Space To Let
A couple of items of interest from Space.com. First, the design of the Project Orion capsule is progressing rapidly. What basically looks just like an over sized Apollo capsule is being designed and built by Lockheed Martin with design input by NASA. They are moving into the cockpit design phase now and have two basic configurations in mind: a four seat configuration for moon voyages and a six seat layout for shorter trips to the International Space Station.
The pieces are coming together for NASA’s next spaceship Orion as space agency engineers begin working with lead contractor Lockheed Martin to shape the vehicle’s cockpit.
“We’re bringing the design teams together and looking at the features of this so that we can adjust and have one integrated concept,” NASA’s Orion project manager Caris ‘Skip’ Hatfield told SPACE.com this month, adding that astronauts are key in the design process. “We don’t want to deliver them a cockpit and have them hate it.”
As an engineer I can state quite firmly that getting the end-user involved in the design phase is crucial to a getting a good final product. Smart move by Lockheed Martin.
Next, we have a "by Jupiter" moment. The New Horizons probe, bound for the artist planet formerly known as Pluto, took a long range photo of Jupiter which even at the distance of 181 million miles shows the promise of the incredible imaging system the craft carries.
"New Horizons is speeding toward this majestic planet at 45,000 miles per hour, right on target for a close encounter on Feb. 28 of next year," said New Horizons Project Scientist Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), where LORRI was designed and built. "LORRI's resolution at Jupiter will be 125 times better than now, and we're really looking forward to getting the most detailed views of the Jovian system since Cassini's flyby in late 2000 and Galileo's final images in 2003."
If it's this good at 181 million miles, we have some stunning pictures to look forward to.
By Quilly Mammoth, Wednesday, 27 September , 2006 @ 4:47 pm
About five years ago I sent a publisher a short story where people used an SRB to launch a small capsule high enough for a man to MOOSE back from space.
“too unbelieveable, NASA would never use an SRB for manned flight.”
By Gaius, Wednesday, 27 September , 2006 @ 4:50 pm
Heh. Ahead of your time.
By BubbaB, Thursday, 28 September , 2006 @ 1:43 pm
Okay, for those of you who didn’t understand, SRB is “solid rocket booster” I think, and MOOSE is “Manned Orbital Operations Safety Equipment”, basically a foam-filled emergency cone for getting astronauts out of space in an extreme emergency.
Am I correct?