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Exploration

Orion Is Not Taking Anyone To Mars

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
March 30, 2017
Filed under , ,

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

56 responses to “Orion Is Not Taking Anyone To Mars”

  1. Oscar_Femur says:
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    So, you’re saying Orion isn’t going to Mars?

  2. Nelson Bridwell says:
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    Back in September NASA issues an RFI for:
    * EM-3 (and beyond) Orion capsule and launch abort system build to print production.
    * One capsule per year, beginning concurrently with EM-2 Orion production and extending through 2030.
    * Last paragraphs: Open to non-Orion proposals (Boeing? SpaceX? ATK?)
    * Switching vendors right after EM-2 somewhat defeats purpose of EM-2 testing!
    https://www.fbo.gov/utils/v

    • kcowing says:
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      They can always amend or cancel the RFI. They can also ignore the responses. There is always language in there that safeguards the government. I was in the room today. NASA’s plan does not include sending a return capsule to Mars and back.

    • Saturn1300 says:
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      Orion would still be needed to return from the gateway and land on Earth.

  3. passinglurker says:
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    So how does the dsg/dst handle the medical problems with deep space transit? Go so fast it doesn’t matter(space x approach)? go some place where you don’t need to be able to stand (obama asteroid mission approach)? Pray for a magical medical pill breakthrough (every deep space hab concept artist’s approach)?

    • Ben Russell-Gough says:
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      Mitigate as far as possible with current technology and then cross your fingers and hope that it is just enough.

    • Saturn1300 says:
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      They will use ion thrusters. This will make artificial gravity like all fictitious human spacecraft. I guess 10′ per minute. May not be enough, but a slo mo shower maybe. A commode flush maybe. No puffy faces maybe.The old thrust half way and turnaround and reverse to slow down. Gerst said regular rockets also. So thrust all the way and use retro rockets to go into orbit. Or use the low energy capture someone came up with. Mars air has Argon, so ion re-fuel. They call it Journey to Mars, so they only have the plans to go into orbit so far.

      • fcrary says:
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        The current, state of the art in ion thrusters requires 6.9 kW of power to produce 0.236 Newtons of thrust. Accelerating a 10,000 kg spacecraft (which is very small for a manned Mars mission) at about 0.1 g (1 m/s) requires 1000 N. That would be an input power of 30 megawatts for an ion thruster. Where do you plan to get 30 MW on a 10 tonne spacecraft?

        • Daniel Woodard says:
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          Although it would not reach those thrust levels, we obviously need a flight qualified nuclear reactor. Even at a very small fraction of a G it would still shorten travel time considerably. and thus decrease exposure to radiation, which is the most significant hazard. Since a reactor could be fueled with uranium rather than plutonium, it would be much safer to process and launch.

          • fcrary says:
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            That may be pushing the state of the art quite a bit. Solar at 1 AU for something like a Orbital ATK UltraFlex is around 150 W/kg. There aren’t any existing nuclear systems (reactors, that is), but I did find references to some LANL work about 15 years ago, which thought they could get a specific power of 200 W/kg. But it isn’t clear what that mass includes. The planned and canceled JIMO mission was looking at ~30 W/kg for the entire reactor system. So, at least near 1 AU, it isn’t clear nuclear would be obviously better.

            In terms of speeding up the trip, low thrust trajectories may not to the trick. If the acceleration is much less than the Sun’s gravity (6 mm/s^2 at 1 AU), the transfer is a slow spiral and takes significantly longer than a Hohmann transfer. If the acceleration is much greater than solar gravity, the trip is faster than a Hohmann transfer.

            When I add in the mass of the thruster and power processing (the NEXT thruster has a specific mass of 120 W/kg and a specific thrust of 0.034 mN/W) and an optimistic 200 W/kg for the power supply, I get an acceleration of 2.5 mm/s^2 for a spacecraft which was nothing at all but the thruster and power supply. Once you add payload and fuel, I think you’ll be in a regime where electric propulsion saves an enormous amount of fuel, but takes longer to get there.

