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51 Comments
- runner1, on 11/10/2009, -1/+31The program had cost around $510 million and needed around $50 million more to complete its flight testing. At the time, an unnamed engineer told the Houston Chronicle the decision to abandon the project was “absolutely ridiculous.”
Face Palm, over 90% done! - hoegaarden, on 11/10/2009, -3/+32"She must have hidden the plans in the escape pod. Send a detachment down to retrieve them. See to it personally, Commander. There'll be no one to stop us this time."
- TRexesInF14s, on 11/10/2009, -0/+16My father was one of the primary engineers working on this project, I don't remember all the specifics but he was heavily involved with the flight software. He wasn't too happy this got canceled either after investing a couple of years in it. I think the Station needs something like this, the safety of the astronauts should be a paramount concern.
- JafaRykos, on 11/10/2009, -0/+11I was an intern at NASA Johnson Space Center in January 2002 when this was canceled. Sean O'Keefe, former head of the Senate appropriations committee, was just appointed head of NASA. Two weeks into both of our stints at NASA, Mr. O'Keefe ended the project without an explanation of why to a shocked crowd of thousands of engineers.
Being the new kid with nothing to lose, when the floor was opened for questions I asked him to explain his decision. He owed the civil servants that much. This was primarily a JSC project and had involved the majority of the personnel in Houston for the last 7 years. His explanation was somewhat satisfactory. The X-38 they are retiring is the same they had that day; it is not complete and I believe it is a 3/4 scale. They still have a lot of work to do in order to get it space flight ready. His reasoning was that the X-38 is a one way system. It only brings astronauts back. The Shuttle is getting old and they felt the money appropriated for the X-38 would be better spent on a two way system. Delivering the astronauts to and from the station.
I disagree with him insofar that the X-38 time to completion is decades in front of a Shuttle replacement. The ISS needs a full working crew and the X-38 would have provided that ability. The down and out attitude at JSC following this announcement had a drastic impact on me as an engineering student. I ended up not going to work at NASA full time because of fear this would happen to me. 7 years of work down the drain. In retrospect, that was silly reasoning. - TrevorBradley, on 11/10/2009, -0/+10The X-38 got me thinking several years back... what exactly are the minimum requirements for an astronaut surviving a de-orbit?
Basically a deorbiter is a heat shield with a lot of instrumentation. Other than protection from heat, there's no actual need for it to be enclosed if an astronaut had a space suit.
Would it be possible for instance for an astronaut in a space suit and a small MMU to return to earth with a large open shield strapped to their back? If you didn't really care if you landed with accuracy, could parachute to the ground like Gagarin, but merely wanted to make sure your trajectory was accurate enough not to come in too hard to burn up.
(I know this is a pretty ridiculous question, but thought it might be worth asking) - Jektal, on 11/10/2009, -1/+10You know, if we're really desperate for cash, couldn't we just send up the escape pod without the remaining $50 mil in flight testing?
It's an escape pod. Hopefully, it will never ever be used anyway. And while it would be horrible if it was needed and failed, if I were an astronaut on the ISS, I'd much rather have an incompletely-tested lifeboat than no lifeboat at all. - leodavinci0, on 11/10/2009, -1/+10It was canceled because it is unnecessary. The Soyuz capsules act as escape pods.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_capsule
These are where the crew go every time space junk flies by just in case that space junk is actually Chuck Norris. - racekarl, on 11/10/2009, -0/+5It was $50 million more to complete flight testing, not to complete the project. I would guess it would have taken a lot more than $50 million to actually get this thing operational.
- charlietuna, on 11/10/2009, -0/+5Or buy some soyuz craft outright?
- NiftyG, on 11/10/2009, -1/+6These people are developing it:
http://www.orbitaloutfitters.com/SpaceDiver.html - TopBanana, on 11/10/2009, -0/+4Bear in mind that although this *sounds* like a complete waste of money, every project like this moves the game along. When we come to need an escape vehicle in the future, we're already a long way there.
- TrevorBradley, on 11/10/2009, -0/+4Surviving a *fall* from space and a re-entry from orbit are radically different things. Reentry burns up all the orbital speed and generates a lot of heat.
