Moon ship design not safe for NASA space crew

by Yuliya Talmazan | August 12, 2008 at 11:18 am

746 views | 5 Recommendations | 16 comments

It was almost 40 years ago that Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the Moon (or so history has it). Yet, that epic landing has not been replicated to this date, and won’t be coming around until 2019. As NASA plans out another “giant leap for mankind” mission, it is facing increasing safety concerns over the design of its Orion crew capsule. Some NASA employees express their dissatisfaction with NASA’s strive to ensure minimum capsule weight (and hence funding) at the expense of crew safety.

Past NASA spaceships were built with enough backup safety systems "to ensure safety and reliability," from the start, the report said. But it said that because of weight problems with the Orion design, NASA has used a different approach, one "without all safeguards included" from the beginning. In the Orion project, any added safety feature would have to "earn its way in" to the design by justifying that the increased safety was worth the extra cost and weight.

That's not right, said the safety advisory panel, which includes two former space shuttle astronauts and was created after the deadly 1967 Apollo 1 fire. The panel said it is "concerned that this process may not be capable of providing adequate protection against hazards that will only come to light once the spacecraft is in operation."

NASA has long promised its first launch of Orion by March 2015, but aimed internally for September 2013 as a launch date. Now it's aiming internally for September 2014.

"The funding over the next two years became too tight for us, so I had to adjust the schedule for that," Hanley said. NASA plans to land astronauts on the moon by 2020.

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World_Groove

at 17:24 on August 12th, 2008

I think they are finding it hard to go to the moon for the "first time"...... .... .... =-P

HankFox (not verified)

at 18:48 on August 12th, 2008

"Or so history has it"??

You asked for some of my photos to use with this story, but that one phrase convinces me I don't want to have anything to do with you.

mocr

at 09:37 on August 13th, 2008

I concur. How do I remove permission?

Josh Sommers

at 19:22 on August 12th, 2008

This is a High Dynamic Range photograph composed of three exposures combined and tonemapped using Photomatix.

Josh Sommers has contributed a photo to this story.

luvi

at 22:01 on August 12th, 2008

Neil A. Armstrong - Astronaut Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr. on Moon (1969)

luvi has contributed a photo to this story.

Vic Nic

at 23:22 on August 12th, 2008

I was experimenting trying to get a clear shot of the moon, I struggled for some time to work out how the achieve the best exposure.
For anyone interested in getting a good moon shot, put your camera in manual mode, select an fstop of around f11, then set your camera speed to about 1/800 and work from there altering your speed only.

Vic Nic has contributed a photo to this story.

Sky Kite

at 00:18 on August 13th, 2008

Go guys - Go !

Someone (I can't remember who) once said, imagine if no one had followed Columbus to America.....

The sooner we get back out there, the sooner we get a proper perspective on our tiny, fragile planet and the sooner we all start working together as a team, pooling our resources and energies to achieve common goals.....

Plenty of room out there for everyone methinks......

Sky Kite has contributed a photo to this story.

ken gilbert (not verified)

at 03:27 on August 13th, 2008

kind of have to agree with hankfox here. it's pretty sad when someone sends a request to me for permission to use this picture:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ken-gilbert/2581932079/

i mean, who comes up with this stuff? you might want to include a human being of reasonable intelligence to oversee the photo requests.

as it stands i am compelled to deny your request to use the photo, because i'm not the one who must grant permission in the first place.

nasiriqbal51

at 03:37 on August 13th, 2008

The Apollo 11 command module Columbia is hanging inside the Flight gallery of the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC (USA). This command module carried astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins on their historic voyage to the Moon and back on July 16-24, 1969 and culminated in the first human steps on the moon. The reminder of the first manned lunar landing mission instantly drew my attention and I took the great picture with great difficulty through my Minolta X700 camera in 2004 as I did not have any wide angle lens then to capture quite a large capsule. (Nasir Iqbal).

nasiriqbal51 has contributed a photo to this story.

Paschen

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 03:42 on August 13th, 2008

yuls.source, I like this story. It's good stuff. They should use my design!

Beer In Pictures

at 05:11 on August 13th, 2008

London recognises the men who walked on the moon (and some who didn't)

Beer In Pictures has contributed a photo to this story.

hypergenesb

at 08:33 on August 13th, 2008

96.7% of Full Moon. Taken with a Sony digital camera shooting handheld down the tube of a Galileo FS-120DX telescope. 25mm eyepiece.

hypergenesb has contributed a photo to this story.

AvalonSkies

at 11:38 on August 13th, 2008

I took that shot from my backyard in Arizona, by poking my digital camera through the eye of my 8" Dobsonian reflector telescope. I've mapped the major seas on the Flickr source page.

AvalonSkies has contributed a photo to this story.

Beardy Vulcan

at 11:57 on August 13th, 2008

I think it's amazing to be looking a something that has actually orbited the moon. Another thing that interested me was that there is a famous photo of this command module in lunar orbit. Then outer surface had mirror finish instead of the dull epoxy resin substrate we see here.

Beardy Vulcan has contributed a photo to this story.