How large is the “capsule” in which the 4 astronauts are calling home for 10 days? Enough to move around?
It was described as the space of “the interior volume of 2 minivans.” So, not large at all.
It’s the biggest space vehicle since the Space Shuttle in terms of habitable space, but still rather cramped for four astronauts – it’s about 16.5 ft in diameter and about 11 ft high in a blunt cone shape. Would be fairly roomy for one person, pretty cramped for four, but still – a bit of room to move around.
A mitigating factor is that in zero gravity every bit of space is equally useful. You can’t lie on the roof of a minivan or wiggle around into every nook. In a spacecraft you can. The entire interior skin works like a large floor. The two rows of seats will break the space up into a set of individual spaces each useful to a human. Cozy, but better than one might think.
I’m watching the livestream and just minutes ago the commentator mentioned the two minivans comparison then added, “about 300 cubic feet, twice as much as Apollo.”
Another question…notwithstanding whatever the astronauts are doing, is it quiet. In a car there’s wind related noise that increases with speed. Is there such a thing in space?
The YouTube channel Everyday Astronaut has a good video comparing the Artemis II to the Saturn V rocket. If the video does not start at the right point the OP’s question starts getting answered at 2:45 in the video linked below:
There’s no wind noise, obviously. Ventilator motor noise would be the big one I imagine
Nope.
Certainly the Apollo craft were noisy. Constant background noise of forced air movement and pumps running liquid cooling loops.
Unlikely things have changed much. Electronics are more efficient, so some cooling loads may be smaller. There is a lot happening aboard once you need to keep the fleshy cargo alive. And that hasn’t changed.
I don’t know about Orion specifically, but the ISS is a constant cacophony of whirring and rattling, due to all the life support and climate control systems always operating. I’m sure that any spacecraft carrying humans is much the same.
I’m reminded of a line from Mass Effect, the 2007 space opera PC RPG. Your character is the captain of a new state-of-the-art starship, and one of your crewmembers is a Quarian, a member of a race of refugees who have lived for the last 300 years in space in a rag-tag migratory fleet of centuries-old freighters and used alien ships acquired second-hand, ever since the sapient AIs they created kicked them off their homeworld. She finds it unsettling how quiet your ship is, because in the fleet, quiet means something has stopped working and you need to get it fixed quick if you want to live. She winds up insisting on spending most of her time in the engine room because it’s the only part of the ship with the kind of sounds that make her feel at home.
I have to imagine that if you’re a NASA astronaut and you wake up and notice it’s quiet, it would be pretty worrying.
But, as I recall…
