So who is watching Orion live now!!!

[luke strawwalker]

Vid files of LAS jettison from the download dump of the onboard engineering cams to NASA Mission Control awhile back... cool but short vid...

OL JR

Oh wow... gorgeous view out the window of Earth... at 3053 miles above earth over the southern Indian Ocean...

 

[luke strawwalker]

Approaching apogee in the next few minutes...

OL JR

 

[luke strawwalker]

GORGEOUS view out the window... right on top of apogee... any minute now...

OL JR

Apogee 1 minute ago at 9:11 am CST, 3604 statute miles...

8.2 g calculated on reentry-- double that of Soyuz. 1.3 n. mi from predicted impact point...

 

[Mushtang]

And to think... the entire Orion flight will go no higher than six inches from the surface of your typical 12 inch high school classroom globe... (3600 miles and the scale of a 12 inch globe is 660 miles per inch).

At this same scale, the Apollo lunar missions flew 31 feet away from that same high school globe, to a softball-size moon about four inches in diameter...

Continuing the analogy, the highest the shuttle ever flew was about a HALF INCH or so above that same globe... 384 statute miles on the Hubble deployment flight... and it took EVERY BIT OF POWER that the shuttle had to reach that altitude and conduct its mission and safely return... Most shuttle missions were actually much lower in altitude than that...

Later! OL JR

At this same scale, Mars would be a roughly six-inch ball, 0.86 miles away at the closest... (4545 feet away).

Live video from the Ikhana drone 200 miles off Baja on its way from NASA Armstrong to the recovery area... beautiful dawn over the ocean off California... 2 hours 23 minutes into the 4.5 hour mission... Orion coasting to apogee...

Gorgeous view of quarter Earth out the window... haven't seen that in a LONG time... (my lifetime anyway)...

OL JR

This graphic is the Earth and Moon to scale and the moving line (click on it to see the animation) is the speed of light showing the communication delay between the astronauts and Houston. It's much more impressive when it's full screen size.

A few years ago my company had several satellite offices and I was a few miles away from our main building. So I did the calculations that if the sun were at our main building and the earth was at my office, how large would the earth be. I printed one out (about 18" diameter I think) and also a moon at the same scale. There was a wall 30 something feet long and I was able to tape these to the wall at the correct distance apart. I wish I'd taken a good picture of it. After that I measured how far from the surface of my small Earth the Hubble and ISS were in orbit (less than an inch) and put those on the wall too.

It was amazing to see it like that, and to see just how close they are and know how difficult it is to get up even that high.

 

[luke strawwalker]

View attachment 248248
This graphic is the Earth and Moon to scale and the moving line (click on it to see the animation) is the speed of light showing the communication delay between the astronauts and Houston. It's much more impressive when it's full screen size.

A few years ago my company had several satellite offices and I was a few miles away from our main building. So I did the calculations that if the sun were at our main building and the earth was at my office, how large would the earth be. I printed one out (about 18" diameter I think) and also a moon at the same scale. There was a wall 30 something feet long and I was able to tape these to the wall at the correct distance apart. I wish I'd taken a good picture of it. After that I measured how far from the surface of my small Earth the Hubble and ISS were in orbit (less than an inch) and put those on the wall too.

It was amazing to see it like that, and to see just how close they are and know how difficult it is to get up even that high.

yep... really helps you visualize it...

First time I calculated all that by hand in high school... (yep, nerd...) I don't have the figures right in front of me, but IIRC the Sun is a ball 110 feet in diameter, and Pluto is like a golf ball or something like 90 MILES away from your regular 12 inch globe...

Later! OL JR

PS... got a web link to your gif?? It's not working on my computer when I click on it...

 

[luke strawwalker]

Just over 2 minutes to SM simulator sep... Orion will fly on alone under its own attitude control prior to reentry... Delta upper stage will perform a third burn to put it on a separate disposal trajectory into the atmosphere...

OL JR

3315 statute miles altitude... 1:20 seconds to sep...

Module sep confirmed at 9:29 cst...

