NASA's SLS Mega-Rocket Could Launch Within 8 Weeks (arstechnica.com) 70
Tuesday Ars Technica reported that "after more than a decade and more than $20 billion in funding, NASA and its litany of contractors are very close to declaring the 111-meter tall rocket ready for its debut launch." Long-time Slashdot reader added "It seems silly saying SLS will launch 'in just two months' for a rocket that was supposed to have first flown in 2016, but here we are."
From Ars Technica's report: On June 20, NASA successfully counted the rocket down to T-29 seconds during a pre-launch fueling test. Although they did not reach T-9 seconds, as was the original goal, the agency's engineers collected enough data to satisfy the requisite information to proceed toward a launch.
During a pair of news conferences last week, NASA officials declined to set a launch target for the mission. However, in an interview Tuesday with Ars, NASA's senior exploration official, Jim Free, said the agency is working toward a launch window of August 23 to September 6. "That's the one we're targeting," Free said. "We'd be foolish not to target that right now. We made incredible progress last week."
Next up is rolling the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft back to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center for final launch preparations, including arming the flight termination system. A team of technicians and engineers will also replace a seal on a "quick disconnect" where a hydrogen leak was observed during fuel loading.... [W]orkers have made their plans to process the vehicle during a relatively quick turnaround. "That group knows exactly what they need to do when we get back," he said. "I don't think we're stretching ourselves to get there. We're probably pushing ourselves a little bit, but we're not going to do something stupid." On this timeline, the SLS rocket could roll back to the launch pad in less than two months.
Friday the Register reported that the rocket's rollback encountered "a delay caused by concerns over the crawlerway" — that is, the 4.2-mile (6.8 km) road of rocks: The massive transporter used to move the Space Launch System between Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and launchpad requires a level pathway and teams have been working on the inclined pathway leading to the launchpad where the rocket currently resides to ensure there is an even distribution of rocks to support the mobile launcher and rocket.
But NASASpaceflight.com reported that the roll back actually happened on Saturday — apparently taking ten hours and 18 minutes, "slightly faster than the expected travel time of 11 hours....
"After returning to the VAB, SLS has another six to eight weeks of final launch preparations ahead of the rollout for the debut mission. This still makes the planned launch window possible, although the margins are slim."
From Ars Technica's report: On June 20, NASA successfully counted the rocket down to T-29 seconds during a pre-launch fueling test. Although they did not reach T-9 seconds, as was the original goal, the agency's engineers collected enough data to satisfy the requisite information to proceed toward a launch.
During a pair of news conferences last week, NASA officials declined to set a launch target for the mission. However, in an interview Tuesday with Ars, NASA's senior exploration official, Jim Free, said the agency is working toward a launch window of August 23 to September 6. "That's the one we're targeting," Free said. "We'd be foolish not to target that right now. We made incredible progress last week."
Next up is rolling the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft back to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center for final launch preparations, including arming the flight termination system. A team of technicians and engineers will also replace a seal on a "quick disconnect" where a hydrogen leak was observed during fuel loading.... [W]orkers have made their plans to process the vehicle during a relatively quick turnaround. "That group knows exactly what they need to do when we get back," he said. "I don't think we're stretching ourselves to get there. We're probably pushing ourselves a little bit, but we're not going to do something stupid." On this timeline, the SLS rocket could roll back to the launch pad in less than two months.
Friday the Register reported that the rocket's rollback encountered "a delay caused by concerns over the crawlerway" — that is, the 4.2-mile (6.8 km) road of rocks: The massive transporter used to move the Space Launch System between Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and launchpad requires a level pathway and teams have been working on the inclined pathway leading to the launchpad where the rocket currently resides to ensure there is an even distribution of rocks to support the mobile launcher and rocket.
But NASASpaceflight.com reported that the roll back actually happened on Saturday — apparently taking ten hours and 18 minutes, "slightly faster than the expected travel time of 11 hours....
"After returning to the VAB, SLS has another six to eight weeks of final launch preparations ahead of the rollout for the debut mission. This still makes the planned launch window possible, although the margins are slim."
Re: In Memoriam: von Braun!!! (Score:2)
Good luck! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes it's an overpriced bloated boondoggle of a project but a lot of smart people who have nothing to do with the intracies of Senate funding and directives still have put their effort into it. A failure is not going to stop the project only force more moey to be spent correcting whatever issues are found
Until Starship is proven out over the next couple years SLS will remain a project that gets funded to retain a heavy lift capacity and save face. I am looking forward to that day and hope we see only 2 or 3 of these before the whole project is deemed safely irrelevant. Even NASA knows this when they selected Starship as the HLS sole winner.
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So the fact that a government agency has made some bad contracts and there was some (uncovered) fraud is proof of the inevitable decline of civiization and NASA is in and of itself doomed?
In my opinion the line drawn here is a bit too far reaching. It could reach that point but there are thousands of steps before that point and thousands of ways to move the line pretty easily and something like the SLS is just a matter of bad timing and honestly more a case that NASA should be given block budgeting with be
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Given the scale of the abuse, it's not proof of the invalidity of every NASA project. But it is typical of their political mandate to "create jobs" rather than to successfully explore and even industrialize space
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Not to be critical (Score:4, Insightful)
At least 5 years behind and billions over budget? [theverge.com] I'm finally glad they'll launch.
