Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, and Welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast that
Speaker 1: looks at the future and says he's just a guy
Speaker 1: made of dots and lines. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren
Speaker 1: foc Obon, and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey, guys, how are
Speaker 1: you doing today? I'm out of this world? Oh I
Speaker 1: see what he did there. We're talking today about Oriyan
Speaker 1: the spacecraft. Yeah, the constellation, though someone might be led
Speaker 1: to believe the constellation because I think you were just
Speaker 1: talking about connecting dots and lines. Maybe that might have
Speaker 1: been a song about it. Well, what is the Orion spacecraft?
Speaker 1: Because I saw some people going nuts about it on
Speaker 1: the internet the other day. Yeah, including coworkers. Absolutely. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so myself, you saw yourself. It was an out of
Speaker 1: body experience. Um yeah. Yeah. On on Friday December at
Speaker 1: seven oh five a m. The Orion Exploration Flight Test
Speaker 1: one launched from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This was an important step in a very long and
Speaker 1: winding Uh. Well, I would say road, but really, spacecraft
Speaker 1: don't take those that often well, in this particular test
Speaker 1: flight was not a very long and winding road, was it,
Speaker 1: I mean where it didn't go out to Jupiter or something. Uh? No,
Speaker 1: it circled the Earth twice uh and then splashed down
Speaker 1: the Pacific Ocean off the coast Baja California at a
Speaker 1: mirror four hours later at nine am at Eastern Standard time.
Speaker 1: So I was so excited to watch that I was
Speaker 1: actually watching it live streaming. I was feigning my ignorance,
Speaker 1: I was. I was sadly I was talking about it
Speaker 1: on camera without being able to actually watch it. I
Speaker 1: knew that I knew it had been successfully launched, but
Speaker 1: I had not been able to actually watch it. That's
Speaker 1: the that's the futurist equivalent of being a sad clown.
Speaker 1: Isn't it talking about you can't watch the present because
Speaker 1: you're talking about the future. Yeah, that was you know,
Speaker 1: that was kind of where I was going with that. Um.
Speaker 1: I also like to have my portrait on on velvet thing.
Speaker 1: I like, Well, anyway, this test flight I thought was
Speaker 1: really inspiring and exciting. And you might be asking, what's
Speaker 1: the big deal? They were just flying some space vehicle.
Speaker 1: Wasn't like there was anybody in it. Right, Well, to
Speaker 1: know what the big deal is, you got to know
Speaker 1: some history. So so we got to back up and
Speaker 1: then we'll get to the big deal. Right. So December nineteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two, was a momentous day, an important day
Speaker 1: in the world's space exploration work. It was the day
Speaker 1: when the Apollo seventeen spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific. Now,
Speaker 1: this marked the end of a mission that sent astronauts
Speaker 1: to the Moon. Those astronauts being John Young, Charles Duke Jr.
Speaker 1: And Stewart Russa. And they were the last human beings
Speaker 1: to ever go beyond low Earth orbit. That's right, So
Speaker 1: not just the last human beings to go to the
Speaker 1: Moon so far, but the last to go more than
Speaker 1: a few hundred miles beyond the surface of the Earth. Well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about what low Earth orbit means, because there's
Speaker 1: there's it's terminology that isn't I mean, like orbit is
Speaker 1: pretty high, right, And and also just the fact that
Speaker 1: you know, things like definitions like space outer space, where
Speaker 1: does that begin? They all get a little fuzzy because
Speaker 1: there's not like a you know, there's not like a sign.
Speaker 1: And if do you pass a certain point, the science
Speaker 1: has welcome to outer space. But but these are the
Speaker 1: designations we have given specific areas of orbit around the Earth.
Speaker 1: So low Eer the orbit, that's where a lot of
Speaker 1: our space stuff is, Like the International Space Station, the
Speaker 1: Hubble Space Telescope, these are all in low Earth orbit.
Speaker 1: They're not further out, and that ends at about two
Speaker 1: thousand kilometers out from the US of the Earth, so
Speaker 1: one thousand, two hundred forty three point seven miles. I
Speaker 1: always forget how close exactly the International Space Station really is.
Speaker 1: It's it's only a mirror like four hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: one kilometers a k a. Two hundred and sixty eight
Speaker 1: miles above the surface of the area. Yeah, it's close
Speaker 1: enough where you can actually see it when it passes overhead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very close. Especially it is zoomed out view. If
Speaker 1: you were to step way back from the Earth and look,
Speaker 1: it's sort of like in the upper sky. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing that how close it is relatively speaking. Next,
Speaker 1: that we have the medium Earth orbit, because if you
Speaker 1: have lowerth orbit, there's got to be something else, right,
Speaker 1: There's gotta be some other designation. Medium Earth orbit extends
Speaker 1: out to thirty five thousand, seven six kilometers or twenty
Speaker 1: two thousand, two hundred thirty six miles. So from two
Speaker 1: thousand kilometers to thirty five thousand, seven six that's medium
Speaker 1: Earth orbit. We're talking about a much larger area than
Speaker 1: lowerth orbit, right, and you're gonna notice that every time
Speaker 1: we go a little further out the actual area that
Speaker 1: we designate gets larger. So is this where you would
Speaker 1: find geosynchronous satellites exactly? This is where satellites that are
Speaker 1: in geosynchronous orbit inhabit, and those were placed there by
Speaker 1: unmanned missions. It's not like we flew some spacecraft out there,
Speaker 1: astronauts popped out plopped to satellite into geosynchronous orbits. That
Speaker 1: all right, good work, boys, let's go on home, clock out.
Speaker 1: That's not the way that works. Uh. Further out from
Speaker 1: there you have high Earth orbit, which goes way way
Speaker 1: out where you know, including things like the Moon, which
Speaker 1: is three hundred eighty four thousand, four hundred kilometers or
Speaker 1: two nine hundred miles away from the surface of the Earth.
