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Exploration

Orion Is Back on Earth

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
December 5, 2014
Filed under

Keith’s note: Orion has landed perfectly in the Pacific. Alas, only CNBC showed it live. NASA TV broke again.
Conclusions:
1. NASA needs to buy more bandwidth.
2. NASA missions are popular with people even if TV networks are clueless.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

48 responses to “Orion Is Back on Earth”

  1. Matt Johnson says:
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    Woo hoo! See you again in 4 years I guess. Now if we could only do this with humans on board, and more often than once every several years, we’d be back to where we were in the 1960’s!

  2. Brian says:
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    The NASA TV stream was infuriating. Broke seconds before launch and seconds before splashdown.

    • Jay says:
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      You must live close to me, I had the EXACT same issues!

    • obicera says:
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      It worked perfectly for me. Perhaps it was your internet provider’s issue?

      • Brian says:
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        That it went down right at what would be expected to be the peak viewing times suggests to me the issue was higher up than my local ISP.

    • Dewey Vanderhoff says:
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      I watched the whole unbroken stream on FloridaToday’s website. But they got their feed from NASA.gov. via LiveStream , so go figure.

      Practically speaking , it’s SpaceflightNow that needs to buy more server capacity. They can’t handle much load at all without crashing.

  3. SpaceHoosier says:
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    This is popular. Over 35 million views on the Ustream feed this morning.

  4. Dewey Vanderhoff says:
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    Yes, the UAV and spacecraft live video was fabulous, especially the main chutes descending thru clouds..

    I noticed at one point in the descent Orion was decelerating at 8+ G’s. That would be mighty tough on crew returning from deep space after months in near Zero G microgravity, would it not ?

    • Jay says:
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      The UAV coverage was unexpected and terrific! Well done!

    • J C says:
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      I don’t think the descent profile was one that would be used with crew on board. As I understand it, it was done to get a good simulation of lunar re-entry without having to fly all the way to the moon. They came in steep and hard to generate the high heat needed to test the shield. A lunar re-entry would be faster (high heat) but shallower (lower g’s).

    • rktsci says:
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      The descent profile is what might happen in an abnormal lunar entry. The expected lunar entry is to do a “skip” entry, where the spacecraft enters the atmosphere for a bit and skips up to space and back down again. The skip would be needed to land off the California/Baja coast in some lunar return cases, where a direct entry would end up off the coast of Southern Chile.

  5. Spacetech says:
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    Flawless Test! Congrats NASA/ULA/Lockheed

  6. NOYB1234 says:
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    NASA TV feed worked fine throughout for us… great coverage. awesome!!!!

  7. Marcus Warren says:
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    Awesome! The evacuation of Earth has begun … http://dandygoat.com/nasa-t

  8. Anonymous Too says:
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    Charlie Bolden questioned the existence of the IKhana (Predator B) unmanned aircraft system (UAS) because it had “no added value” to the Agency’s space program. This vehicle has been used for support of Earth science missions and advanced aeronautical technology development. Well, there was a last minute calamity because there was no live coverage of the reentry of the Orion test vehicle. It was surprising called upon at the eleventh-hour just like it was for the Southern California fires to transmit live feed to the fire fighters to keep them out of danger. Thanks Charlie for lack of knowledge and understanding of our national assets.

    • Spacetech says:
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      Huh?

    • speragine says:
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      charlie Bolden is a kind of dim bulb, did you see him during the social? He deferred on like his first three questions.

    • david says:
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      You must be talking about network coverage but I watched from CM-SM Sep all the way through splashdown and recovery live after the launch. Drove to the Sandbar in Cocoa Beach for the splashdown social event after the buses dropped us off at the Washington Nationals stadium. No issue with the NASA TV feed. The first images of the Orion prior to Forward Bay Cover jettison were surreal.

  9. Antilope7724 says:
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    Congratulations to NASA. I’m sure an honored place is waiting in some museum for the Orion 1 capsule (after it’s taken apart and put back together).

    • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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      the capsule is actually going to be reused for the in-flight abort test in 2018.

