No doubt Nomex.
I wonder if that’s the same company that makes Aerotech rocket motors for hobbyists.
To be fair, it’s a disposable booster, so repairability probably isn’t high on the list of design requirements.
However, I suspect that repairability isn’t as high on the list of ANY spacecraft so much as light weight, small volume and reliability. I would bet NASA (or SpaceX, Roscosmos, or ESA, or whoever) probably would happily trade a lot of repair time and difficulty for a few tens of grams here and there in a design, regardless of disposability or not.
It seems to depend on fairly fancy browser features. Works fine on my desktop (Firefox) but not on my tablet with Firefox for Android.
It now reports Orion to be traveling barely faster than 400 mph. Much like tracking the progress of the JWST, the earth’s gravity is slowing it way down.
80 mph
Gonna have to move over to the slow lane pretty soon.
Today’s NASA APOD is of Artemis 1, flight day 13.
NASA will have live coverage of the event beginning at 11 a.m. ET, with the splashdown at about 12:40 p.m., on Dec. 11.
I was thinking that it’d be an amazing journey, to be on this first test flight. Then seeing this “skip entry” idea makes me not wanting to be on an experiment that could end up skipping off the atmosphere at the wrong angle, ending up orbiting the sun or heading out to Jupiter. The first few sets of astronauts will definitely quite nervous about the return trip.
I wonder if the astronauts will be issued a “blue pill” in this eventuality…
This article claims that Carl Sagan pushed the rumor that Apollo astronauts carried suicide pills, but it was totally false:
https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2013/10/astronauts-and-suicide-pills.html
Astrophysicist Carl Sagan may be the most responsible for the rumor that NASA astronauts carry suicide pills. Sagan, a two-time recipient of the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, was absolutely adamant about it, even featuring the controversial notion in his book Contact.
But Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell firmly disagrees. Lovell, along with his fellow crew members Jack Swigert and Fred Haise, actually faced the prospect of being marooned in space when an explosion in their oxygen tanks crippled Apollo 13’s service module.
“Since Apollo 13 many people have asked me, ‘Did you have suicide pills on board?’ We didn’t, and I never heard of such a thing in the eleven years I spent as an astronaut and NASA executive,” he wrote in 1975.
Gerry Griffin, a former director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, corroborated Lovell’s statement, bluntly adding that if an astronaut truly wished to end his or her life, space provides plenty of opportunities.
I bolded the last part. That seems like as good an argument against the possibility as any. Just vent the oxygen until you pass out. Quick and painless.
Well, an orgy would help use up their oxygen faster.
Contrary to the article, the “skip entry” maneuver isn’t because of the high speed of the returning spacecraft – which is indeed very fast, but Apollo had similar re-entry speeds. Unless substantial retro burns occur, a spacecraft returning from the moon will have about the same speed at re-entry that it had at TLI, namely something close to escape velocity. The article is misleading in comparing Orion’s high re-entry speed to the much lower speeds of the space shuttle, since the shuttle was re-entering from LEO orbital velocity, not escape velocity. The real purpose of the skip is that it allows the spacecraft more control to target a landing site with greater precision.
Apollo was a direct entry at a shallow angle. There was always a risk of a “skip” if the trajectory wasn’t exactly right, but with Apollo that would have been unintentional and catastrophic and sent the spacecraft hurtling away from earth.
Woo hoo! That was cool. 25,000 MPH to zero in about twenty minutes – amazing.
I made my tweener kid and his friend watch it, and they started chanting “Hin-den-burg! Hin-den-berg!” I was mock-appalled at their incivility, but impressed by their historical awareness.
This meme is giving me weird headmovies of the Apollo-Soyuz docking in 1975. Goes something like this:
“Let’s see what kinda suicide capsules you guys got.” The lead cosmonaut hands his over. “Nice – what flavor is it?”
“Grape. Would you like to try it? Have heard no bad reviews …”
“No thanks, Alexei, I’m trying to cut down.”
Anyways…“Hindenburg!” Geez…kids these days…
NASA has released more details about Artemis III
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/artemis_iii_mission_map_2022.jpg
It doesn’t look like the astronauts are going to be doing much more than Neil and Buzz though maybe there will be more specifics to come. The big difference, apparently, is that this will be the first exploration of the moon’s South pole region. I suppose the other big difference will be the quality of the video. That will be fun.
During their moonwalks, the astronauts will take pictures and video, survey geology, retrieve samples, and collect other data to meet specific scientific objectives.
How long are they scheduled to stay?
Orion will undock and back away from Starship to remain in NRHO for roughly one orbit around the Moon, lasting about 6.5 days. This will match the length of the surface expedition, so as Orion completes its orbit, the two person surface crew will finish their work on the surface in time to launch back up to meet the spacecraft.
Thank you. I was looking at the graphic on my phone pre-coffee.
NASA announces crew for Artemis-2, the moon flyby:
NASA Names Astronauts to Next Moon Mission, First Crew Under Artemis | NASA