Peeling skin can be caused by a variety of factors. To deal with ...
A little information for thought.
Before reading about the American "space" Gemini tin can, I pay special attention to ablation protection - a thick layer of "coating", which burns out during descent so that the spacecraft itself does not burn out, much like the evaporation of boiling water in a teapot / samovar protects it from damage for the time being. On Soviet descent vehicles, the thickness of this layer was measured in centimeters, and the mass - in hundreds of kilograms (too lazy to google - almost up to one and a half tons). See the thoroughly burnt declared Gagarin Vostok-1:
and some of the modern TMA Unions with a space tourist:
For a man for whom the studio nature of NASA's manned flights to the moon is already quite obvious, the question arises: when exactly was it decided that the entire Apollo program would go through Hollywood? The space epic of Kubrick did not begin from scratch: Von Braun breathed so much, breathed so much, seemed to seriously sculpt something, tried ... But it ended in complete crap: they sent me to collect meteorites in Antarctica and in some completely incomprehensible inglorious resignation. Why? At what point, in what year did the Great Illumination come, that it will be a little easier to make beautiful photos in the studio than to fly to the moon? Let's figure it out.
Before the Apollo there were only low-orbit flights - "Mercury", "Gemini". They are at least not fake?
Well, now let's see something. Let's say Gemini Three is the first manned flight under the Gemini program, as future inmates from NASA amicably claim. 1965, almost five hours of flight.
"Gemini was the first American spacecraft made using a controlled descent system for the descent vehicle (crew compartment). The shape of the descent vehicle was made in the form of a headlight. the atmosphere took place with a constant angle of attack. The controlled flight was performed due to the rotation of the descent capsule along the bank angle. The descent capsule of the Gemini spacecraft is two-seater, which made it possible to perform a spacewalk. after the hatch was closed, it was restored due to the stored oxygen in the cylinders. "
Now we go to the NASA website and look for what the hell it was:
In the picture, the stump is clear, everything is beautiful. But upon closer examination of photographs of real devices, questions arise:
No, excuse me, fakes and "mock-ups for training" - here is a real apparatus after the descent, burned, with astronots Armstrong and Scott inside, after splashdown:
And here it is, as it were, in space:
Great crap. Beautiful as new galvanized bucket. Here's how her cladding is arranged:
Fastening Gemini Cladding
They want to say that these tin cans on cogs with washers withstood the air flow at least at the first cosmic speed?
Say, at 7000 m / s? The speed of modern aircraft, if anything, is about 200 m / s. Well, OK, when landing, the ship fell upside down, the bottom there is more massive - but after all, when starting and entering orbit, it flies forward in cans - and without any protective fairings, like the start is clearly visible:
You see - the tin is without any fairing. Moreover, in her hatches there are glass windows that look straight ahead. Yes, yes - forward to an air flow of 7000 m / s. The engineers already find it funny, yes. Strategic reconnaissance aircraft SR-71 flies at a speed of 900 m / s - and it has the most difficult problem of glass frontal blocks of the cockpit so that they do not fall apart and burst from overheating, a monstrous glass sandwich is made through which jet fuel is pumped to power the engines ... And this is 900 m / sec. It is difficult to imagine what can withstand 7000 m / s of the incoming flow.
Here you can see this porthole - in the hatch, near which there is a horseradish in glasses:
Gemini after splashdown, on the deck of the ship:
By the way, it is very characteristic that NASA's photos are carefully selected so that the porthole is not visible, and Gemini ships in museums stand without hatches at all. But here, on a muddy photo supposedly from space, the porthole is visible on the open hatch:
: Pindos fell into space
No ablative protection? Just think. In total, the air flow speed is up to 6-7 km / s, and the temperature is up to 11000 ° Celsius (and for a short time and much more). Bullshit. Galvanizing will withstand. After all, it is covered with a super-duper protective layer that can withstand temperatures up to 3000 ° C. What are you talking about? Soviet descent vehicles protective layer did they have up to 8 cm, and even then it burned in plasma? From the same bad these scoops. We have nanotechnology. Millimeter coverage, and holds better than theirs 8 cm.
Well, but the fact that we then multiplied such a wonderful, simple and excellently shown design by zero and for the Apollo began to sculpt ablation protection and heat shields is difficult to explain, but we will think of something.
