'Major Component Malfunction' Ends SLS Rocket Test Early. NASA Considers New Timeline (floridatoday.com) 112
"NASA's rocket charged with taking the agency back to the moon fired its four main engines Saturday afternoon, but the test in Mississippi was cut short after a malfunction caused an automatic abort," reports Florida Today...
"We did get an MCF on engine four," a control room member said less than a minute into the test fire, using an initialism that stands for "major component malfunction...." The engines fired for 12 more seconds after the exchange before an automatic shutdown was called. The test was meant to last eight minutes — the full duration needed for the booster during its Artemis program liftoff — but only ran less than two minutes.
Prime contractor Boeing previously said the test would need to run at least 250 seconds, or more than four minutes, for teams to gather enough data to move forward with transport to Kennedy Space Center and launch sometime before the end of the year. An exact plan moving forward, which could mean a second test and delay before transport to Florida, had not yet been released by Saturday evening.
Or, as the Guardian reports, "It was unclear whether Boeing and Nasa would have to repeat the test, a prospect that could push the debut launch into 2022."
In a press conference tonight, a NASA official specifically addressed the question of whether or not a launch this year was still feasible. "I think it's still too early to tell. I think as we figure out what went wrong, we're going to know what the future holds. And right now we just don't know...
"Not everything went according to script today, but we got a lot of great data, a lot of great information. I have absolutely total confidence in the team to figure out what the anomaly was, figure out how to fix it, and then get after it again... Depending on what we learn, we might not have to do it again."
They added that there was no sign of engine damage, and emphasized to reporters another way to view the significance of this afternoon's event. "A rocket capable of taking humans to the moon, was firing, all four engines at the same time." And they also stressed that this afternoon's result was not a failure -- but a test. "When you test, you learn things..."
"We're going to make adjustments, and we're going to fly to the moon. That's what the Artemis program is all about, that's what NASA is all about, and that's what America is all about. We didn't get everything we wanted, and yeah, we're going to have to make adjustments. But this was a test, and this is why we test.
"If you're expecting perfection on a first test, then you've never tested before."
"The date is set," NASA had tweeted Friday, thanking its partners Boeing Space and Aerojet Rocketdyne for Saturday's "hot fire" test of the SLS's core stage.
"One of NASA's main goals for 2021 is to launch Artemis I, an uncrewed moon mission meant to show the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket can safely send humans to our lunar neighbor," reported CNET. "But first, NASA plans to make some noise with a fiery SLS test on Saturday."
Below is the original report that schwit1 had shared from Space.com: It's a critical test for NASA and the final step in the agency's "Green Run" series of tests to ensure the SLS rocket is ready for its first launch... In the upcoming hot-fire engine test, engineers will load the Boeing-built SLS core booster with over 700,000 gallons of cryogenic (that's really cold) propellant into the rocket's fuel tanks and light all four of its RS-25 engines at once. The engines will fire for 485 seconds (a little over 8 minutes) and generate a whopping 1.6 million pounds of thrust throughout the test...
Following the success of this hot fire test and subsequent uncrewed missions to the moon, "the next key step in returning astronauts to the moon and eventually going on to Mars," Jeff Zotti, the RS-25 program director at Aerojet Rocketdyne said during the news conference. NASA's SLS program manager John Honeycutt agreed.
"This powerful rocket is going to put us in a position to be ready to support the agency in the country's deep space mission to the moon and beyond," he said.
"We did get an MCF on engine four," a control room member said less than a minute into the test fire, using an initialism that stands for "major component malfunction...." The engines fired for 12 more seconds after the exchange before an automatic shutdown was called. The test was meant to last eight minutes — the full duration needed for the booster during its Artemis program liftoff — but only ran less than two minutes.
Prime contractor Boeing previously said the test would need to run at least 250 seconds, or more than four minutes, for teams to gather enough data to move forward with transport to Kennedy Space Center and launch sometime before the end of the year. An exact plan moving forward, which could mean a second test and delay before transport to Florida, had not yet been released by Saturday evening.
Or, as the Guardian reports, "It was unclear whether Boeing and Nasa would have to repeat the test, a prospect that could push the debut launch into 2022."
In a press conference tonight, a NASA official specifically addressed the question of whether or not a launch this year was still feasible. "I think it's still too early to tell. I think as we figure out what went wrong, we're going to know what the future holds. And right now we just don't know...