            I’m also not sure about the nuclear power supply for a reusable transfer vehicle. Those designed are fast reactors. Compared to a much more massive slow reactor, they are produce more radiation while on, more radioactive byproducts, and require refueling more often. They are quite safe on launch, but you might not want to bring one back to that Gateway station.

          • Saturn1300 says:
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            They will use regular rockets to get going. The ion will be mostly for artificial gravity, I predict. NASA has said they will use SEP for a long time. Have to see if it will stop bone loss. Have to still use straws other wise the liquid will keep going and hit you in the face. I think NASA is planning AG. Maybe not. The effect will be there though.

          • air_and_space92 says:
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            No, not nearly enough thrust from electromagnetic propulsion to do that, especially on the mass scale being discussed with SEP.

          • 2004MN4 says:
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            One big problem is no one knows how much gravity is needed to mitigate the negative health effects. Earth gravity, Mars gravity, Lunar gravity, something less?

          • fcrary says:
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            You realize we’re talking about much less than a four thousandth of a g, don’t you?

          • 2004MN4 says:
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            Nuclear power is way too heavy to allow Mars transfers with the same speed as chemical. But the SEP system developed for ARRM could be used to get 7 month transfers at ~200-400 kW (depending on how heavy the vehicle is). See: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archi

            You could also use SEP tugs to pre-place chemical boosters in Lunar orbit and as Mars. This lets you fly a chemical trajectory but with less launch mass than without SEP. It’s like the fuel depot approach… just the depots have engines. Which would be cheaper because the cost of adding engines to a depot is way cheaper than the cost of developing two separate elements and the associated tech needed for a depot.

          • Daniel Woodard says:
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            I had not considered the criterion of spacecraft acceleration vs solar gravity, a good point. Apparently the acceleration with NEP or SEP is so low that a transit time of several months is needed to achieve a significant benefit. For instrumented probes to the outer planets it still seems a reasonable option.

        • Saturn1300 says:
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          Does not matter what the thrust is. There will still be enough to settle fluids.

    • 2004MN4 says:
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      If they do it right, they can use the DSG as a lab to better understand those medical problems. Every other Mars architecture is using guesses to fill in knowledge gaps about radiation, microgravity, and habitable volume parameters need for the transit. (Also the SpaceX approach isn’t any faster transit than any of the other architectures being studied by NASA.. so they have the same problems as everyone else)

      • fcrary says:
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        SpaceX is talking about transfer times of three to five months. The Hohmann (minimum energy) trajectories, which NASA studies often assume, take about nine months.

        • 2004MN4 says:
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          Conjunction class Mars missions are usually 7-9 month transfers (not Hohmanns). 3-5 month transfers require very, very large maneuvers at Earth or Mars or a multi-Megawatt MPD thruster like VASIMR. Neither is credible with any sort of near-term tech.

          This paper shows what the fast transfers look like (p. 10): https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archi

          The DVs are well beyond any current tech. Especially with the masses needs for human spaceflight.

  4. Matthew Black says:
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    And every time it’s ever implied that NASA is going to send an Orion to Mars – which they wont – then on website comments sections everywhere, the half-clued up and half-informed always say “But you can’t send people to Mars in that – it’s too small?!” And then myself and others end up replying; “Too small? Is it really?! NNOOO, it couldn’t be – these people are rocket scientists – they know what the’yre doing…”

    And the sarcasm will go right over the heads of the half-informed and half-witted – pushing some of them to say; “See – I told you it’s all fake and phony!” Now, some of you will scoff – but these type of things are already being said. Orion was only ever going to be a taxi to-and-from Cislunar space. If they’re going to push a small crew and the DSH out to the Martian Moons and then back to Cislunar space: then no re-entry capsule is required. There’s no point pushing a multi-ton vehicle to Mars and back again if you don’t have to.

    • kcowing says:
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      And then Lockheed Martin publishes pictures of Orion in orbit around Mars.