Not the slightest sign of locking screws? Well, the fact that there will be a wild vibration - so there is nothing special about it. Well, the fastening will loosen, the washers, sheathing sheets will begin to dangle and rattle ... And if the edge twitches, it can tear off the entire sheathing - well, yes, it may well, so what? They flew away, English language they tell you: flew off! And everything's good! Maybe in those years it was generally fashionable for hypersound to plant screws on office glue.
Washers of such a huge diameter that are ridiculous? Tighten the washer a little with a screw - will its edges rise and an air flow along with the screws themselves, which M5 is about to pull out? And to hell with them. Maybe it will cost. The Lunar Chicken Coop over there in the neighboring studio was fastened with Space Scotch Tape - and nothing, people were eating it.
Sweat for improved aerodynamics? What kind of sweat? We don’t know to know, we don’t know ... Stupid? Why are we stupid? Everyone here at NASA is like that.
Did you loose half of the screws? So they still keep the hell with such loads. And then, we reduced the mass of the ship. You can't screw a couple of thousand - now the carrying capacity has increased. And in general, your insulting words - maybe we will also have time to turn up before the flight! You find fault, but in fact it is necessary to praise!
I would especially like to praise these piano hinges of sealed hatches:
The hatches open outward. It is not difficult to calculate their area and the force that will act on them from the side of the atmosphere in this apparatus - and there was supposedly an atmosphere with a pressure of 0.3 kg / cm. The hatch has an area of about square meter, 10000 sq. Cm * 0.3 = 3000 kg, three tons will press on the hatch from the inside. Bullshit, piano loops will hold up, bggg.
By the way, on the same photo you can see that there is no additional fastening of the hatch from the hinge side, and that the hatch is sealed with a dumb anti-scientific seal similar to the refrigerator door seal. Trust me - it looks ridiculous. The Russians make the hatches of their descent vehicles plug-in from the inside - the pressure presses them against the rubber band of the seal and ensures tightness. The Americans, on the other hand, use a stupid design, potentially prone to etching and leaks. However, after the screws and washers this is so, a trifle.
So this bucket did not fly into space. More precisely - maybe it was launched, but in principle it could not return to earth from space with living astronomers inside.
It turns out that NASA Hollywood began much earlier than the manned Apollo.
PINKLET, CARVED FORTUNES, STEPS, FRAMES
The main part of the porthole is, of course, glass. "For space" is not used ordinary glass, and quartz. At the time of Vostok, the choice was not very great - only SK and KV brands were available (the latter is nothing more than fused quartz). Later, many other types of glass were created and tested (KV10S, K-108). They even tried to use SO-120 plexiglass in space. The Americans, on the other hand, know the Vycor brand of thermal and shock-resistant glass.
Glass is used for portholes different sizes- from 80 mm to nearly half a meter (490 mm), and recently an eight-hundred-millimeter "glass" appeared in orbit. O external protection"Space windows" speech ahead, but to protect the crew from harmful effects of near-ultraviolet radiation, special beam-splitting coatings are applied to the windows of the windows operating with non-stationary installed devices.
The porthole is not only glass. To obtain a solid and functional design, several glasses are inserted into a holder made of aluminum or titanium alloy. Even lithium was used for the Shuttle's windows.
To ensure the required level of reliability, several glasses were initially made in the window. In which case, one glass will break, and the rest will remain, keeping the ship sealed. Domestic windows on "Soyuz" and "Vostoks" had three glasses each (on "Soyuz" there is one two-glass, most flight covered by a periscope).
On "Apollo" and "Space Shuttle" "windows" are mainly three-glass, but "Mercury" - their "first swallow" - the Americans have already equipped with a four-glass porthole.
Unlike the Soviet ones, the American porthole on the Apollo command module was not a single assembly. One glass worked as part of the shell of the bearing heat-shielding surface, and the other two (in fact, a two-glass window) were already part of the pressurized circuit. As a result, these windows were more visual than optical. Actually, taking into account the key role of the pilots in the management of the Apollo, such a decision looked quite logical.
On the Apollo's lunar cockpit, all three windows themselves were single-glass, but from the outside they were covered by an external glass that did not fit into the pressurized circuit, and from the inside - by an internal safety plexiglass. Single-glass windows were also installed later on orbital stations, where the loads are still less than those of the descent vehicles of spacecraft. And on some spacecraft, for example, on the Soviet interplanetary stations "Mars" in the early 70s, in one clip were actually combined several windows (two-glass compositions).
