Not a shocking conclusion... But that's what you get, when you try to take a spacecraft that has basically been designed purposefully for over a decade to NOT work with any commercial providers and then you try to answer the question "can we launch this on a commercial rocket anyway?"The bit about the LAS rings very false, though. So they considered launching with a LAS, or with Orion inside a regular fairing. Uh... Did no one consider the obvious option? (see image - Orion ogive fairing without LAS)And if we only had the technology breakthrough to launch a capsule without a fairing... (CST-100, Dragon)
Quote from: Lars-J on 04/19/2019 10:40 pmNot a shocking conclusion... But that's what you get, when you try to take a spacecraft that has basically been designed purposefully for over a decade to NOT work with any commercial providers and then you try to answer the question "can we launch this on a commercial rocket anyway?"The bit about the LAS rings very false, though. So they considered launching with a LAS, or with Orion inside a regular fairing. Uh... Did no one consider the obvious option? (see image - Orion ogive fairing without LAS)And if we only had the technology breakthrough to launch a capsule without a fairing... (CST-100, Dragon)So you're saying your expertise single handily is superior to the entire team that considered all the options outlined in this three page article?From the article, they considered as many options as they could.
The LAS has three motors. The attitude control motor, abort motor and jettison motor. The jettison motor allows the LAS tower to pull away the ogive fairings safely. You get rid of the LAS tower = you get rid of the ogive jettison capability. Sure you can come up with another way to jettison the ogives but I just wanted to explain how the current design worksp.s. excellent article Philip and great work by the LSP team.
Quote from: Markstark on 04/19/2019 11:56 pmThe LAS has three motors. The attitude control motor, abort motor and jettison motor. The jettison motor allows the LAS tower to pull away the ogive fairings safely. You get rid of the LAS tower = you get rid of the ogive jettison capability. Sure you can come up with another way to jettison the ogives but I just wanted to explain how the current design worksp.s. excellent article Philip and great work by the LSP team. Precisely. There's no interface to explosively jettison the ogive panels. They're bolted together and rely on the LAS jettison motor to pull the entire LAS assembly away, very much like the old Apollo LES, where if I am not mistaken the Boost Protective Cover (BPC) was one entire structure unlike the Orion BPC which is made up of four separate panels that are bolted together. The actual LAS tower is mated first to the Forward Bay Cover (FBC) of Orion, then the ogive assembly is mated to the LAS tower.
There are ways around it, but that means that you have to be willing to consider the alternative(s). Developing a mini-fairing with that ogive shape to replace the BPC to sit on top of Orion as I described it should NOT take 18 months. Not if you found a competent and efficient contractor.Look at that image again of the Orion LAS, the absurdity of it. This cannot be the only way it can be done, can it?
I will however take offence with that lead image.... who did the scaling on that thing The tip of FH should be part way up the tapered payload adapter...
If I READ THE ARTICLE CORRECTLY it seems that the Orion service module is under powered when compared to the thrust power and the fuel load it carried and all the ablitys that the Apollo service module had