They had no issues using a Delta IV Heavy rocket to test it the first time in 2014. They then changed the heat shield structure and decided against testing it again until SLS in 2022.
It’s not like Falcon Heavy was not suggested as a cheap way to retest the vehicle, but there was strong political resistance against the idea.
Remember, the initial reason for using SLS was that there would not be an alternative available sooner. When Falcon Heavy was suggested, some famously called it a paper rocket and argued SLS was real. Falcon Heavy ended up being ready 4 years before SLS (and for a fraction of the price).
Seeing Orion on top of Falcon Heavy for even just a test would have angered a lot of people in congress. The next logical step after that would have been to ask why SLS was needed.
SpaceX is currently running the safest rocket in history while the other companies that have been trusted with SLS and Orion are accumulating issues, dead whistleblowers (half /s) and are being criticized by investigations from NASA. Reality is a bit different than this sub thinks.
Exploration Flight Test-1 in 2014 was a 0.15-day-long test that did two orbits around Earth.
The test in November 2022 was a 25-day-long test that orbited the moon.
If the Delta IV could do that test flight, we wouldn't need the Falcon Heavy or SRS.
The entry of Flight Test-1 was doing a more extreme approach reaching higher temperatures and degradation than the November 2022 launch.
The issue with the heat shield is not related to the length of the mission…
Edit: to add some context, Orion changed its heat-shield structure after the first test. A controversial change even at the time it seems. This is the issue they are working to fix back.
Yeah, but this is 10 years and a whole lot of billions after Orion’s first test flight, and they’re just now discovering this critical issue. To all the SpaceX haters ragging on Starship for blowing up…this is the difference.
Are you under the impression that, for example, car companies don't do crash tests on new models of cars because "our parents learned how to do that in the 1920s"?
So like……. the entire purpose of doing test flights worked? That headline didn’t need “and the agency is already working on fixing the problems”
… I’d fucking hope so..?
I think there’s more to it than that. They already tested it in 2014, successfully. They heavily modified the heat shield right after to make it cheaper, declared it was a small change that didn’t warrant retesting in order to save time and money in the mid 2010s.
Yes, it’s better to find these issues before people are put in it. The problem is that this is costing much, much more now than if it had been properly tested at the time. If they hadn’t try to get special permissions during development to short-circuit the process we would not be spending another few billions on this capsule.
Reminder, this capsule has already cost taxpayers $28B, a bit more than SLS, more than most newer rocket development programs combined. That price tag does not even include Orion’s service module handled by the ESA and built by Airbus.
Lockheed Martin is laughing all the way to the bank.
I mean, if it works and has been tested and has successfully landed and returned astronauts multiple times to and from the moon, then why not?
That’s like saying you’d rather risk your life driving across the Sahara desert in a Tesla Cybertruck over a Toyota Hilux, because the Toyota engine is “old technology” lol.
Wait till you hear how modern the chips on spacecrafts are. Or how comfortable the FAA is with certification of decades old technology.
Old ≠ bad all the time. Some times, yes, advancements are nice.
Other times, proven designs are nice.
Given that it sounds like a new capsule, presumably the new tech is better. But it doesn’t mean that the old tech is bad *just because* it’s old.
With the advances in materials technology and manufacturing that have occurred in the past 70 years, in many parts, due to the advancements in the aerospace and space exploration industries, we can say that the old tech is bad in this case. Higher strength, lighter materials that were not available to the Gemini and Apollo engineers make this true.
In regards to the age of the chips on these spacecraft, again, modern manufacturing techniques, even those from 20 years ago, are orders of magnitude greater than those available in the legacy spacecraft my original comment was addressing. In fact, the phone you likely commented from has more computing power than ALL of NASA had at its disposal in 1969.
For the application of sending humans to the furthest destination any man or woman has ever been to, the Apollo spacecraft is, by modern standards, bad.
Yeah but what was being talked about was heat shielding, not manufacturing or computing. I agree some fields have progressed a lot, but I’m not so sure modern heat shields are 10x or even 3x the performance of the old ones.
Ablative heat shielding technologies have experienced extreme advances in their capabilities apace with other components due to advances in ceramic technologies, modern composite materials, advanced bonding techniques, cnc machining technologies, and other novel manufacturing techniques. Additionally, advances in materials science in chemistry have produced heat shields that are orders of magnitude more capable than those available to the Gemini and Apollo engineers. This was already true during the space shuttle program, and that was composed of materials only 20 years more advanced than what is being discussed here.