    • Ben Russell-Gough says:
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      FWIW, NASA’s DRA5 concept actually found a use for Orion in Mars orbit, even if it’s one about which I wasn’t really happy.

  5. LPHartswick says:
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    Neither is Dragon.

    https://www.google.com/url?…

    • Ben Russell-Gough says:
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      I don’t think that Elon has ever said that this was in the plans. Heck, he didn’t even submit a proposal to that Mars free-return flyby idea that was floating around a few years back!

  6. ejd1984 says:
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    I really hope NASA now revives the Nautilus X proposal.

    https://phys.org/news/2011-

    • mattmcc80 says:
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      I’ve always liked this concept, but it assumes SEP performance that doesn’t exist yet.

    • Zed_WEASEL says:
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      The Nautilus-X concept is not as viable after the SpaceX introduce the ITS at the 2016 Mexican IAC.

      The Nautilus-X is slower and more expensive to developed, deployed & operated with only a fraction of the cargo capacity & living space volume of the ITS.

  7. Donald Barker says:
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    OH SO suprising…. Not.

  8. Johnhouboltsmyspiritanimal says:
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    it never made sense to haul 25Klb of Orion to Mars and back just to get a crew off. with all the hoopla over the Martian some folks missed the whole reusable transit vehicle meant you pulled into earth orbit for crew transfer and you were not carrying your reentry vehicle with you the whole time. the mass penalty for getting orion back to Entry interface adds up really quick with Mars departure burn, mars orbit insertion, earth departure and liftoff. like compound interest the extra prop and mass adds up quick and that bill comes due at launch.

  9. David Gump says:
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    Gerst also said the DST would be fully assembled on Earth to eliminate the mass required for hatches and nodes that would be required if they used in-space assembly. Their planning extends to about the time they can do a Mars orbit mission in 2033; no Orion needed at Mars for that. They correctly punt on getting too specific about the technologies for landing, since they won’t be used for ~20 years.

    • air_and_space92 says:
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      Correct. I know MSFC has ideas on methane engine development for in space stages or landers, but best to keep lander options open depending on the Moon/Mars destination with the current administration.

  10. NArmstrong says:
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    No architecture, no plan. What a waste.

  11. Bob Mahoney says:
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    Back we go to that which was mapped out 40+ years ago…

    http://spaceflighthistory.b

    Look carefully at the first diagram provided with this article. These current ‘plans’ for a DSH can be located in the lower middle region of the image, labeled ‘Lunar Orbit Station’ while the DST is represented by the Nuclear Tug/’Orbit Launch Vehicle’ on its way to Mars in the middle.

    Oh, and do note…since we’re smarter today, we’re erasing the earlier components of the architecture as we go as well as skipping the ‘hardware commonality’ part, too…not quite the original vision.

    I think the Moody Blues had it right: Days of Future Past.

  12. Robert Rice says:
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    Why does this gateway need to be in lunar orbit….would not earth orbit be more convenient…and do we really need a gateway station for a deep space transport….I guess a pressurized staging area makes sense for astronauts to construct such a vehicle….just seems closer to earth is better than out at the moon…..and as far as Orion…it’s just a taxi…always has been…never thought it had diddle to do with getting to Mars

    • muomega0 says:
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      “If you want to develop a space transportation infrastructure, with reusable landers, the ability to construct and launch Mars and asteroid vehicles (along the ability to fuel them with lunar propellants), and the ability to utilize advanced space transportation to lift you out of most of the gravity well (electric propulsion and/or tethers), then I think you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better staging location than EML2.”

      A fundamental step however is a LEO gas station to significantly reduce the LV size required, allow dirt cheap propellant to be launched with the goal of reuse–which allows incremental changes to LVs without excessive certification costs. By shifting HLV $ to payloads, the flight rate will further reduce LV costs to create new markets.

