At least for the first flights, NASA will be content with four passengers in the spacecraft that will replace the shuttles instead of the original plan - six
To save weight, NASA is considering the possibility of removing two seats from the Orion passenger vehicle. The manager of the Constellation program says that the possibility of redesigning Orion was discussed together with the International Space Station partners despite the fact that the original operational capability was to launch a six-seater vehicle. Although the space station crew will increase to six at the end of May, NASA is convinced that the loss of two seats on Orion will not cause an operational problem, as long as there are Soyuz spacecraft in the field.
Last week, the Orlando Sentinel reported that due to budget problems, the Constellation program would not be able to meet the schedule of returning to the moon before 2020, two years behind the original plan (2018). Now NASA engineers are worried that the moon mission could slip a few more years ahead.
To compensate for this bad news, NASA is considering the possibility of reducing the mass of the first Orion spacecraft that will fly on top of the Ares-1 rocket. The issue came up after Jeff Hanley, director of the Constellation program and developer of Orion within it, said that the Orion design was within plus or minus a few hundred kilograms of the maximum of about 10 tons, dictated by the safety requirements for landing with two of the three parachutes in case one parachute fails during landing .
"Currently, we are on the edge and therefore we will start with four passengers, said Anli. "This allows us to develop in the meantime a joint version for the lunar spacecraft and the one that will reach the space station, but we will also plan a version of six so that we can increase the capacity if required."
"In any case, the Russians will always place a Soyuz or a derivative of it on the station so that in case there is a need to abandon the station, there will always be one Soyuz and one Orion spacecraft.
10 תגובות
The space shuttle program is not a resounding success - from a situation of 24 flights a year at a low cost per flight, the issue has become a continuous nightmare for NASA that draws huge budgets. This is a tool of too many compromises in the style of catch multiple you did not catch
It may be simpler to create a one-time tool instead of investing huge sums in testing and maintaining the silicon tiles of the passages, checking the motors and some two million other parts every time.
NASA failed in the process of a multi-use vehicle because flying into space is still not like flying from Israel to the USA.
It is possible that the failure is also related to the fact that there were too many requirements (the army had its own requirements as well as other bodies), it is possible that if they had tried to create a simpler reusable tool they would have succeeded.
Apparently cheaper and less risky as a result of the fact that it is always first hand...
Why do they go back?
The shuttles are multi-use tools - why go back to disposable tools in the style of the Mercury and Apollo programs?
I did not check the academic usage, however in the high-tech press there was a need for an opposite word for upgrade. For example, my laptop was downgraded to XP so that it would not be necessary to increase its memory for Vista.
Tishonmach, is this an innovation of the Hebrew Language Academy?
This process is unfortunately very similar to the one that led the original design of the space shuttle to a series of compromises that ended in two accidents and an almost completely useless system.
In lines 1,7: two instead of two.
And when exactly do the ferries go out of use?..
Cool !
the opposite of "get upgraded"
What is tshunamech?