When spacecraft is in orbit, the temperature difference on its surface can be a couple of hundred degrees. The expansion coefficients of glass and metal are naturally different. So, seals are placed between the glass and the metal of the clips. In our country, they were dealt with by the Research Institute of the rubber industry. The construction uses vacuum-resistant rubber. Development of such seals - difficult task: rubber is a polymer, and cosmic radiation over time "chops" polymer molecules into pieces, and as a result, "ordinary" rubber simply crumbles.
Buran's bow glazing. Inner and outer parts of the Burana porthole
Upon closer examination, it turns out that the design of domestic and American "windows" differ significantly from each other. Almost all glass in domestic designs is in the form of a cylinder (of course, with the exception of glazing for winged vehicles of the Burana or Spiral type). Accordingly, the cylinder has a side surface that needs to be specially treated to minimize glare. For this, the reflective surfaces inside the window are covered with special enamel, and the side walls of the chambers are sometimes even pasted over with semi-velvet. The glass is sealed with three rubber rings (as they were first called - sealing rubber bands).
At the windows of American ships "Apollo" lateral surfaces were rounded, and on them, like a tire on a wheel disk of a car, a rubber seal was stretched.
It will no longer be possible to wipe the glass inside the window with a cloth during the flight, and therefore absolutely no debris should get into the chamber (inter-glass space). In addition, the glass should neither fog up nor freeze. Therefore, before starting at spaceship not only the tanks are filled, but also the windows - the chamber is filled with ultra-pure dry nitrogen or dry air. To "unload" the glass itself, the pressure in the chamber is provided for half that in the sealed compartment. Finally, it is desirable that with inside the surface of the compartment walls was not too hot or too cold. For this, an internal plexiglass screen is sometimes installed.
Space is not an ocean
Whatever they paint there in " star wars ah "and the Star Trek series, space is not an ocean. Too many shows operate on scientifically inaccurate assumptions, portraying space travel as if it were sailing on the sea. It is not.
In general, space is not two-dimensional, there is no friction in it, and the decks of a spacecraft are not the same as those of a ship.
More controversial points - spacecraft will not be named according to the naval classification (for example, "cruiser", "battleship", "destroyer" or "frigate", the structure of army ranks will be similar to the ranks of the Air Force, not the Navy, but pirates, most likely, in general will not.
Space is three-dimensional
The cosmos is three-dimensional, it is not two-dimensional. Two-dimensionality is a consequence of the "space is an ocean" delusion. Spacecraft do not move like boats, they can move "up" and "down"
Orientation in space also does not matter. If you see the spaceships "Enterprise" and "Intrepid" passing each other "upside down" - there is nothing strange, in reality such their position is not prohibited by anything. Moreover: the bow of the ship may be directed in a completely different direction from where in this moment the ship is flying.
This means that the enemy's attack with profitable direction with the maximum fire density "side salvo" is difficult. Spaceships can approach you from any direction, not at all like in two-dimensional space
Rockets are not ships
I don't care what the layout of the Enterprise or Battlestar Galaxy looks like. In a scientifically correct rocket, "down" is towards the exhaust of rocket engines. In other words, the layout of the spacecraft is much more like a skyscraper than an airplane. The floors are perpendicular to the acceleration axis, and "up" is the direction in which your ship is currently accelerating. Thinking differently is one of the most annoying mistakes and is extremely popular in SF writing. It's me ABOUT YOU Star Wars, Star Trek and Battle Star Galaxy!
This misconception grew out of the "space is two-dimensional" error. Some works even turn space rockets into something like boats. Even from the point of view of ordinary stupidity, the "bridge" sticking out of the hull will be shot off by enemy fire much faster than the one located in the depths of the ship, where it will have at least some protection (Star Trek and "Uchuu Senkan Yamato" are immediately remembered here).
(Anthony Jackson pointed out two exceptions. First: if the spacecraft acts like an atmospheric plane, in the atmosphere "down" will be perpendicular to the wings, opposite to the lift, but in space "down" will be the direction of the exhaust of the engines. Second: an ion engine or other low acceleration engine can give the ship some centripetal acceleration, and "down" will be directed along the radius from the axis of rotation.)
Rockets are not fighters
X-wing and "viper" can maneuver on the screen as they please, but without atmosphere and wings, atmospheric maneuvers are impossible.
Yes, you won't be able to turn around "on a patch" either. The faster the spacecraft moves, the more difficult it is to maneuver. It WILL NOT move like an airplane. A better analogy would be the behavior of an overclocked high speed fully loaded tractor with trailer on bare ice.
Also questionable is the very justification of fighters from a military, scientific and economic point of view.
