THE CREW EXPLORATION VEHICLE (CEV) AND THE NEXT GENERATION OF HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT

摘要

Announced in January 2004, NASA's "Vision for Space Exploration" describes an ambitious series of missions, including a plan to return humans to the moon before the end of the next decade as well as eventual crewed missions to Mars. The first vehicle produced for this system of systems will be the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), also known as "Project Orion." Orion will join the US Space Shuttle, the Russian Soyuz, and the Chinese Shenzhou in the fleet of crewed ascent and reentry vehicles active in the world today. This paper will explore the factors important in the design of these vehicles and show how these factors led to the selection of the overall approach to the Orion spacecraft shape and design. We will show that the selected approach satisfies the performance requirements by using mature technologies to offer the broadest and most efficient capabilities for missions beyond low earth orbit (LEO).