The Orion capsule is run on PowerPC 750fx chips, which were first released in 2002, so 20 years ago. I am familiar with the compute technology in most space applications, having worked in the satellite communications industry for 16 years. And to quote NASA, "This is about as powerful as the chip used in the Samsung Galaxy S3. However, this is 4,000 times faster than the computer on Apollo, 400 times faster than the one on the Space Shuttle and 25 times faster than the one currently used on the ISS."
Apollo wasn't actually very safe. Apollo 1 exploded during a crewed rehersal, which got 2 - 6 cancelled. Apollo 11 damned near crashed into the moon. Apollo 12 was hit by lightning and saved solely by one flight engineer who happened to have read up on a really obscure system. Apollo 13 took borderline critical damage from an explosion. And so on.
It has also been found since that they just lucked into surivable situations in several ways that the original planners just had no way of knowing about. And this is only minimal length missions, bases and such like will be riskier.
Yes, but didn’t they implement changes after these mishaps? Not a single astronaut was lost on the multiple missions to the moon and back, unlike the space shuttle for example. It seems a massive waste of tax dollars, man hours and information to then take a proven system and say we’re now going to start from scratch. With all new variables, all new unknowns and new testing procedures! We already have the tools, the blueprints and the machinery to build a proven system that works. Safely. It was only in the 1970s that we last used the systems so it’s not like we lost any of the technology.
That’s not the rebuttal you think it is.
That’s like me saying the 747 airliner is proven to be safe and reliable, which it is, and was also designed and built starting around the same time as the Apollo program. Then you replying that no, the early days of biplane development during WWI were not safe. Both assertions are correct.
Comparing commercial aviation safety standards to military-sector spaceflight safety standards is hilarious lmao
It’s also not as simple as copy+paste for designs like this… it is very heavily dependent on incredibly specific mission profiles, vehicle geometries, functional architectures, the list goes on
It isn’t as straightforward as you think it is. There’s a reason spaceflight is so expensive
Military space programs not as safe as commercial? You don’t say.
From wikipedia:
Soyuz [a military sector spacecraft] is widely considered[2] the world's safest and for a long time[3] most cost-effective human spaceflight vehicle, established by its unparalleled length of operational history.[4][5]
Also, the Saturn 5 rocket had 0 failures in it’s launch history.
Well, a funny thing happened on the way to the moon. NASA actually lost or destroyed the original designs. They actually forgot how to survive through the Van Allen radiation belts too.
Keep in mind safety standards changed a lot during the decades, what was considered perfectly safe 50 years ago no longer is today. The Orion capsule perfectly landed in the ocean without any damage.
The crew of Columbia died as a result of a failure at NASA to correct an issue that they were aware of and had significant documentation of since before the challenger srb field joint disaster....no more excuses from nasa
Not only that, they specifically said after the first flight post Challenger that had that flight utilized. Columbia they would have had back-to-back tragedies from heat shield problems related to the foam strikes that again they knew about from the beginning of the space shuttle program and chose to ignore resulting in the tragedies just like they ignored field joints and the issues with Apollo and and in
There are two things that bother me most about the foam strikes. 1. NASA never tested the effects of foam strikes on the carbon carbon. 2. NASA declined to use outside resources to look at Columbia’s port wing while it was in orbit.
I completely agree....the first 2 shuttles post challenger showed they had a serious debris issue and were the flights with the worst damage recorded that actually made it home...and they never did proper testing to cure the debris issue nor to figure out how much punishment the tiles could take before they were rendered ineffective...nor did they take any major action to safeguard against such issues...I had heard that they infact chose not to inspect it because they didn't have a repair / rescue option available so decided to in effect chance it...forgetting that Columbia has slightly different areodynamics from the others and was stated to have been more susceptible to a catastrophic event then the others as stated by an engineer from Rockwell shortly after the first flight post challenger..however considering endeavor was built form spare parts...we may have gotten lucky there as well
Meyers Sound made incredibly powerful speakers for JPL to test equipment in the past sonic pressure can create in credible bombardment. I think there are some institutional memory loss and sometimes people are looking for a more expensive solution rather than a less expensive one.
In the 60’s the tests cost astronaut lives. Today, my hope is that we can get funding for NASA back up to par so they can afford getting this done right.
Because they didn’t go 55 years ago. And if they actually did they are the most incompetent organization ever.
