MURRIIIIICAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and...3 years to MARS.

[Edited on December 5, 2014 at 11:28 AM. Reason : .]

12/5/2014 11:27:33 AM

SPLASHDOWN!

12/5/2014 11:29:55 AM

spashdown!!!!!!!

12/5/2014 11:30:13 AM

Houston, we are Stable 1.

12/5/2014 11:30:31 AM

We back

12/5/2014 11:31:52 AM

That was pretty cool. I liked the shot from the UAV as it was descending through the atmosphere.

12/5/2014 11:32:41 AM

This was so much fun to watch.

12/5/2014 11:42:24 AM

OH WE BACK!!

12/5/2014 11:43:42 AM

Everything went off without a hitch today. Thrilled by such a successful test. Awesome images from the UAV circling the recovery area.

12/5/2014 11:51:41 AM

I'm intrigued by the recovery efforts as well. Several of the airbags on top of the capsule didn't inflate - they are designed to help keep the ship upright in the water. other than that a flawless flight

12/5/2014 12:00:27 PM

post-mission press conference:

Quote :

""Did the President or any members of congress call to offer congratulations?" Dead silence - Geyer mentions Senator Nelson attended launch. Otherwise nope."

12/5/2014 7:37:52 PM

Here is a beautiful picture from the recovery of the capsule:

There are more pictures in this thread from the spaceflight forum i frequent.
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=36247.495

12/6/2014 11:14:36 AM

Given that this test was successful, is the 3 year gap after this due to funding issues or the need for more testing and development?

12/6/2014 12:30:38 PM

3 year gap is because the next flight won't be on the Deltva IV Heavy (what this one was), it'll be on the SLS (what Wraith is working on)

This mission was great, but the Delta rocket isn't human capable and I'm not sure of the point of launching another unmanned Orion on the same mission.

12/6/2014 12:41:50 PM

https://www.flickr.com/photos/43397645@N06/sets/72157647226612194/with/15930373126/

12/6/2014 1:12:41 PM

I think this is great but I also thiink its a huge waste of time and not very efficient to focus on manned missions to mars right now. I think putting a man on mars is more of a pop culture milestone than a scientific space exploration milestone unless we were able to put a space station on mars.

Unmanned missions are easier, faster, more cost efficient and obtain a lot more information. They also could bring us closer to the day we could put a permanent, self sustaining manned space station on mars instead of just sending a person there to get out say "hey, i'm on mars" and then come back. Theres no real benefit to that.

I don't get the fascination with mars in the first place. We already know a lot about it. There are several moons out there wihin reach than have much more to be learned about. In an ideal world, pursuing a manned mission to mars wouldn't mean we have to ignore everything ese but with today's funding we are about to invest decades into something with very little gain while ganymede, encelatus, titan, and europa sit out there with oceans we know nothing about.

Going to the moon in the 70s was ambitious. Going to mars in 2030 is not. We need to be a lot more ambitious.

12/6/2014 1:16:02 PM

we reached the moon in 1969. dumbass.

12/6/2014 1:17:50 PM

Apollo 17 (the last one) was in 1972.

12/6/2014 1:20:27 PM

that is a correct statement.

12/6/2014 1:57:52 PM

any footage links?

12/6/2014 2:05:09 PM

^^Its funny you rather focus on semantics than the actual content of the post

#trollology101

[Edited on December 6, 2014 at 8:39 PM. Reason : k]

12/6/2014 8:39:21 PM

that's fine... i don't want to argue. i assumed your post meant that we went to the moon first in the 70's, and if that wasn't your intention my bad.

12/6/2014 8:47:12 PM

Quote :

"I don't get the fascination with mars in the first place. We already know a lot about it. There are several moons out there wihin reach than have much more to be learned about. In an ideal world, pursuing a manned mission to mars wouldn't mean we have to ignore everything ese but with today's funding we are about to invest decades into something with very little gain while ganymede, encelatus, titan, and europa sit out there with oceans we know nothing about. "

Interesting you should say that actually. As of now there isn't a planned manned mission to the Martian surface. That was the plan of Project Constellation but that was canceled in 2010. The mission of SLS is to send astronauts around the moon (not onto it), to asteroids, and to the Martian moons Phobos and Diemos. That's not to say that the mission could change in the future, it will certainly be able to deliver Orion to a Martian injection orbit, but right now there is nothing on the books for putting people on Mars.