Speaker 1: So that's you know, a really good johnt. And like
Speaker 1: we said, space Shuttle program only stayed in lower th orbit.
Speaker 1: Never went beyond it. Only twenty four human beings have
Speaker 1: ever been beyond lowerth orbit, and those are the people
Speaker 1: who are in the Apollo program. Now, this is kind
Speaker 1: of weird if you were a space enthusiast and you
Speaker 1: don't often consider the fact, but it has been more
Speaker 1: than forty years since humans went beyond I think the
Speaker 1: farthest they've been since the end of the Apollo program
Speaker 1: was to service the Hubble Space Telescope. I think you
Speaker 1: might be right on that. I could be wrong if
Speaker 1: you're a NASA geek out there with awesome knowledge about
Speaker 1: anybody went a little bit farther than that. But definitely,
Speaker 1: no one's been beyond low Earth orbit. Right, we have
Speaker 1: stayed really really close to the surface of the Earth
Speaker 1: for more than forty years humans have. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: and the question yeah, of course. We meanwhile have Voyager
Speaker 1: leaving the Solar System. So it took us like six
Speaker 1: or seven tries to say, okay, voyagers left the Solars.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, wait, alright now, now Voyager left the
Speaker 1: Solar System two years ago, right, exactly the part right,
Speaker 1: the best part. I was like, Okay, we can now
Speaker 1: confirm for a fact that two years ago. But the
Speaker 1: interesting thing to me is that imagine that, you know,
Speaker 1: we're none of us were alive when the Apollo mission
Speaker 1: went to the Moon. Even even me, despite what you're
Speaker 1: going to hear in a future podcast, I was not
Speaker 1: alive in nineteen seventy two. But can you imagine if
Speaker 1: you were alive during that era where we were sending
Speaker 1: missions to the Moon, and sent multiple missions to the Moon,
Speaker 1: that would you imagine that for the next four decades
Speaker 1: we wouldn't send anyone further out. That seems like that
Speaker 1: was going backward. Yeah, it's like we've retreated from battle
Speaker 1: with space. Yea space space right, space slapped us around
Speaker 1: a little bit, and we said, you know what, we
Speaker 1: need to figure this out before we try it again.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, there are definitely conversations to have,
Speaker 1: like whether or not manned space exploration is a real
Speaker 1: benefit compared to something like the robotics approach. All those
Speaker 1: conversations we have had multiple times on this podcast. We
Speaker 1: just want to talk about the new approach until once
Speaker 1: again go beyond low Earth orbit. And that's what the
Speaker 1: Orion spacecraft is all about. Right, So the big deal
Speaker 1: is this is how human beings are going to get
Speaker 1: way the heck out there in the future, at least
Speaker 1: the ones who are going on NASA's time. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's this and listening to Timothy Leary, So the as
Speaker 1: an overview of the Orion Crew Vehicle project, you actually
Speaker 1: need to go back a little bit too, because it
Speaker 1: kind of evolved over time. So in the mid two thousand's,
Speaker 1: that's when NASA unveiled a proposal for a continued human
Speaker 1: exploration of space, originally called the Vision for Space Exploration. Uh,
Speaker 1: this was a big thing during George W. Bush's administration.
Speaker 1: It was really inspiring. It was this very ambitious plan,
Speaker 1: and then there was a change of leadership at NASA
Speaker 1: and it became even more ambitious. It became it was
Speaker 1: renamed into the Constellation Project, and as a part of
Speaker 1: that renaming, they also decided to rename the the Crew
Speaker 1: Exploration Vehicle and call it Orian Exploration Vehicle. I I
Speaker 1: don't believe we said, but that was the name that
Speaker 1: the shuttle was going to have. Yeah, well his name,
Speaker 1: thank yeah, so, but exactly that's what it was going
Speaker 1: to be, the Crew Exploration Vehicle. Now it's called Orian. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and because again Orian was also a constellation apart
Speaker 1: from the place in mythology, and plans were that it
Speaker 1: would fly by two thousand fourteen, at least in tests,
Speaker 1: which turns out actually came to pass despite a lot
Speaker 1: of changes in the program. So originally, before the Orion
Speaker 1: was going to be built, there was going to be
Speaker 1: another space vehicle called the orbital space plane. And before
Speaker 1: that there was going to be any different space vehicle
Speaker 1: that was unnamed, but it was going to be built
Speaker 1: by lockeed Martin. There was going to be a suborbital
Speaker 1: space plane. So those were more like direct Shuttle replacements
Speaker 1: than a deep space spacecraft. So just to clarify, I
Speaker 1: think what you said is pretty good, But can you
Speaker 1: clarify the difference between a spacecraft and a space plane. Sure,
Speaker 1: space plane tends to be suborbital or very lower th orbit. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so there's altitude only goes out so far. Maybe
Speaker 1: as a replacement for the Shuttle program, it could also
Speaker 1: be a delivery system for smaller craft that would be
Speaker 1: piggybacking onto the suborbital plane. So you would have a
Speaker 1: sub orbital plane takeoff, reach an extremely high altitude, and
Speaker 1: then you would have a second launch off of the
Speaker 1: plane of a smaller craft that would head into orbit,
Speaker 1: but those plans were scrapped uh, and the Orion was
Speaker 1: the new approach once that had happened. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: there was a precedent already for planned aircraft getting canceled
Speaker 1: before it got to the full build out stage. So
Speaker 1: there was no guarantee that Orion wasn't going to suffer
Speaker 1: the same fate. So what's the Constellation project gonna do? Well,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna do anything now because well, the the
Speaker 1: one of the many one of the one of the
Speaker 1: many plans was that they were going to send a
Speaker 1: return mission to the Moon by twenty uh. They were
Speaker 1: also going to use the under the Constellation program, there
Speaker 1: was a completion of the International Space Station planned in there.
