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  1. #301
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    Harry covered it well. Just one addition. They have been able to change the orientation of Philae which should give them more energy. Very likely not enough now but maybe with some luck in a few month when they are closer to the sun Philae can wake up and resume work.
    "don't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence"

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    The last readings of power input from the solar panels indicate, they had some success. The power generated was significantly higher. Whether it is enough to keep it running is still doubtful though. The problem is still that the position of Philae is in shadow most of the time so energy generated is much lower than anticipated.

    But the chance it may wake up later when approaching the sun has at least improved.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Takeovers View Post
    The last readings of power input from the solar panels indicate, they had some success. The power generated was significantly higher. Whether it is enough to keep it running is still doubtful though. The problem is still that the position of Philae is in shadow most of the time so energy generated is much lower than anticipated.

    But the chance it may wake up later when approaching the sun has at least improved.
    They are actually quite lucky that the surrounding terrain and lander position have not affected the S-band link between the lander and orbiter. It could have easily gone completely dark after landing. Keeping that link alive with Rosetta's orbit is quite amazing.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Takeovers View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Necron99
    The first crewed missions are not expected to commence until the 2020s.
    I am an optimist. With any luck this monster may never fly with crew.
    Yeah... I mean, think about the amount of automated experiments you could fit in it if you take out the life support junk - you get much more for your money.

    You do need to develop for people to travel, but you need to build if up on an industrial footing, make it about some form of mining, and science that leads to product development - build an economic framework to give more purpose than just sticking flag on a rock.

    Micro Spacecraft to Pave the Way for Future Space Exploration04.29.05

    Years ago, space visionaries dreamt that swarms of small spacecraft someday would travel to other worlds to explore them in preparation for future landings by human beings. Science fiction authors have written scripts and countless stories that outline how spaceship crews could send small 'probes' to alien worlds to scout conditions on those planets.

    blackbox modelThese visions are about to advance one step closer to reality because of the efforts of NASA and a nonprofit partner, The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, Calif., that are preparing to launch a 'micro spacecraft' to flight test it as early as 2006.


    Image right: A diagram of the Reentry Breakup Recorder, also known as the Black box. Image courtesy: The Aerospace Corporation.

    NASA and its partner recently agreed to develop the first 'black box' for spacecraft and test a prototype of this device that will be based on technology that Aerospace has been working on for several years. The 'black box' is actually a very small 'micro spacecraft' that would be attached to larger space vehicles. A joint program between NASA and Aerospace will develop the black box micro spacecraft, among many other low-cost, miniature space systems, under the terms of a NASA-Aerospace agreement.

    Black boxes aboard aircraft record airplane data such as speed, altitude and crew conversations. After an accident, this information can be recovered to help investigators learn the cause of the mishap. The black box often includes a beacon that helps investigators locate the downed aircraft.

    New, lightweight, low-cost devices the partners plan to develop would allow NASA and The Aerospace Corporation to flight test miniature sensor systems to gather temperature, pressure and other data, or to validate thermal protection systems for human missions.

    The micro spacecraft capabilities and supporting technologies, scientists say, will help enable the President's Vision to send human beings back to the moon and later venture on to Mars. These technologies and "foundation" research will make possible "sustained and affordable human and robotic missions," according to the researchers.

    NASA hopes to put human beings back on the moon by approximately 2015. The agency also believes that human missions to Mars may take place as early as 2025.

    an agreement was made."Micro spacecraft that can collect space flight data and return it to Earth will enhance space travel reliability through better designs," said G. Scott Hubbard, director of NASA Ames Research Center, located in California's Silicon Valley, who recently signed an agreement with William F. Ballhaus Jr., Aerospace president and chief executive officer, to develop the black box.


    Image left: G. Scott Hubbard, director of NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, and Dr. Bill Ballhaus, president and chief executive officer of the Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo,, Calif., are pictured shaking hands. Image courtesy: The Aerospace Corporation.

