The Orion Spacecraft

the spacecraft. Yeah, the constellation, though someone might be led to believe the constellation because I think you were just talking about connecting dots and lines. Maybe that might have been a song about it. Well, what is the Orion spacecraft? Because I saw some people going nuts about it on the internet the other day. Yeah, including coworkers. Absolutely. Well, okay, so myself, you saw yourself. It was an out of

body experience. Um yeah. Yeah. On on Friday December at seven oh five a m. The Orion Exploration Flight Test one launched from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Yeah. This was an important step in a very long and winding Uh. Well, I would say road, but really, spacecraft don't take those that often well, in this particular test flight was not a very long and winding road, was it,

I mean where it didn't go out to Jupiter or something. Uh? No, it circled the Earth twice uh and then splashed down the Pacific Ocean off the coast Baja California at a mirror four hours later at nine am at Eastern Standard time. So I was so excited to watch that I was actually watching it live streaming. I was feigning my ignorance, I was. I was sadly I was talking about it on camera without being able to actually watch it. I knew that I knew it had been successfully launched, but

I had not been able to actually watch it. That's the that's the futurist equivalent of being a sad clown. Isn't it talking about you can't watch the present because you're talking about the future. Yeah, that was you know, that was kind of where I was going with that. Um. I also like to have my portrait on on velvet thing. I like, Well, anyway, this test flight I thought was really inspiring and exciting. And you might be asking, what's the big deal? They were just flying some space vehicle.

Wasn't like there was anybody in it. Right, Well, to know what the big deal is, you got to know some history. So so we got to back up and then we'll get to the big deal. Right. So December nineteenth, nineteen seventy two, was a momentous day, an important day in the world's space exploration work. It was the day when the Apollo seventeen spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific. Now, this marked the end of a mission that sent astronauts

to the Moon. Those astronauts being John Young, Charles Duke Jr. And Stewart Russa. And they were the last human beings to ever go beyond low Earth orbit. That's right, So not just the last human beings to go to the Moon so far, but the last to go more than

a few hundred miles beyond the surface of the Earth. Well, let's talk about what low Earth orbit means, because there's there's it's terminology that isn't I mean, like orbit is pretty high, right, And and also just the fact that you know, things like definitions like space outer space, where does that begin? They all get a little fuzzy because there's not like a you know, there's not like a sign. And if do you pass a certain point, the science

has welcome to outer space. But but these are the designations we have given specific areas of orbit around the Earth. So low Eer the orbit, that's where a lot of our space stuff is, Like the International Space Station, the Hubble Space Telescope, these are all in low Earth orbit. They're not further out, and that ends at about two thousand kilometers out from the US of the Earth, so

one thousand, two hundred forty three point seven miles. I always forget how close exactly the International Space Station really is. It's it's only a mirror like four hundred and thirty one kilometers a k a. Two hundred and sixty eight miles above the surface of the area. Yeah, it's close enough where you can actually see it when it passes overhead. Yeah, it's very close. Especially it is zoomed out view. If you were to step way back from the Earth and look,

it's sort of like in the upper sky. Yeah, it's pretty amazing that how close it is relatively speaking. Next, that we have the medium Earth orbit, because if you have lowerth orbit, there's got to be something else, right, There's gotta be some other designation. Medium Earth orbit extends out to thirty five thousand, seven six kilometers or twenty two thousand, two hundred thirty six miles. So from two thousand kilometers to thirty five thousand, seven six that's medium

Earth orbit. We're talking about a much larger area than lowerth orbit, right, and you're gonna notice that every time we go a little further out the actual area that we designate gets larger. So is this where you would find geosynchronous satellites exactly? This is where satellites that are in geosynchronous orbit inhabit, and those were placed there by unmanned missions. It's not like we flew some spacecraft out there,

astronauts popped out plopped to satellite into geosynchronous orbits. That all right, good work, boys, let's go on home, clock out. That's not the way that works. Uh. Further out from there you have high Earth orbit, which goes way way out where you know, including things like the Moon, which is three hundred eighty four thousand, four hundred kilometers or two nine hundred miles away from the surface of the Earth.