  10. dbooker says:
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    “Someone needs to spill coffee on their keyboard at #NASA right now. No mission can be this flawless. #Orion #EFT1”

    Guess it can be if you really aren’t pushing the limits. Even SpaceX knows that.

    • DTARS says:
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      Booster recovery and reuse is not testing the limits???

      Wasn’t that tried before and failed with NASA

      Now it is going to be done right to become affordable instead of faked!

  11. Paul Newton says:
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    “NASA needs to buy more bandwidth”

    I thought that the NASA coverage today was adequate and far better and more complete than similar Apollo tests in the 60s. I could watch the launch and all of the mission on the internet or on the NASA channel on DISH.

    The number of people who actually try to tune in to coverage of something like this is not that great.I think CNN, Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC, showed about what most of the public expected. Some people considered this test the equivalent of Apollo 4, the first Saturn V. It wasn’t. It was more like the first two Saturn 1b launches which were heat shield tests and they got essentially NO coverage in 1966. The first Saturn 1 got a little more coverage because it represented such an advancement over Atlas or Titan, but Saturn 1b was only a marginal increase over a Saturn 1, and it warranted no coverage, except in somethng like Av Week or Missiles and Rockets.

    The coverage overall this week I thought was good and significant. There were several segments, particularly on PBS, that explored where this Orion mission fit into the overall NASA plan. Amidst a lot of NASA’s hype about a first step to Mars, many people came to the realization there is no Mars program, and even if there were, a Mars mission is multiple decades away. And some even wondered why we would be trying to gear up for another Apollo-like flags and footprints rock retrieval mission; was that worthwhile? It was fun for a few years, 1968 – 1972, but it basically led us nowhere. Have we learned nothing from history ? I suspect that human spaceflight will be in for some good years, mainly depending upon ISS and commercial crew. Maybe in another 6 years we will see an SLS launch. Besides the jobs, the only reason to continue Orion is to give SLS something to fly.

  12. James Lundblad says:
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    I thought today was absolutely awesome, and I think as long as we keep moving forward even with the constrained budgets, and careful steps forward we will make it to Mars. I am reminded that Apollo was a little crazy with all the risks there were taken in the race to the Moon.

    https://www.youtube.com/wat

    It’s time to rejoice is such an awesome test flight. EM1 will be a BFD and EM2 will be BFD^2.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Seriously? America is now on the same exact Apollo track that you laud: a flag event on the surface of Mars. We have learned nothing whatsoever from Apollo nor, indeed, from commercial space.

      Capsules are necessitated by high re-entry temperatures from elevated velocity. I get that. But the work should be to figure out how to get a returning spaceship into Earth orbit, where it can dock with a purpose-built device that returns to the surface. The idea that the same machine travels in deep space and re-enters just defies logic.

      • James Lundblad says:
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        Is a flag and footprints mission to Mars even feasible? Seems like you have to pre-deploy hab(s) and propellant fab(s) and return vehicle before sending the crewed vehicle/hab module. Crews would have to stay over a year to make the effort worthwhile and because of return trajectories. It would be like a really, really long ISS rotation.

  13. rjr56 says:
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    Panem et circenses.

    A history of the Shuttle Era:

    http://davidstockmanscontra

    A preview of the Orion Era:

    http://www.firstrebuttal.co

  14. Jeff2Space says:
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    The NASA TV online stream broke for me too. When this happened, I switched to Ustream which was a bit better.

  15. FAlberts says:
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    In Europe NASA TV did work. Combining with the NASA BLOG it was my major source today. And hoping my boss will not harm me to look at this at work time.

    So, next is an unmanned ride in 2018 — including an European build service module — …around the Moon. In 1968 William Anders, James Lovell, Frank Borman did do the same.

    A half year later Neil and Buzz did take a foot on the Moon. But now we still have to wait three more years for the first manned flight orbiting the Moon.

    And NASA still believes in Mars missions never will be funded.

    And ESA (Europe) believes in a success of Ariane 6.

    Nevertheless BIG congratulations to all the people working on that great success today. Breaking this down from Billions to Millions (Dollars) maybe it will be a success.