    Micro spacecraft can test heat shields designed to protect future spaceships and their astronaut passengers from the extreme temperatures that space vehicles experience during high-speed flight when entering a planet's atmosphere.

    As a micro spacecraft traveling at very high speed, enters a planet's atmosphere, friction causes intense heat to buildup on the shield. Part of the shield burns away, taking hot gases with it. If it is functioning correctly, the shield protects the spacecraft from incineration. Data that scientists gather from micro spacecraft during their descent into planets' atmospheres will help engineers validate existing heat shield designs. According to experts, these data also will assist engineers to develop new and more efficient designs.

    "People had not figured how to put black boxes on spacecraft before because the boxes would tend to burn up during re-entry," said Dan Rasky, a scientist at NASA Ames. Ames is contributing its expertise in spacecraft heat shield design to the development effort.

    "One of the first uses we see is using these space black boxes on the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV)," Rasky explained. The CEV is a future spaceship that NASA plans to use to fly people to the moon and beyond. Small spacecraft would ride piggyback on the CEV and other missions.

    When the CEV ventures to the moon, scientists foresee micro spacecraft serving as lunar landing scouts, sent ahead of a CEV lunar landing module. According to researchers, micro spacecraft also would aid human missions to the red planet by monitoring the martian atmosphere and ground conditions, and providing general reconnaissance and landing beacons. The tiny spacecraft would also include chemical and biological sensors, useful in detection of substances related to potential past and present life on Mars.

    Scientists additionally envision using micro spacecraft to do systematic studies of Mars, and sample returns from the moon, Mercury and Venus. Micro spacecraft may also conduct "on location" studies of Venus. Because they can be less expensive than other, more complicated spacecraft, a great number of micro probes could be sent to many more places in the solar system to gather data, researchers suggest. The gas giant planets of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune offer countless opportunities for micro spacecraft to study 'volatiles' - water vapor, ammonia, various isotopes and winds.

    Reentry Breakup RecorderThe basis for the effort to develop low-cost spacecraft technologies is the Reentry Breakup Recorder (REBR), a one-foot (0.3-meter) diameter, 2.2-pound (one-kilogram) device that will have a heat shield, batteries, data recorder, sensors and a transmitter. REBR has been under development at Aerospace for the past several years -- with NASA Ames being responsible for design of the micro spacecraft's entry system.


    Image right: Model of the Reentry Breakup Recorder (spacecraft 'black box') to scale. The addition of the heat shield is expected to bring its size closer to 1 foot (0.3 meters) in diameter. Image courtesy: The Aerospace Corporation.

    During initial flight tests, a prototype REBR will separate from a rocket or larger spacecraft due to aerodynamic heating and forces. Engineers designed REBR to collect data as the spacecraft to which REBR is attached re-enters the atmosphere and breaks apart. During the low-speed portion of the re-entry, REBR would 'phone home' to relay data by satellite prior to impact.

    "Aerospace would use these devices to gather data during the re-entry and breakup of space hardware to validate and calibrate models, and NASA Ames would use them to test new heat shield materials and sensors," said Ethiraj Venkatapathy, planetary exploration technology manager at NASA Ames. The NASA-Aerospace team is using nanotechnology to develop very small, inexpensive sensors, he added.

    Nanotechnology is the creation of materials, devices and systems based on a nanometer scale. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter, roughly 10,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. "Nanotechnology could lead to changes in almost everything from computers and medicine to automobiles and spacecraft," said James Arnold, a scientist with the NASA Ames Center for Nanotechnology.

    Nanotechnology is already enabling engineers to make space science instruments smaller than before. An example is a miniature x-ray instrument within a device that scientists designed to measure the chemistry and crystallography of the surface of Mars during the upcoming Mars Smart Lander (MSL) mission.

    Scientists say nanotechnology has resulted in nanoelectronics more fault-tolerant to radiation damage than present electronics. Nanoelectronics is electronics created on the nanometer scale. Spacecraft are susceptible to the effects of higher radiation levels because space vehicles fly beyond Earth's protective atmospheric layer.