So that's you know, a really good johnt. And like we said, space Shuttle program only stayed in lower th orbit. Never went beyond it. Only twenty four human beings have ever been beyond lowerth orbit, and those are the people who are in the Apollo program. Now, this is kind of weird if you were a space enthusiast and you don't often consider the fact, but it has been more than forty years since humans went beyond I think the farthest they've been since the end of the Apollo program

was to service the Hubble Space Telescope. I think you might be right on that. I could be wrong if you're a NASA geek out there with awesome knowledge about anybody went a little bit farther than that. But definitely, no one's been beyond low Earth orbit. Right, we have stayed really really close to the surface of the Earth for more than forty years humans have. Yeah, yeah, and and the question yeah, of course. We meanwhile have Voyager

leaving the Solar System. So it took us like six or seven tries to say, okay, voyagers left the Solars. Wait wait, wait, wait, alright now, now Voyager left the Solar System two years ago, right, exactly the part right, the best part. I was like, Okay, we can now confirm for a fact that two years ago. But the interesting thing to me is that imagine that, you know, we're none of us were alive when the Apollo mission

went to the Moon. Even even me, despite what you're going to hear in a future podcast, I was not alive in nineteen seventy two. But can you imagine if you were alive during that era where we were sending missions to the Moon, and sent multiple missions to the Moon, that would you imagine that for the next four decades we wouldn't send anyone further out. That seems like that was going backward. Yeah, it's like we've retreated from battle

with space. Yea space space right, space slapped us around a little bit, and we said, you know what, we need to figure this out before we try it again. And uh, you know, there are definitely conversations to have, like whether or not manned space exploration is a real benefit compared to something like the robotics approach. All those conversations we have had multiple times on this podcast. We just want to talk about the new approach until once

again go beyond low Earth orbit. And that's what the Orion spacecraft is all about. Right, So the big deal is this is how human beings are going to get way the heck out there in the future, at least the ones who are going on NASA's time. Right, Yeah, it's this and listening to Timothy Leary, So the as an overview of the Orion Crew Vehicle project, you actually need to go back a little bit too, because it

kind of evolved over time. So in the mid two thousand's, that's when NASA unveiled a proposal for a continued human exploration of space, originally called the Vision for Space Exploration. Uh, this was a big thing during George W. Bush's administration. It was really inspiring. It was this very ambitious plan, and then there was a change of leadership at NASA

and it became even more ambitious. It became it was renamed into the Constellation Project, and as a part of that renaming, they also decided to rename the the Crew Exploration Vehicle and call it Orian Exploration Vehicle. I I don't believe we said, but that was the name that the shuttle was going to have. Yeah, well his name, thank yeah, so, but exactly that's what it was going

to be, the Crew Exploration Vehicle. Now it's called Orian. Uh. And and because again Orian was also a constellation apart from the place in mythology, and plans were that it would fly by two thousand fourteen, at least in tests, which turns out actually came to pass despite a lot of changes in the program. So originally, before the Orion was going to be built, there was going to be

another space vehicle called the orbital space plane. And before that there was going to be any different space vehicle that was unnamed, but it was going to be built by lockeed Martin. There was going to be a suborbital space plane. So those were more like direct Shuttle replacements than a deep space spacecraft. So just to clarify, I think what you said is pretty good, But can you clarify the difference between a spacecraft and a space plane. Sure,

space plane tends to be suborbital or very lower th orbit. Uh, and so there's altitude only goes out so far. Maybe as a replacement for the Shuttle program, it could also be a delivery system for smaller craft that would be piggybacking onto the suborbital plane. So you would have a sub orbital plane takeoff, reach an extremely high altitude, and then you would have a second launch off of the plane of a smaller craft that would head into orbit, but those plans were scrapped uh, and the Orion was

the new approach once that had happened. So, in other words, there was a precedent already for planned aircraft getting canceled before it got to the full build out stage. So there was no guarantee that Orion wasn't going to suffer the same fate. So what's the Constellation project gonna do? Well, it's not gonna do anything now because well, the the one of the many one of the one of the many plans was that they were going to send a

return mission to the Moon by twenty uh. They were also going to use the under the Constellation program, there was a completion of the International Space Station planned in there. Uh and also to extend human presence quote beyond our Solar system end quote. That's pretty ambitious. Yeah, I don't know if human presence necessarily means manned mission. Though human presence maybe this was a man made object that we

sent beyond the Solar System. We're going to throw a ball, really, unless they're working on warp drive or something, I don't think we're going beyond the Solar system anytime soon. Right, But yeah, here's the butt. The butt is that the program, being incredibly ambitious, was also had problems, budgeting problems, There were a lot of issues, are some political issues at NASA.