12/6/2014 11:39:28 PM

What abut Europa? What are some of the main obstacles for that voyage or unmanned landing?

12/7/2014 7:23:24 AM

Delta V, radiation, time... and the big one: Funding.

12/7/2014 9:09:02 AM

Quote :

"I think this is great but I also thiink its a huge waste of time "

According to my friend who works on Orion, this flight test alone will provide with an abundance of knowledge about aeroheating and aerodynamics of high-speed re-entry. He said that it was the most heavily instrumented test flight ever in the US. Re-entry physics are a very difficult thing to simulate on the ground and forget about fully modeling it on a computer right now. Whether or not the manned aspect of these missions is a waste, this mission certainly was not.

12/7/2014 10:25:50 AM

Even if funding for a manned Europa mission were plausible, it would take about seven years one way to get there. No human has ever been in space for that long so nobody really knows what would happen to the human body aside from an early death due to all the radiation in deep space, let alone the psychological aspect of being that far away from everything for all that time. Unless there is some kind of groundbreaking technological advancement in propulsion in the near future, I don't see a manned mission to Europa happening in our life time.


Also, not too sure how many volunteers there would be to spend like 16 years in space with limited communication to Earth and really really really slow internet. Unmanned, however, that is a lot more feasible.

[Edited on December 8, 2014 at 11:04 AM. Reason : ]

12/8/2014 11:03:39 AM

jupiter also has very powerful radiation belts (like earth's van allen belts times several thousand) and i'm pretty sure that europa is very close to or residing inside of this radiation. sending a crew there for initial exploration with today's technology is infeasible.

unmanned probes however sounds very prudent... i feel like we could learn tons by studying europa.

12/8/2014 2:00:10 PM

Yeah, while I love exploring space and all of the things out there to learn about our origins and such, without a massive break through in technology we aren't going anywhere past the moon or mars anytime soon. Mars seems to be the place to strive for simply because its likely the only rock even remotely reachable by humans that we would even have a slight chance of living on in the future if for some reason we had to.

12/8/2014 2:45:28 PM

i could see humans visiting Ceres. it has a lot of water (ice) and would make an interesting target at some point in the future.

12/8/2014 3:55:32 PM

You guys, (especially wraith) are missing my point. Why send humans on these missions when all they do is complicate them. We can accomplish a lot more at a faster pace without humans. We can even build bases for humans without humans. We aren't to the point where sending humans past low earth orbit is beneficial in terms of opportunity cost. You send a human to mars then what? they die or they come right back. Sure any of these ideas are beneficial but when you are preventing yourself from making important discoveries and potentially paving a road to permanent extraterrestrial habitability, its awful.

12/8/2014 11:48:15 PM

Respectfully, I'm not missing your point. I understand what you are saying but there is only so much that robots can do with our current technology. AI isn't nearly advanced enough to do the kinds of things that exploration requires, especially when it comes to problem solving. Also, when you get beyond a certain distance, the control lag just makes it impossible to pilot/drive something remotely. My area of expertise is not mechatronics though so if you have journal articles or something showing robots that can build a fully functional habitat for humans, please by all means post a link.

Curiosity is probably the most advanced piece of robotics ever created by humans but it still is only really good for observing and sending back data. Rovers and probes aren't able to do nearly the amount of analysis that an actual human scientist could do. On the topic of Mars by the way, there are actually feasibility reports behind send people there permanently with regular shipments of supplies planned so they can continue to build a settlement so it wouldn't be a case of "dying or coming back". It would be a case of astronauts going there to figure out how to live there, then yeah, probably coming back but laying the groundwork to send people there permanently. Also, this is not to mention all of the ridiculous amount of technology that would be developed (and applied to every day life on earth) for such a program.

12/9/2014 11:57:21 AM

I was able to see some high resolution pictures of Orion on board the ship that recovered it, and there seems to be MUCH less visible charring on it compared to Apollo, Gemini, and even Dragon. I guess that's what it was designed for, but it looks to be in immaculate condition.

12/9/2014 3:59:41 PM

One of my coworkers (we work in a related field that deals with aeroheating) was saying that they had manufactured the heat shield to have cracks and imperfections just so they could see how it would perform under less than ideal situations.

12/9/2014 7:51:03 PM

Quote :

" but there is only so much that robots can do with our current technology."

our current technology is where it is with mostly private funding. You have to account for the acceleration from nasa funding being thrown at it.

