room with three other people. Uh, it's they've got a
ping pong table. Yeah. So the bottom of the crew
module itself, which, by the way, if you look the
animations of Orion flying through space, you're gonna see that
(21:04):
it has this extended area that's got a thruster on
the back of it. That is the crew module and
service module together. Um. Eventually those two separate. I'll talk
about the service module more in just a second. But
when they do separate, when it's time for the crew
capsule to come down. Uh, that's the bottom of the
crew capsule is where the heat shield is. Yeah. The
(21:25):
engineers actually redeveloped Apollo's heat shield material av coat. It's
it's a brew of like fiberglass and plastics, and this
particular coating is on the yourrine is designed to with
stand temperatures up to uh some five thousand, five hundred
degrees fahrenheit. I don't have a translation for that for celsius,
but it's warm um and uh that would be the
(21:48):
re entry temperature for a return flight from Mars for example. Uh.
And then if you were to look at the full
the full component in the launch system, the bottom most
part part that attaches to the rocket through a an adapter, UH,
is the service module. Now the service module was built,
or it will the the Finnish one will finally be
(22:10):
built by the Airbus Defense and Space Company. It was
the one that we saw in the test flight. Was
developed by the European Space Agency, so this was a
partnership between NASA and the e s A. So e
s A developed it and then they've given the contract
to Airbus Defense and Space to do the production for
the later space service modules. This is the part of
(22:31):
the spacecraft that can hold unpressurized cargo, so you can
think of it as like the cargo hold of the
Space Shuttle. It's similar to that. Uh. It also supplies
the crew with oxygen and water as long as it's
attached to the crew. Module, provides propulsion to move the
spacecraft to proper orbits and course settings, etcetera, provides thermal
control to the crew, and it also generates in stores electricity.
(22:55):
Has a solar panel array that it can deploy once
you reach orbit or or you head out going right,
and that solar panel array is what will capture solar
power and convert to electricity for use on the spacecraft.
UM and then once you're coming back for re entry,
that's the part that gets jettison last really until the
(23:15):
and then the uh well that in the fairings around
the Orion spacecraft as well, but all that gets jettison
and then the Orion manipulates, you know, is oriented so
that the bottom faces the surface of the Earth when
it starts to come back in. So that's kind of
an overview of what the systems are. Um. I've actually
looked at some pictures, some mock ups of what the
(23:37):
interior of the spacecraft look like. So when you're in
a launch situation, you're laying flat on your back, uh,
and that's the position you would be in, although you're
in a seated position because you're on a chair, but
your your back is on the what would be the
floor in a world with gravity, you're in a you're
in a diaper change position. Yeah, okay, well well, um
(23:59):
so so you're in that position until the until you're
able to unstrap once you're out in space, and then
you can float around all willy nilly where there is
no real upper down anymore. They probably are wearing diapers. Huh. Yeah,
there's there's stories about it all the seccidence of being
an astronaut kids. Yeah, inclosed spaces with three other people
that you're gonna become real close friends with over the
(24:21):
next several months to a couple of years, depending on
the mission. Um. Yeah, so this is um, it's an
exciting thing. It's interesting. We haven't had any manned flights
and that kind of brings us into what Orion is
going to be used for. You mentioned one of them,
Joe the trip to Mars, although that one's further down
the planned than other. Right. Well, in the old regime,
the Constellation program, they were saying we were going to
(24:43):
what returned to the Moon. In the idea was that
the Moon was going to be our primary objective and
then from there we would then start planning out trips
to places like Mars. Is that still basically the idea
or have we changed our minds kind of kind of
changed things around a little a little bit. I think
I think there's manned flights of it planned for for
(25:05):
testing around. Yeah, that would be the earliest. And the
crew module has a docking station where it can dock
with other spacecraft. The Apollo spacecraft and Jim and I
spacecraft had these sort of things too. Um, So it
may be that we see other types of uses of
the Orion and the the closer future, but seems ambitious.