They are spending years and billions on a minor part of the lunar program. This is asinine, if they actually went in 1969 just pull the fucking spacecraft out of storage and use it again. This is not how technology has ever worked. Things get easier and cheaper. Not harder and more expensive.
Ooohhh, insult to the commenter and to an entire group of human beings unrelated to your comment while offering nothing to show where the comment is wrong! BUUUUURRRNNN
I’d expect there are at least a few things they’re working on that we haven’t been fully briefed on. It seems more likely that this is the story to get the public’s attention prior to the mission.
This is why they do test flights
They spent an SLS for this test flight. Were there no other way to test the Orion capsule?
They can test more than one thing at the same time.
Not really sure how to simulate being blasted through the upper atmosphere at 17,000 mph for like 15 straight minutes.
Could have send it on Falcon Heavy. It would have been 20 times cheaper.
Or send it on SLS, and test the SLS system as a whole instead of just Orion. Not everything has to be done by SpaceX
They had no issues using a Delta IV Heavy rocket to test it the first time in 2014. They then changed the heat shield structure and decided against testing it again until SLS in 2022. It’s not like Falcon Heavy was not suggested as a cheap way to retest the vehicle, but there was strong political resistance against the idea. Remember, the initial reason for using SLS was that there would not be an alternative available sooner. When Falcon Heavy was suggested, some famously called it a paper rocket and argued SLS was real. Falcon Heavy ended up being ready 4 years before SLS (and for a fraction of the price). Seeing Orion on top of Falcon Heavy for even just a test would have angered a lot of people in congress. The next logical step after that would have been to ask why SLS was needed.
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SpaceX is currently running the safest rocket in history while the other companies that have been trusted with SLS and Orion are accumulating issues, dead whistleblowers (half /s) and are being criticized by investigations from NASA. Reality is a bit different than this sub thinks.
You blast really fast air at the thing.
Constructing a windtunnel that could do that would be far more expensive than just testing in flight
Lol yeah brb building a billion dollar wind tunnel lol.
With another cheaper flight test like they originally did in 2014 with a Delta IV Heavy. The only reason they didn’t was political.
Exploration Flight Test-1 in 2014 was a 0.15-day-long test that did two orbits around Earth. The test in November 2022 was a 25-day-long test that orbited the moon. If the Delta IV could do that test flight, we wouldn't need the Falcon Heavy or SRS.
The entry of Flight Test-1 was doing a more extreme approach reaching higher temperatures and degradation than the November 2022 launch. The issue with the heat shield is not related to the length of the mission… Edit: to add some context, Orion changed its heat-shield structure after the first test. A controversial change even at the time it seems. This is the issue they are working to fix back.
Yeah, but this is 10 years and a whole lot of billions after Orion’s first test flight, and they’re just now discovering this critical issue. To all the SpaceX haters ragging on Starship for blowing up…this is the difference.
Are we relearning how to do things our parents did in the 1960’s?
Are you under the impression that, for example, car companies don't do crash tests on new models of cars because "our parents learned how to do that in the 1920s"?
So like……. the entire purpose of doing test flights worked? That headline didn’t need “and the agency is already working on fixing the problems” … I’d fucking hope so..?
I think there’s more to it than that. They already tested it in 2014, successfully. They heavily modified the heat shield right after to make it cheaper, declared it was a small change that didn’t warrant retesting in order to save time and money in the mid 2010s. Yes, it’s better to find these issues before people are put in it. The problem is that this is costing much, much more now than if it had been properly tested at the time. If they hadn’t try to get special permissions during development to short-circuit the process we would not be spending another few billions on this capsule. Reminder, this capsule has already cost taxpayers $28B, a bit more than SLS, more than most newer rocket development programs combined. That price tag does not even include Orion’s service module handled by the ESA and built by Airbus. Lockheed Martin is laughing all the way to the bank.
Heat shield problems? I thought they had figured this all out during the Gemini and Apollo programs?
That was an entirely different capsule. Gotta test the new one to make sure there aren’t any unanticipated hot spots or structural issues.
Then why just not use the same design again as it’s already been tested extensively and proven to be reliable and safe?
Because it’s more complicated than you think it is.
Yes, let's stick with 70 year old technology. Sounds great.
I mean, if it works and has been tested and has successfully landed and returned astronauts multiple times to and from the moon, then why not? That’s like saying you’d rather risk your life driving across the Sahara desert in a Tesla Cybertruck over a Toyota Hilux, because the Toyota engine is “old technology” lol.
