Wednesday, July 26, 2006
BELT-TIGHTENING FOR ORION
NASA has been working for some time on design of the vehicles and systems for it's next "big project" -- the manned spacecraft and boosters with which it is planning to ... do everything, i.e. go to the moon for multi-week exploration missions, on to Mars (eventually) and service and crew the International Space Station. Recently, this program got a name -- "Orion."
Outside observers had been noting a mismatch between the projected lifting capacity of the new rockets NASA proposes building and the initial designs for the spacecraft involved. NASA has now acknowledged that and has issued a new design for the core spacecraft, the so-called "Crew Exploration Vehicle" or "CEV."
I like the new design -- it's simpler and cleaner and more consistent with the idea of creating a fairly basic vehicle that could be expanded over time. Almost all of the components of the new system have now been assigned more realistic engines based on proven, existing designs. In other words, the over-all concept is becoming more like a real, flyable spacecraft.
But that begs the question of whether NASA should be involved in this program at all. There's a LOT of carping at the question in the space blogosphere and commentariat. I'm a fence-sitter in this debate. It wouldn't bother me at all if the proposal laid out at the immediately preceding link -- that NASA get out of the Earth-to-orbit part of the project and focus just on the lunar-and-beyond part -- ended up being the way forward. But there's also something to be said for the cost of NASA doing a completely integrated program being justified as acceptable to keep their over-all infrastructure in place and operating for the near term.
The question is when the right time is for NASA to get out of the space operations business and turn it over to private actors. Hopefully, I'll have more time to write about that soon.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:01 AM
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