Rockets are not arrows
The spacecraft does not necessarily fly where its nose points. While the engine is running, acceleration is directed to where the bow of the ship is facing. But if you turn off the engine, the ship can be freely rotated in the desired direction. If necessary, it is quite possible to fly "sideways". This can be useful for firing a full side salvo in combat.
So all the scenes from "Star Wars" with a fighter trying to shake the enemy off the tail is complete nonsense. It is enough for them to turn around and shoot the pursuer (a good example would be the episode of the Babylon 5 series "Midnight on the Firing Line").
Rockets have wings
If your rocket has a few megawatts of power, an absurdly powerful heat engine, or an energy weapon, it will need huge heatsinks to dissipate heat. Otherwise, it will melt rather quickly, or even evaporate easily. The radiators will look like huge fenders or panels. This is a pretty big problem for warships, as the radiators are extremely vulnerable to fire.
The rockets have no windows
Portholes on a spaceship are needed about the same as on a submarine. (No, Seaview doesn't count. Strictly science fiction. There are no panoramic windows on the Trident submarine). Portholes - weakening of structural strength, and besides, what is there to look at? Unless the ship is orbiting a planet or near another ship, only the depths of space and the blinding sun are visible. And also, unlike submarines, on board a spacecraft, windows let in a stream of radiation.
Star Trek TV series, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica are flawed as battles WILL NOT take place at a distance of a few meters. Directional energy weapons will work at distances where enemy ships are visible only through a telescope. Looking at the battle through the porthole, you will not see anything. The ships will be too far away, or you will be blinded by the flash of a nuclear explosion or laser fire reflected from the surface of the target.
The navigation compartment may have an observational astronomical dome for an emergency, but most of the windows will be replaced by radar, telescopic cameras and similar types of sensors.
There is no friction in space
There is no friction in space. Here on Terra, if you are driving, all you have to do is release the gas and the car will start to brake by friction against the road. In space, by turning off the engines, the ship will maintain its speed for the rest of eternity (or until it crashes into a planet or something else). In the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey, you may have noticed that the Discovery spacecraft flew towards Jupiter without a single plume of exhaust from the engines.
This is why it makes no sense to talk about the "distance" of a rocket flight. Any rocket not in the orbit of the planet and not in the gravitational well of the Sun has an infinite flight distance. In theory, you could light the engines and travel to the Andromeda Galaxy ... reaching your goal in a million years. Instead of range, it makes sense to talk about changing speeds.
Acceleration and deceleration are symmetrical. An hour of acceleration to a speed of 1000 kilometers per second requires about an hour of braking to stop. You can't just "step on the brakes" like on a boat or a car. (The word "about" is used because the ship loses mass as it accelerates and becomes easier to brake. But these details can be ignored for now.)
If you want to intuitively understand the principles of spacecraft movement, I recommend playing one of the few accurate simulation games. The list includes computer game Orbiter, the computer game (unfortunately not reprinted) Independence War and the tabletop war games Attack Vector: Tactical, Voidstriker, Triplanetary, and Star Fist (these two are no longer published, but you can get caught here).
Fuel does not necessarily propel the ship directly
Rockets have a difference between "fuel" (indicated in red) and "reaction mass" (indicated in blue). Rockets obey Newton's third law of motion. The mass is thrown away, giving the rocket acceleration.
Fuel in this case spent on throwing out this reaction mass. In a classic atomic rocket, uranium-235 will be fuel, ordinary uranium rods in nuclear reactor, but the reaction mass is hydrogen heated in this very reactor and escaping from the nozzles of the ship.
The confusion is caused by the fact that in chemical rockets, the fuel and the reaction mass are one and the same. A shuttle or Saturn 5 rocket consumes chemical fuel by directly ejecting it from the nozzles.
Cars, planes, and boats use relatively little fuel, but this is not the case for rockets. Half of the rocket can be occupied by the reaction mass, and the other half - by structural elements, the crew and everything else. But the ratio of 75% of the reaction mass is much more likely, or even worse. Most rockets are a huge reaction tank with an engine at one end and a tiny crew compartment at the other.
There are no invisibles in space
In space there is no practical way hide the ship from detection.
There is no sound in space
I don't care how many movies you've seen with roaring engines and thundering explosions. The sound is transmitted by the atmosphere. No atmosphere, no sound. Nobody will hear your last bang. This moment was correctly displayed in very few TV series, including Babylon 5 and Firefly.
The only exception is the explosion of a nuclear warhead hundreds of meters from the ship, in which case the flux of gamma rays will cause the hull to make a sound when deformed.