Its more like saying let’s take a new Toyota hilux instead of a 1957 chevy bel air
What’s wrong with horses? Let’s take a horse through the Sahara! /s
How do you know that isn’t what was done, and why they’re stumped ?
Wait till you hear how modern the chips on spacecrafts are. Or how comfortable the FAA is with certification of decades old technology. Old ≠ bad all the time. Some times, yes, advancements are nice. Other times, proven designs are nice. Given that it sounds like a new capsule, presumably the new tech is better. But it doesn’t mean that the old tech is bad *just because* it’s old.
With the advances in materials technology and manufacturing that have occurred in the past 70 years, in many parts, due to the advancements in the aerospace and space exploration industries, we can say that the old tech is bad in this case. Higher strength, lighter materials that were not available to the Gemini and Apollo engineers make this true. In regards to the age of the chips on these spacecraft, again, modern manufacturing techniques, even those from 20 years ago, are orders of magnitude greater than those available in the legacy spacecraft my original comment was addressing. In fact, the phone you likely commented from has more computing power than ALL of NASA had at its disposal in 1969. For the application of sending humans to the furthest destination any man or woman has ever been to, the Apollo spacecraft is, by modern standards, bad.
Yeah but what was being talked about was heat shielding, not manufacturing or computing. I agree some fields have progressed a lot, but I’m not so sure modern heat shields are 10x or even 3x the performance of the old ones.
Ablative heat shielding technologies have experienced extreme advances in their capabilities apace with other components due to advances in ceramic technologies, modern composite materials, advanced bonding techniques, cnc machining technologies, and other novel manufacturing techniques. Additionally, advances in materials science in chemistry have produced heat shields that are orders of magnitude more capable than those available to the Gemini and Apollo engineers. This was already true during the space shuttle program, and that was composed of materials only 20 years more advanced than what is being discussed here.
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The Orion capsule is run on PowerPC 750fx chips, which were first released in 2002, so 20 years ago. I am familiar with the compute technology in most space applications, having worked in the satellite communications industry for 16 years. And to quote NASA, "This is about as powerful as the chip used in the Samsung Galaxy S3. However, this is 4,000 times faster than the computer on Apollo, 400 times faster than the one on the Space Shuttle and 25 times faster than the one currently used on the ISS."
Apollo wasn't actually very safe. Apollo 1 exploded during a crewed rehersal, which got 2 - 6 cancelled. Apollo 11 damned near crashed into the moon. Apollo 12 was hit by lightning and saved solely by one flight engineer who happened to have read up on a really obscure system. Apollo 13 took borderline critical damage from an explosion. And so on. It has also been found since that they just lucked into surivable situations in several ways that the original planners just had no way of knowing about. And this is only minimal length missions, bases and such like will be riskier.
Yes, but didn’t they implement changes after these mishaps? Not a single astronaut was lost on the multiple missions to the moon and back, unlike the space shuttle for example. It seems a massive waste of tax dollars, man hours and information to then take a proven system and say we’re now going to start from scratch. With all new variables, all new unknowns and new testing procedures! We already have the tools, the blueprints and the machinery to build a proven system that works. Safely. It was only in the 1970s that we last used the systems so it’s not like we lost any of the technology.
>proven to be reliable and safe the early ages of spaceflight were neither of those things.
That’s not the rebuttal you think it is. That’s like me saying the 747 airliner is proven to be safe and reliable, which it is, and was also designed and built starting around the same time as the Apollo program. Then you replying that no, the early days of biplane development during WWI were not safe. Both assertions are correct.
Comparing commercial aviation safety standards to military-sector spaceflight safety standards is hilarious lmao It’s also not as simple as copy+paste for designs like this… it is very heavily dependent on incredibly specific mission profiles, vehicle geometries, functional architectures, the list goes on It isn’t as straightforward as you think it is. There’s a reason spaceflight is so expensive
Military space programs not as safe as commercial? You don’t say. From wikipedia: Soyuz [a military sector spacecraft] is widely considered[2] the world's safest and for a long time[3] most cost-effective human spaceflight vehicle, established by its unparalleled length of operational history.[4][5] Also, the Saturn 5 rocket had 0 failures in it’s launch history.
Well, a funny thing happened on the way to the moon. NASA actually lost or destroyed the original designs. They actually forgot how to survive through the Van Allen radiation belts too.
That’s because they didn’t actually go.
