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submission
Comments: 1 +- One if by Land, Two if by Sea on Thursday December 13 2007, @12:45PM Reservoir Hill
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nasa
Reservoir Hill writes "Work is progressing on the design of the new Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), the next generation of NASA spacecraft that will take humans to the International Space Station, back to the Moon, and hopefully on to Mars but one major question about the spacecraft has yet to be answered. On returning to Earth, should the CEV land in water or terra firma? After initial studies, the first assessment by NASA and the contractor for the CEV, Lockheed Martin, was that landing on land was preferred in terms of total life cycle costs for the vehicles. But getting the CEV light enough for the Ares rockets to be able to launch it, and therefore eliminating the 1500 lb airbags for landing has its appeal so now a splashdown in water seems to be favored. "Looking at the landing itself, the event of actually touching down, water comes out to be preferable as less risk," says Jeff Hanley, Manager for the Constellation Program. The final decision will be made in 2008. "If the Orion team is able to come in at the preliminary design review later this next year with a concept for be able to land on land that is fairly robust but not cost a lot of mass to have to hurl to the moon and back, then it becomes an operational decision," added Hanley."
Your program is sick! Shoot it and put it out of its memory.
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landing gear (Score:2)
a concept for be able to land on land that is fairly robust but not cost a lot of mass to have to hurl to the moon and back,..
One way things have changed since 1969-72 is that we have vastly greater experience of routine LEO flights[1]. Surely it would be enormously inefficient to, as the quote says, fly the terrestrial EDL equipment to the moon and back? Why not re-enter LEO and dock with a descent vehicle?
[1] how many hundred manned Soyoz launches and landings have there been by now, anyway? 20 years ago as a teenager I kept a running total of that and the duration of all manned flights up to the record-breaking MIR tours.