Speaker 1: Uh and also to extend human presence quote beyond our
Speaker 1: Solar system end quote. That's pretty ambitious. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know if human presence necessarily means manned mission. Though human
Speaker 1: presence maybe this was a man made object that we
Speaker 1: sent beyond the Solar System. We're going to throw a ball, really,
Speaker 1: unless they're working on warp drive or something, I don't
Speaker 1: think we're going beyond the Solar system anytime soon. Right,
Speaker 1: But yeah, here's the butt. The butt is that the program,
Speaker 1: being incredibly ambitious, was also had problems, budgeting problems, There
Speaker 1: were a lot of issues, are some political issues at NASA.
Speaker 1: I mean, it got kind of ugly in the mid
Speaker 1: to late two thousand's and by President Obama called for
Speaker 1: the end of the Constellation program kind of to to
Speaker 1: scrap the program m and start fresh with a new
Speaker 1: approach um, largely in light of new technologies and discoveries
Speaker 1: that had happened since they had started planning the Constellation program.
Speaker 1: So it's incredibly disappointing for a lot of people. Others,
Speaker 1: Like I've seen some folks comment and say they felt
Speaker 1: that the Constellation program wasn't focused enough, and so they
Speaker 1: kind of thought, well, it was a terrible thing to
Speaker 1: happen to have this program scrapped, but it might have
Speaker 1: been the right thing to do. I was not in
Speaker 1: a place where I could comment on that one way
Speaker 1: or the other. Anytime any program for science gets canceled, uh,
Speaker 1: I get a little sad. But at any rate, the
Speaker 1: development of the Orion vehicle continued. They decided that there
Speaker 1: were certain elements under the Constellation program that were worthy
Speaker 1: of of continued funding, and one of those was the
Speaker 1: Orion spacecraft. Another was the space launch system, which will
Speaker 1: be eventually what brings Orian into space, a heavy lifting rocket.
Speaker 1: For now, we're using Delta four rockets, but it'll be
Speaker 1: a different launch system further down the line, but that
Speaker 1: one's not ready yet at any rate. The development of
Speaker 1: the Orion vehicle took place at the Johnson Space Center
Speaker 1: UM and now it's called the Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle
Speaker 1: the MPCV, although most people just still called Ryan and UM. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of where we're at now. Like we're
Speaker 1: at the phase now where it went through all the
Speaker 1: design phase. It had been built out, and the test
Speaker 1: that we referred to earlier took place, which proved that
Speaker 1: the Orion systems are in fact space worthy, which is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. That is super cool. Yes, yeah, it is, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty I was very excited to see this
Speaker 1: thing tested. I was too, I remember. So it was
Speaker 1: originally going to be launched on a Thursday morning, right,
Speaker 1: and then that Thursday morning there was some weather issues,
Speaker 1: there were some boats. I think that we're maybe kind
Speaker 1: of too close to the launch site that there was
Speaker 1: there was also a technical issue with the spacecraft itself
Speaker 1: some of the latches. They couldn't get a read on
Speaker 1: whether the latches had disengaged properly, so they had to
Speaker 1: they essentially had to do a control all delete on
Speaker 1: the system. They really did reboot the system. It was
Speaker 1: the It was the equivalent of turning it off and
Speaker 1: on again. Um, And they just could not get everything
Speaker 1: in line before the launch window closed. Because there's only
Speaker 1: in order for them to actually do the missions they
Speaker 1: have planned, they have to launch in very specific windows
Speaker 1: of time, so they had to scrap it for twenty
Speaker 1: four hours. The next launch window opened at seven oh
Speaker 1: five a m. On Friday morning, and that's exactly when
Speaker 1: they launched. They did not waste any time. So by
Speaker 1: the time I went to go and shoot my video
Speaker 1: about the Orion spacecraft, I already knew that the launch
Speaker 1: was successful, but I did not know if the splashdown
Speaker 1: would be. Yeah, we keep talking about this Orion capsule.
Speaker 1: Let's get into what's inside of it and what makes
Speaker 1: it go. Yeah, I was wondering how similar in the
Speaker 1: end it's going to be to the kinds of crew
Speaker 1: capsules we saw in the Apollo missions. Well, certainly the
Speaker 1: exterior looks very similar, right, yeah, absolutely on purpose. In fact,
Speaker 1: the designers and engineers really wanted to mirror that that familiar,
Speaker 1: kind of nostalgic design that was used in Apollo, except
Speaker 1: you know, update it with the modern materials and technologies
Speaker 1: that we have in our hands today, right right, So,
Speaker 1: and and I mean those some things on it are
Speaker 1: not quite as contemporary as you would think for interesting reasons,
Speaker 1: and we'll get to that later. Well, the interesting thing
Speaker 1: to me is that, I mean the Apollo spacecraft worked.
Speaker 1: It worked well. I mean the re entry into the
Speaker 1: atmosphere like one time, it didn't well more than one time,
Speaker 1: if we're going to be truly technical, because Apollo one
Speaker 1: was a terrible disaster, but that was that was a
Speaker 1: test flight that went terribly wrong. But the the the
Speaker 1: design of the craft was and kind of elegant in
Speaker 1: its simplicity for the issue of re entry, right, They
Speaker 1: had a specific design that allowed it to re enter
Speaker 1: the your's atmosphere in a specific orientation, and that was
Speaker 1: pretty remarkable. So yeah, yeah, I should have I should
Speaker 1: have also mentioned that that it wasn't just that it
Speaker 1: you know, looked real cute. They it's also a very
Speaker 1: effective shape for a capsule to be exactly. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: so if you were to look at the the launch
Speaker 1: of this, if you go back and watch the video
Speaker 1: and you take a look and you see this rocket,
Speaker 1: it's got this tall like tapered spire type uh cap
Speaker 1: to it, and you're looking for the Orion spacecraft like
Speaker 1: the actual module, you're gonna not see it because it's
Speaker 1: actually it is kept. It's kind of think of it
Speaker 1: like a cap of a pen. The very top of
Speaker 1: the the launch system is actually a launch abort system. Now,
Speaker 1: this is a device that is meant to help the
Speaker 1: Orion spacecraft um uh escape if something were to go
Speaker 1: wrong at any point to the launch, even if it's
Speaker 1: on the launch pad itself, So from the launch pad
Speaker 1: all the way up into when the separation would happen
Speaker 1: between the Oriyan uh, the the well, the service module
Speaker 1: and the rocket. Right. So it's got its own set
Speaker 1: of thrusters. It's actually got three different motors on it.