(25:28):
A lot of people are saying that they doubt that
is going to be when we see the first launches,
not necessarily because of technological issues, but because of financial ones. Politics. Yeah,
so we need to fund these. In fact, you could
argue that the test flight was a test of two things,
the space worthiness of the Orion capsule and NASA's ability
(25:51):
to drum up excitement and enthusiasm for the space program. Both.
I would say, we're really successful. Yeah, if you were
on Twitter on Friday morning when the spacecraft went up,
you could not help but see tons of tweets about this.
Though then again, I wonder if a lot of those
were coming from the kind of people who are very
interested in space anyway. So what does it take to
(26:13):
break through to the person who doesn't really give a
flip about space day to day. I don't know what
I mean, apart from showing just the amazing videos and
pictures that have been taken over the course of the
space program. I'm not really entirely sure. Yeah, that that
really is kind of the golden question there. But getting
(26:37):
them while they're young helps definitely, So That's that's part
of it though, right, because I mean we're talking we're
looking out several years. The people that they're the who
will be the astronauts in one they're in school now,
you know. Yeah. Well, okay, So, as I was saying
a second ago, the Moon landing kind of did it.
I mean, everybody cared about that, and I'm wondering, what's
(27:00):
the thing we should put our feet on that will
get people really excited again. Well, well we've we've the
Ryan Project has moved away from the moon concept. They're
now talking about landing on an asteroid, captured captured asteroid.
That is so cool. I think is the timeline they're
thinking about if all else goes well, and this would
(27:22):
be you know, for multiple reasons. One, I mean, we
have a legitimate interest in asteroids and finding out their
physical makeup other things that we just we don't know
that we don't know, right, I mean, there's stuff we
don't know because we don't know. I'm almost more excited
about asteroids than I am about Mars asteroids. There are
(27:42):
a lot more practical, pretty pretty decent early arcade game too,
And that's also accurately a lot When I was a
kid science. Yeah, so, so this would be kind of
instead of the Moon acting as the stepping stone toward
longer voyages. Uh, the asteroid mission would be in part
beyond doing the basic science of testing the asteroid for
(28:05):
finding out what it's physical makeup is, all that kind
of stuff, it would also be to test the actual
um capabilities of the Orion spacecraft in preparation for longer missions.
And those longer missions would be the trip to Mars,
which is an enormous goal. We have covered it many
times on this podcast to talk about how big a
(28:25):
deal it is to go to Mars, because in order
to just get there, you have to wait until Earth
and Mars are lined up in their orbits so that
you minimize the amount of time it's going to take
to get from Earth to Mars. Uh. That by minimize,
we're talking still between six and eight months, sometimes nine months,
depending upon exactly when the window is. Then once you
get there, by the time you get there, Earth and
(28:48):
Mars are no longer in that ideal alignment anymore, you're
gonna have to wait two years more or less until
you get to those same conditions where you can make
that same return trip from Mars to Earth and not
acquire an enormous amount of fuel that I don't know
where you would get it unless you're actually converting the
raw material of Mars into fuel, which is a possibility.
(29:10):
That's one of the other things that I'm looking into.
So anyway, it's a huge, huge challenge, and the Orion
is supposed to be the spacecraft that will get us.
They're using NASA's approach. Yeah, they're they're hoping that some
time and say the twenty thirties, that might be able
to happen. Yeah, And and so contrast that with the
(29:32):
Mars one Colony plan to get people on Mars by
early next Tuesday. Yeah, it's it's yeah, sorry, I'm being
that was that was overly dismissive. I think we can
be a little dismissive. Um, I mean, I don't. I
don't wish any project to fail. It just seems like
that one is particularly ambitious. It's hard to balance enthusiasm
(29:57):
and a kind of motivating enthusiasm with being realistic because
at the same time, you could have been living in
the sixties and been super critical of Kennedy for setting
up the space timeline he did. Do you know what
I mean. Yet you could also argue that that ambitious
timeline really did motivate us and our scientists to work
(30:19):
harder and to be more inspired and to get it done.