I mean, it got kind of ugly in the mid to late two thousand's and by President Obama called for the end of the Constellation program kind of to to scrap the program m and start fresh with a new approach um, largely in light of new technologies and discoveries that had happened since they had started planning the Constellation program.

So it's incredibly disappointing for a lot of people. Others, Like I've seen some folks comment and say they felt that the Constellation program wasn't focused enough, and so they kind of thought, well, it was a terrible thing to happen to have this program scrapped, but it might have been the right thing to do. I was not in a place where I could comment on that one way or the other. Anytime any program for science gets canceled, uh, I get a little sad. But at any rate, the

development of the Orion vehicle continued. They decided that there were certain elements under the Constellation program that were worthy of of continued funding, and one of those was the Orion spacecraft. Another was the space launch system, which will be eventually what brings Orian into space, a heavy lifting rocket. For now, we're using Delta four rockets, but it'll be a different launch system further down the line, but that

one's not ready yet at any rate. The development of the Orion vehicle took place at the Johnson Space Center UM and now it's called the Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle the MPCV, although most people just still called Ryan and UM. So, yeah, that's that's kind of where we're at now. Like we're at the phase now where it went through all the design phase. It had been built out, and the test that we referred to earlier took place, which proved that the Orion systems are in fact space worthy, which is

pretty cool. That is super cool. Yes, yeah, it is, no, it's it's pretty I was very excited to see this thing tested. I was too, I remember. So it was originally going to be launched on a Thursday morning, right, and then that Thursday morning there was some weather issues, there were some boats. I think that we're maybe kind of too close to the launch site that there was there was also a technical issue with the spacecraft itself

some of the latches. They couldn't get a read on whether the latches had disengaged properly, so they had to they essentially had to do a control all delete on the system. They really did reboot the system. It was the It was the equivalent of turning it off and on again. Um, And they just could not get everything

in line before the launch window closed. Because there's only in order for them to actually do the missions they have planned, they have to launch in very specific windows of time, so they had to scrap it for twenty four hours. The next launch window opened at seven oh five a m. On Friday morning, and that's exactly when

they launched. They did not waste any time. So by the time I went to go and shoot my video about the Orion spacecraft, I already knew that the launch was successful, but I did not know if the splashdown would be. Yeah, we keep talking about this Orion capsule. Let's get into what's inside of it and what makes it go. Yeah, I was wondering how similar in the end it's going to be to the kinds of crew capsules we saw in the Apollo missions. Well, certainly the

exterior looks very similar, right, yeah, absolutely on purpose. In fact, the designers and engineers really wanted to mirror that that familiar, kind of nostalgic design that was used in Apollo, except you know, update it with the modern materials and technologies that we have in our hands today, right right, So, and and I mean those some things on it are not quite as contemporary as you would think for interesting reasons,

and we'll get to that later. Well, the interesting thing to me is that, I mean the Apollo spacecraft worked. It worked well. I mean the re entry into the atmosphere like one time, it didn't well more than one time, if we're going to be truly technical, because Apollo one was a terrible disaster, but that was that was a

test flight that went terribly wrong. But the the the design of the craft was and kind of elegant in its simplicity for the issue of re entry, right, They had a specific design that allowed it to re enter the your's atmosphere in a specific orientation, and that was pretty remarkable. So yeah, yeah, I should have I should have also mentioned that that it wasn't just that it you know, looked real cute. They it's also a very

effective shape for a capsule to be exactly. Yeah. So so if you were to look at the the launch of this, if you go back and watch the video and you take a look and you see this rocket, it's got this tall like tapered spire type uh cap to it, and you're looking for the Orion spacecraft like the actual module, you're gonna not see it because it's actually it is kept. It's kind of think of it like a cap of a pen. The very top of

the the launch system is actually a launch abort system. Now, this is a device that is meant to help the Orion spacecraft um uh escape if something were to go wrong at any point to the launch, even if it's on the launch pad itself, So from the launch pad all the way up into when the separation would happen between the Oriyan uh, the the well, the service module and the rocket. Right. So it's got its own set of thrusters. It's actually got three different motors on it.