    Another technology scientists and engineers are using to develop micro spacecraft is a NASA Ames artificial intelligence (AI) computer program that can automatically design small spacecraft antennas, among other components.

    The AI software - working on a network of personal computers - has already designed an antenna intended to orbit Earth while attached to a satellite.

    The antenna, able to fit into a one-inch space (2.5 by 2.5 centimeters), can receive commands and send data to Earth from the Space Technology 5 (ST5) satellites. The three satellites - each no bigger than an average TV set - will help scientists study magnetic fields in Earth's magnetosphere. NASA scientists have spent two years developing the evolutionary AI software that designed the antenna.

    diagram of blackbox"The AI software examined millions of potential antenna designs before settling on a final one," said project lead Jason Lohn, a scientist at NASA Ames. "Through a process patterned after Darwin's 'survival of the fittest,' the strongest designs survive and the less capable do not."


    Image left: Black box diagram. Image courtesy: The Aerospace Corporation.

    The software started with random antenna designs and through the evolutionary process, refined them. The computer system took about 10 hours to complete the initial antenna design process. "We told the computer program what performance the antenna should have, and the computer simulated evolution, keeping the best antenna designs that approached what we asked for. Eventually, it zeroed in on something that met the desired specifications for the mission," Lohn said.

    "Not only can the software work fast, but it can adapt existing designs quickly to meet changing mission requirements," he said. Following the first design of the ST5 satellite antenna, NASA Ames scientists used the software to 're-invent' the antenna design in less than a month to meet new specifications - a very quick turn-around in the space hardware redesign process.

    Evolved space antennas designed by Lohn's evolutionary software are 97 percent efficient as compared to conventional antennas that are only 38 percent efficient, according to scientists.

    Scientists also can use the evolutionary AI software to invent and create new structures, computer chips and even machines, according to Lohn. "We are now using the software to design tiny microscopic machines, including gyroscopes, for spaceflight navigation," he ventured.

    "The initial focus of the (micro spacecraft) collaboration (between NASA Ames and Aerospace) will be on development of small re-entry probes," said William Ailor, director of the Center for Orbital and Re-entry Debris Studies at The Aerospace Corporation and Aerospace lead for the effort.

    "Similar technologies could be used on an Ames concept called Scout Probes for Exploration," Rasky said. This concept makes use of small entry probes to gather information and reconnaissance on atmospheric and surface conditions and hazards, according to Rasky.

    Development and flight-testing of very small entry probes that contain nanosensors also will help NASA considerably reduce the cost of its planetary robotic and human exploration missions, according to Venkatapathy.

    Researchers say that NASA has completed most of the "easy" missions to planets and moons. The completed remote observation orbiters and fly-by missions have whetted scientific interest for even more exotic exploration to gather extensive data on the surfaces of alien worlds. The ultimate goals of more ambitious deep space missions include 'on-the-scene' science and surface exploration.

    Scientists hope to use micro spacecraft to scout alien worlds to reduce some of the risk to human beings and robots. This risk is related to a larger spacecraft's entry and descent into planetary atmospheres, and landings on moons and planets.

    NASA Ames has much experience in the development of small space probes. In 1971, Ames used a 137-pound (62.1-kilogram) spacecraft, the Planetary Atmospheric Experiment Test vehicle, to study spacecraft heating and entry into Earth's atmosphere.

    Ames also proposed the Mars Environmental Survey, a multi-lander network to study the fourth planet. This proposal evolved into the Mars Pathfinder mission. The Deep Space-II mission, which flew 'piggy back' on the Mars 98 Lander, contained critical entry systems technology from Ames.

    In the future, once they are tested on Earth, NASA will be able to send Trailblazer micro-probes, each weighing two - 22 pounds (one - 10 kilograms) to places like Mars, gas giant planets like Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune and to a moon of Saturn called Titan, according to Venkatapathy. The probes will measure atmospheric and surface conditions and help scientists evaluate potential dangers, he explained.

