Imagine that you want to become an astronaut and fly to the moon. The biggest question that you might have is, “How am I going to get there?” If you are flying for the United States, the answer is simple. You will be flying in the Orion spacecraft, also known as the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV). The CEV is part of a program called Constellation.
The Orion spacecraft is currently being designed for NASA as a safe way to take you to the moon and back. Eventually, Orion may help with a mission to Mars as well. And Orion will also be able to help with flights to the International Space Station once the Space Shuttle retires in 2010. To handle all of these different missions, the Orion comes in a couple of different models. The one they're planning to use for the moon missions is very similar to the Apollo spacecraft – the spacecraft that first took astronauts to the moon.
Thinking Past the Space Shuttle
You might be wondering why NASA doesn't use the space shuttle to go to the moon. There are a couple different reasons. One big reason is safety -- the space shuttle has certainly had some safety problems. One space shuttle blew up when a solid rocket booster leaked and ignited the main fuel tank. Another space shuttle disintegrated during re-entry because a block of foam fell and ripped a hole in a wing during launch.
Image courtesy NASA/John Frassanito and Associates
CEV launch
|
These kinds of problems are a lot less likely to happen with the astronauts sitting on top of the rocket. If something goes wrong with the engines during launch, the problem happens below the crew capsule rather than next to it as on the space shuttle system. The escape tower can pull the crew capsule to safety.
Another advantage of the Orion's design is that the service module protects the crew capsule's heat shield for nearly the entire flight.
|
What's in a name?
The Orion spacecraft is named after the constellation Orion. In Greek mythology, Orion was a great hunter who boasted he could kill any creature on Earth.
|
Besides safety, the other problem with the space shuttle is that it is designed to be a big space truck for getting things into low Earth orbit and back again. It was never meant to go to the moon. If you look at the space shuttle, you can see that almost the entire spacecraft, and therefore most of its weight, is in the cargo bay, the wings and the tail. All that extra weight would make the space shuttle too big and heavy to go to the moon. The crew capsule of the Orion spacecraft is essentially the nose end of the space shuttle, without the cargo bay and the wings. That's all you need to go to the moon.
However, the engines of the space shuttle are top notch, and they live on in the Constellation program. The Orion spacecraft sits on top of the Ares I, which is comprised of two separate sections. One of these sections is just like a solid rocket booster from the space shuttle, and the other is one of the liquid fuel engines from the space shuttle.
Next >> | 
