Getting to the Moon and Back
If you are an astronaut who is going to fly to the moon in the Orion spacecraft, here is what your mission would look like.
First, a rocket called the cargo launch vehicle (Ares V) would take off. It carries your lunar lander (Altair) and a big rocket engine attached to the lunar lander. This big rocket engine is called the Earth departure stage and it will propel you to the moon.
Image courtesy NASA/John Frassanito and Associates
Cargo Launch Vehicle with Lunar Lander and Earth Departure Stage
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Once the lunar lander is in orbit, you and three of your friends can take off. The four of you would get into the Orion spacecraft, go through the count down and launch into Earth orbit. Once in orbit, your spacecraft would dock with the lunar lander. The Earth departure stage attached to the lander would fire and push you toward the moon. Once it is done, the Earth departure stage would drop off, leaving your Orion spacecraft and the lunar lander in an orbit around the moon.
You and your three friends would get into the lunar lander and land on the moon, leaving the Orion spacecraft orbiting the moon. When you are done with your mission, you would get back in the lunar lander and take off again, flying back to the Orion spacecraft. You would dock with the Orion, get back in it and drop the lunar lander.
Image courtesy NASA/John Frassanito and Associates
Astronauts leave the moon in the ascent stage
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Now you are ready for the return trip. Using the engine in Orion's service module, you would fly back into Earth orbit. To come home, you would disconnect from the service module to expose the heat shield and re-enter the Earth's atmosphere. Parachutes would open as you get close to the ground. Then, either airbags would open or retro rockets would fire to let the crew capsule settle gently on land. The whole trip would take about two weeks.
With luck, the first Orion spaceships could be flying as early as 2011. The hope is that United States astronauts will be working on the moon by 2020.
The Shape of Orion
Although the Apollo is almost 40 years old, it made sense to design the basic configuration of the Orion like the Apollo because it is cost effective. The Orion spacecraft itself has three main sections. First, there is the crew capsule. It is shaped like a big cone, and at the biggest part of the cone, it is 16.5 feet in diameter. How big is that? A typical minivan is about 16 feet long and 6 feet wide. So if you imagine two minivans parked side by side with a couple feet of space between them that is how big the base of this cone is.
The crew capsule can hold four to six people for several days. There are about 400 cubit feet of space inside the cone for people, which is about the same amount of space inside two minivans. Unlike most minivans, the crew capsule has a small toilet area and a place to store and prepare food. There's also lots of computers and a “glass cockpit” like a modern airplane to control the spaceship.
On the bottom of the crew capsule's cone, there is a circular heat shield. When the capsule comes back from the moon, the heat shield keeps the crew capsule from burning up during re-entry into the atmosphere. On top of the crew capsule, is an escape tower. The escape tower is a special set of rocket engines that can pull the crew capsule away from the rocket if anything goes wrong during the launch. Attached to the bottom of the crew capsule, below the heat shield, is a big cylinder called the service module. It contains a rocket engine and its fuels, solar panels and fuel cells to make electricity, and thrusters to steer the spacecraft.