That being said, perhaps a small-medium rocket that could drop an astronauts orbital velocity to zero and let them fall rather than de-orbit might be a better option. A lot less shielding required. The personal rocket would be very heavy, but perhaps less heavy than any shield. - blacklilyninja, on 11/10/2009, -1/+5The sad thing is that it was a political decision to kill the project so they could keep using the russian capsules. I actually remember the day they did it. Diverting money to military needs. They really should finish it and use it.
- crichards7, on 11/10/2009, -0/+4Pet hate: click-able images, when all that happens when you click them, is they show themselves alone, at the same size.
- askantik, on 11/10/2009, -0/+4Anything in the "m"illions is really chump change to the government. Look up the cost of outfitting and sending just ONE soldier to Iraq or Afghanistan.
- louisut, on 11/10/2009, -1/+4for starters, you'd need a structure that could withstand re-entry from orbital speeds (~mach 22). Gagarin ejected well after that had happened (~8k feet... skydivers jump at higher altitudes), and suborbital craft never reach those kinds of speeds.
- GojiraBreath, on 11/10/2009, -0/+3Dugg for the pic (in the article) of the X-38 coming out of the huge Guppy. Didn't know those odd birds were still flying.
- iheartbakon, on 11/10/2009, -2/+4Someone was in the pod. The tracks go off in this direction.
- JafaRykos, on 11/10/2009, -1/+3This is not why the X-38 was canceled. The X-38 was a "lifeboat" just like the Soyuz; but, it allowed 7 astronauts to stay on the station. NASA has a policy of not allowing more people on station than it can get back in case of an emergency. The X-38 was commissioned to allow a full operational crew be aboard the station at all time. The Soyouz only fits 3 people and also gives the Russians leverage with the US space policies.
- TrevorBradley, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2Heat shields themselves are very delicate, but they've got to be reinforced on some pretty serious structure.
I'm wondering if it would be possible to skip into the atmosphere at a 50-60km altitude to bleed almost all of that speed. Likely wouldn't work, be too delicate an operation. - RealmDown, on 11/10/2009, -1/+3I seem to remember that outside the earths atmosphere, if you slow down then you actually move into a higher orbit. You have to reach atmo before breaking will send you into a controlled reentry. And at mach 22, there is little room for error.
- RevLoki, on 11/10/2009, -1/+3Sure, if we want to continue to be Russia's bitch for the foreseeable future. As Wayne Hale notes in his blog:
"The X-38 was a lifting body spacecraft that was to serve as the International Space Station's lifeboat. It was the prototype of the Crew Rescue Vehicle, the CRV. If it had been allowed to succeed, it would have been an alternative to the Russian Soyuz in that role. As a spacecraft it was the potentially evolvable beginning of new space taxis that would have been able to provide alternate ways to get humans to low earth orbit and back. Again, eliminating our sole reliance on the venerable Soyuz, but also providing a way to rotate crews without the Shuttle - which we so desperately needed after Columbia. And the X-38 would have preceded the proposed commercial human launch vehicles by almost a decade.
Unfortunately, new political leadership inside the beltway thought that NASA's only problem was not being able to do our accounting in line with the arcane rules proposed by the OMB. The new political leadership - which by their own admission - knew nothing about the technical aspects of getting into space - needed a scapegoat, an example, something that they could "cut" to show that they were serious about keeping NASA financially in line."
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=32782 - tushyd, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2They have soyuz escape vehicles already, 2 I believe
- DanielConley, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2A tragic waste. Human spaceflight is the most noble endeavor and should be the ultimate consumate focal point for human efforts, not silly wars and their machines.
- Tyrghast, on 11/10/2009, -1/+3Cancelled by Bush to cut costs... An emergency escape vehicle for people two hundred miles above the ground, surely we don't need that.
If he was really that concerned about cutting costs, he could have not invaded Iraq. Biggest waste of time, money and human life in the history of the world. - MSP1, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2Eh? As far as Congress is concerned, cutting NASA's budgets seems all to easy!
- HiddenCanuck, on 11/10/2009, -1/+3Oh boy. Digg user base about to fill in the rest of the lines one comment at a time... for the entire trilogy... :D
- ASSASSYN360, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2Canceled because safely returning to earth is not courageous. s/c
- charlietuna, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2*Testing* was over 90% done. Maybe there was something else that could be pared, but It's not easy to cut budgets.
- madrigaelic, on 11/10/2009, -0/+1True. Estimates for a completed program were something like $1.2 billion, if I remember correctly.