Quote :

"especially when it comes to problem solving."

computer software has been solving probems and thinking critically for a long time. better than most humans but definitely better than humans who are on a long-term space mission would be able to under that kind of stress.

Quote :

" Also, when you get beyond a certain distance, the control lag just makes it impossible to pilot/drive something remotely."

autonomous drones can pilot themselves. a swarm of drones can be controled by a super computer on site. the distances between the swarm would be minimal with the entire system on site.

Quote :

"so if you have journal articles or something showing robots that can build a fully functional habitat for humans, please by all means post a link."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ErEBkj_3PY
this is a tedtalk from two years ago just to give you an introduction of the eary days of this technology. the level of coding in these control algorithms has advanced exponentially since then.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ_0T_UnhJI
Watch this video of autonomous cooperation of drones, combining data, solving problems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2nn1X9Xlps#t=290
swarmanoid is a group of specialized bots that can complete tasks autonomously (word?) their specific target application is to complete tasks in hazardous areas.

http://www.e-swarm.org/
Check out some of the publications. You don't have to pay for the abstract Some of them are very skynetty.

-Can ants inspire robots? Self-organized decision making in robotic swarms
-Analysing an Evolved Robotic Behaviour Using a Biological Model of Collegial Decision Making
-Analysing Robot Swarm Decision-Making with Bio-PEPA

All of this is just whats out there ready to go today and can obviously be scaled up and even improved rather quickly. I know high school computer science students who can write software to help autonomous robots solve problems based on unknown variable quantities.

Quote :

"Curiosity is probably the most advanced piece of robotics ever created by humans but it still is only really good for observing and sending back data. "

Curiosity is not advanced at all. Its a jack of all trades but its just one robot and is not autonomous like the ones we are capable of making today. Curiosity's computer has 2gb of ram and a 400MIP CPU. I'm posting this from a 2 pound computer with literally a thousand times more processing power.

Curiosity was relatively cheap like 1% the cost of an apollo. A tiny fraction of 1% of the cost compared to a manned mission to mars. If you spent manned amounts of money on unmanned missions, the possibilities would be endless.

Quote :

"Rovers and probes aren't able to do nearly the amount of analysis that an actual human scientist could do."

False, Computers can do much more analysis in many more conditions with much less rest and much less error. None of those are even close really. Computers are humans basically. Humans pre program what they want to do years in advance. Essentially thousands of people are analyzing the data instead of a few.

Quote :

" On the topic of Mars by the way, there are actually feasibility reports behind send people there permanently with regular shipments of supplies planned so they can continue to build a settlement so it wouldn't be a case of "dying or coming back". It would be a case of astronauts going there to figure out how to live there, then yeah, probably coming back but laying the groundwork to send people there permanently. Also, this is not to mention all of the ridiculous amount of technology that would be developed (and applied to every day life on earth) for such a program. "

This can all be done more efficiently with unmanned pioneers. I don't think you are recognizing the amount of extra "stuff" that must be included just to support humans on an exploration or construction mission. Let go of the hollywood concept of manned exploration.

[Edited on December 9, 2014 at 9:16 PM. Reason : 1%]

[Edited on December 9, 2014 at 9:17 PM. Reason : v]

12/9/2014 9:13:26 PM

^go away troll.

12/9/2014 9:21:50 PM

Hey E Man, you get that the laptop you're posting on now wouldn't last long in space right?

12/9/2014 9:45:26 PM

In its current form no but I'm assuming they'd spend more than 1000 dollars on their computing system. I'm not sure if you're just trolling but theres no inherent reason why computing can't work in space. Its just more difficult. Containing and atmosphere and environment suitable for computing would still be significantly easier than sustaining one for human life (which kinda already requires computing(

12/9/2014 10:45:58 PM

I'm not trolling, your logic was simply "Well, my laptop is more powerful than Curiosity" when in reality it's much more complicated than that. The RAD750 processor which powers Curiosity cost in the range of $200,000

12/9/2014 11:25:16 PM

you do realized that most computers sent to space are NOT the fastest things on the market... the computer that controls Orion is based on 10 year old technology. They aren't up there playing call of duty on the thing... reliability is key, not high end graphics cards or hard drives that can contain an entire porn collection, etc. And then comes the radiation hardening, etc.

http://www.geek.com/science/nasas-orion-spacecraft-runs-on-a-12-year-old-single-core-processor-from-the-ibook-g3-1611132/

[Edited on December 10, 2014 at 7:28 AM. Reason : ]

12/10/2014 7:18:04 AM

You are fooling yourself if you think that modern day AI is just as advanced as the human brain when it comes to critical thinking and problem solving. Yes, a computer can do complex calculations faster and more accurately than the brain but they aren't nearly as capable when it comes to thinking outside the box and reacting to very specific issues. With tasks this complex there are literally hundreds of thousands of things that could go wrong.