The Cold War didn't didn't hurt. The Space race was
a race. There was a you know, it was it
was a competition in any ways. And part of the
issue maybe that we feel like there's less pressure now,
like there's not this political reason to demonstrate our superiority
(30:42):
of getting things really far where they started. Absolutely I am,
I do think that that's valid. I would be more
apt to be less cynical about the Mars one if
they were choosing to fund it with anything but reality TV,
which just yeah, yeah, yeah, even if you even if
(31:03):
you love reality television, the ability to raise enough money
to send a mission to Mars, that's a that would
have to be the most successful reality television program, right
because we're talking billions of dollars here. It's not cheap.
So I thought it would be fun also to talk
about some of the other things that didn't really fit
(31:25):
into the other parts of the podcast, and one of
those is this is fun facts about it, right, Yeah.
The first one is fun fact Hey do you know,
radiation could kill you. Yeah, we talked about this every
time Mars comes up. So you know, being on Earth
is really nice because Earth is a big umbrella from
(31:45):
all of the energy out there in the universe that
wants to kill us. It's also where I keep all
my stuff. So if we're traveling beyond the protective barriers
provided by Earth's magnetosphere, by Earth's atmosphere, we're in trouble. Right.
There is high energy things out in space. There's solar radiation,
there's cosmic radiation, their cosmic rays. Uh, it's not good
(32:08):
for you know, these are things that can cause some
some damage. Sometimes it can be severe damage, and you
want to limit that as much as possible. So you
if you're on a multi month mission to get to Mars,
I mean, once you get to Mars, you still have
to worry about radiation, but just the journey from Earth
to Mars is gonna be problematic. You've got to figure
(32:28):
out how to protect the astronauts from detect yourself with
reality TV. And now in this case, you protect yourself
with pretty much everything that's on board the spacecraft. UH,
the official UH policy or the procedure that you're supposed
to follow. In case the spacecraft detects radiation, then there
are specific sensors on the spacecraft meant to detect cosmic
(32:50):
radiation solar radiation. You get an alert and then everybody
moves to the back. You all go to the aft
section of the spacecraft. It's it's sort of like it's
sort like getting into the seller when the tornadoes coming,
except your sellers is protecting you with all of your
food and water supply exactly, because you become the junk
in the trunk. Yeah, that's true. So you've got that
(33:13):
that heat shielding that Lauren talked about earlier. That's that's
to your back essentially, right, so that that part can
absorb quite a bit of radiation. And then you put
everything in front of you that you can, like, you know,
the water chairs exactly. You you get your stuff. And
the reasoning for this is that if you are already
able to make use of things that are already aboard
(33:35):
the spacecraft, you don't have to add more material and
therefore add more weight to the shield exactly. So it's
kind of a a jerry rigged approach, but if it's effective,
then it's awesome. This is kind of similar to an
approach we've talked about before for long space missions, which
was the idea of using initially water and food resources
(33:58):
as radiation shielding, and then as the mission goes on,
using human waste as radiation shielding, which has high water
content and turns out that provides pretty good shielding. Yeah.
So it's essentially that methodology that they're talking about. Uh.
Then there's also the the part about what do you
do how do you get the capsule once it returns
(34:20):
to Earth? Right, because in the old days we I'm
sure that you've seen footage from the old newsreels of
of navy teams going out and like pulling the astronauts
directly out of the capsule in the middle of the
ocean onto lifeboats, no one really looking very excited about it. Yeah,
and this is this is not necessarily going to work
(34:41):
for some of these longer missions where people have been
outside of Earth's conditions for prolonged periods of time. Like
going to the Moon and back that was several days.
But if you're talking about going to Mars and bag
that's like almost three years total. You know, in space
and on microgravity, and Mars has one third of it's gravity.
