Stacking of New Space Vehicle Begins At KSC 121
Matt_dk writes "For the first time in more than a quarter-century, a new space vehicle will begin stacking on a mobile launch platform (MLP) at Kennedy Space Center. The Ares I-X aft skirt, which was mated to a solid fuel segment in the Rotation, Processing and Surge Facility at KSC, rolled over to the 528-foot-tall Vehicle Assembly Building today, where it will be lifted and placed on the MLP in High Bay 3. On that platform, workers will secure the aft booster and continue adding segments of the first stage rocket, the upper stage simulators, the crew module mockup and the launch abort system simulator, taking the vehicle to a height of 327 feet."
Re:Maybe next year (Score:5, Informative)
Not live but recent images here: http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/search.cfm?cat=4 [nasa.gov]
Note the "mobile launch pad" disclaimer (Score:4, Informative)
"For the first time in more than a quarter-century [...] on a mobile launch platform (MLP)"
Good thing they had that little disclaimer. SpaceX's Falcon 9 showed up there earlier this year. From the pictures, the Falcon's launch platform doesn't look like it's going anywhere.
http://spacex.com/updates.php
Re:Note the "mobile launch pad" disclaimer (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Spaceship modules (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is the way to spend taxpayer money! (Score:5, Informative)
I know a lot of other people might be down on NASA. They say its too much of this, or too much of that, should be privatized, etc.. but...last time I checked:
NASA was the only organization to put a man on the moon, land a couple of rovers on Mars, fly by Jupiter, Saturn, and the outer planets, build and operate a space plane and a space station.
NASA's done a lot of great things, but the Ares I-X isn't one of them. It's just a suborbital rocket model being put together mostly for political reasons, and has almost nothing in common with the Ares I rocket it's supposed to be a test for. It's been designed to specifically avoid all the big problems and question-marks which are threatening to doom the Ares I, making it almost useless as a test. I feel really bad for all the skilled NASA engineers whose time has been wasted on this make-work project instead of something more fruitful.
Like another commenter, I'm quite a bit more impressed by the SpaceX Falcon 9 [spacex.com] rocket which is already at Cape Canaveral, even if it isn't using the MLP. That's going to be quite a bit more important to the future of spaceflight than the Ares I-X.
Re:This is the way to spend taxpayer money! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This is the way to spend taxpayer money! (Score:5, Informative)
Umm, no. Soyuz 102 manned flights. Shuttle has done 126. So its two losses are statistically worse for Soyuz (1.96% Soyuz, 1.58% Shuttle).
I know there are people who have been indoctrinated into believing that the Shuttle is the worst vehicle to ever fly into space, and the Soyuz is the best. But, fact is, the numbers support the reverse position.
Shuttle has had 126 missions. 124 of them reached orbit and returned.
Soyuz has had 102 missions. 98 of them reached orbit and returned.
Of the 124 Shuttle missions that reached orbit and returned, 122 completed their intended missions, two had to abort due to non-lethal technical difficulties.
Of the 98 Soyuz missions that reached orbit and returned, 91 completed their intended missions, seven had to abort due to non-lethal technical difficulties. Note that one of the 91 "successful" missions included accidentally ramming Mir.
Re:wrong macro engineering again (Score:3, Informative)
And while I am on it, no vehicles should be built at all until the scientific metric system of measurement is introduced and imperial medieval system is banned. It should be forbidden, I do not know, by the Geneva convention. Due to pseudo-patriotism the complicated systems are built with archaic feet, elbows, inches, etc. All would be fine, but alive people are to fly it.
It's not patriotism as much as infrastructure for fabrication and test. I'm thinking of propulsion here, but this is true of other areas as well. Raw materials required/needed are only available in the USA in English units (5/8in tubing for prop lines, etc), for that to become metric would require all the suppliers to support metric as well: it's not just NASA. Also, machining and test equipment in many facilities (again, not just NASA) are non-metric: again this infrastructure could be converted but would be expensive and nobody has ponied up the bread to do the conversion and re-cert required.
All certainly do-able but there is a cost: not arguing against metric as I work only in metric, switching to all metric would make my life easier.
Re:This is the way to spend taxpayer money! (Score:4, Informative)
There was at least one mission that returned satellites to Earth. STS-51A returned two satellites that had malfunctioned; these were later repaired and successfully relaunched. I thought there were one or two others that did the same (and perhaps they were military missions), but I can't immediately find them.
Re:This is the way to spend taxpayer money! (Score:3, Informative)
Why NASA bothered with the Saturn I [wikipedia.org] or the Saturn IB [wikipedia.org] when they could have just waited until the Saturn V was built and then done everything after that shows what a waste of tax dollars NASA is.
Do you seriously think the Saturn I or IB are at all comparable to the Ares I-X? I mean, I'm certainly not against flight tests in general -- I think the Ares I-Y [blogspot.com] is useful, as it will test the 5-segment booster, one of the biggest question-marks about the Ares I. The Ares I-X is almost entirely PR, though. Ironically, it's looking like the Ares I-X schedule slips may result in the Ares I-Y being postponed/canceled.
Re:This is the way to spend taxpayer money! (Score:3, Informative)
It was - the original design never had the O-rings expanding quite so much to seal the gaps, but it worked well, so they kept the design as it was. theye did know well before the disaster that the colder the rings were, the longer it took them to seal and the more damage was done to the SRB joint and ring itself, so they put a lower limit on the safe launch temperature.
On the day of the Challenger launch, it was below freezing (or close to it), way below any previous launch of the Shuttle. When the SRBs were lit, the O ring disintegrated immediately, but rocket fuel slag plugged the gap in the SRB joint. This held in place until the wind shear at Max Q dislodged it, allowing the hot gases out, which destroyed the rear support, allowing the SRB to swing out, pivoting around the upper support, causing the nose to break the main fuel tank.
Re:This is the way to spend taxpayer money! (Score:3, Informative)