- RealmDown, on 11/10/2009, -1/+2Replied to wrong thread, sorry. Feel free to bury.
- OUberLord, on 11/10/2009, -1/+2I think it needs to be somewhat steerable and enclosed, as you'd want to try and not land in the middle of the ocean where it could take days if not weeks for someone to get to you. In the event of landing in some sort of inhospitable area (whether it be the middle of the ocean or the middle of siberia) you would want the escape pod enclosed so that it could function as shelter until rescue, not to mention store basic survival supplies / rations.
I'm not engineer or anything, just speculating is all. - celotil, on 11/12/2009, -0/+1Not a single Farscape-positive comment?
Come on, there has to be at least one geek out there who saw the X-38 and automatically thought of John Crichton's "module". - GunWraith, on 11/10/2009, -2/+3Look sir, droids!
- genconkeeper, on 11/10/2009, -0/+1Why Ashland? Dayton's got a big old hanger full of X-planes. In fact the next expansion may just included a brand new X-plane hanger.
- celotil, on 11/10/2009, -0/+1"What is *that*?"
"That's cutting edge technology,"
"We'll go in mine." *Turns to Prowler* - chinaman1212, on 11/10/2009, -2/+3that would be a ***** awesome ride!!
- dsfjvhbd, on 11/10/2009, -0/+1It is an international station and every participant is dependent on the others. So everyone has "leverage" over it in some way.
- Calintzpso, on 11/12/2009, -0/+1Titan Maximum quote
"Disassemble it and melt down the parts into a statue of my balls in palmer's mouth." - TrevorBradley, on 11/10/2009, -0/+1@RealmDown, you've got that backwards. If you slow down you move into a lower orbit. You will however move faster at the perigee (lowest point) of that orbit. That's if you don't enter the atmosphere.
There's a danger if you slow down a fair bit, but not a lot, you'll go through the atmosphere even faster and burn up. - trolleyfan, on 11/10/2009, -0/+1"Generally when deorbiting something, you purposely aim for the ocean or uninhabited areas."
Yeah, but that's because otherwise you're potentially dumping a few tons of spacecraft on somebody's house - or head. If all that's coming down is a *person* it's not *fundamentally* more dangerous to people on the ground than skydiving. - tushyd, on 11/11/2009, -0/+1I doubt that it would work. The intense heat from reentry isn't only on the blunt shielding, there is a rise in heat all over an aeroshell during a ballistic reentry.
- obsessedglobe, on 11/11/2009, -0/+1They should get famous people to use it as part of a reality series to raise money for the project as well as raise awareness of NASA's underfunding. The famous ppl could wear space helmets and initially pretend they escaped the space station, crash landed in vegas; and now they have to use their popularity to find their way back to NASA (train,plane,taxi) as they landed too far away and NASA can't pay the bill; brilliant!
- BigT383, on 11/10/2009, -0/+1Instead of going back to ocean splash-down capsules, NASA should've expanded upon the lifting body design when working on Orion. I agree with using expendable rockets, but there's no reason that what we stick on top has to be shaped like a capsule.
- GreatDrok, on 11/10/2009, -0/+1This is just a skydive (er spacedive) from a suborbital vehicle so not travelling at Mach 22 and therefore not much more problematic than the jump Kittinger did back in 1960. Not going to burn up even from that altitude since the linear velocity is low. Of course, Kittinger did break Mach 1 on the way down but that still isn't all that fast and he slowed down a lot as the atmosphere thickened.
- DanielConley, on 11/10/2009, -1/+1ODST!
- leodavinci0, on 11/10/2009, -1/+1There are 2 capsules ready to go, so the crew is 6 maximum. Frankly I think you all should look at it this way: International cooperation is a good thing, it can lead to cooperation elsewhere where it may be needed more. Don't look at it pessimistically by saying we are Russia's bitch as a result. You wouldn't last too long in a marriage I bet.
- charlietuna, on 11/10/2009, -1/+1NASA should stick to applied research such as the characteristics of lifting surfaces in hypersonic flight and aerospike engines. Government certainly has a role to play, but this escape capsule might be something that Burt Rutan's scaled composites corporation could develop more efficiently.
- MWeather, on 11/10/2009, -1/+1Generally when deorbiting something, you purposely aim for the ocean or uninhabited areas.
- williemain, on 11/10/2009, -2/+1Didn't something similar happen when Val Kilmer went to Mars?
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