Speaker 1: One is the jettison motor that's just used to jettison
Speaker 1: the launch aboard system from the Oriyan crew module because
Speaker 1: eventually you're gonna need to remove that cap if you
Speaker 1: want to do something like, I don't know, look out
Speaker 1: the window, because otherwise you're just gonna see the interior
Speaker 1: of the launcherboard system cap on there. So the adjacent
Speaker 1: motor pulls the system away from the crew module once
Speaker 1: the two detached, when they reach the proper altitude. Then
Speaker 1: you have the attitude control motor that allows for steering,
Speaker 1: so if you need to steer at all um you
Speaker 1: can use those. And then you've got the abort motor
Speaker 1: that's specifically in the case of an emergency, which can
Speaker 1: propel the module away from the launch pad or just
Speaker 1: the launch delivery system should something really go wrong. It
Speaker 1: can deploy in milliseconds. So as soon as a problem
Speaker 1: is detected. And they've tested this out already, they've done
Speaker 1: tests of the launch a board system, they can activate it.
Speaker 1: The thrusters will fire and they're pretty powerful. I mean
Speaker 1: they can propel a crew up to a height of
Speaker 1: one mile at And this is a quote from NASA
Speaker 1: forty two times the speed of a drag race car,
Speaker 1: say the average speed of a drag race car. Again
Speaker 1: Nessa's Nessa loves to use these analogies for the Ryan
Speaker 1: spacecraft in general. They also said that it provides enough
Speaker 1: thrust to lift twenty six elephants off the ground, But
Speaker 1: I don't know that they actually test elephants. Elephants your
Speaker 1: your average every day every every Joe elephant talking elephants.
Speaker 1: A yeah. I immediately went to like, is that an
Speaker 1: African or European? Of course, the African elephants are non migratory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get into a whole money players something now, folks, now,
Speaker 1: but then you're right, Um, it is interesting that it
Speaker 1: has this very powerful aboard system. Well that's important because
Speaker 1: we've seen space launches turn very tragic. Exactly. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting that it's it's one of the elements
Speaker 1: that NASA was very much UM stressing was an important part,
Speaker 1: which you know, is kind of a departure from earlier
Speaker 1: launch aboard systems which were a little more rudimentary and
Speaker 1: not necessarily as effective. So UM, at any rate, once
Speaker 1: you get to the point where it it uh detaches,
Speaker 1: that's important. You know, you can't have it on perpetually
Speaker 1: because that cap actually covers the part of the crew
Speaker 1: module where the parachutes would deploy, so you can't re
Speaker 1: enter the ourt's atmosphere with that that launch aboard system on.
Speaker 1: It has to be able to detach from the capsule
Speaker 1: in order for you to be able to descend properly,
Speaker 1: to have a controlled descent. Okay, I have another question. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's assume you're an astronaut who's incredib bleak claustrophobic. Okay,
Speaker 1: it sounds like you've gone into the wrong profession. Not
Speaker 1: sure how you got through training. How tighter the quarters
Speaker 1: in the new crew module? Okay, So within the crew module,
Speaker 1: you have three sixteen cubic feet of space to move
Speaker 1: around in. That's about nine cubic meters. It's not a lot. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it is a crew module that can hold up
Speaker 1: to four astronauts. So with a full component crew component,
Speaker 1: you would have four people in three sixteen cubic feet
Speaker 1: of space. It's not a lot of space. You would
Speaker 1: be working in pretty close quarters for quite some time.
Speaker 1: Remember this is a deep space space. You're going to Mars.
Speaker 1: You're going to be in a space this big for
Speaker 1: eight months better part of a year. Yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: a long time to be hanging out in a small
Speaker 1: room with three other people. Uh, it's they've got a
Speaker 1: ping pong table. Yeah. So the bottom of the crew
Speaker 1: module itself, which, by the way, if you look the
Speaker 1: animations of Orion flying through space, you're gonna see that
Speaker 1: it has this extended area that's got a thruster on
Speaker 1: the back of it. That is the crew module and
Speaker 1: service module together. Um. Eventually those two separate. I'll talk
Speaker 1: about the service module more in just a second. But
Speaker 1: when they do separate, when it's time for the crew
Speaker 1: capsule to come down. Uh, that's the bottom of the
Speaker 1: crew capsule is where the heat shield is. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: engineers actually redeveloped Apollo's heat shield material av coat. It's
Speaker 1: it's a brew of like fiberglass and plastics, and this
Speaker 1: particular coating is on the yourrine is designed to with
Speaker 1: stand temperatures up to uh some five thousand, five hundred
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit. I don't have a translation for that for celsius,
Speaker 1: but it's warm um and uh that would be the
Speaker 1: re entry temperature for a return flight from Mars for example. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then if you were to look at the full
Speaker 1: the full component in the launch system, the bottom most
Speaker 1: part part that attaches to the rocket through a an adapter, UH,
Speaker 1: is the service module. Now the service module was built,
Speaker 1: or it will the the Finnish one will finally be
Speaker 1: built by the Airbus Defense and Space Company. It was
Speaker 1: the one that we saw in the test flight. Was
Speaker 1: developed by the European Space Agency, so this was a
Speaker 1: partnership between NASA and the e s A. So e
Speaker 1: s A developed it and then they've given the contract
Speaker 1: to Airbus Defense and Space to do the production for
Speaker 1: the later space service modules. This is the part of
Speaker 1: the spacecraft that can hold unpressurized cargo, so you can
Speaker 1: think of it as like the cargo hold of the
Speaker 1: Space Shuttle. It's similar to that. Uh. It also supplies
Speaker 1: the crew with oxygen and water as long as it's
Speaker 1: attached to the crew. Module, provides propulsion to move the
Speaker 1: spacecraft to proper orbits and course settings, etcetera, provides thermal
Speaker 1: control to the crew, and it also generates in stores electricity.
