Designing Orion

Cool article on the tradeoffs and design issues involved in designing the shuttle replacement. [Link]

Designing any new spacecraft requires relentless innovation. But sometimes the better part of innovation is not invention, but effectiveness. And therein lies the challenge for Orion, and for the engineers designing it. NASA and Lockheed Martin must find the discipline to produce a straightforward spaceship, with a clear mission and mature technology. And they must do it by 2015, with a total budget of only $8 billion--the equivalent of six weeks' expenses in Iraq.

But Orion will hardly be primitive. Those stacks of paper the astronauts depend on, for example: They're being banished. The beloved FDFs and all the procedures they outline are being built into Orion's onboard computers. But the really remarkable things are the computers themselves. The shuttle's computers had to be custom-designed. Orion's computers use existing Honeywell technology. They are fifth-generation aerospace avionics boxes, with millions of hours of real-world experience, the same computers pilots use to fly Boeing 777s, hardened against vibration and radiation for the rigors of space flight.

Says Larry Price, a Lockheed engineer who is second-in-command of creating Orion: "We spent nothing to develop them." He's smiling. How sweet it is in the year 2007 to be designing a new rocket ship, look around, and buy the computers to fly to the moon off-the-shelf.