Just a reminder, the Kennedy challenge of putting a man on the moon was done in just over 8 years.
Re: Not to be critical (Score:1)
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You mean lives lost to old age?
Re: Not to be critical (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes it did cost some lives, but accidents happen.
Sure, but that fire was not an accident. Not implying that it was intentional, just that the level of incompetence that lead to it can't be classed as mere accident. That said, I don't think their pace was too extreme. Like most NASA fatal accidents, it was a failure to recognize the difference between a brief delay that could save lives and a delay that could merely save a little equipment.
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Yep, Challenger is the biggest example of something that you couldn't really classify as an accident, the suits/managers who pushed for the launch while the engineers said it could lead to failure should have been jailed.
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I was thinking of putting live humans inside a can filled with 100% oxygen atmosphere at over one atmosphere of pressure along with a bunch of outgassing freshly made plastics, etc. and multiple possible sources of ignition, but Challenger is certainly a contender. I mean, the O-ring situation that existed was bad enough all by itself. Feynman had some pretty harsh things to say about details such as calling the fact that the O-rings only burned about a third of the way through each time a "safety factor of
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Three, plus some ground crew (unfortunately, I don't remember how many) that got caught in a nitrogen filled tank.
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I assume you are referring to the lives of Grissom, White and Chaffee during Apollo 1 testing
They did not seem to be the result of some rush to launch but more a matter of learning hard lessons while performing an extraordinary feat:
Their deaths were attributed to a wide range of lethal hazards in the early CSM design and conditions of the test, including a pressurized 100 percent oxygen prelaunch atmosphere, wiring and plumbing flaws, flammable materials used in the cockpit and in the astronauts' flight su
Re:Not to be critical (Score:4, Funny)
Not to be critical? Why not be critical? We should be critical.
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Supporters of space exploration should be shouting the loudest about the money wasted on the gross overruns on SLS, JWST, the Mobile Transporter, etc etc etc
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Facts don't back up that statement. [wikipedia.org]
Thank you for playing; the girl at the door has your consolation prize.
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It's not 10x, that's the point, more like 2.1x. We were fighting the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and riots in the streets. We still managed to do it in 8 years. Unfortunately, these mega contractors get worse as time progresses. We definitely need to get smarter in our procurement of military and space systems with penalties for contractors who don't deliver on-time and on-budget.
Wait, that takes political backbone, and I don't see that happening anytime in the next 30 years. #Nevermind
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It's been that way for decades, many of the Aerospace companies who were in Apollo are still there, just in an absorbed or consolidated form. A company I worked for in the 90s (disclosure, I worked on the Shuttle program) is now part of one of them after being part of another. The fewer, smaller players have been gobbled up leaving the gov't less choice.
I'm a huge fan of SpaceX and the other companies because they're actually making progress. That also means that any small company that is successful and a g
it could (Score:2)
but it won't
hell even the last sentence says it has 6 to 8 weeks of prep, quit wasting people's time with bullshit articles
worlds most expensive insurance (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm all for it. We spend 10s of billions on stuff that's FAR less important. But, damn, being part of the SLS effort is like being that member of the track team that's literally getting lapped by the top performer.
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We're buying an insurance policy that covers us after we've driven our vehicle successfully? Starship might go orbital before SLS. They could have played hardball with Boeing and asked them to make a reusable system, or given SpaceX that money to improve the factor of safety or speed up/automate rocket manufacturing.
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Yes, s
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Heavy loads is one thing. Passengers are quite another. SpaceX has a lot of convincing to do before NASA will let any of their astronauts ride up on Starship, and even more before they'll let any ride down.
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I’m hearing a lot of “but they might fail”. Very true. But, to,be honest, I’m also getting vibes of “I dont like SpaceX because Musk is a weirdo so I’m gonna nitpick”.
Yes, second (bezos) and a third (SLS) options are great to have. No argument there.
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SpaceX provides human transport on a conventional rocket, with a conventional capsule system. Starship isn't that. NASA didn't actually like Dragon not having parachutes, and made SpaceX change the design.
Starship is another matter entirely. There are lots of issues, but just as examples:
- it doesn't have a launch escape system. SpaceX says Starship itself is that, but it doesn't have the thrust to pull away if the booster explodes on the pad, and it obviously doesn't help much if the tonnes of fuel in Star
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I have always felt that SpaceX could use crew Dragon to ferry NASA personnel to Starship once it was in Earth orbit, whether it is a Lunar mission or just as passengers to Mars
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That's more or less the idea behind flying out to the lunar gateway and then boarding a lander, except that Dragon/Falcon can't go that far. I imagine NASA was pressured to have an Apollo style direct to the surface and back capability anyway, just in case a quick plant the flag mission was politically desirable.
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The need for convincing is budgetary and political, not engineering or science based. SpaceX has been performing very well indeed, including the astonishingly stupid and wasteful requirement of ocean landings.