    "These probes also could serve as landing beacons for following piloted or robotic vehicles. Scout probes for exploration could be a critical, new capability for reducing risks encountered with remote exploration landings," Rasky predicted.

    Publication-size images can be found at:

    NASA - Black Box
    NASA - Micro Spacecraft to Pave the Way for Future Space Exploration

  5. #305
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    The Indian Space Organisation ISRO has released a photo of the comet Siding Spring that has passed Mars a while ago. It seems the more general purpose camera of the Indian Mars Orbiter was more suited for comet picture taking than the more specialized US probes.


  6. #306
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    ^ does Comet Nipple come to mind....

  7. #307
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    The Philae lander weighed 200 pounds on earth, but on the comet it was about the weight of a sheet of paper. Interesting to think of it bouncing along until it settled! OSIRIS spots Philae drifting across the comet | Rosetta - ESA's comet chaser

  8. #308
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    One more about that Mars flyby of a comet. The brand new US Mars orbiter MAVEN has yielded a lot of information about the comet halo material that reached Mars. A most lucky coincidence that a probe perfectly fitted for that task arrived just weeks before the comet with science equipment that can sense that material.

    MAVEN could not have been better equipped for the purpose had it been designed for that task. But it was designed to study the exo atmosphere of Mars. At the time it was developed the comet was not even known.

  9. #309
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    It's all happening in space right now.

    Arianne CEO says space tourism is a waste of time and resources.

    Russia is testing KOSMOS 2499, a secret maneuverable satellite that has just redocked with it's launch vehicle.

    NASA is preparing to wake the New Horizons probe from it's hibernation on Dec 6 as it nears Pluto.

  10. #310
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    Quote Originally Posted by Necron99
    Arianne CEO says space tourism is a waste of time and resources.
    Which is ridiculous. Private enterprise is not for him to critisize. He would be right if tax money were in it,but it isn't.

    That aside, I quite agree. I don't see the attraction of a flight to 80 or 100km for a few minutes. Space to me means orbital. But it is really up to the people. If they want to spend 250.000$, let them.

  11. #311
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    Quote Originally Posted by Takeovers View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Necron99
    Arianne CEO says space tourism is a waste of time and resources.
    Which is ridiculous. Private enterprise is not for him to critisize. He would be right if tax money were in it,but it isn't.

    That aside, I quite agree. I don't see the attraction of a flight to 80 or 100km for a few minutes. Space to me means orbital. But it is really up to the people. If they want to spend 250.000$, let them.

    you could compare it to aviation pioneers, but most of out aviation major advances came from military development, not commercial.
    Sure commercial put the finishing touches on stuff, but it was on the back of military work.
    The question would be is commercial tourism going to add to the space tech library or just be a sideshow. Can Branson tell us something that NASA, JPL and Rayeothon/Boeing/McDonall-Douglas don't already know.

  12. #312
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    For 5K you can get basically the same experience. Zero G Corporation

  13. #313
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    Quote Originally Posted by Necron99
    Can Branson tell us something that NASA, JPL and Rayeothon/Boeing/McDonall-Douglas don't already know.
    No he certainly can't. His competition XCOR can though. They are working on a very interesting concept for small rocket engines using internal combustion engines and piston pumps instead of turbopumps. Quite costeffective and robust. Unfortunately it does not scale up to larger engines.

    Quote Originally Posted by Gerbil
    For 5K you can get basically the same experience. Zero G Corporation
    Yeah, but it does not give you astronaut wings, the certificate you have been in space. That is given at 100km altitude to international standards. Or at 80km altitude by the standards of the US Airforce. Some people think they need that.