"Not everything went according to script today, but we got a lot of great data, a lot of great information. I have absolutely total confidence in the team to figure out what the anomaly was, figure out how to fix it, and then get after it again... Depending on what we learn, we might not have to do it again."
They added that there was no sign of engine damage, and emphasized to reporters another way to view the significance of this afternoon's event. "A rocket capable of taking humans to the moon, was firing, all four engines at the same time." And they also stressed that this afternoon's result was not a failure -- but a test. "When you test, you learn things..."
"We're going to make adjustments, and we're going to fly to the moon. That's what the Artemis program is all about, that's what NASA is all about, and that's what America is all about. We didn't get everything we wanted, and yeah, we're going to have to make adjustments. But this was a test, and this is why we test.
"If you're expecting perfection on a first test, then you've never tested before."
"The date is set," NASA had tweeted Friday, thanking its partners Boeing Space and Aerojet Rocketdyne for Saturday's "hot fire" test of the SLS's core stage.
"One of NASA's main goals for 2021 is to launch Artemis I, an uncrewed moon mission meant to show the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket can safely send humans to our lunar neighbor," reported CNET. "But first, NASA plans to make some noise with a fiery SLS test on Saturday."
Below is the original report that schwit1 had shared from Space.com: It's a critical test for NASA and the final step in the agency's "Green Run" series of tests to ensure the SLS rocket is ready for its first launch... In the upcoming hot-fire engine test, engineers will load the Boeing-built SLS core booster with over 700,000 gallons of cryogenic (that's really cold) propellant into the rocket's fuel tanks and light all four of its RS-25 engines at once. The engines will fire for 485 seconds (a little over 8 minutes) and generate a whopping 1.6 million pounds of thrust throughout the test...
Following the success of this hot fire test and subsequent uncrewed missions to the moon, "the next key step in returning astronauts to the moon and eventually going on to Mars," Jeff Zotti, the RS-25 program director at Aerojet Rocketdyne said during the news conference. NASA's SLS program manager John Honeycutt agreed.
"This powerful rocket is going to put us in a position to be ready to support the agency in the country's deep space mission to the moon and beyond," he said.
Sure (Score:5, Insightful)
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Been watching for a while, delayed to 5PM EST, hopefully we get flamey end activation today
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5PM EST, screen says... within the hour *sigh*
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Welp! that was satisfying, not one of those 3-second SFs like SpaceX pulls off ;)
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T plus about two hours, and all we're seeing is the fuel slowly fuming away in the Florida sun.
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The test stand is that big. ;)
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I'll believe this whole project wasn't a massive waste of money when in five years time it has lifted a ton to orbit for less than 3 times ( even EXCLUDING development costs ! ) what Spacex charge NASA to do that.
Re:Sure (Score:5, Informative)
If this were SpaceX running this, they probably would have safed the system and dispatched engineers to debug and fix the control fault in realtime, with 50% odds that they'd be back up with a new attempt by the end of the day. SpaceX's operating principle is that if the timeline is long, it's wrong.
But NASA doesn't work that way. :P
Ignoring SLS itself and just comparing to Orion, this comparison [arstechnica.com] is just humiliating:
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Since that time, according to The Planetary Society's Casey Dreier, NASA has spent $23.7 billion developing the Orion spacecraft. This does not include primary costs for the vehicle's Service Module, which provides power and propulsion, as it is being provided by the European Space Agency.
For this money, NASA has gotten a bare-bones version of Orion that flew during the Exploration Flight Test-1 mission in 2014. The agency has also gotten the construction of an Orion capsule—which also does not have a full life support system—that will be used during the uncrewed Artemis I mission due to be flown in 12 to 24 months. So over its lifetime, and for $23.7 billion, the Orion program has produced:
* Development of Orion spacecraft
* Exploration Flight Test-1 basic vehicle
* The Orion capsule to be used for another test flight
* Work on capsules for subsequent missions
Obviously, that is not nothing. But it is far from a lot, even for a big government program. To see how efficiently this money could theoretically have been spent, let's use an extreme example.