Weight is not weight
There is a difference between weight and mass. The mass is always the same for an object, but the weight depends on which planet the object is on. A brick weighing one kilogram will weigh 9.81 Newtons (2.2 lb) on Terra, 1.62 Newtons on the Moon (0.36 lb), and zero Newtons (0 lb) aboard the International Space Station. But the mass will always remain one kilogram. (Chris Bazon pointed out that if an object is moving at a relativistic speed relative to you, then you will find an increase in mass. But this cannot be seen at normal relative speeds.)
The practical consequences of this boil down to the fact that something heavy cannot be moved on board the ISS by tapping an object with one little finger. (Well, that is, you can, somewhere in the millimeter a week or so.) The shuttle can hover next to the station with zero weight ... but maintaining a mass of 90 metric tons. If you push it, the effect will be extremely insignificant. (roughly as if you were pushing it on the landing strip at Cape Kennedy).
And if the shuttle is slowly moving towards the station, and you are caught between them, the zero weight of the shuttle will still not save you from the sad fate of turning into a cake. Do not brake a moving shuttle by resting your hands on it. It takes as much energy as it does to set it in motion. There is not so much energy in a person.
Sorry, but your orbital builders will not be able to move multi-ton steel beams like toothpicks.
Another factor requiring attention is Newton's third law. Pushing a steel beam involves action and reaction. Since the mass of the beam is likely to be greater, it will barely move. But you, as a less massive object, go in the opposite direction with much greater acceleration. This makes most of the tools (such as hammers and screwdrivers) useless for free fall conditions - there is a huge trick to create similar tools for zero gravity conditions.
Free fall is not zero gravity
Technically, people on board space station are not in "zero gravity". It almost does not differ there from gravity on the surface of the Earth (about 93% of the earth). The reason everyone "flies" is the "free fall" state. If you find yourself in an elevator when the cable breaks, you too will experience a free fall and will "fly" ... until you fall. (Yes, Jonathan pointed out that air resistance is ignored here, but you get the basic idea.)
The point is that the station is in "orbit" - which is a clever way to fall, constantly missing the ground. See here for details.
There will be no explosion
Once in a vacuum without a protective suit, you will not burst like a balloon. Dr. Jeffrey Landis has spent enough detailed analysis this question.
In short: You will remain conscious for ten seconds, you will not explode, in total you will live about 90 seconds.
They don't need our water
Marcus Baur pointed out that an alien invasion of Terra for our water is like an Eskimo invasion of Central America to steal ice. Yes, yes, this is about the notorious series V.
Markus: There is no need to come to Earth for water. This is one of the most common substances "up there" ... so why drive a ship for several light years for the sake of what you can easily get much cheaper (and without this annoying human resistance) in your own system, almost " around the corner"?
The Orion multipurpose transport spacecraft has been developed by NASA and Lockheed Martin since the mid-2000s and already completed its first unmanned test flight in December 2014. With the help of Orion, cargo and astronauts will be launched into space, but this is not all that this ship is capable of. In the future, it will be Orion that will have to deliver people to the surface of the Moon and Mars. When creating the ship, its developers used a lot interesting technologies and new materials, one of which we would like to tell you about today.
When astronauts travel in the direction of asteroids, the Moon or Mars, they will have stunning views of space, which they will see through small windows in the hull of the ship. NASA engineers are striving to make these "windows to space" more durable, lighter and cheaper to manufacture than in previous models of spacecraft.
In the case of the ISS and Space Shuttle, the portholes were made of laminated glass. In the case of Orion, acrylic plastic will be used for the first time, which will significantly improve the integrity of the ship's windows.
“Glass window panels have historically been part of the ship's shell, maintaining the necessary pressure inside it and preventing the death of astronauts. Also, the glass should protect the crew as much as possible from the enormous temperature when entering the Earth's atmosphere. But the main disadvantage of glass is its structural imperfection. Under heavy load, the strength of the glass decreases over time. When flying in space, this weak point can play a cruel joke with the ship, ”says Linda Estes, head of the illuminator subsystems department at NASA.
It is precisely because glass is not an ideal material for portholes that engineers have been constantly looking for more suitable material for this. There are many structurally stable materials around the world, but only a few are transparent enough to be used in portholes.
In the early stages of the Orion's development, NASA tried to use polycarbonates as the material for the windows, but they did not meet the optical requirements for imaging. high resolution... After that, the engineers switched to acrylic material which provided the highest transparency and enormous strength. In the United States, huge aquariums are made from acrylic, which protect their inhabitants from the potentially dangerous environment for them, while withstanding enormous water pressure.