  14. #314
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    Spooky galaxy web reveals the largest structures in the universe

    Miriam Kramer, Space.com November 20, 2014, 7:36 amA spooky new image shows a web of bright galaxies aligned in the largest structures ever discovered in the universe.
    Scientists working with a telescope in Chile discovered the alignment by studying 93 quasars — objects that shine very brightly and are powered by supermassive black holes — from the early universe.
    The picture (an artist's impression created using data collected by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope) shows the quasars aligned in a web of blue against the black sea of space.
    Earlier studies have found that these quasars are "known to form huge groupings spread over billions of light-years," European Southern Observatory (ESO) representatives said in a statement. The quasars studied by the research team formed when the universe was about 4.6 billion years old, about one-third of the age it is now, ESO added.

    "The first odd thing we noticed was that some of the quasars' rotation axes were aligned with each other — despite the fact that these quasars are separated by billions of light-years," study leader Damien Hutsemékers, from the University of Liège in Belgium, said in the same ESO statement.


    Hutsemékers and his team also found that the quasars' rotation axes were linked to what is called the large-scale structure of the universe. Previous studies have shown that galaxies are not distributed evenly throughout the universe. Instead, the large star-filled objects clump together in a web, and this is the large-scale structure of the universe, according to ESO.
    Scientists working with the Very Large Telescope found that the rotation of the quasars is parallel to the large-scale structures where the galaxies are found.
    "The alignments in the new data, on scales even bigger than current predictions from simulations, may be a hint that there is a missing ingredient in our current models of the cosmos," team member Dominique Sluse of the Argelander-Institut für Astronomie in Bonn, Germany and University of Liège, said.


    Team members said that the likelihood these results were created by chance is less than 1 percent, according to ESO. The new study is detailed in the November 19 issue of the Journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
    The European Southern Observatory is a collaboration of 15 different countries including France, Brazil and Denmark. ESO is responsible for operating three observing sites in Chile at La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. The Very Large Telescope is based in Paranal.


    https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/bu...-the-universe/

  15. #315
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    This is history in the making. SpaceX is very close to their goal of reusing launch vehicles.

    A new launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 to resupply the ISS using the Dragon spaceship is coming up for mid december.

    There is great news about this launch. SpaceX has ordered a custom built barge where the first stage will attempt to land after sending off the second stage with Dragon.



    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/536262624653365248

    Autonomous spaceport drone ship. Thrusters repurposed from deep sea oil rigs hold position within 3m even in a storm.
    The size of the landing pad is 300x170ft. The yellow ring shows the span of the feet that stage will use for landing. They will need to be pretty much spot on to successfully do it. There are still a few ambiguities and they give themselves only 50% chance of success for the first attempt.

    The X in the middle of the platform is the X out of the Company logo SpaceX.

    Elon Musk even mentioned that in the future the stage may be refuelled on that platform to fly back to the launch site for quick reuse. But the goal is for the stage to fly directly back to the launch site whenever available fuel allows it once they have permission by the Federal Aviation Authority FAA.



    This is the stage prepared in Cape Canaveral. Note the grid fins mounted to the top that will be used for steering during reentry and descent. During launch they will be folded down but during descent they are capable to be extended partly or fully and being rotated for steering. They will enable precision steering but they are untested and there is a risk it may not work as intended on first try.

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/536258543675252739

    Testing operation of hypersonic grid fins (x-wing config) going on next flight

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    Note that all this is being done not by one of the huge aerospace companies with a billion Dollar NASA contract. It is all being done by the still small and young company SpaceX using their own resources from being the cheapest launch service provider. High ranking people from both China and Russia have stated that they are not able to match their prices.

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    The barge idea seems to unnecessarily complicate things.
    Surely there are easier places to test landing that don't require so much precision.

  18. #318
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    Quote Originally Posted by Necron99 View Post
    The barge idea seems to unnecessarily complicate things.
    Surely there are easier places to test landing that don't require so much precision.

    Sure there are. The problem is they don't get permission to use them before they have demonstrated, they can be that precise. The plan is to return to land when possible.