Not trying to demean the videos that you posted but most of them look like the robots are solving very simple problems like getting around/over obstacles and locating very specific objects. If an engine gimbal actuator fails at full actuation is the onboard flight computer going to be able to A) Recognize there is a failure B) Figure out what is causing it C) Dispatch a drone/robot/arm whatever to actually repair it (this is assuming that there is some kind of robot onboard with the capability to do so) and D) Do all of this before it actually impacts the mission, without any help from humans? What about problems that arise that nobody even thinks about beforehand?

12/10/2014 9:22:48 AM

Relevant XKCD

12/10/2014 10:25:14 AM

Quote :

"I'm not trolling, your logic was simply "Well, my laptop is more powerful than Curiosity" when in reality it's much more complicated than that. The RAD750 processor which powers Curiosity cost in the range of $200,000"

This was being in response to curiosity being the "most advanced piece of robotics ever created". I thought that was a misleading statement considered the tiny amount of money spent on it versus the technology available.

Quote :

"you do realized that most computers sent to space are NOT the fastest things on the market... the computer that controls Orion is based on 10 year old technology. They aren't up there playing call of duty on the thing... reliability is key, not high end graphics cards or hard drives that can contain an entire porn collection, etc. And then comes the radiation hardening, etc."

This is a choice. There is technological barrier to sending computers to space that are much more advanced. The main barrier is more likely the cost/weight/volume trade off of human life support systems. I think you are underestimating just how much is required to support humans in space. Most of the mission limits are due to that which is a key component of my argument.

Quote :

"You are fooling yourself if you think that modern day AI is just as advanced as the human brain when it comes to critical thinking and problem solving."

Seems like a statement someone would have made in the past. This all depends on the context. AI may be more advanced when working in static, science-backed situations such as natural phenomena, surveying, construction, and assembly. The kind of things that would be done on a mission. Keep in mind all of the advantages AI have are magnified in space because humans are emotional and a person who misses their family and natural environment, may not be able to think clearly.

In several contexts, specifically social contexts, when dealing with humans and other large life forms, computers fall short. These are the type of jobs humans still have a monopoly over machines.

Quote :

" Not trying to demean the videos that you posted but most of them look like the robots are solving very simple problems like getting around/over obstacles and locating very specific objects. If an engine gimbal actuator fails at full actuation is the onboard flight computer going to be able to A) Recognize there is a failure B) Figure out what is causing it C) Dispatch a drone/robot/arm whatever to actually repair it (this is assuming that there is some kind of robot onboard with the capability to do so) and D) Do all of this before it actually impacts the mission, without any help from humans? What about problems that arise that nobody even thinks about beforehand?"

Theres a lot of people who know a lot more than what is published on the internet and a lot of technology out there well beyond what I can come up with. One of the things in an earlier video is the idea of interchangeable parts and swarm redundancy so even if something fails, the mission goes on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGI-Nw8w9Ro
Algorithms are being developed that can learn new objects and figure out how to reach a goal on their own.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC2TTslf_YM
These types of robots can read their environment and react to new conditions in order to complete a pre-determined task.

12/10/2014 8:02:55 PM

Alright, lets discuss the biggest things humans are better at than machines will ever be, for example maintenance and trouble shooting. Your stated goal is to send bigger and bigger things to Mars and beyond until it is suitable for human habitation, correct?

So lets take a look at a time when we tried to do that with Skylab (granted there was no real big robotics type deal here), but the goal with Skylab-1 was to send all the hardware up in one go, unmanned, and have it wait for Skylab-2 (the first manned mission to get up there). However, Skylab suffered serious damage on the way up that required human intervention to fix. We were able to get up there quickly and fix it before things became unrecoverable because it was just in LEO.

Now you want to send an abundance of stuff to Mars. What if something goes wrong that requires something trivially easy for a human to fix? Maybe swapping out a fuse, getting a gear unjammed, clearing off a solar panel, etc. A human can fix can diagnose and fix an issue like that in seconds, a machine can possible diagnose the solution, but might not be able to fix it.