      L2 modifies the high orbit lunar station of Farquhar, which builds upon the concept of Houbolt: “Rendezvous and leave weight in orbit” to shift the focus to beyond ‘mooning’

      The man reasons to stage at L2. 1) reuesable L2-Mars cyclers preposition supplies and propellant with the most efficient orbits 2) significantly less energy, capsule take 700m/s each way from L1, only 300m/s each way from L2 3) acts as lunar safe haven with very small delta v 4) provides the proper environment to ensure equipment would function for long duration missions 5) like Apollo, allows earth ascent/reentry capsule to serve another function 6) reduces mass required to Mars vs LEO 7) reduces costs for both science and HSF missions to Mars and beyond 8) shifts focus “to asteroids and the Martian moons” — significant resources 9) is flexible, technology can be demonstrated and not frozen for decades

      • 2004MN4 says:
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        As you point out, cislunar is a perfect place to stage for missions to Mars, Asteroids, Venus, our anywhere outside of the Earth-Moon system. This is because it is on the edge of the Earth’s gravity well and Lunar swing-bys can be used to kick spacecraft out of the gravity well for free. It’s also a good place to stage for missions to the Lunar surface if you use an L2 Halo that goes close to the Lunar surface (the Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit JSC has been talking about in conference papers for the last couple years).

        A fuel depot in Low Earth Orbit could be very helpful for getting to a cislunar staging area, but that depends on the economics of launch vehicle costs. I think maybe they should have commercial contracts to send supplies to the Gateway and then let industry decide whatever is the most economical.

        • fcrary says:
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          A lunar flyby won’t get you to escape velocity for free. From L2, you start with zero velocity relative to the Moon. All a flyby does is change the direction, not the magnitude, of that relative velocity. You have to fire the rockets and get up to escape velocity. Admittedly, that’s only 100 m/s from L2, but it isn’t free. Anyway, you’d already have to get all the way from low Earth orbit to L2, which is actually worse than going directly to escape velocity from low Earth orbit.

          • 2004MN4 says:
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            Not sure if my other comment went through… I tired to post on my phone. But basically you can get transfers for ~10 m/s out of L2 Halos to Mars. They take 8-10 months, but you can start before the crew launches. And they escape with a C3 of 2-3 km2/s2… less than needed for Mars, but that’s where the DST’s SEP is needed. This is basically what ARRM would have done to capture an asteroid, just run in reverse to get something big un-captured instead.

            Here’s a paper that explains how it works: https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/bi

      • fcrary says:
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        What do you mean by “700 m/s and 300 m/s each way”? It’s about 900 and 100 m/s to go from L1 or L2 (respectively) to Earth escape velocity. After that, you’re on an orbit around the Sun which is nearly identical to the Earth’s. An additional 3 km/s or so is needed for a minimum energy transfer to Mars. As far as I can tell, the only way staging out of a lunar or (L1/L2) orbit makes sense is if you are refueling there. And then, it only makes sense if the fuel is produced on the Moon. (By the way, this isn’t twitter; you can use more than 140 characters per idea you’re describing.)

  13. NArmstrong says:
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    I think Keith’s previous headline applies here:
    Space Policy: No One Knows What Is Going On. Ten years ago NASA management was ready to ditch the ISS because it was needlessly boring holes in low Earth orbit,making no progress, not exploring. Constellation and Orion were selected because they would take us “somewhere”-what a load. Now we will put a station in deep space because it will be a simulation of going to Mars?? At least in LEO there is something to see. The crew in deep cislunar space will have little to see.

    • 2004MN4 says:
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      We have learned a tremendous amount from the ISS but it is shielded by the Earth’s Magnetosphere and is also close enough for easy access form the Earth. A cislunar gateway is in the Deep Space radiation environment and is far enough away that we would need to figure out how to do Earth-Independent operations.

      Also, if they do it right, they can construct the Gateway from the same modules (or test versions of modules) as would be used to a Mars transport vehicle. Then they could test the actual Mars vehicle in the same sort of environment as it would experience during transit to Mars.