  16. NX_0 says:
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    #1. Second Tweet si best. Just awesome.
    #2. Lack of problems indicates (to me) they were not aggressive enough with testing. They could have tested more things or tested their things more thoroughly. There were no weigh-points where they could say, “Hey, things are looking good, let’s push the envelope a little more.”

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      True but impossible: NASA history is full of promising tech abandoned because failure was regarded as a design mistake. The news would have been full of stories like ‘Does NASA still have the right stuff?” if the thing had failed.

    • david says:
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      Much more benign flight than what was expected, planned, or designed for. It was a 3 sigma good day

  17. Michael Bradley says:
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    CNN completely missed the launch in favor of some talking heads. The Canadian networks picked it up, but the NASA websites were jammed. UStream seems a better option.

  18. Rich_Palermo says:
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    So, they sent an empty container into orbit for a few hours and recovered it intact. For this they needed a multiyear development program and one of the most expensive rockets in the current inventory?

    Well, the Amurrican people have spoken through their Congress. Guess it is time to get in line and obey.

    U-S-A! U-S-A! /waves flag

  19. dogstar29 says:
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    What wait? They are getting money in their districts and campaign contributions in their pockets already, Why rock the boat by insisting that the project accomplish anything?

  20. dogstar29 says:
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    That might work, I sincerely hope it does. But I was on the grassroots side for a long time, and I am not holding my breath. In my experience legislators listen only if you can hand them a fat check.

  21. Michael Spencer says:
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    I suppose that by 2014 we should expect NASA to be able to design and slash a damn capsule. Sheesh.

    How about building a real presence in space? A vehicle that stays in space- that refuels and leaves earth orbit? Fuel depots? Gliders to get back down? Some progress on spin tech to simulate gravity?

  22. DTARS says:
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    The giant chutes were cool. I haven’t seen a capsule land like that since I was a kid!!

    Progress

    • dogstar29 says:
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      It _was_ fun to watch. Maybe not very practical, but so what?

      • DTARS says:
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        I did watch, I did smile, then I remembered I’m 59. I use to tell my kids I saw us land on the moon and I was going to see us land on Mars before I die. Don’t think I’m going to make it, with programs like Orion. I think that is part of the reason for this rocket to no where. That desperate hope that my generation has.

        • dogstar29 says:
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          I tell my kids I remember Sputnik. And I tell them we have landed on Mars. And Venus, and Titan. And we have looked down on every planet. Not with our flesh and blood of course, but with our eyes and hands, and our hearts and minds.

  23. ChuckM says:
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    For those who say that we are wasting billions of dollars on old technology, I totally disagree. If we want a strong and viable space program, it cannot be implemented on the cheap. Orion had to start somewhere, and that somewhere was with proven Apollo technology. To have seen such a perfect mission is a major complement to NASA. Orion’s first flight just helped reduce future major risk for followon missions.
    Of course NASA doesn’t have the major political backing and financial resources it once had. But we do what we can with what we have and make it work.
    And for those that believe that “we have no business out in space”. This is exactly what the critics said of the building of Continental Railroad.
    Finally, as I saw Orion come through the clouds I felt a pride not felt since STS-1, and I said to myself yes we can, yes we can.

  24. dogstar29 says:
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    The offshore recovery was quite expensive, and will be required for every flight. It was required because the airbags had been deleted to save weight. That’s the way NASA works.
    Engineer: “It’s too heavy.”
    Manager: “What can we take off?”
    Engineer: “We could scrap the airbags.”
    Manager: “Sounds like the best alternative. Do a study on all the recovery options.”

    Contrast that with the way Kelly Johnson or Ed Heinemann or maybe Elon Musk would have reacted:
    Engineer: “It’s too heavy.”
    Manager: “Then get every system down to design weight, and do it by tomorrow! Any questions?”

  25. Antilope7724 says:
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    This flight was so perfect the usual hydrogen flare at launch didn’t even scorch the Delta IV exterior. Maybe the breezes were strong enough to blow it away from the rocket?

    • david says:
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      I was told at the time that United Launch Alliance was using a new staggered ignition sequence to minimize the scorching. From what we could see from a distance and later in the pictures and vidoes closer up, it looked like it succeeded.