Orion is NASA’s newest manned space project. What will it be like to live and work in this latest environment?

2018-05-03T09:29:32-04:00

I have been fascinated by space, and rockets, and astronauts since NASA visited my school in 1964. I’ve been very fortunate to personally know a few individuals intimately involved in the various programs over the years. The planned mission to Mars is simply mind-blowing to me. That’s why I find this newest evolution so interesting.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180425-inside-the-cramped-confines-of-nasas-new-spacecraft

What it's like to live in Nasa's new spacecraft

Crowded, smelly and seasick – life inside Nasa’s new spacecraft won’t be much fun.

Response by CWO3 Private RallyPoint Member made May 3 at 2018 9:54 AM

2018-05-03T09:54:13-04:00

A kid from my HS - a year behind me - was the Voice of NASA many years ago. He spoke on TV from behind the scenes on launches and so forth. He died of a heart attack while travelling and they had his funeral at a church in our small town in SW KY. The NASA Administrator and cadre flew into the small airport and it was quite an occasion for the town of 3000. The airport is basically a runway and fuel pump, with a few private planes and no employees. I was told they had to deviate from the normal plane to accommodate the rural airport.

Response by Capt Daniel Goodman made May 3 at 2018 9:54 AM

2018-05-03T09:54:26-04:00

I know you're fascinated, I get that, and I'm not meaning to be doom and gloom.. going to Mars is total nonsense, I assure you, robots are one thing, that's relatively straight antenna and common system engineering, relatively advanced signal processing, though doable...going to Mars with humans, however, when the Moon hasn't even been colonized yet, and no nuclear thermal rocket has even been built, is, to me, just simply an exercise in stupidity...I've met two Apollo astronatputs very briefly, I've been involved before my total perm disability, in numerous extremely advanced engineering projects, I've taken more engrg, physics, math, comp sci (CS), Chen, and bioscience than I can even remember half the time, and know precisely what's involved in a project of such magnitude...to do a human Mars flight would involve sevl trillion lines of code, with countless errors, quantum processors would be needed, plus, the number of humans that could be sent would be ludicrously minimal...sending three humans a quarter million miles to the Moon took God only knows how much radiation shielding from cosmic rays, sending an equivalent crew 40 million miles at the present stage of human technological evolution is totally and completely laughable, the shuttles barely worked half the time, and they were just test vehicles drafted into continual use, I was on active when the first shuttle got dropped off the 747, I watched it, plus, the whole Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo sequence was done by German war criminals who'd left 30,000 bodies moldering in mass graves at Peenemunde just to get the V-2s built, read Dora by Jean Michel, who won the US Medal of Freedom as a French resistenace fighter in the Marquis during WW2, to really understand how he US and Soviet space programs REALY got started, he say hose monsters Werner and Magnus von Braun, the brother war criminals, along with all he other Germans who were used here after WW2, so believe me, I can assure you, the book is quite revealing...any thought of sending humans to Mars is purest polyanna fantasy, standard NASA dog and pony show, none of it is real, look up the Kiwi, NERVA, and Pluto nuclear ramjets on Wikipedia and YouTube, and you'll see the material on the 1 gigawatt thrust engines developed at Jackass Flats, NV in the early 60s that were never followed up on...I've read all that nonsense about a space corps, that, too, is utterly premature nonsense, when the human race has got fleets of starships ferrying hundreds of colonists to the Moon, when the Moon is properly industrially excavated, and when travel back and forth to it is as routine as getting into a jet for a vacation, then let NASA start fantasizing halfway realistically about Mars, till then, it's all nothing but pipdream nonsense, I know you're gonna disagree, I get that, I k ew guys who helped on Apollo, engineers I'd known and worked with before my disability, I know exactly what happened when they were involved, they told me, I knew them and worked wit them personally, hough that was yes ago...science like that won't be around for another 100-200 yes, minimum, and certainly not by NASA alone, it'd take an Intl effort of every industrialized natio n on this planet decades to even remotely have a chance at getting that far, and that'd just be for nonhuman test vehicles...human flight? I'm sorry, but quite honestly, gimme a break, I know I'm gonna sound like the Grinch at Christmas, however, every word I've told you is true, I did yes of very serious scientific programming, algorithm development, I've read extensively on spacecraft control system design, I've read extensively on the history of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, Skylab, the Manned Orgpbiting Lab (MOL), which one of my unit COs was to have gone up on...a guy I worked under while on active was civil service, he was an alternate for flight test engineer (FTE), got disgusted, and got out...trust me, I've been all over such Gerard K O'Neill fantasies for yes, and that's all such thoughts are purest fantasy pseudoscience, honest, I'm eager for your thoughts, as I'd said, I know you're gonna disagree, however, believe me, I trained under the best, worked under the best, knew the nest, and a project like that is, at least to me, totally specious nonse, and any notion of a supposed apace corps is totally premature grandstanding, I assure you, honest, at least to me, OK?

Response by Capt Daniel Goodman made May 3 at 2018 9:57 AM

2018-05-03T09:57:32-04:00

And I don't care what some genius group at NASA dreams up...they've been doing all tat sort of terraforming nonsense about Mars for decades, new EVA suits, yada, yada, yada...all scientific polyanna claptrap, at least to me, honest, I learned the hard way, a long time ago, back when dinos and mastodons store the planet, the difference between REAL science, and purest pseudoscience, as well as totally wishful pollyanna thinking, honest....been there, done that (BTDT), I assure you....

Response by SSG Private RallyPoint Member made May 3 at 2018 10:10 AM

2018-05-03T10:10:09-04:00

I wonder why they designed this capsule for 4, looks like they should have stuck to 3 like the Apollo. I still say if they want to go to Mars etc, they need to build a launching system in space and build the craft in space as well, the launch from space. The you would not have to build it to withstand the rigors of and earth based launch.

Response by SGT David T. made May 3 at 2018 3:57 PM

2018-05-03T15:57:46-04:00

All I can say is it is about time. We have stagnated for far too long in our space program. The shuttle program was cool, but wasn't out exploring our solar system. I hear about the early days and how cool it was to be alive when all of these amazing breakthroughs happened. Then after the moon, it fizzled.

I live in the Huntsville area so I see billboards for this around town and on the arsenal. I want to go watch the testing they do when they get there.