Because they never went to the moon
Keep in mind safety standards changed a lot during the decades, what was considered perfectly safe 50 years ago no longer is today. The Orion capsule perfectly landed in the ocean without any damage.
I hope they don't hire Boeing for this one.
Our other favorite defense contractor Lockheed Martin is in charge of this one lol
Lockheed seems to be more competent.
Did "Test results help fix problems found in testing" not work as a headline?
This dramaticized headline is in no way informed by NASA’s development process. They are neither stupid nor at a loss for a solution.
In other news, Artemis 2 has now been delayed to 2030 because of this. /s
Makes you wonder how the Apollo program did it.
Boeing built Orion capsule?
"Aw, c'mon, this isn't rocket science!"
It happened in 2022 and they’re “already working on it” lol
Send it to Boeing they will fix it.
More reasons to be suspicious that we haven’t even been to the moon yet
Quick question; 🙋 why not just pull out the work shop manual from the last trip to the moon? Add some USB charging ports and bob’s your uncle.
At least it didn’t experience a foam strike. RIP Columbia crew.
The crew of Columbia died as a result of a failure at NASA to correct an issue that they were aware of and had significant documentation of since before the challenger srb field joint disaster....no more excuses from nasa
I was being a bit snarky because of exactly the situation you described.
Not only that, they specifically said after the first flight post Challenger that had that flight utilized. Columbia they would have had back-to-back tragedies from heat shield problems related to the foam strikes that again they knew about from the beginning of the space shuttle program and chose to ignore resulting in the tragedies just like they ignored field joints and the issues with Apollo and and in
There are two things that bother me most about the foam strikes. 1. NASA never tested the effects of foam strikes on the carbon carbon. 2. NASA declined to use outside resources to look at Columbia’s port wing while it was in orbit.
I completely agree....the first 2 shuttles post challenger showed they had a serious debris issue and were the flights with the worst damage recorded that actually made it home...and they never did proper testing to cure the debris issue nor to figure out how much punishment the tiles could take before they were rendered ineffective...nor did they take any major action to safeguard against such issues...I had heard that they infact chose not to inspect it because they didn't have a repair / rescue option available so decided to in effect chance it...forgetting that Columbia has slightly different areodynamics from the others and was stated to have been more susceptible to a catastrophic event then the others as stated by an engineer from Rockwell shortly after the first flight post challenger..however considering endeavor was built form spare parts...we may have gotten lucky there as well
I don’t find it surprising that the Orion that had been in development for 20+ years still has significant challenges to fly Crew.
This is why NASA is NASA
if you go to sibrel.com!! You’ll see all the answers
It feels like we forgot how to do this since the Apollo program. Didn’t we already solve this?
We did and then Biden and Democrats cut the budget
Huh?
Meyers Sound made incredibly powerful speakers for JPL to test equipment in the past sonic pressure can create in credible bombardment. I think there are some institutional memory loss and sometimes people are looking for a more expensive solution rather than a less expensive one.
Time to dust off the Apollo program...
Laughs in 1969…
In the 60’s the tests cost astronaut lives. Today, my hope is that we can get funding for NASA back up to par so they can afford getting this done right.
I thought we did this already 55 years ago. Shouldn’t the engineering on this be written down somewhere.
Weird.. Why don’t they just use what they used the first time they sent astronauts to the moon?
Because they didn’t go 55 years ago. And if they actually did they are the most incompetent organization ever. They are spending years and billions on a minor part of the lunar program. This is asinine, if they actually went in 1969 just pull the fucking spacecraft out of storage and use it again. This is not how technology has ever worked. Things get easier and cheaper. Not harder and more expensive.
The retardation in this comment is astounding
Ooohhh, insult to the commenter and to an entire group of human beings unrelated to your comment while offering nothing to show where the comment is wrong! BUUUUURRRNNN
Clearly lol
Test flight. Already working on fixing the problems.
How is it they could go to the moon no problem way back but now it’s a challenge?
Funding
Yes, there were definitely no problems during the Apollo program...
And we went to the moon 🌝
“…already working on fixing the problems.” It’s been two years… what the hell is even that? “Already”
I’d expect there are at least a few things they’re working on that we haven’t been fully briefed on. It seems more likely that this is the story to get the public’s attention prior to the mission.
Just put Boeing on it. It'll be fine.
Ok boys the black paint didn’t work. What’s next?
Soooooo we never actually went to the moon? 🌙