SpaceX is generally considered one of the most efficient space companies. Founded in 2002, the company has received funding from NASA, the Department of Defense, and private investors. Over its history, we can reliably estimate that SpaceX has expended a total of $16 billion to $20 billion on all of its spaceflight endeavors. Consider what that money has bought:
* Development of Falcon 1, Falcon 9, and Falcon Heavy rockets
* Development of Cargo Dragon, Crew Dragon, and Cargo Dragon 2 spacecraft
* Development of Merlin, Kestrel, and Raptor rocket engines
* Build-out of launch sites at Vandenberg (twice), Kwajalein Atoll, Cape Canaveral, and Kennedy Space Center
* 105 successful launches to orbit
* 20 missions to supply International Space Station, two crewed flights
* Development of vertical take off, vertical landing, rapid reuse for first stages
* Starship and Super Heavy rocket development program
* Starlink Internet program (with 955 satellites on orbit, SpaceX is largest satellite operator in the world)
To sum up, SpaceX delivered all of that for billions of dollars less than what NASA has spent on the Orion program since its inception.
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Not likely. The optimistic per launch cost to LEO with bulk pricing was about $6.5 million / tonne in 2019. An off-the-shelf working now Falcon Heavy launch is about 30% of that.
What SLS can do is lift twice as much as a Falcon Heavy. So the real race is between SLS and Starship.
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I'll believe this flies in 2021 when I see it.
Since the vital goal of planting a big beautiful American flag on the moon by January 20, 2025 is now toast, I'm betting that this rocket is more likely to get cancelled than to ever fly.
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Since the vital goal of planting a big beautiful American flag on the moon by January 20, 2025 is now toast, ...
Pretty sure we already did that [wikipedia.org] on July 20, 1969, November 19, 1969, February 5, 1971, July 30, 1971, April 21, 1972, and December 11, 1972.
Try and keep up. :-)
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Don't tell me about it. Tell the flag-planter-in-chief.
Re:Sure (Score:5, Funny)
Putting a man on the moon was easy, 20th century tech could do that. Putting a woman on the moon is clearly far, far harder since it's taking more than half a century longer for anyone to pull it off.
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Putting a woman on the moon is clearly far, far harder...
But keeping her there? Priceless.
Harder, indeed! (Score:2)
NASA *did* try a female crew, but they kept stopping to ask for directions . . . :)
More seriously, one of the things that came out during the shuttle program was that for the first time, they had suits for women. Something about needing a solution other than a catheter to deal with the biological difference . . .
Yes, the commies launched a couple of women, but those were publicity stunts, with no more role than the animals in earlier flights. Iâ(TM)m not sure what they did, but my guesses are cathet
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Cancelled, ha! Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Re:Sure (Score:4, Funny)
American flag on the moon by January 20, 2025 is now toast
Trump is going to be pissed if they don't make it in time for his inauguration.
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Well, since they shut down the test early due to some issue, that's looking more likely.
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I'll believe this flies in 2021 when I see it.
Space is hard. With all the delays that have already occurred the test flight was never going to fly in 2021 (just like it did not fly in 2016 when originally scheduled, nor the 2017 reschedule, etc.).
But NASA continues to create success oriented schedules that presumes everything will go perfectly, and then everyone waits for the "something" that pushes the schedule back and then they get to exhale a sigh of relief that their company did not have to make the call (for they were late too, but now don't hav
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Space is hard.
That you, Mr. Bruno??
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NASA Needs to Modernize (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm blown away that NASA is still using their old rocket building methodology. I get why - Congress runs NASA - but it's just so outdated.
The rockets they are testing today are the flight rockets. If anything happens to them, NASA is set back years. Yes, NASA engineers are about the best in the world, and this has been meticulously planned for and measured and re-measured, but shit happens.
Contrast with SpaceX, who has a warehouse full of engines. They build another one every week it seems. If one isn't working quite right, pull it, send it back to the shop, and slap another in. If you blow up a couple accidentally, send a truck to the warehouse to get a couple of more.
I'm almost hoping that NASA blows these up. What's it going to take to force them to abandon their 50+ year old model?
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You are ignorant of rocketry, not the same engines as 1970s, many improvements.
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But I know how to read, which comes in handy when posting replies to things on the internet.
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But I know how to read, which comes in handy when posting replies to things on the internet.
I have never seen a post more deserving of "You must be new here".
Re: NASA Needs to Modernize (Score:3)
Also worth noting, the RS-25 was an absolutely excellent engine in the 70s, and is still a very good one today. The Raptor is a big step forward, but the RS-25 is actually still more efficient. The Raptor has it licked in terms of total thrust, thrust to weight, reuse, and convenience of fuel, but again - the RD-25 is a really good engine.
