How hard is it to...

After watching Gen Bolden before a Senate Committee on NASA TV
yesterday
I kept wondering, How hard is it to design/build a crewed capsule to
be launched on an EELV? Like a heavy lift version of the the Atlas or
Delta? I mean they are talking about doing a Orion Lite that will be
used as a lifeboat and they are going to deliver it to ISS on an
EELV. It will need some form of autonomous navigation to Dock with
ISS or at least get close enough to be grabbed by the station arm and
berthed. Why not just go ahead and make it a crew transfer vehicle?
Design it so it can be launched by either Delta or Atlas. Heck make
it compatible or adaptable to the Ariane too, let ESA buy or lease or
rent a crewed vehicle from US! That way we have three different launch
vehicles that can deliver crews to the station! Continue to support
COTS and even Commerical Crew launch COTS for further redundancy!
Seriously how hard could it be? SERIOUSLY!

Just my $0.02

Keith W of St Louis, AKA Space Cadet

Not Racist
Not Violent
Just No Longer Silent

Space Cadet wrote:
After watching Gen Bolden before a Senate Committee on NASA TV
yesterday
I kept wondering, How hard is it to design/build a crewed capsule to
be launched on an EELV? Like a heavy lift version of the the Atlas or
Delta?

According to what I've seen on the Boeing website that is the plan on hand.
As for Lockmart, IIRC they were doing Orion already, but may have to backfill
to achieve Orion lite.

AFAIK the whole point of Orion lite is to be able to launch from an EELV.
But you know, given our history with Orion, I'm almost willing to wager that
the SM portion of it will make a comeback in a smaller form, or perhaps
as a separately launched item that the Orion capsule can dock with for an
extended space stay. Or as the justification to proceed with the heavy lift
booster, (although why not just use a 'heavy' flavor of Atlas V or Delta IV)
to launch an Orion-Lite/SM combo....

I think Orion-Lite w/o a SM to keep it on orbit for up-to-a-week seems
non-viable to me. Thoughts?

Dave

On 05/13/2010 11:02 AM, Space Cadet wrote:
After watching Gen Bolden before a Senate Committee on NASA TV
yesterday
I kept wondering, How hard is it to design/build a crewed capsule to
be launched on an EELV? Like a heavy lift version of the the Atlas or
Delta? I mean they are talking about doing a Orion Lite that will be
used as a lifeboat and they are going to deliver it to ISS on an
EELV. It will need some form of autonomous navigation to Dock with
ISS or at least get close enough to be grabbed by the station arm and
berthed. Why not just go ahead and make it a crew transfer vehicle?

Because with the LAS that would be required for a manned launch, Orion
would be too heavy for the current Atlas/Delta heavies. By reducing it
to a CRV-only function, it is now light enough to launch on EELV. The
fact that Orion CRV cannot carry crew on the way up prevents it from
competing with the ISS Commercial Crew providers, which will encourage
investment in them.

Boeing and Bigelow are proposing an ISS Commercial Crew capsule that
would launch on EELV. It is light enough even with a LAS because the
service module is "sawed off" enough. But for that reason it is not as
readily evolvable to a beyond-LEO design as Orion CRV is.

On Thu, 13 May 2010 23:10:55 -0500, "Jorge R. Frank"
wrote:

Why not just go ahead and make it a crew transfer vehicle?

Because with the LAS that would be required for a manned launch, Orion
would be too heavy for the current Atlas/Delta heavies.

You sure, Jorge? The best numbers I can find are that Ares I had a
planned payload capacity of 56,000 lbs. while Atlas V-Heavy is listed
as 25 metric tons or 55,115 lbs., which seems close enough to make up
the difference with a little prop offloading. And Ares I's payload
capacity was heading south all the time, so I suspect major
weight-reduction efforts have been underway for quite a while now
anyway.

Brian