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No, the problems with Starship carrying NASA astronauts are safety related. That doesn't mean they're about safety in an absolute sense, it means they're about satisfying NASA's safety protocols. Actually, it means convincing NASA to change its safety protocols, because Starship is simply too different to satisfy them. Man-rating a rocket takes a long time. Introducing entirely new criteria and then man-rating a rocket is going to take even longer. Way too long to get to the moon by 1999.
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Starliner is supposed to be reusable up to ten times, designed to be launched on any rocket, including space x falcon
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It's still too early to say when Starship will be ready or if it will even be viable in the intended form. They are still a long way from carrying crew into orbit with it, and then getting them back down.
Ignore what Musk says. 10 years ago he said he would have people on Mars in 10 years time. He's a hopeless optimist. SpaceX has the skills to do it (although they did just fire a bunch of people for criticising Musk, who knows how far back that set them) but the timeline is really unknowable at this point b
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(although they did just fire a bunch of people for criticising Musk, who knows how far back that set them)
They were fired for disrupting the work environment and creating a hostile work environment for other employees. Not for criticizing Musk.
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They were fired for disrupting the work environment and creating a hostile work environment for other employees. Not for criticizing Musk.
They were quite clearly criticized for criticizing Musk.
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Starship can be an insurance policy for SLS/Orion, as a Starship variant could easily do what SLS/Orion does. However, SLS/Orion is no insurance against problems with Starship, since all it can do is deliver a few astronauts to NRHO. It can't even get them to low lunar orbit, let alone the lunar surface. The only backup for Starship is another lunar lander...one that doesn't use SLS, since the SLS is needed to launch Orion, and it can't fly often enough to do both jobs.
Huge waste of money (Score:2)
Why are we letting NASA even invite bids from companies that deliberately refuse to even try to develop fully reusable launch systems? Of course, they manipulate the weak-minded NASA into thinking reusability was impossible. Wouldn't you if you owned a cash cow aerospace company? After all, no government space official is paying with his own money. And the buffoon executives at NASA believed them in spite of successes like DC-X .. which they canceled due to one landing gear failure following 8 successful te
Re: Huge waste of money (Score:2)
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NASA sets the parameters based on what the industry says is possible. Otherwise, NASA would ask for a light-speed spaceship with warp engines.
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NASA set parameters for SLS. But they were/are hog tied by Congress who insisted that SLS use bits of space shuttle (to keep space shuttle contractors in business and the senators/congressmen who's district covers those contractors in office)
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>I'm pretty sure it's NASA who sets the parameters of the project
funniest thing ive heard this week. Ever heard of politicians?
So launches for only 1000 times more than SpaceX (Score:1)
Spacex's Starship will soon be launching at Millions per launch for the same or higher payload.
How can the corrupt politicians KEEP getting away with forcing NASA to throw taxpayers' money away like this ?
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No pollution control, no gun control and Biden doing his best to ensure Trump wins next time.
If I was a Southern politician, I would be pretty damn pacified right now.
It's the rest of who are shitting ourselves.
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What would be worse - a complete failure of SLS at launch, hopefully at some point in the launch where it doesn't cause too much ground damage, or total success of the SLS launch, paving the way for future launches?
Either way, SLS will have done one good thing - ensured there is a larger talent pool for private companies to draw people from in future, once it is shown that SpaceX, Bue Origin and the others working on private enterprise funded orbit solutions can work effectively to provide better solutions
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"So what was your proudest cost-plus contract work and how much did you end up overbilling your 32-hour workweek by ?"
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But the quicker SLS fails, the faster we nail down the coffins of the corrupt cost-plus enabling politicians, and let private industry take over, doing it right.
proudly union made (Score:1)
When are purse strings going to be further cut? (Score:3)
The numbers don't lie, NASA budget during the space race was considerable and then dwindled rapidly.
The future of space exploration seems now to be very much a privately funded affair for the USA - some deep pockets and some big ego's are funding the latest developments in the field, for better or worse.
You could argue, if not for these private interests, the US would've slipped so far back in terms of the development and progression of exploration of space, as to become insignificant.
However, despite the funding to NASA having dwindled, the US still spends more on NASA than its counterparts, China & Russia.
We are now within a period of financial instability and possibly on the cusp of a major recession - and seriously, in terms of "bang for buck", NASA is struggling.
But we do have to remember the simply amazing work they are still doing - e.g. Mars exploration - it's astounding.
I don't know what the future holds, but having funding not associated with huge corporate interests is a liberating thing - the "space race" was totally a thing of "national pride" rather than any actual returns - a political point, almost a slightly childish "my dick is bigger than yours" point.
When the chips are down, when globally, the economy is struggling, governments will totally reign in spending further - and NASA will surely see funding further cut.
In the interim, the sci-fi obsessed tech titans are splashing out billions in ... well, a "my dick is bigger than yours" contest.
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the sci-fi obsessed tech titans
...are more interesting than you.
Wake me (Score:2)
Wake me when it actually launches.
A dollar says it could but won't (Score:2)
I lost all confidence.
Over a decade and $20 billion in funding? (Score:2)