Altitude 3200 s.mi... 59 minutes to splashdown...

 

[luke strawwalker]

about 45 minutes out now... just over 2000 miles altitude...

Later! OL JR

 

[luke strawwalker]

about 22 minutes out... altitude around 1300 s. mi...

disposal burn of upper stage successful... still predicting a 1.3 mi separation from the pre-calculated impact point... 8.2 g at 400,000 feet during reentry, over 4,000 degrees expected on the heat shield...

OL JR

Raise burn successfully completed...

 

[dixontj93060]

Wow, pretty complex recovery sequence. I don't remember them going through what is essentially three sets of chutes with Apollo.

 

[luke strawwalker]

3000 miles to splashdown.. 412 n. mi altitude...

16 minutes to splashdown...

Later! OL JR

 

[luke strawwalker]

less than 3.5 minutes from entry interface... about fourteen minutes to splashdown... 3 minutes to entry interface...

camera view out the window on Orion...

Minute and a half now...

Later! OL JR

1 minute to entry interface... 11 minutes to splashdown...

900 miles to splashdown target... 470,000 feet...

LOS... blackout begun... Orion looked perfect going into blackout...

 

[luke strawwalker]

peak heating occurring now... four minutes until chute sequence...

OL JR

View back from Orion... right down the middle... Ikhana view from IR camera...

orion at 80,000 feet

 

[dixontj93060]

Sweet recovery!

 

[luke strawwalker]

4 hours 20 minutes or so into flight... 3200 feet to splashdown...
2200 feet...

good view from Ikhana... winds at 12 knots at the surface... wave height 4 feet...

good view out the window of the chutes...

1000 feet...

splashdown!!!

OL JR

 

[Mushtang]

I got to watch some of the feed from NASA TV up until the awesome footage from the chase plane. Then the feed started cutting in and out and eventually shut down completely, so I missed the splash down. Grr!!!

I guess I'll catch it later on YouTube.

 

[luke strawwalker]

Bullseye splashdown... 10:29 am cst splashdown-- 270 miles west of Baja, 600 miles from San Diego...

OL JR

 

[dixontj93060]

I got to watch some of the feed from NASA TV up until the awesome footage from the chase plane. Then the feed started cutting in and out and eventually shut down completely, so I missed the splash down. Grr!!!

I guess I'll catch it later on YouTube.

I kept loosing it on Safari, but worked perfectly on Chrome.

 

[luke strawwalker]

I got to watch some of the feed from NASA TV up until the awesome footage from the chase plane. Then the feed started cutting in and out and eventually shut down completely, so I missed the splash down. Grr!!!

I guess I'll catch it later on YouTube.

Man that sucks... you're at work??

Can't beat a good-old TV tuned to NASA TV... no feed worries, no buffering, no crap...

So much for computers...

Picture perfect flight says PAO... recovery efforts beginning... video from Ikhana drone of Zodiac fast boats to recover...

 

[luke strawwalker]

Video of recovery efforts...

THERE ARE APES ON BOARD!!! THREE HUGE TALKING APES!!!

No, wait, just kidding...

LOL

OL JR

 

[luke strawwalker]

Wow, pretty complex recovery sequence. I don't remember them going through what is essentially three sets of chutes with Apollo.

a LOT bigger and heavier than Apollo... Apollo did have drogues and pilot chutes and 3 mains though...

Later! OL JR

 

[atticus]

A Spike, a Golden Spike! (Who writes this stuff?)

Seriously, the parachutes looked great. There was more 'mingling' than I would liked to have seen, but fine recovery.
What was the descent at splashdown? I thought I had heard 25 ft/sec was expected.

 

[luke strawwalker]

A Spike, a Golden Spike! (Who writes this stuff?)

Seriously, the parachutes looked great. There was more 'mingling' than I would liked to have seen, but fine recovery.
What was the descent at splashdown? I thought I had heard 25 ft/sec was expected.

That's what they anticipated... don't know the actual figures... probably hasn't been released yet...

Yea, PAO stuff is worse than cheerleaders IMHO... their writing sucks...