One is the jettison motor that's just used to jettison the launch aboard system from the Oriyan crew module because eventually you're gonna need to remove that cap if you want to do something like, I don't know, look out the window, because otherwise you're just gonna see the interior of the launcherboard system cap on there. So the adjacent motor pulls the system away from the crew module once

the two detached, when they reach the proper altitude. Then you have the attitude control motor that allows for steering, so if you need to steer at all um you can use those. And then you've got the abort motor that's specifically in the case of an emergency, which can propel the module away from the launch pad or just the launch delivery system should something really go wrong. It can deploy in milliseconds. So as soon as a problem

is detected. And they've tested this out already, they've done tests of the launch a board system, they can activate it. The thrusters will fire and they're pretty powerful. I mean they can propel a crew up to a height of one mile at And this is a quote from NASA forty two times the speed of a drag race car, say the average speed of a drag race car. Again Nessa's Nessa loves to use these analogies for the Ryan

spacecraft in general. They also said that it provides enough thrust to lift twenty six elephants off the ground, But I don't know that they actually test elephants. Elephants your your average every day every every Joe elephant talking elephants. A yeah. I immediately went to like, is that an African or European? Of course, the African elephants are non migratory. Yeah, we're gonna get into a whole money players something now, folks, now, but then you're right, Um, it is interesting that it

has this very powerful aboard system. Well that's important because we've seen space launches turn very tragic. Exactly. Yeah, it's it's it's interesting that it's it's one of the elements that NASA was very much UM stressing was an important part, which you know, is kind of a departure from earlier launch aboard systems which were a little more rudimentary and not necessarily as effective. So UM, at any rate, once you get to the point where it it uh detaches,

that's important. You know, you can't have it on perpetually because that cap actually covers the part of the crew module where the parachutes would deploy, so you can't re enter the ourt's atmosphere with that that launch aboard system on. It has to be able to detach from the capsule in order for you to be able to descend properly, to have a controlled descent. Okay, I have another question. Okay, let's assume you're an astronaut who's incredib bleak claustrophobic. Okay,

it sounds like you've gone into the wrong profession. Not sure how you got through training. How tighter the quarters in the new crew module? Okay, So within the crew module, you have three sixteen cubic feet of space to move around in. That's about nine cubic meters. It's not a lot. Uh. And it is a crew module that can hold up to four astronauts. So with a full component crew component, you would have four people in three sixteen cubic feet

of space. It's not a lot of space. You would be working in pretty close quarters for quite some time. Remember this is a deep space space. You're going to Mars. You're going to be in a space this big for eight months better part of a year. Yeah, so that's a long time to be hanging out in a small room with three other people. Uh, it's they've got a

ping pong table. Yeah. So the bottom of the crew module itself, which, by the way, if you look the animations of Orion flying through space, you're gonna see that it has this extended area that's got a thruster on the back of it. That is the crew module and service module together. Um. Eventually those two separate. I'll talk about the service module more in just a second. But when they do separate, when it's time for the crew capsule to come down. Uh, that's the bottom of the

crew capsule is where the heat shield is. Yeah. The engineers actually redeveloped Apollo's heat shield material av coat. It's it's a brew of like fiberglass and plastics, and this particular coating is on the yourrine is designed to with stand temperatures up to uh some five thousand, five hundred degrees fahrenheit. I don't have a translation for that for celsius, but it's warm um and uh that would be the

re entry temperature for a return flight from Mars for example. Uh. And then if you were to look at the full the full component in the launch system, the bottom most part part that attaches to the rocket through a an adapter, UH, is the service module. Now the service module was built, or it will the the Finnish one will finally be built by the Airbus Defense and Space Company. It was

the one that we saw in the test flight. Was developed by the European Space Agency, so this was a partnership between NASA and the e s A. So e s A developed it and then they've given the contract to Airbus Defense and Space to do the production for the later space service modules. This is the part of the spacecraft that can hold unpressurized cargo, so you can think of it as like the cargo hold of the

Space Shuttle. It's similar to that. Uh. It also supplies the crew with oxygen and water as long as it's attached to the crew. Module, provides propulsion to move the spacecraft to proper orbits and course settings, etcetera, provides thermal control to the crew, and it also generates in stores electricity.