Speaker 1: Has a solar panel array that it can deploy once
Speaker 1: you reach orbit or or you head out going right,
Speaker 1: and that solar panel array is what will capture solar
Speaker 1: power and convert to electricity for use on the spacecraft.
Speaker 1: UM and then once you're coming back for re entry,
Speaker 1: that's the part that gets jettison last really until the
Speaker 1: and then the uh well that in the fairings around
Speaker 1: the Orion spacecraft as well, but all that gets jettison
Speaker 1: and then the Orion manipulates, you know, is oriented so
Speaker 1: that the bottom faces the surface of the Earth when
Speaker 1: it starts to come back in. So that's kind of
Speaker 1: an overview of what the systems are. Um. I've actually
Speaker 1: looked at some pictures, some mock ups of what the
Speaker 1: interior of the spacecraft look like. So when you're in
Speaker 1: a launch situation, you're laying flat on your back, uh,
Speaker 1: and that's the position you would be in, although you're
Speaker 1: in a seated position because you're on a chair, but
Speaker 1: your your back is on the what would be the
Speaker 1: floor in a world with gravity, you're in a you're
Speaker 1: in a diaper change position. Yeah, okay, well well, um
Speaker 1: so so you're in that position until the until you're
Speaker 1: able to unstrap once you're out in space, and then
Speaker 1: you can float around all willy nilly where there is
Speaker 1: no real upper down anymore. They probably are wearing diapers. Huh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's stories about it all the seccidence of being
Speaker 1: an astronaut kids. Yeah, inclosed spaces with three other people
Speaker 1: that you're gonna become real close friends with over the
Speaker 1: next several months to a couple of years, depending on
Speaker 1: the mission. Um. Yeah, so this is um, it's an
Speaker 1: exciting thing. It's interesting. We haven't had any manned flights
Speaker 1: and that kind of brings us into what Orion is
Speaker 1: going to be used for. You mentioned one of them,
Speaker 1: Joe the trip to Mars, although that one's further down
Speaker 1: the planned than other. Right. Well, in the old regime,
Speaker 1: the Constellation program, they were saying we were going to
Speaker 1: what returned to the Moon. In the idea was that
Speaker 1: the Moon was going to be our primary objective and
Speaker 1: then from there we would then start planning out trips
Speaker 1: to places like Mars. Is that still basically the idea
Speaker 1: or have we changed our minds kind of kind of
Speaker 1: changed things around a little a little bit. I think
Speaker 1: I think there's manned flights of it planned for for
Speaker 1: testing around. Yeah, that would be the earliest. And the
Speaker 1: crew module has a docking station where it can dock
Speaker 1: with other spacecraft. The Apollo spacecraft and Jim and I
Speaker 1: spacecraft had these sort of things too. Um, So it
Speaker 1: may be that we see other types of uses of
Speaker 1: the Orion and the the closer future, but seems ambitious.
Speaker 1: A lot of people are saying that they doubt that
Speaker 1: is going to be when we see the first launches,
Speaker 1: not necessarily because of technological issues, but because of financial ones. Politics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we need to fund these. In fact, you could
Speaker 1: argue that the test flight was a test of two things,
Speaker 1: the space worthiness of the Orion capsule and NASA's ability
Speaker 1: to drum up excitement and enthusiasm for the space program. Both.
Speaker 1: I would say, we're really successful. Yeah, if you were
Speaker 1: on Twitter on Friday morning when the spacecraft went up,
Speaker 1: you could not help but see tons of tweets about this.
Speaker 1: Though then again, I wonder if a lot of those
Speaker 1: were coming from the kind of people who are very
Speaker 1: interested in space anyway. So what does it take to
Speaker 1: break through to the person who doesn't really give a
Speaker 1: flip about space day to day. I don't know what
Speaker 1: I mean, apart from showing just the amazing videos and
Speaker 1: pictures that have been taken over the course of the
Speaker 1: space program. I'm not really entirely sure. Yeah, that that
Speaker 1: really is kind of the golden question there. But getting
Speaker 1: them while they're young helps definitely, So That's that's part
Speaker 1: of it though, right, because I mean we're talking we're
Speaker 1: looking out several years. The people that they're the who
Speaker 1: will be the astronauts in one they're in school now,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. Well, okay, So, as I was saying
Speaker 1: a second ago, the Moon landing kind of did it.
Speaker 1: I mean, everybody cared about that, and I'm wondering, what's
Speaker 1: the thing we should put our feet on that will
Speaker 1: get people really excited again. Well, well we've we've the
Speaker 1: Ryan Project has moved away from the moon concept. They're
Speaker 1: now talking about landing on an asteroid, captured captured asteroid.
Speaker 1: That is so cool. I think is the timeline they're
Speaker 1: thinking about if all else goes well, and this would
Speaker 1: be you know, for multiple reasons. One, I mean, we
Speaker 1: have a legitimate interest in asteroids and finding out their
Speaker 1: physical makeup other things that we just we don't know
Speaker 1: that we don't know, right, I mean, there's stuff we
Speaker 1: don't know because we don't know. I'm almost more excited
Speaker 1: about asteroids than I am about Mars asteroids. There are
Speaker 1: a lot more practical, pretty pretty decent early arcade game too,
Speaker 1: And that's also accurately a lot When I was a
Speaker 1: kid science. Yeah, so, so this would be kind of
Speaker 1: instead of the Moon acting as the stepping stone toward
Speaker 1: longer voyages. Uh, the asteroid mission would be in part
Speaker 1: beyond doing the basic science of testing the asteroid for
Speaker 1: finding out what it's physical makeup is, all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, it would also be to test the actual
Speaker 1: um capabilities of the Orion spacecraft in preparation for longer missions.