Re: NASA Needs to Modernize (Score:5, Insightful)
Have they actually demonstrated the capability to build new RS-25's? So far as I know, all testing to date has been using museum pieces. They could be flying crazy alien rockets from Area 51, but it still wouldn't mean anything without the tooling to build new ones if they're flying them on expendable boosters.
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Last May contract awarded for building 18 more, we'll see if Aerojet Rocketdyne can.
It's an engine that has accomplished things, vs. Raptor which is still in R&D and which to date hasn't gone 8 miles up. Could be a great engine but that's in the future.
Re: NASA Needs to Modernize (Score:2)
While thatâ(TM)s true, SpaceX have done full duration burns with Raptor. In fact the hop to 12.5km involved a full duration burn, but not at full power obviously.
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par for the course, developing rocket engines has more spectacular fireworks than big midwestern city on 4th of July. They've made upgrades to the engines and pushing power to 110%+
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has it licked in going up to 12.5km altitude to date? lolz. Sure, someday the Raptor might be solid tried and true engine but it's still in R&D. It's not taken anything anywhere yet.
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NASA's focus is on manned spaceflight. They care about nothing blowing up more than anything. When this "blows you away" then that's an acceptable loss.
When they finally get to the Moon (Score:5, Funny)
They can do a refill on the SpaceX-Gas-Station, there will be one in Mare Serenitatis and another one in Mare Crisium, both with a Diner attached.
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They can do a refill on the SpaceX-Gas-Station, there will be one in Mare Serenitatis and another one in Mare Crisium, both with a Diner attached.
Won't do any good. First the SLS doesn't land on the moon (or anywhere). 2nd it doesn't burn Liquid Methane and LOX which is what the gas station will have. Guess the Lunar Starship will have to let them hitch a ride home.
Rockets that can't be refueled with fuel made off Earth are going to become obsolete. As will non reusable space craft.
One thing I've found funny about the recent companies and nations trying to catch up to SpaceX is that they all seem to target the Falcon 9 as being what they have t
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Rockets that can't be refueled with fuel made off Earth are going to become obsolete
The biggest use case for rockets will remain to bring satellites in earth orbit. Refueling on the moon or mars may never happen.
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"The biggest use case for rockets will remain to bring satellites in earth orbit. Refueling on the moon or mars may never happen."
That may well be the case right now, but it is the intent of a large number of people (including Elon Musk) to change it.
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Until that moment, rockets that bring fuel from the earth are not obsolete.
Which of course is why I said:
are going to become obsolete
Part of the big thing with Starship is the standardization. Almost all the components of the booster are currently being made and tested for the 2nd stage. Lowers development costs by sharing them between the two parts. Same maintenance crews and shared parts warehouses. Fewer unique parts means lower inventory and production costs.
Also the Starship will take relatively minor mods to make other versions. Crewed with or without additional cargo. Fuel tanker. Cargo. Lun
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I think you'd find it quite difficult to make methane on the moon.
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I think you'd find it quite difficult to make methane on the moon.
Don't see why considering that it requires water and CO2 to make methane. There is water present. Carbon and Oxygen is in the soil and can be cooked out with a solar furnace. So all the components are there. Burn the extracted Carbon with the extracted O2 to make the CO2. Then you have your CO2 and water to make methane and O2. Same system could be used for extracting other materials such as various metals for manufacturing of the base. The procedures already exist.
Burning the C and O2 gives you heat
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Actually there are only trace amounts of carbon (mostly solar wind deposits) [wikipedia.org] on the moon.
Need to crash a carbonaceous asteroid near your fuel factory site.
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While the average carbon content may be low, the moon probably has concentrated carbon resources that can be extracted. Those could include ejecta from carbon-laden meteorites, CO2 ice in dark craters at the poles, and whatever is releasing the carbon emissions that have been discovered all over the moon.
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I think you'd find it quite difficult to make methane on the moon.
Don't see why considering that it requires water and CO2 to make methane. There is water present. Carbon and Oxygen is in the soil and can be cooked out with a solar furnace. So all the components are there.
There is [harvard.edu] no [wiley.com] Carbon [wikipedia.org] (other than maybe trace amounts from solar wind) on the Moon.
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There are only trace amounts of copper on Earth, but we still mine and use it. For that matter, the amount of carbon on Earth is only a little bit above trace levels. Most likely, there are deposits of CO2 ice at the poles in the same dark craters where we would be able to get water.