Has a solar panel array that it can deploy once you reach orbit or or you head out going right, and that solar panel array is what will capture solar power and convert to electricity for use on the spacecraft.

UM and then once you're coming back for re entry, that's the part that gets jettison last really until the and then the uh well that in the fairings around the Orion spacecraft as well, but all that gets jettison and then the Orion manipulates, you know, is oriented so that the bottom faces the surface of the Earth when it starts to come back in. So that's kind of an overview of what the systems are. Um. I've actually looked at some pictures, some mock ups of what the

interior of the spacecraft look like. So when you're in a launch situation, you're laying flat on your back, uh, and that's the position you would be in, although you're in a seated position because you're on a chair, but your your back is on the what would be the floor in a world with gravity, you're in a you're

in a diaper change position. Yeah, okay, well well, um so so you're in that position until the until you're able to unstrap once you're out in space, and then you can float around all willy nilly where there is no real upper down anymore. They probably are wearing diapers. Huh. Yeah, there's there's stories about it all the seccidence of being

an astronaut kids. Yeah, inclosed spaces with three other people that you're gonna become real close friends with over the next several months to a couple of years, depending on the mission. Um. Yeah, so this is um, it's an exciting thing. It's interesting. We haven't had any manned flights and that kind of brings us into what Orion is going to be used for. You mentioned one of them, Joe the trip to Mars, although that one's further down

the planned than other. Right. Well, in the old regime, the Constellation program, they were saying we were going to what returned to the Moon. In the idea was that the Moon was going to be our primary objective and then from there we would then start planning out trips to places like Mars. Is that still basically the idea or have we changed our minds kind of kind of changed things around a little a little bit. I think I think there's manned flights of it planned for for

testing around. Yeah, that would be the earliest. And the crew module has a docking station where it can dock with other spacecraft. The Apollo spacecraft and Jim and I spacecraft had these sort of things too. Um, So it may be that we see other types of uses of the Orion and the the closer future, but seems ambitious. A lot of people are saying that they doubt that is going to be when we see the first launches,

not necessarily because of technological issues, but because of financial ones. Politics. Yeah, so we need to fund these. In fact, you could argue that the test flight was a test of two things, the space worthiness of the Orion capsule and NASA's ability to drum up excitement and enthusiasm for the space program. Both. I would say, we're really successful. Yeah, if you were on Twitter on Friday morning when the spacecraft went up, you could not help but see tons of tweets about this.

Though then again, I wonder if a lot of those were coming from the kind of people who are very interested in space anyway. So what does it take to break through to the person who doesn't really give a flip about space day to day. I don't know what I mean, apart from showing just the amazing videos and pictures that have been taken over the course of the space program. I'm not really entirely sure. Yeah, that that

really is kind of the golden question there. But getting them while they're young helps definitely, So That's that's part of it though, right, because I mean we're talking we're looking out several years. The people that they're the who will be the astronauts in one they're in school now, you know. Yeah. Well, okay, So, as I was saying a second ago, the Moon landing kind of did it. I mean, everybody cared about that, and I'm wondering, what's the thing we should put our feet on that will

get people really excited again. Well, well we've we've the Ryan Project has moved away from the moon concept. They're now talking about landing on an asteroid, captured captured asteroid. That is so cool. I think is the timeline they're thinking about if all else goes well, and this would

be you know, for multiple reasons. One, I mean, we have a legitimate interest in asteroids and finding out their physical makeup other things that we just we don't know that we don't know, right, I mean, there's stuff we don't know because we don't know. I'm almost more excited about asteroids than I am about Mars asteroids. There are a lot more practical, pretty pretty decent early arcade game too, And that's also accurately a lot When I was a