      Also landing on Mars requires the development of a Mars landing/ascent vehicle. This would be expensive and take a long time. With the Gateway, we can be doing useful test flights while the development part of the budget is used to build the Mars lander. This is better than other plans that have us out of space (and losing experience) during development of the Mars architecture.

      • fcrary says:
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        The Earth’s magnetosphere only extends to ~10 Earth radii on the day side. You don’t need to go all the way to the Moon to test hardware in a deep space radiation environment. If you really want to drive up the dose, orbits in the Van Allen belts are even closer. (Secondary and hosted payloads associated with communications satellites are great for this since geostationary transfer pass through the radiation belts.)

        • 2004MN4 says:
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          For those orbits, it’s actually cheaper to go to these cislunar orbits. The extra prop needed to get to the Moon is less that the DV needed to raise perigee above the Van Allen belts. And the problem isn’t designing rad tolerant hardware… the problem is trying to figure out how much radiation from GCRs is safe for humans.

          • fcrary says:
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            I’m afraid I don’t follow that. Are you actually claiming the delta-v to circularize in a medium Earth orbit (say 15 R_E) is greater than going all the way to a 1×60 R_E transfer orbit to the Moon, and then stopping at the Moon? That’s just not correct.

            I also hope you aren’t suggesting we use astronauts as subjects in GCR radiation exposure experiments.

          • 2004MN4 says:
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            I just checked. Starting from a 200 km circular orbit, it takes 3.13 km/s to get out to 383,000 km to where the Moon is. To get to 15 RE it’s only 2.86 km/s, but then it takes another 1.31 km/s to circularize… so the total is more. You could do a little better by putting your apogee above 15 RE and then periapsis at 15 RE, but going to the Moon will still be cheaper. If you have something heavy and uncrewed, you can find a low energy transfer that will capture into some sort of cislunar orbit for ~20 m/s in ~4-5 months. If you need to go faster (say with crew) you can still get into most cislunar orbits for less than 1 km/s. And it’s also much, much cheaper to get out of those cislunar orbits and go to Mars than for a 15 RE circular orbit.

            And while there are some ways to test the GCR health effects without human subject (like Matroshka on the ISS), tests on astronauts will also provide crucial data that can’t be obtained any other way. But in Lunar orbit the duration of the missions (and the exposure) can be incremented gradually and therefore the risk is less than going straight to interplanetary human mission durations.

  14. mattmcc80 says:
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    Um. Isn’t that an Orion docked to the gateway on the left?

    • kcowing says:
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      The Gateway does not go to Mars.

      • 2004MN4 says:
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        With the larger SEP tug in stage 2 of the plan it could go to Mars. But I think the idea is to build a second hab (a block 2) based off of what they learn from the one in the Gateway. There are a lot of unknowns with Deep Space habitation and I think have a test module to learn from is a good idea.

  15. jski says:
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    Seldom do boondoggles go anywhere.

  16. fcrary says:
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    I just realized something about staging out of L2. Maybe this has been considered before, but what does this do to launch windows? The launch to Mars has to happen at the right phase of the Moon’s orbit (ultimately, the spacecraft has to be moving away from the Earth in the direction of the Earth’s orbital velocity.) What phase that is depends on the details, but that’s fixed by the vehicle design. The windows from Earth or low Earth orbit, are about half an hour or so, repeating once a day for a few weeks. I think launching out of L2 would mean a 12 hour to one day window, period, and if you miss that, you get to wait 26 months. If it weren’t L2, but a lower lunar orbit, then you’d have to deal with the phasing of that orbit as well. Am I missing something?

    • 2004MN4 says:
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      The Gateway lets the crew wait in space. They can arrive early at the beginning of the launch windows and wait longer or have a short wait if the end up at the end of the launch window. From the Gateway they can then rendezvous with the DST which most likely would have left the Gateway months before the crew launched.

      Here’s a paper from last year that looks at some of the missions that could be done from the Gateway. It doesn’t directly address your launch window question, but hopefully it’s still interesting: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/

  17. Bill Housley says:
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    Just one more nail in the coffin.