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There's not much carbon on the moon, and it lacks the biological processes that concentrate it on Earth. The carbon isn't contributing to the efficiency of your propulsion either. If you're going to burn your drinking water, you might as well just use the hydrogen and oxygen directly.
There is a lot of aluminum oxide laying around, which you can electrolyze into rocket fuel. Benefits include not using ultra-precious inner-system hydrogen at all.
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Hopefully with a Monolith Burger attached.
"cryogenic (that's really cold)" (Score:3)
Enough with all the technical gobbledeegook.
Test fire ended early (Score:3)
Didn't complete the full 8 minutes.
Re:Test fire ended early (Score:5, Funny)
"1.6 million pounds of thrust"
> Didn't complete the full 8 minutes.
Sometimes when you're really thrusting, when it gets loud and things are shaking you can't last longer than six or seven minutes of full power thrusting.
Re: Test fire ended early (Score:2)
Re: Test fire ended early (Score:4, Funny)
That depends on whether I'm thinking about a trip around Uranus.
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Didn't complete the full 8 minutes.
See! Despite the token woman, this was still a mission run by men.
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Looks like Boeing may be trying their old trick. The test failed but we know why so we'll call it good and carry on to the next phase. Doesn't fly with me as peoples lives are in the balance.
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Yeah, I caught that too..."Depending on what we learn, we might not have to do it again."
The first firing of the RS-25 was a great advance. (Score:5, Insightful)
The first firing of the RS-25 was a great advance for rocket design and engineering, of which NASA and Rocketdyne can be proud.
Unfortunately that occurred on March 16th, 1977.
FFS, NASA, what happened ?
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When NASA went to the moon in the 1970s, they did much of the core engineering, design and development in-house. The federal government poured in money at the top and relied on trickle-down economics to spread that wealth around the nation through sub-contracts.
What happened was that the companies that saw that money as potential income got involved. They realized that if they were being paid to design and develop something they got right in a couple of years, the amount of money they
They are slow (Score:2)
Their spacship flew once in 15 years and now apparently
"Nasa’s Boeing deep space rocket set for ‘once-in-a-generation’ test"
IOW, nothing will happen the next 25 years.
yeah, ya know... (Score:2)
I HATE when that happens!
What a waste (Score:2)
Money and personnel that could have been given to Blue Origin and SpaceX to develop/test re-usable rockets instead wasted on the obsolet, and not-scalable, concept of disposable rockets. Aliens must think Earthlings are super rich to blow money on disposable rockets.
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Money and personnel that could have been given to Blue Origin and SpaceX to develop/test re-usable rockets
But the Rs-25 *is* a re-usable rocket - as you might expect for $140million/piece - and as proven by the Space Shuttle.
It just happens that that are going to drop them in the ocean after the first use :-( .
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Looks like they also had an MAF (Score:2)
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I think the 'F' stands for some synonym of 'malfunction'.
Re: Looks like they also had an MAF (Score:2)
Once again, waterfall model is slowing down NASA (Score:4, Interesting)
The old model used to work when there were unknowns. However we already had lots of experience in both theory and application, and there is no reason to back to the drawing board for new rockets.
However what I see is, every NASA project becomes a repeat of the entire process, with almost no reuse of old data. All the contractors need to be fed after all. And this is really wasteful.
We are still building the replacement for the Hubble for over 20 years now. It was supposed to launch in 2007 with a cost of 0.5 billion dollars. Now it has cost over 10 billion (20x increase) and nothing has launched yet (hopefully it is set to launch this year, again).
We could have sent 10 incremental projects with the same money. And we would have tested the actual complex mirror mechanism in the way. Now if any of the delicate parts were to fail, we will have nothing to show for it.
Obviously the non-incremental development cannot continue. Yes, waterfall is good for some things, but not practical for rocket science anymore.
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Who wants to go up on the first Agile rocket launch?
Re:Once again, waterfall model is slowing down NAS (Score:4)
Oh, but they have:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
You are half right, but not-waterfall does not need to mean Agile. Before the first manned mission, Dragon 9 had hundreds of runs, and Dragon had tens of deliveries. The first human one was based on all that experience.
The only part of NASA that is doing this is JPL. They have been sending better and better rovers to Mars every few years. Some would fail, but they still hammer on.
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The only part of NASA that is doing this is JPL.