Speaker 1: And those longer missions would be the trip to Mars,
Speaker 1: which is an enormous goal. We have covered it many
Speaker 1: times on this podcast to talk about how big a
Speaker 1: deal it is to go to Mars, because in order
Speaker 1: to just get there, you have to wait until Earth
Speaker 1: and Mars are lined up in their orbits so that
Speaker 1: you minimize the amount of time it's going to take
Speaker 1: to get from Earth to Mars. Uh. That by minimize,
Speaker 1: we're talking still between six and eight months, sometimes nine months,
Speaker 1: depending upon exactly when the window is. Then once you
Speaker 1: get there, by the time you get there, Earth and
Speaker 1: Mars are no longer in that ideal alignment anymore, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to wait two years more or less until
Speaker 1: you get to those same conditions where you can make
Speaker 1: that same return trip from Mars to Earth and not
Speaker 1: acquire an enormous amount of fuel that I don't know
Speaker 1: where you would get it unless you're actually converting the
Speaker 1: raw material of Mars into fuel, which is a possibility.
Speaker 1: That's one of the other things that I'm looking into.
Speaker 1: So anyway, it's a huge, huge challenge, and the Orion
Speaker 1: is supposed to be the spacecraft that will get us.
Speaker 1: They're using NASA's approach. Yeah, they're they're hoping that some
Speaker 1: time and say the twenty thirties, that might be able
Speaker 1: to happen. Yeah, And and so contrast that with the
Speaker 1: Mars one Colony plan to get people on Mars by
Speaker 1: early next Tuesday. Yeah, it's it's yeah, sorry, I'm being
Speaker 1: that was that was overly dismissive. I think we can
Speaker 1: be a little dismissive. Um, I mean, I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't wish any project to fail. It just seems like
Speaker 1: that one is particularly ambitious. It's hard to balance enthusiasm
Speaker 1: and a kind of motivating enthusiasm with being realistic because
Speaker 1: at the same time, you could have been living in
Speaker 1: the sixties and been super critical of Kennedy for setting
Speaker 1: up the space timeline he did. Do you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Yet you could also argue that that ambitious
Speaker 1: timeline really did motivate us and our scientists to work
Speaker 1: harder and to be more inspired and to get it done.
Speaker 1: The Cold War didn't didn't hurt. The Space race was
Speaker 1: a race. There was a you know, it was it
Speaker 1: was a competition in any ways. And part of the
Speaker 1: issue maybe that we feel like there's less pressure now,
Speaker 1: like there's not this political reason to demonstrate our superiority
Speaker 1: of getting things really far where they started. Absolutely I am,
Speaker 1: I do think that that's valid. I would be more
Speaker 1: apt to be less cynical about the Mars one if
Speaker 1: they were choosing to fund it with anything but reality TV,
Speaker 1: which just yeah, yeah, yeah, even if you even if
Speaker 1: you love reality television, the ability to raise enough money
Speaker 1: to send a mission to Mars, that's a that would
Speaker 1: have to be the most successful reality television program, right
Speaker 1: because we're talking billions of dollars here. It's not cheap.
Speaker 1: So I thought it would be fun also to talk
Speaker 1: about some of the other things that didn't really fit
Speaker 1: into the other parts of the podcast, and one of
Speaker 1: those is this is fun facts about it, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: The first one is fun fact Hey do you know,
Speaker 1: radiation could kill you. Yeah, we talked about this every
Speaker 1: time Mars comes up. So you know, being on Earth
Speaker 1: is really nice because Earth is a big umbrella from
Speaker 1: all of the energy out there in the universe that
Speaker 1: wants to kill us. It's also where I keep all
Speaker 1: my stuff. So if we're traveling beyond the protective barriers
Speaker 1: provided by Earth's magnetosphere, by Earth's atmosphere, we're in trouble. Right.
Speaker 1: There is high energy things out in space. There's solar radiation,
Speaker 1: there's cosmic radiation, their cosmic rays. Uh, it's not good
Speaker 1: for you know, these are things that can cause some
Speaker 1: some damage. Sometimes it can be severe damage, and you
Speaker 1: want to limit that as much as possible. So you
Speaker 1: if you're on a multi month mission to get to Mars,
Speaker 1: I mean, once you get to Mars, you still have
Speaker 1: to worry about radiation, but just the journey from Earth
Speaker 1: to Mars is gonna be problematic. You've got to figure
Speaker 1: out how to protect the astronauts from detect yourself with
Speaker 1: reality TV. And now in this case, you protect yourself
Speaker 1: with pretty much everything that's on board the spacecraft. UH,
Speaker 1: the official UH policy or the procedure that you're supposed
Speaker 1: to follow. In case the spacecraft detects radiation, then there
Speaker 1: are specific sensors on the spacecraft meant to detect cosmic
Speaker 1: radiation solar radiation. You get an alert and then everybody
Speaker 1: moves to the back. You all go to the aft
Speaker 1: section of the spacecraft. It's it's sort of like it's
Speaker 1: sort like getting into the seller when the tornadoes coming,
Speaker 1: except your sellers is protecting you with all of your
Speaker 1: food and water supply exactly, because you become the junk
Speaker 1: in the trunk. Yeah, that's true. So you've got that
Speaker 1: that heat shielding that Lauren talked about earlier. That's that's
Speaker 1: to your back essentially, right, so that that part can
Speaker 1: absorb quite a bit of radiation. And then you put
Speaker 1: everything in front of you that you can, like, you know,
Speaker 1: the water chairs exactly. You you get your stuff. And
Speaker 1: the reasoning for this is that if you are already
Speaker 1: able to make use of things that are already aboard
Speaker 1: the spacecraft, you don't have to add more material and
Speaker 1: therefore add more weight to the shield exactly. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of a a jerry rigged approach, but if it's effective,
Speaker 1: then it's awesome. This is kind of similar to an
Speaker 1: approach we've talked about before for long space missions, which
Speaker 1: was the idea of using initially water and food resources
Speaker 1: as radiation shielding, and then as the mission goes on,
Speaker 1: using human waste as radiation shielding, which has high water
Speaker 1: content and turns out that provides pretty good shielding. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's essentially that methodology that they're talking about. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then there's also the the part about what do you
Speaker 1: do how do you get the capsule once it returns
Speaker 1: to Earth? Right, because in the old days we I'm
Speaker 1: sure that you've seen footage from the old newsreels of
Speaker 1: of navy teams going out and like pulling the astronauts
Speaker 1: directly out of the capsule in the middle of the
Speaker 1: ocean onto lifeboats, no one really looking very excited about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is this is not necessarily going to work
Speaker 1: for some of these longer missions where people have been
Speaker 1: outside of Earth's conditions for prolonged periods of time. Like
Speaker 1: going to the Moon and back that was several days.