To date, Orion is equipped with four portholes built into the crew module, as well as additional windows in each of the two hatches. Each porthole consists of three panels. Inner panel made of acrylic and the other two are still glass. It is in this form that Orion has already managed to visit space during its first test flight. Over the course of this year, NASA engineers must decide if they can use two acrylic panels and one glass in the windows.
In the coming months, Linda Estes and her team are to conduct a so-called "creep test" on acrylic panels. Creep in this case is a slow deformation of a solid body over time under the influence of a constant load or mechanical stress. All are subject to creep. solid bodies- both crystalline and amorphous. Acrylic panels will be tested for 270 days under enormous stress.
The acrylic portholes should make the Orion significantly lighter, and their structural strength will eliminate the risk of porthole shattering due to accidental scratches and other damage. According to NASA engineers, thanks to the acrylic panels, they will be able to reduce the weight of the ship by more than 90 kilograms. Reducing the mass will make it much cheaper to launch the spacecraft into space.
Switching to acrylic panels will also reduce the cost of building Orion-type ships, because acrylic is much cheaper than glass. It will be possible to save about 2 million dollars on the windows alone when building one spacecraft. Perhaps, in the future, glass panels will be completely excluded from the windows, but so far this requires additional thorough testing.
The Orion multipurpose transport spacecraft has been developed by NASA and the company since the mid-2000s and already completed its first unmanned test flight in December 2014. With the help of Orion, cargo and astronauts will be launched into space, but this is not all that this ship is capable of. In the future, it will be Orion that will have to deliver people to the surface of the Moon and Mars. When creating the ship, its developers used a lot of interesting technologies and new materials, one of which we would like to tell you about today.
When astronauts travel in the direction of asteroids, the Moon or Mars, they will have stunning views of space, which they will see through small windows in the hull of the ship. NASA engineers are striving to make these "windows to space" more durable, lighter and cheaper to manufacture than in previous models of spacecraft.
In the case of the ISS and Space Shuttle, the portholes were made of laminated glass. In the case of Orion, acrylic plastic will be used for the first time, which will significantly improve the integrity of the ship's windows.
“Glass window panels have historically been part of the ship's shell, maintaining the necessary pressure inside it and preventing the death of astronauts. Also, the glass should protect the crew as much as possible from the enormous temperature when entering the Earth's atmosphere. But the main disadvantage of glass is its structural imperfection. Under heavy load, the strength of the glass decreases over time. When flying in space, this weak point can play a cruel joke with the ship, ”says Linda Estes, head of the illuminator subsystems department at NASA.
It is precisely because glass is not the ideal material for portholes that engineers have been constantly looking for a better material for this. There are many structurally stable materials around the world, but only a few are transparent enough to be used in portholes.
In the early stages of the Orion's development, NASA tried to use polycarbonates as the material for the windows, but they did not meet the optical requirements for high-resolution imaging. After that, the engineers switched to acrylic material, which provided the highest transparency and tremendous strength. In the United States, huge aquariums are made from acrylic, which protect their inhabitants from the potentially dangerous environment for them, while withstanding enormous water pressure.
The Orion is currently equipped with four portholes built into the crew module, as well as additional windows in each of the two hatches. Each porthole consists of three panels. The inner panel is made of acrylic, while the other two are still glass. It is in this form that Orion has already managed to visit space during its first test flight. During this year, NASA engineers must decide if they can use two acrylic panels and one glass in the windows.
In the coming months, Linda Estes and her team are to conduct a so-called "creep test" on acrylic panels. Creep in this case is a slow deformation of a solid body over time under the influence of a constant load or mechanical stress. All solid bodies, both crystalline and amorphous, are subject to creep. Acrylic panels will be tested for 270 days under enormous stress.
The acrylic portholes should make the Orion significantly lighter, and their structural strength will eliminate the risk of porthole shattering due to accidental scratches and other damage. According to NASA engineers, thanks to the acrylic panels, they will be able to reduce the weight of the ship by more than 90 kilograms. Reducing the mass will make it much cheaper to launch the spacecraft into space.
Switching to acrylic panels will also reduce the cost of building Orion-type ships, because acrylic is much cheaper than glass. It will be possible to save about 2 million dollars on the windows alone when building one spacecraft. Perhaps, in the future, glass panels will be completely excluded from the windows, but so far this requires additional thorough testing.