kid science. Yeah, so, so this would be kind of instead of the Moon acting as the stepping stone toward longer voyages. Uh, the asteroid mission would be in part beyond doing the basic science of testing the asteroid for finding out what it's physical makeup is, all that kind of stuff, it would also be to test the actual um capabilities of the Orion spacecraft in preparation for longer missions. And those longer missions would be the trip to Mars,

which is an enormous goal. We have covered it many times on this podcast to talk about how big a deal it is to go to Mars, because in order to just get there, you have to wait until Earth and Mars are lined up in their orbits so that you minimize the amount of time it's going to take to get from Earth to Mars. Uh. That by minimize, we're talking still between six and eight months, sometimes nine months,

depending upon exactly when the window is. Then once you get there, by the time you get there, Earth and Mars are no longer in that ideal alignment anymore, you're gonna have to wait two years more or less until you get to those same conditions where you can make that same return trip from Mars to Earth and not acquire an enormous amount of fuel that I don't know where you would get it unless you're actually converting the raw material of Mars into fuel, which is a possibility.

That's one of the other things that I'm looking into. So anyway, it's a huge, huge challenge, and the Orion is supposed to be the spacecraft that will get us. They're using NASA's approach. Yeah, they're they're hoping that some time and say the twenty thirties, that might be able to happen. Yeah, And and so contrast that with the Mars one Colony plan to get people on Mars by early next Tuesday. Yeah, it's it's yeah, sorry, I'm being that was that was overly dismissive. I think we can

be a little dismissive. Um, I mean, I don't. I don't wish any project to fail. It just seems like that one is particularly ambitious. It's hard to balance enthusiasm and a kind of motivating enthusiasm with being realistic because at the same time, you could have been living in the sixties and been super critical of Kennedy for setting up the space timeline he did. Do you know what

I mean. Yet you could also argue that that ambitious timeline really did motivate us and our scientists to work harder and to be more inspired and to get it done. The Cold War didn't didn't hurt. The Space race was a race. There was a you know, it was it was a competition in any ways. And part of the issue maybe that we feel like there's less pressure now, like there's not this political reason to demonstrate our superiority of getting things really far where they started. Absolutely I am,

I do think that that's valid. I would be more apt to be less cynical about the Mars one if they were choosing to fund it with anything but reality TV, which just yeah, yeah, yeah, even if you even if you love reality television, the ability to raise enough money to send a mission to Mars, that's a that would have to be the most successful reality television program, right because we're talking billions of dollars here. It's not cheap.

So I thought it would be fun also to talk about some of the other things that didn't really fit into the other parts of the podcast, and one of those is this is fun facts about it, right, Yeah. The first one is fun fact Hey do you know, radiation could kill you. Yeah, we talked about this every time Mars comes up. So you know, being on Earth is really nice because Earth is a big umbrella from all of the energy out there in the universe that wants to kill us. It's also where I keep all

my stuff. So if we're traveling beyond the protective barriers provided by Earth's magnetosphere, by Earth's atmosphere, we're in trouble. Right. There is high energy things out in space. There's solar radiation, there's cosmic radiation, their cosmic rays. Uh, it's not good for you know, these are things that can cause some some damage. Sometimes it can be severe damage, and you

want to limit that as much as possible. So you if you're on a multi month mission to get to Mars, I mean, once you get to Mars, you still have to worry about radiation, but just the journey from Earth to Mars is gonna be problematic. You've got to figure out how to protect the astronauts from detect yourself with reality TV. And now in this case, you protect yourself with pretty much everything that's on board the spacecraft. UH, the official UH policy or the procedure that you're supposed

to follow. In case the spacecraft detects radiation, then there are specific sensors on the spacecraft meant to detect cosmic radiation solar radiation. You get an alert and then everybody moves to the back. You all go to the aft section of the spacecraft. It's it's sort of like it's sort like getting into the seller when the tornadoes coming, except your sellers is protecting you with all of your food and water supply exactly, because you become the junk

in the trunk. Yeah, that's true. So you've got that that heat shielding that Lauren talked about earlier. That's that's to your back essentially, right, so that that part can absorb quite a bit of radiation. And then you put everything in front of you that you can, like, you know, the water chairs exactly. You you get your stuff. And the reasoning for this is that if you are already able to make use of things that are already aboard the spacecraft, you don't have to add more material and

therefore add more weight to the shield exactly. So it's kind of a a jerry rigged approach, but if it's effective, then it's awesome. This is kind of similar to an approach we've talked about before for long space missions, which was the idea of using initially water and food resources as radiation shielding, and then as the mission goes on, using human waste as radiation shielding, which has high water content and turns out that provides pretty good shielding. Yeah.