Speaker 1: But if you're talking about going to Mars and bag
Speaker 1: that's like almost three years total. You know, in space
Speaker 1: and on microgravity, and Mars has one third of it's gravity.
Speaker 1: So no matter what, you don't have the benefit of
Speaker 1: full Earth gravity while you're out there. And there's not
Speaker 1: a whole lot of room to put some exercise bikes
Speaker 1: on board this this spacecraft. So they're they're real concerns about,
Speaker 1: you know, being gentle on the astronauts, making sure you
Speaker 1: have the safest way for them to get out of there.
Speaker 1: So once it splashes down, and we should also mention
Speaker 1: the splashdown thing is is a boon. You might think, well,
Speaker 1: that seems primitive, but when you think about it, first
Speaker 1: of all, there's way more water on Earth than there
Speaker 1: is land. So that's that you don't have to go
Speaker 1: and pick out a specific runway for your ship to
Speaker 1: return to. If you're aiming for the Pacific, you've got
Speaker 1: a pretty good shot. Yeah, So it's the window, the
Speaker 1: window of re entry is way larger than it would
Speaker 1: be if you had to aim for a specific spot
Speaker 1: on Earth. Right, you've got a much larger area to
Speaker 1: play with. Um. So, once it splashes down, uh, the
Speaker 1: Navy would go out to retrieve it, and first they
Speaker 1: would send out some uh, some various boats, either some
Speaker 1: rigid inflatable and some zodiac style boats, motor boats. The
Speaker 1: teams are called amphibious space specialists amphibious specialist, so they're
Speaker 1: frogs that um uh. And if you're an amphibious specialist
Speaker 1: and I just used a terrible term to describe you,
Speaker 1: I apologize. Some of my best friends are squids. So
Speaker 1: if you feel better, that's sub mariners at any rate.
Speaker 1: So you go out. They go out there and they
Speaker 1: tow the the spacecraft back to a Navy vessel which
Speaker 1: has a well deck flooded. Now this is this is
Speaker 1: something that can be accessed from essentially the ocean. The
Speaker 1: Navy team pulls the the spacecraft into the well deck
Speaker 1: which has water in it, and then the water is
Speaker 1: drained from the well deck. A platform is brought in
Speaker 1: and then there the astronauts are allowed to climb out
Speaker 1: of the capsule and then they immediately go to a
Speaker 1: medical checkup. As soon as they are out, they go
Speaker 1: to be looked over by a doctor to make sure
Speaker 1: that they are in good health. The Navy started testing
Speaker 1: this procedure around twenty their teen or so, and they
Speaker 1: found that it really is the safest thing for for
Speaker 1: the astronauts and uh the most efficient process, the best
Speaker 1: use of the equipment that they have available, right, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so here's another thing. Yeah, I mentioned earlier that not
Speaker 1: everything on board the Orion's necessarily the most state of
Speaker 1: the art equipment they could afford. In fact, in some cases,
Speaker 1: they might be looking back to an older technology to
Speaker 1: provide some of these vital systems on board the craft. Now,
Speaker 1: why would they do that and what would they what
Speaker 1: would they get that wasn't absolutely the newest thing they
Speaker 1: could get. So the processor powering the Orion's computer system
Speaker 1: is probably what you're you're alluding to. It's like IBM
Speaker 1: power PC seven fifty f X, which, for those of
Speaker 1: you have been working with computers for a decade or more,
Speaker 1: you probably familiar with the term power pc. Those were
Speaker 1: found in old Apple computers before they switched over and
Speaker 1: changed their their processor types. Um, the IBM power Pc
Speaker 1: went on the market in two thousand two, and you're thinking,
Speaker 1: it's fourteen. Why are we using a processor that's older
Speaker 1: than than a decade? Well, the I found six sold
Speaker 1: out really fast. That was one thing, you know, that
Speaker 1: six plus everyone wanted one of those. They haven't had
Speaker 1: a docking station in the spacecraft. The real reason is
Speaker 1: because it's dependable. It's the reason you go with older
Speaker 1: technology is that you have a proven history of reliability.
Speaker 1: And the worry is that if you go with brand
Speaker 1: new technology, like the cutting edge stuff, the stuff that's
Speaker 1: just rolling out of Silicon Valley, it may not have
Speaker 1: that reliability. And what if you're if people's lives depend
Speaker 1: upon the technology, you better make sure it's reliable. And
Speaker 1: that's the main reason. What's also kind of interesting about
Speaker 1: it is that there are multiple power PC chips. Uh.
Speaker 1: They have actually three computer systems on board that are
Speaker 1: all redundant. The reason being that if you encounter radiation,
Speaker 1: it could require that you reboot a computer system, and
Speaker 1: you can't go without a computer system, even for just
Speaker 1: twenty seconds, which is how long the reboot process takes.
