Archive for February, 2009

Apollo Umbilical

February 19, 2009

I can’t be bothered to figure out how to embed this video.  It shows NASA engineers using the Apollo umbilical as a model to inform their design of the Orion umbilical.

Since Orion is reusable, I wonder if they’ll depart from the guillotine style of the Apollo umbilical.  I’d expect that to be more reliable, and it should be trivial to put replaceable connectors just inboard of the cut point so that the cables/pipes can be replaced easily.