Later! OL JR

 

[luke strawwalker]

A Spike, a Golden Spike! (Who writes this stuff?)

Seriously, the parachutes looked great. There was more 'mingling' than I would liked to have seen, but fine recovery.
What was the descent at splashdown? I thought I had heard 25 ft/sec was expected.

It wasn't TWENTY YEARS from the "Golden Spike" to the first intercontinental railroad trip... unlike the best estimate of Orion's first "Mars trip" after this mission...

(shaking head)...

Later! OL JR

 

[atticus]

Jerry's Kids already have the third floor.

 

[MaxQ]

Jerry's Kids already have the third floor.

Live From the Mars Hotel.
I have that album!

Dead heads...who are you - where are you?

 

[Space Oddity]

Here in the UK I watched the launch on BBC TV and heard the landing on BBC radio.

Fantastic!

Reminded me of the inspiration I felt with Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, back in the sixties. I hope it inspires this and future generations in the same way.

These days however, you in the US have no competition to get to Mars as you had in getting to the moon in the sixties. Then again, if us Europeans can target and land on something as small as a comet, maybe we can pride ourselves in giving you lot the inspiration to land on something as big as Mars��

Well done to the US. Can't wait for the next launch.
I just hope there will be a "Kennedy type" commitment to do it. That will really inspire future generations.

All the best,

SO.

 

[luke strawwalker]

(snip)
Well done to the US. Can't wait for the next launch.
I just hope there will be a "Kennedy type" commitment to do it. That will really inspire future generations.

All the best,

SO.

Cool... BUT,

You're going to have a long wait-- 2017 will be the first unmanned launch of SLS with an "all up" Orion+SM, which NASA has farmed out to the Europeans to build anyway... (not enough money to do it themselves).

I wouldn't count on ANY "Kennedy moments" or "Kennedy type commitments" to it... History has shown that to be the aberration, not the standard operating procedure.

It remains to be seen if Orion and ESPECIALLY SLS will survive the next change in Administrations...

Despite all the glowing cheerleading on NASA-TV and such, this thing is FAR from a "done deal"... and there's 20 years before they'll be seriously thinking about going to Mars... that's been the story on a Mars mission since the 60's... and we're really not any closer now than we were then... well, considering the moment, maybe ONE step closer (out of 36 million miles to go... that is a LONG WALK! (as Bugs Bunny might say...)

Later! OL JR

 

[nute]

Shoot, I missed the recovery!
I saw the launch, stage separation, etc. but I was in a ChemLeague meeting during lunch and forgot to set an alarm!! Damnit!

Nate

 

[Winston]

It was fascinating to watch and I'm certainly glad that everything went well, but water landings? How 20th century. Even the Ruskies can land on land and have been doing it for decades.

Looking forward to the launch of the manned versions of the Dragon and some propulsive landings... on land. As an added bonus (from wikipedia):

"A Dragon capsule is capable of performing all the entry, descent and landing (EDL) functions required to deliver payloads of 1 tonne (2,200 lb) or more to the Martian surface without using a parachute. Preliminary analysis shows that the capsule's atmospheric drag will slow it sufficiently for the final stage of its descent to be within the capabilities of its SuperDraco retro-propulsion thrusters."

 

[Mushtang]

Whatever the government can do, the private sector can do faster, cheaper, and better. I love space and rockets just as much as anyone here, but I'm not so sure the government is the best way to get this stuff done. If there is a real NEED to go to Mars (or land on asteroids, or return to the moon, etc.) then private enterprise will make it happen.

I have high hopes that Elon Musk or someone like him will be behind the next space adventures. Hopefully the government will drop out of the business sooner than later and stop wasting tax money on programs that burn billions of dollars and then get cancelled because some politician wants a different rocket built in HIS state instead of what is being done now.

Back in the 60's when the race with the Russians was taking place there was an actual need for the government to be involved, we are currently in a race with nobody and even if we were - beating the Chinese to mars isn't going to have the same effect that beating the Russians to the moon did.

Having the government out of the way will be better for us all.