Speaker 1: So you have a backup system. But what if the
Speaker 1: backup system goes down, Well, then you have a third
Speaker 1: backup or a third system that acts as a second backup.
Speaker 1: I guess I should say, and Uh, the odds of
Speaker 1: all three systems going down, according to geek dot com,
Speaker 1: which talked about this extensively, are one in one million,
Speaker 1: eight hundred seventy thousand missions, So the odds are low.
Speaker 1: That you would lose all three systems that one. I
Speaker 1: would like to think that by the time we start
Speaker 1: getting up to a point where statistically speaking we'd be
Speaker 1: worried about that, we'd be using a different kind of
Speaker 1: spacecraft anyway. But at any rate, the each computer system
Speaker 1: has two of these chips, and the chips aren't working
Speaker 1: like you know we think of multi core processors. These
Speaker 1: are single core processors. By the way, we think a
Speaker 1: multi core processors as ways of of taking complex tasks
Speaker 1: and dividing them up so that we can do them
Speaker 1: more quickly. That's not why the computer systems have two
Speaker 1: processors each. They have them so that they are both
Speaker 1: working on the same set of data at the same
Speaker 1: time and error checking each other. If the if the
Speaker 1: findings are coming up uh different from one another, then
Speaker 1: they know they need to reboot that system because something
Speaker 1: has gone wrong with one or both processors. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of an early alert system for when you need
Speaker 1: to do a control al delete, which is kind of cool. Also,
Speaker 1: the the equipment in general, like the circuit boards, the
Speaker 1: the paneling, everything is is much thicker than what you
Speaker 1: would find with terrestrial electronics. And again that's to absorb
Speaker 1: some of this radiation before it has a chance to
Speaker 1: affect the electronic components. So very practical approach, which makes sense, right,
Speaker 1: And what's interesting to me is that if you look
Speaker 1: at the instrumentation panels, they look, you know, a lot
Speaker 1: lots of physical switches, lots of of like oscillating kind
Speaker 1: of you know, it looks like nineteen sixties technology. It's
Speaker 1: almost precisely the opposite of what you see in Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's Dragon capsule mock ups right where it looks more
Speaker 1: like an Apple product. So it's really interesting to see
Speaker 1: how NASA is taking this approach. They're saying, look, we
Speaker 1: want First of all, we want funding, and if we're
Speaker 1: going to get funding, we have to prove that this
Speaker 1: technology works. We don't have you know, we are not
Speaker 1: a private organization, so we have to make sure that
Speaker 1: we can prove the things we say are going to
Speaker 1: actually be effective. Yeah, and then we want the most
Speaker 1: reliable things possible, even if they're less convenient. Then yeah,
Speaker 1: it may be it may not be as sexy as
Speaker 1: the dragon capsule. But just to me was interesting, like
Speaker 1: if you compare the two and you look at at
Speaker 1: the interiors of both how different they appear from one another. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of on a similar note, I wonder
Speaker 1: if the private space industry is going to be an
Speaker 1: issue with getting funding for the Orion program, simply because
Speaker 1: if I'm a politician and I'm presented with a proposal
Speaker 1: from NASA saying we need X billion dollars to fund
Speaker 1: this particular mission, and then I look over and I say, well, look,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is over there at SpaceX doing it on
Speaker 1: his own dime, and I don't have to spend anything.
Speaker 1: I worry that's going to become a disincentive to fund
Speaker 1: the NASA program. I certainly hope that's not the case.
Speaker 1: I think we need both. Yeah, yeah, I hope that
Speaker 1: it's going to be more the case of of both
Speaker 1: both organizations working together and and kind of helping each
Speaker 1: other out. You know, the sort of thing where, uh,
Speaker 1: NASA has rented a couple of its launchpads to SpaceX
Speaker 1: for for example, and SpaceX has provided some equipment to NASA,
Speaker 1: and that they feed each other more more like a
Speaker 1: more like a friend ice cream social in low gravity,
Speaker 1: um and and less of a competition. And I don't
Speaker 1: I don't see I don't think of SpaceX as as
Speaker 1: presenting itself as a competitor to NASA. I'm just worried
Speaker 1: that people who are in charge of the wallets can't
Speaker 1: see it that way. Maybe that's just me being a
Speaker 1: little bit of a worry ward personally. I I really
Speaker 1: hope that the funding comes through. I found the Orion
Speaker 1: launched to be incredibly inspiring. I cry every time there's
Speaker 1: a launch, just it's even if I'm not watching it.
Speaker 1: I just somewhere I feel it. There's a great diserbance
Speaker 1: in the forest, and I just cried. I also got
Speaker 1: a little I got a little weepy. Actually, I was
Speaker 1: worried that I wasn't gonna be able to get through
Speaker 1: a video take without tearing up, but I did. I
Speaker 1: did so. Yeah, there are two things I always tear
Speaker 1: up at launches and lunches. Two things. Yeah, lunch is
Speaker 1: pretty good, lunch is awesome. All right, Well this was
Speaker 1: this was fun and of course very timely. I hope
Speaker 1: if you guys out there had a chance that you
Speaker 1: caught the Orion launched. There our videos obviously of the launch.
Speaker 1: If you didn't get a chance to see it live.
Speaker 1: I didn't get a chance to see it live, so
Speaker 1: I watched the video after the fact. Uh, but very
Speaker 1: very cool and really exciting stuff. If you have any
Speaker 1: suggestions for topics we should tackle in future episodes of
Speaker 1: forward Thinking, why don't you send us an email that
Speaker 1: addresses f W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can drop us a line over at Google
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Speaker 1: we have to handle f W thinking. Just search f
Speaker 1: W thinking in Facebook. We'll pop right up. Don't forget
Speaker 1: to go see f W thinking dot com. That's our
Speaker 1: website where we've got all the podcasts, videos, blog posts,
Speaker 1: other exciting stuff for you to check out there, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk to you again really soon. For more on
Speaker 1: this topic in the future of technology, visit forward thinking
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