The New Stuff

By Andrew Edwards
Staff Writer
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE ­ America¹s return journey to the moon requires a
stop at the Mojave Desert outpost where Chuck Yeager broke the sound
barrier.

NASA engineers at Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force base
are testing the aerodynamic properties of the Orion Crew Exploration
Vehicle. The bell-shaped spacecraft ­ on pace to replace the Space Shuttle ­
looks like a larger version of the Apollo vehicle that enabled Neil
Armstrong to make "one giant leap for mankind."

"This (Orion) will be our manned spacecraft for the next 30 years," said
Chuck Rogers, NASA¹s deputy project leader for Orion tests at Dryden.

NASA opened Dryden¹s doors to reporters on Wednesday to show Orion's
evolution. Engineers at the facility's Flight Loads Laboratory demonstrated
how they have studied "a boilerplate" version of the Orion vehicle to
prepare for a key series of tests.

Orion-related work has been conducted at NASA facilities across the United
States. At Dryden, the primary thrust of the effort is what's called Orion's
"Abort Flight Test." The Abort Flight Test ­ actually a series of tests ­
will be conducted at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico to verify that
the manned spacecraft can break away from its rocket if a future launch goes
awry.

The boilerplate version of Orion being tested as Dryden has the same
aerodynamic profile as the planned production vehicle. The craft is 16 feet
in diameter and has 380 feet of habitable volume.

Wednesday, the pod-like Orion was set on a square-shaped steel frame that
was delicately balanced on "knife's edge" upon two pillars. During the
tests, the set-up was rocked by hand, allowing equipment to measure how the
boilerplate Orion moved back-and-forth, creating the kind of data that test
operations manager Dave McAllister said would be fed into flight computers
to aid astronauts piloting the actual vehicle.

McAllister, who has worked on Orion for about 2 1/2 years, said this is the
most exciting project of his career.

"I'm thrilled that would trust me to work on this project," he said. "The
cool factor is very high."

Orion is designed to have room for six astronauts ­ packed tightly - on
missions to the International Space Station or four travelers headed to the
moon. McAllister said the project is on pace to launch Orion into orbit in
2014 and to the moon in 2020.

At White Sands, the planned Abort Flight Tests will include tests in which
NASA makes Orion break away from its rocket ­ called an Ares I - on the
launch pad and additional tests to perform abort procedures after the rocket
has blasted off.

Like the earlier generation of Apollo spacecraft, Orion would sit atop the
rocket used to launch the vehicle into orbit. Orion itself would be crowned
by its abort mechanism, in essence a small rocket that would fire and carry
the crew out of harm¹s way in an emergency.

Abort Flight Test project leader Gary S. Martin said the abort system would
have enough power to carry the Orion vehicle 5,000 feet above wherever it's
at when the system is triggered and another 5,000 downrange from the launch
site.

McAllister said one of the most significant limitations of the Space Shuttle
program was that astronauts could not escape the vehicle if a launch turned
into disaster, which is what happened when the Challenger exploded on
liftoff in 1986.

Whether future crews complete their missions successfully or are forced to
use the abort mechanism, Orion would parachute back to earth. Like Apollo,
the craft is designed to finish its journey in the ocean.

The Abort Flight Tests are expected to cost about $40 million, Martin said.
The first launch pad test could be performed in New Mexico as early as
April.

Future lunar missions will require NASA to launch two rockets. An Ares V
rocket ­ larger than the one that would be used to send the manned vehicle
into space ­ would carry the payload needed to travel to the moon.

The larger rocket would launch first. Later, the rocket carrying Orion would
launch into low-earth orbit. On lunar missions, the Orion vehicle would then
detach from and rendezvous with what's called an "earth departure stage"
from the Ares V rocket that would carry Orion and a lunar vehicle further
into space.

And one day, perhaps further than the moon. Orion is part of what NASA calls
its Constellation Program and the space agency still dreams of landing on
the Red Planet. If NASA ever makes it as far as Mars, officials plan on
using Orion to carry astronauts there and back to earth.

It's still too early to predict when NASA may undertake its first
interplanetary mission, Rogers and McAllister said.