So no matter what, you don't have the benefit of
(35:03):
full Earth gravity while you're out there. And there's not
a whole lot of room to put some exercise bikes
on board this this spacecraft. So they're they're real concerns about,
you know, being gentle on the astronauts, making sure you
have the safest way for them to get out of there.
So once it splashes down, and we should also mention
the splashdown thing is is a boon. You might think, well,
(35:23):
that seems primitive, but when you think about it, first
of all, there's way more water on Earth than there
is land. So that's that you don't have to go
and pick out a specific runway for your ship to
return to. If you're aiming for the Pacific, you've got
a pretty good shot. Yeah, So it's the window, the
window of re entry is way larger than it would
be if you had to aim for a specific spot
(35:44):
on Earth. Right, you've got a much larger area to
play with. Um. So, once it splashes down, uh, the
Navy would go out to retrieve it, and first they
would send out some uh, some various boats, either some
rigid inflatable and some zodiac style boats, motor boats. The
teams are called amphibious space specialists amphibious specialist, so they're
(36:06):
frogs that um uh. And if you're an amphibious specialist
and I just used a terrible term to describe you,
I apologize. Some of my best friends are squids. So
if you feel better, that's sub mariners at any rate.
So you go out. They go out there and they
tow the the spacecraft back to a Navy vessel which
(36:26):
has a well deck flooded. Now this is this is
something that can be accessed from essentially the ocean. The
Navy team pulls the the spacecraft into the well deck
which has water in it, and then the water is
drained from the well deck. A platform is brought in
and then there the astronauts are allowed to climb out
(36:47):
of the capsule and then they immediately go to a
medical checkup. As soon as they are out, they go
to be looked over by a doctor to make sure
that they are in good health. The Navy started testing
this procedure around twenty their teen or so, and they
found that it really is the safest thing for for
the astronauts and uh the most efficient process, the best
(37:08):
use of the equipment that they have available, right, Yeah, okay,
so here's another thing. Yeah, I mentioned earlier that not
everything on board the Orion's necessarily the most state of
the art equipment they could afford. In fact, in some cases,
they might be looking back to an older technology to
provide some of these vital systems on board the craft. Now,
(37:29):
why would they do that and what would they what
would they get that wasn't absolutely the newest thing they
could get. So the processor powering the Orion's computer system
is probably what you're you're alluding to. It's like IBM
power PC seven fifty f X, which, for those of
you have been working with computers for a decade or more,
(37:50):
you probably familiar with the term power pc. Those were
found in old Apple computers before they switched over and
changed their their processor types. Um, the IBM power Pc
went on the market in two thousand two, and you're thinking,
it's fourteen. Why are we using a processor that's older
than than a decade? Well, the I found six sold
(38:11):
out really fast. That was one thing, you know, that
six plus everyone wanted one of those. They haven't had
a docking station in the spacecraft. The real reason is
because it's dependable. It's the reason you go with older
technology is that you have a proven history of reliability.
And the worry is that if you go with brand
(38:32):
new technology, like the cutting edge stuff, the stuff that's
just rolling out of Silicon Valley, it may not have
that reliability. And what if you're if people's lives depend
upon the technology, you better make sure it's reliable. And
that's the main reason. What's also kind of interesting about
it is that there are multiple power PC chips. Uh.
(38:53):
They have actually three computer systems on board that are
all redundant. The reason being that if you encounter radiation,
it could require that you reboot a computer system, and
you can't go without a computer system, even for just
twenty seconds, which is how long the reboot process takes.
So you have a backup system. But what if the
backup system goes down, Well, then you have a third
(39:13):
backup or a third system that acts as a second backup.
I guess I should say, and Uh, the odds of
all three systems going down, according to geek dot com,
which talked about this extensively, are one in one million,
eight hundred seventy thousand missions, So the odds are low.