So it's essentially that methodology that they're talking about. Uh. Then there's also the the part about what do you do how do you get the capsule once it returns to Earth? Right, because in the old days we I'm sure that you've seen footage from the old newsreels of of navy teams going out and like pulling the astronauts directly out of the capsule in the middle of the

ocean onto lifeboats, no one really looking very excited about it. Yeah, and this is this is not necessarily going to work for some of these longer missions where people have been outside of Earth's conditions for prolonged periods of time. Like going to the Moon and back that was several days. But if you're talking about going to Mars and bag that's like almost three years total. You know, in space and on microgravity, and Mars has one third of it's gravity.

So no matter what, you don't have the benefit of full Earth gravity while you're out there. And there's not a whole lot of room to put some exercise bikes on board this this spacecraft. So they're they're real concerns about, you know, being gentle on the astronauts, making sure you have the safest way for them to get out of there. So once it splashes down, and we should also mention

the splashdown thing is is a boon. You might think, well, that seems primitive, but when you think about it, first of all, there's way more water on Earth than there is land. So that's that you don't have to go and pick out a specific runway for your ship to return to. If you're aiming for the Pacific, you've got a pretty good shot. Yeah, So it's the window, the window of re entry is way larger than it would be if you had to aim for a specific spot

on Earth. Right, you've got a much larger area to play with. Um. So, once it splashes down, uh, the Navy would go out to retrieve it, and first they would send out some uh, some various boats, either some rigid inflatable and some zodiac style boats, motor boats. The teams are called amphibious space specialists amphibious specialist, so they're frogs that um uh. And if you're an amphibious specialist and I just used a terrible term to describe you,

I apologize. Some of my best friends are squids. So if you feel better, that's sub mariners at any rate. So you go out. They go out there and they tow the the spacecraft back to a Navy vessel which has a well deck flooded. Now this is this is something that can be accessed from essentially the ocean. The Navy team pulls the the spacecraft into the well deck which has water in it, and then the water is

drained from the well deck. A platform is brought in and then there the astronauts are allowed to climb out of the capsule and then they immediately go to a medical checkup. As soon as they are out, they go to be looked over by a doctor to make sure

that they are in good health. The Navy started testing this procedure around twenty their teen or so, and they found that it really is the safest thing for for the astronauts and uh the most efficient process, the best use of the equipment that they have available, right, Yeah, okay, so here's another thing. Yeah, I mentioned earlier that not everything on board the Orion's necessarily the most state of

the art equipment they could afford. In fact, in some cases, they might be looking back to an older technology to provide some of these vital systems on board the craft. Now, why would they do that and what would they what would they get that wasn't absolutely the newest thing they could get. So the processor powering the Orion's computer system

is probably what you're you're alluding to. It's like IBM power PC seven fifty f X, which, for those of you have been working with computers for a decade or more, you probably familiar with the term power pc. Those were found in old Apple computers before they switched over and changed their their processor types. Um, the IBM power Pc went on the market in two thousand two, and you're thinking, it's fourteen. Why are we using a processor that's older

than than a decade? Well, the I found six sold out really fast. That was one thing, you know, that six plus everyone wanted one of those. They haven't had a docking station in the spacecraft. The real reason is because it's dependable. It's the reason you go with older technology is that you have a proven history of reliability. And the worry is that if you go with brand new technology, like the cutting edge stuff, the stuff that's just rolling out of Silicon Valley, it may not have

that reliability. And what if you're if people's lives depend upon the technology, you better make sure it's reliable. And that's the main reason. What's also kind of interesting about it is that there are multiple power PC chips. Uh. They have actually three computer systems on board that are

all redundant. The reason being that if you encounter radiation, it could require that you reboot a computer system, and you can't go without a computer system, even for just twenty seconds, which is how long the reboot process takes. So you have a backup system. But what if the backup system goes down, Well, then you have a third backup or a third system that acts as a second backup.