I can't speak for anyone else in this thread, but I'm pretty sure no one wants to abandon our robotic exploration programs. When we go to Mars, I can see several possibilities of autonomous missions having already landed with supplies waiting, so I think it's super important. However, it's important to develop these technologies concurrently.

12/10/2014 8:51:54 PM

^agreed.

12/10/2014 8:53:06 PM

I understand your point and it makes sense but I think you are neglecting to realize the technology available and just how far we've come since the 70s.

Quote :

"Alright, lets discuss the biggest things humans are better at than machines will ever be, for example maintenance and trouble shooting."

I disagree. This is only true for things the machine has not been programmed to fix. Just as a person who is trained to work on cars is better suited to fix a car, a machine designed to fix something will be able to do that job better than a human. I think you are stuck in thinking about a machine fixing an unknown, previous existing piece of equipment.


Your statement holds true if we had no idea what we might have to fix but I'm operating under a huge assumption that your swarm will include knowledge of every thing you will need to fix (you will only need to fix things that are being sent so it could all be tested on Earth) and just like a mechanic would bring all the necessary tools, you will bring all the necessary robots and software to fix the robots you are sending. Despite the distance, code packs can still be beamed up from earth to add a human element if it were indeed needed beyond the knowledge acquisition abilities of the software.

Quote :

" What if something goes wrong that requires something trivially easy for a human to fix? Maybe swapping out a fuse, getting a gear unjammed, clearing off a solar panel, etc. A human can fix can diagnose and fix an issue like that in seconds, a machine can possible diagnose the solution, but might not be able to fix it. "

Anything that easy for a human to do, can be handled by robotics. The things you listed are all fairly simple "retrieve a book" mechanical operations that would be much more difficult for a human to do in extreme conditions. It would be human error to build machine to diagnose a certain problem and not have sent a machine to fix the problem you coded for diagnosis of.

In fairness to your point though, there are much more difficult scenarios that one could imagine. Remember though, we're talking about a swarm. A bunch of different types of sensors, machines, and, equipment acting as one system. The software knows itself, its components, its surroundings and its missions, has the ability to improvise and is ultimately controled by coding...written by humans.

There is enough evidence in all of the videos and documents I have shared to show the ability of all of the things I've stated to happen. If I were in charge, I'm pretty sure I could assemble a team and have a detailed mission plan within a matter of months. The price tag would be the only issue.

Quote :

"I can't speak for anyone else in this thread, but I'm pretty sure no one wants to abandon our robotic exploration programs. When we go to Mars, I can see several possibilities of autonomous missions having already landed with supplies waiting, so I think it's super important. However, it's important to develop these technologies concurrently."

I understand what you are saying but that only works if you have a much larger or unlimited budget. To be concurrent, I'd like to see them spend the same amount of money on unmanned missions that they are spending on proposed manned missions. The very act of manning a mission expands the costs exponentially but the benefits are not that much better.

Its much more of a romantic idea to have humans exploring space than it is practical. The costs outweigh the mission specific benefits. Now, one could still argue that the non-mission benefits about the things we learn about ourselves could outweigh any mission benefits but thats a different conversation.

12/10/2014 10:15:49 PM

Your car analogy is flawed, think we have cars with on-board diagnostics but not machines that can do these tasks required for repair. We have advanced drones that can fly for hours without human intervention but are ultimately serviced by human mechanics in the ground. It's not just a measure of knowing how to repair something, it's having the ability to do so. If you can show me a robot that has the manipulation dexterity of a human hand, depth perception of the human eyes, and the speed to quickly move from one area to another the way a human can, please show me.

12/10/2014 11:34:35 PM

Quote :

"Your car analogy is flawed, think we have cars with on-board diagnostics but not machines that can do these tasks required for repair. "

Not because the technology doesn't exist, but only because humans are much cheaper and more readily available....on earth.

Quote :

" If you can show me a robot that has the manipulation dexterity of a human hand, depth perception of the human eyes, and the speed to quickly move from one area to another the way a human can, please show me. "

All of these human traits are extremely limited in space.

12/15/2014 11:14:01 PM

Are you kidding? Maybe on EVAs but within the craft? No way.

12/16/2014 5:49:15 PM

Even robotic arms that are controlled by astronauts within a spacecraft don't have the dexterity of a human hand.

12/17/2014 8:48:22 AM