That you would lose all three systems that one. I
(39:36):
would like to think that by the time we start
getting up to a point where statistically speaking we'd be
worried about that, we'd be using a different kind of
spacecraft anyway. But at any rate, the each computer system
has two of these chips, and the chips aren't working
like you know we think of multi core processors. These
are single core processors. By the way, we think a
(39:56):
multi core processors as ways of of taking complex tasks
and dividing them up so that we can do them
more quickly. That's not why the computer systems have two
processors each. They have them so that they are both
working on the same set of data at the same
time and error checking each other. If the if the
findings are coming up uh different from one another, then
(40:21):
they know they need to reboot that system because something
has gone wrong with one or both processors. So it's
kind of an early alert system for when you need
to do a control al delete, which is kind of cool. Also,
the the equipment in general, like the circuit boards, the
the paneling, everything is is much thicker than what you
would find with terrestrial electronics. And again that's to absorb
(40:44):
some of this radiation before it has a chance to
affect the electronic components. So very practical approach, which makes sense, right,
And what's interesting to me is that if you look
at the instrumentation panels, they look, you know, a lot
lots of physical switches, lots of of like oscillating kind
of you know, it looks like nineteen sixties technology. It's
(41:08):
almost precisely the opposite of what you see in Elon
Musk's Dragon capsule mock ups right where it looks more
like an Apple product. So it's really interesting to see
how NASA is taking this approach. They're saying, look, we
want First of all, we want funding, and if we're
going to get funding, we have to prove that this
technology works. We don't have you know, we are not
(41:30):
a private organization, so we have to make sure that
we can prove the things we say are going to
actually be effective. Yeah, and then we want the most
reliable things possible, even if they're less convenient. Then yeah,
it may be it may not be as sexy as
the dragon capsule. But just to me was interesting, like
if you compare the two and you look at at
(41:52):
the interiors of both how different they appear from one another. Um. Also,
you know, kind of on a similar note, I wonder
if the private space industry is going to be an
issue with getting funding for the Orion program, simply because
if I'm a politician and I'm presented with a proposal
(42:13):
from NASA saying we need X billion dollars to fund
this particular mission, and then I look over and I say, well, look,
Elon Musk is over there at SpaceX doing it on
his own dime, and I don't have to spend anything.
I worry that's going to become a disincentive to fund
the NASA program. I certainly hope that's not the case.
(42:33):
I think we need both. Yeah, yeah, I hope that
it's going to be more the case of of both
both organizations working together and and kind of helping each
other out. You know, the sort of thing where, uh,
NASA has rented a couple of its launchpads to SpaceX
for for example, and SpaceX has provided some equipment to NASA,
(42:56):
and that they feed each other more more like a
more like a friend ice cream social in low gravity,
um and and less of a competition. And I don't
I don't see I don't think of SpaceX as as
presenting itself as a competitor to NASA. I'm just worried
that people who are in charge of the wallets can't
see it that way. Maybe that's just me being a
(43:17):
little bit of a worry ward personally. I I really
hope that the funding comes through. I found the Orion
launched to be incredibly inspiring. I cry every time there's
a launch, just it's even if I'm not watching it.
I just somewhere I feel it. There's a great diserbance
in the forest, and I just cried. I also got
a little I got a little weepy. Actually, I was
worried that I wasn't gonna be able to get through
(43:37):
a video take without tearing up, but I did. I
did so. Yeah, there are two things I always tear
up at launches and lunches. Two things. Yeah, lunch is
pretty good, lunch is awesome. All right, Well this was
this was fun and of course very timely. I hope
if you guys out there had a chance that you
caught the Orion launched. There our videos obviously of the launch.
(44:01):
If you didn't get a chance to see it live.
I didn't get a chance to see it live, so
I watched the video after the fact. Uh, but very
very cool and really exciting stuff. If you have any
suggestions for topics we should tackle in future episodes of
forward Thinking, why don't you send us an email that
addresses f W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com,
or you can drop us a line over at Google
(44:23):
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