At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the agency’s Orion spacecraft pauses in front of the spaceport’s iconic Vehicle Assembly Building as it is transported to Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station where, upon arrival arrival at the launch pad, United Launch Alliance engineers and technicians placed Orion atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket.
Image Credit: NASA/Frankie Martin
Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle there has been no U.S. based manned launch capability The Orion capsule along with the SLS rocket is the answer to this problem. One piece of this answer is set to launch on December 4th, Although the SLS rocket is not ready the Orion capsule will take it’s first unmanned flight atop a Delta IV heavy lift rocket.
Related: Will NASA SLS Rocket survive when ARES did not?
Launch is scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 4 2014 at 7:05 a.m. EST from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) in Florida. The window for launch is two hours 39 minutes.
Test flight diagram
Credit NASA
NASA TV launch commentary of the flight, designated Exploration Flight Test-1, begins at 4:30 a.m. and will continue through splashdown in the Pacific Ocean approximately 600 miles southwest of San Diego.
This will be a short flight and is deigned to test the Orion systems and simulate a high speed orbital re-entry. The spacecraft will orbit Earth twice and travel to an altitude of 3,600 miles into space. This flight will test many of the elements that pose the greatest risk to astronauts and will provide critical data needed to improve Orion’s design and reduce risks to future mission crews.
This launch is a fraud on the public. The Delta IV Heavy is not human rated, and I doubt that it can be made so without a reduction of what that standard means based on what things NASA has published to date. I also see an exposure interval during which it is hard to believe that the capsule and/or any occupants could survive. Also, the requirement to safely separate the LAS provides a window of vulnerability. All this stands in opposition to the billions spent on the Orion system, which still lacks the service module necessary for it to do anything of interest. Should it acquire that service module and that is properly tested, the duo have no actual missions other than one test described and funded. There is no Lunar lander nor Mars lander with associated return vehicle. At this point, it appears that the SLS is scheduled to carry humans on its second launch, which certainly indicates a risk profile beyond what should be attempted. Also, that EM-2 flight would not occur until at least 2021 with an interim vehicle that has no real future. Much of the initial hardware is to be disposed of as we move on to the higher capacity versions. That includes the J2-X engine on which so much treasure has been expended. It is hard to see any specific version receiving enough flights to even seem reliable by the most charitable evaluation.
To quote from the wiki, “During the joint Senate-NASA presentation in September 2011, it was stated that the SLS program has a projected development cost of $18 billion through 2017, with $10 billion for the SLS rocket, $6 billion for the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and $2 billion for upgrades to the launch pad and other facilities at Kennedy Space Center.[66] These costs and schedule are considered optimistic in an independent 2011 cost assessment report by Booz Allen Hamilton for NASA.” Also to quote from the wiki, “Others suggest it will cost less to use an existing lower payload capacity rocket (Atlas V, Delta IV, Falcon 9, or the derivative Falcon Heavy), with on-orbit assembly and propellant depots as needed, rather than develop a new launch vehicle for space exploration without competition for the whole design.[87][88][89][90][91] The Augustine commission proposed an option for a commercial 75 metric ton launcher with lower operating costs, and noted that a 40 to 60 t launcher can support lunar exploration.”
At this point, nobody knows what the Block II hardware will really look like or whether it will really fly, so the idea that a true HLLV with lead us into deep space in some reasonable manner is dependent on a set of pipe dreams that may not and IMO should not ever happen. If sufficient contracts/missions are available, it is apparent that the Falcon Heavy will be able to assemble on orbit anything that our future in space requires and it will be available at least 6 years before SLS of any variety flies. What it can evolve into by the time SLS is available I hesitate to even predict.
What the Orion is to do on the 4th is something the Dragon could have accomplished several years ago and yet NASA will trumpet it as a great accomplishment. With a bit of luck, even this transparently useless mission will fail, exposing the totality of the fraud.
Wow! How do you really feel! You had a number of good points. Also remember the SLS will cost a total of 41 Billion by the time its done. NASAs entire yearly budget is about 17 billion. So several years of ENTIRE NASA budgets is being consumed. As for the Manned rated argument and the need to have a NASA build Manned rated rocket…the Space Shuttle was man rated….need I say more. Man rated or not reliability of rockets does not go up that much…if any. We are at a tipping point where the commercial sector may be able to indeed do it faster, better, and cheaper…not just two of the three. By the way…NASA does not really build the SLS…contractors do.