    However sea landings save a lot of fuel for the return flight so for heavy loads and especially for their upcoming Falcon Heavy landing the central core at sea will increase the possible payload a lot. In that scenario the two boosters will return to the launch site - RTLS. The central core would land on that mobile spaceport downrange.

  19. #319
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    I'm more excited about New Horizons that wakes up on December 6th.

    It's already taken a long range shot of its eventual destination, Pluto.

    When it was launched, Pluto was still a planet!


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    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    I'm more excited about New Horizons that wakes up on December 6th.

    It's already taken a long range shot of its eventual destination, Pluto.

    When it was launched, Pluto was still a planet!

    No doubt it is of much higher direct scientific importance. BTW they have identified possible targets beyond Pluto. After passing Pluto New Horizons will go on to more remote objects to observe. They will fine adjust the trajectory so New Horizons will be directed to meeting one of them by the gravity field of Pluto.

    However cost efficient reuse will do orders of magnitude more for long term space development. Imagine a spacecraft big enough and with fuel reserves that enables it to go into orbit of Pluto instead of having only a few hours of good science observing while passing at high speed.

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    Amazing luck, some bloke in the US left his camera on time lapse for an hour and caught a meteor hitting the atmosphere and disintegrating into a cloud.


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    Move over, Halley: 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko may now be the most famous comet in the cosmos. Comet 67P has been the photogenic subject of many images sent back by the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission. The mission's Philae lander made space history by successfully settling onto the surface of the comet last month.

    We've seen crags, its weird kidney shape and all sorts of dramatic shadows playing across the comet's surface. One thing all those images have in common is that they're in stark, artsy black and white.

    This leaves us with a curious question: what does 67P look like in color? An image accompanying a presentation for an upcoming American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco offers up an intriguing option. The comet may be slightly reddish. The presentation, titled "Color Variegation on 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko," is set for December 18, at which point more information on the image is expected to be released.

    In the meantime, we're left with some speculation as to what the image depicts. It was captured by the narrow-angle camera of Rosetta's OSIRIS imaging system. The camera is capable of taking images in a wide spectral range, as opposed to the images we've been seeing from Rosetta's navigation camera, which only shoots in black and white. The OSIRIS camera was already responsible for an impressive true-color image of Mars released in 2007.

    Some comet-watchers are guessing this new OSIRIS picture is the first true-color image of the comet to be released. However, the ESA has previously described the comet as "extremely dark" and "blacker than coal." The slight blurriness of the image can be attributed to it being a combination of images taken with red, green and blue filters which were then superimposed to create the final reddish image. The blurriness stems from the comet's rotation between exposures.

    Rosetta's comet will continue to be a source of fascination. Whether this image depicts what the comet would look like if you happened to be looking at it while riding on Rosetta, it definitely offers up a new perspective on our previously gray-scale viewpoint.

    Crave reached out to the ESA for comment on the image, but did not immediately hear back.

  23. #323
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    Orion liftoff is tonight at about 9pm.
    Coverage from mission control starts at around 5:40

    Live feed here.

    Orion


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    Quote Originally Posted by Necron99 View Post
    Orion liftoff is tonight at about 9pm.
    Coverage from mission control starts at around 5:40


    Another unnecessary billion dollar publicity stunt.

    The official rationale is testing the heat shield. The heat shield is basically the same as alredy used in Apollo so why test it in a slow entry at all?

    Most of the Orion capsule is only a mockup. Like the launch abort rocket. At the moment they are talking about it on NASA TV like there is a real one there but it is only a dummy. The service module is also a dummy without function except they have put a few batteries in, that will not be present in the flight article.

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    I understand that the re-entry will be an accelerated one to simulate an extra orbit return.

    To me, the whole craft seems a waste of time.
    With advances in materials and robotics/AI there is no need to send manned missions anywhere just yet. Not at least until we find a far cheaper way of escaping the gravity well and can afford large scale space infrastructure.

    I'll watch though, 'cause if that Delta IV goes off, it's gonna make a hell of a bang.

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