Because people don't die due to failed deployments.
Not a failure!? (Score:2)
> not a failure -- but a test. "When you test, you learn things
Er, (s)he clearly has never taken a test! All the ones I've ever taken result in a pass or a fail.
Re: Not a failure!? (Score:1)
Re: Not a failure!? (Score:2)
I don't have a learning disorder.
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> not a failure -- but a test. "When you test, you learn things
Er, (s)he clearly has never taken a test! All the ones I've ever taken result in a pass or a fail.
You learn whether you knew enough to pass. Learn which bits you thought you knew but didn't.
Re: Not a failure!? (Score:2)
You're just saying you can learn from your failures.
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You're just saying you can learn from your failures.
Yes. You can learn from your successes too. It's also more than that.
You could test to see when something breaks. It's going to fail, and you learn stuff.
Anyway, you're the one claiming you can't learn from a test. Any reasons why you think that?
Easy Choice (Score:2)
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The idea is sold to the federal government as a means of disbursing federal tax dollars in a way that promotes industry, promotes innovation, helps keep the US as the principle "power" in space, and, of course, helps create US jobs.
The other side of this coin is that having control of the purse strings - a role which up until the latest round of elections would have fallen to Senator Richard Shelby, chair of the Senate Appropria
They needed a win... (Score:5)
So on one hand I want to say "Space stuff is hard, failures are to be expected."
But on the other hand, SLS has consume ~$20B, making it way overbudget, and is nearly 5 years overdue at this point. These are also Space Shuttle engines which, I don't know the full history on the SLS program, but I would imagine they decided to go with because they are a tried and tested design and were chosen because it'd get the program in space faster...even if they cost something like 150 to 180M per engine.
Boeing also really needed a win on this. Between their 737-MAX screw up and the screw up on the Commercial crew capsule, which also uncovered more problems. This failure just feels like more egg on their face. To make matters worse, you have Lockheed doing the Orion capsule, another overbudget and overdue project, that has ran into problems where the whole capsule would have to be deconstructed to potentially fix it.
It really makes me wonder if there is any point to these traditional defense contractors anymore besides being black holes to dump tax payer dollars into.
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I mean, SpaceX is also a huge consumer of tax payer dollars. And, more to to the point, started with OSS given out by the space program. Just a physical product isn't the only goal.
Russians build cheap rockets that work (Score:2)
Use them for the heavy lifting. Focus on the intelligent payload.
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I mean, SpaceX is also a huge consumer of tax payer dollars.
Yes, but SpaceX is delivering. The problem isn't consuming dollars. The problem is when they consume dollars and produce failure.
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SpaceX is delivering, but they're also using a lot of knowledge gained from open science/sourced failures through the 1990's and early 2000's. Taxpayer funded failures aren't a bad thing - if there is useful knowledge gained and shared.
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It really makes me wonder if there is any point to these traditional defense contractors anymore besides being black holes to dump tax payer dollars into.
Eisenhower warned us 60 years ago.
So did Orwell. In 1984 the "wars" were ways to use up productivity and keep workers poor and controllable.
Boeing and SpaceX successful (Score:5, Insightful)
Both companies are successful, they just have different goals.
Musk's goals are cheaper spaceflight (and get his ass to Mars). He's doing that by designing efficient reusable rockets.
Boeing's goal is to absorb as many taxpayer dollars as possible. They don't do this by putting anything in space. Delays and cost overruns are part of the method.
Repeat the test? (Score:2)
"It was unclear whether Boeing and Nasa would have to repeat the test, a prospect that could push the debut launch into 2022."
Nah, it'll be fine, Just replace the broken pipe, or whatever, and it's off to the cape.
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Even in the initial broadcast they said they needed a full two minutes to get all the data they hoped to acquire for this test, and they didn't make that target. When you have a hard target of two minutes, and a soft target four times that, and you miss the hard target? That smells like failure to me.
As much as I'd love to see SLS succeed, I'm not sure there's much hope for it at this point. Although, I suppose since sucking down funding is goal number one, so long as that continues it's successful enoug
It's not a trick (Score:2)
It's a Boeing!
Considers new timeline (Score:2)
Since this was 'once in a generation test' according to their own words, we'll have to wait for the next generation.
I'm disappointed... (Score:2)
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And that woman! Irritating and seemingly trying hard to make Mr. You Know look bad.
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Or this [bass-guitar-info.com].