I guess I should say, and Uh, the odds of all three systems going down, according to geek dot com, which talked about this extensively, are one in one million, eight hundred seventy thousand missions, So the odds are low. That you would lose all three systems that one. I would like to think that by the time we start getting up to a point where statistically speaking we'd be worried about that, we'd be using a different kind of

spacecraft anyway. But at any rate, the each computer system has two of these chips, and the chips aren't working like you know we think of multi core processors. These are single core processors. By the way, we think a multi core processors as ways of of taking complex tasks and dividing them up so that we can do them more quickly. That's not why the computer systems have two processors each. They have them so that they are both working on the same set of data at the same

time and error checking each other. If the if the findings are coming up uh different from one another, then they know they need to reboot that system because something has gone wrong with one or both processors. So it's kind of an early alert system for when you need to do a control al delete, which is kind of cool. Also, the the equipment in general, like the circuit boards, the the paneling, everything is is much thicker than what you

would find with terrestrial electronics. And again that's to absorb some of this radiation before it has a chance to affect the electronic components. So very practical approach, which makes sense, right, And what's interesting to me is that if you look at the instrumentation panels, they look, you know, a lot lots of physical switches, lots of of like oscillating kind

of you know, it looks like nineteen sixties technology. It's almost precisely the opposite of what you see in Elon Musk's Dragon capsule mock ups right where it looks more like an Apple product. So it's really interesting to see how NASA is taking this approach. They're saying, look, we want First of all, we want funding, and if we're going to get funding, we have to prove that this

technology works. We don't have you know, we are not a private organization, so we have to make sure that we can prove the things we say are going to actually be effective. Yeah, and then we want the most reliable things possible, even if they're less convenient. Then yeah, it may be it may not be as sexy as the dragon capsule. But just to me was interesting, like if you compare the two and you look at at

the interiors of both how different they appear from one another. Um. Also, you know, kind of on a similar note, I wonder if the private space industry is going to be an issue with getting funding for the Orion program, simply because if I'm a politician and I'm presented with a proposal from NASA saying we need X billion dollars to fund this particular mission, and then I look over and I say, well, look, Elon Musk is over there at SpaceX doing it on

his own dime, and I don't have to spend anything. I worry that's going to become a disincentive to fund the NASA program. I certainly hope that's not the case. I think we need both. Yeah, yeah, I hope that it's going to be more the case of of both both organizations working together and and kind of helping each

other out. You know, the sort of thing where, uh, NASA has rented a couple of its launchpads to SpaceX for for example, and SpaceX has provided some equipment to NASA, and that they feed each other more more like a more like a friend ice cream social in low gravity, um and and less of a competition. And I don't I don't see I don't think of SpaceX as as presenting itself as a competitor to NASA. I'm just worried that people who are in charge of the wallets can't

see it that way. Maybe that's just me being a little bit of a worry ward personally. I I really hope that the funding comes through. I found the Orion launched to be incredibly inspiring. I cry every time there's a launch, just it's even if I'm not watching it. I just somewhere I feel it. There's a great diserbance in the forest, and I just cried. I also got a little I got a little weepy. Actually, I was worried that I wasn't gonna be able to get through

a video take without tearing up, but I did. I did so. Yeah, there are two things I always tear up at launches and lunches. Two things. Yeah, lunch is pretty good, lunch is awesome. All right, Well this was this was fun and of course very timely. I hope if you guys out there had a chance that you caught the Orion launched. There our videos obviously of the launch. If you didn't get a chance to see it live. I didn't get a chance to see it live, so I watched the video after the fact. Uh, but very

very cool and really exciting stuff. If you have any suggestions for topics we should tackle in future episodes of forward Thinking, why don't you send us an email that addresses f W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or you can drop us a line over at Google Plus or Twitter or Facebook. At Google Plus and Twitter, we have to handle f W thinking. Just search f W thinking in Facebook. We'll pop right up. Don't forget

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