NASA Sets Tentative Launch Dates For Debut of Its Massive New Rocket (theverge.com) 73
NASA is aiming to launch its new monster rocket, the Space Launch System, on its first trip to deep space as early as late August, the agency announced today. The Verge reports: NASA says it has placeholder dates for August 29th, September 2nd, and September 5th for the rocket's debut, though there is still plenty of work left to do on the vehicle between now and then. NASA officials stressed that they are not committing to any of these dates at the moment, but the announcement puts the rocket closer than it's ever been to its launch. The SLS has been in development for roughly a decade, and its inaugural launch date has been an ever-moving target. NASA originally planned to launch as early as 2017, but schedule delays, development mishaps, and poor management have caused the rocket's debut to slip again and again.
But after conducting a mostly full dress rehearsal with the rocket back in June, NASA is in the development end game, and an actual launch looms on the horizon. A more solid launch date should come closer to actual liftoff. "We'll make the agency commitment at the flight readiness review, just a little over a week before launch," NASA's Jim Free, associate administrator for exploration systems development, said during a press conference. "But these are the dates that the team is working to and have a plan to."
If NASA rolls out SLS to the launchpad in mid-August but cannot launch by September 5th, then the rocket's liftoff could see a significant delay. It all has to do with the SLS's flight termination system, which is used to destroy the rocket if something goes catastrophically wrong during the launch and the vehicle starts to veer off course. Teams must fully test the flight termination system before launch, and that work can only be done inside the VAB. Once the SLS is rolled out from the VAB, there is a 20-day time limit for the flight termination system before it has to be tested again. That means the rocket has to launch within 20 days of its rollout, or it must be returned to the VAB so that the flight termination system can get checked out again. That testing takes time, so if SLS is forced to come back to the VAB after rolling out in August, chances are it wouldn't be ready to fly until late October.
But after conducting a mostly full dress rehearsal with the rocket back in June, NASA is in the development end game, and an actual launch looms on the horizon. A more solid launch date should come closer to actual liftoff. "We'll make the agency commitment at the flight readiness review, just a little over a week before launch," NASA's Jim Free, associate administrator for exploration systems development, said during a press conference. "But these are the dates that the team is working to and have a plan to."
If NASA rolls out SLS to the launchpad in mid-August but cannot launch by September 5th, then the rocket's liftoff could see a significant delay. It all has to do with the SLS's flight termination system, which is used to destroy the rocket if something goes catastrophically wrong during the launch and the vehicle starts to veer off course. Teams must fully test the flight termination system before launch, and that work can only be done inside the VAB. Once the SLS is rolled out from the VAB, there is a 20-day time limit for the flight termination system before it has to be tested again. That means the rocket has to launch within 20 days of its rollout, or it must be returned to the VAB so that the flight termination system can get checked out again. That testing takes time, so if SLS is forced to come back to the VAB after rolling out in August, chances are it wouldn't be ready to fly until late October.
Fresh Air and Sunshine? (Score:1, Interesting)
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Let's say one of them produces 10,000,000 cars worth of CO2. There are how many cars on the road in the US? And these rockets get launched how many times? Well, none at the moment..
Orders of Magnitude [Re:Fresh Air and Sunshine?] (Score:2)
Anyone got an idea how much CO2 one of these rascals produce?
Orders to magntude:
Total fuel mass for the SLS boosters is about 0.0015 million tons. Humans emit 33,621 million tons of carbon dioxide a year.
Carbon dioxide emission is negligible.
It is hard to over-emphasize just how huge the emission of carbon dioxide by humans is.
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Compared to 33,621 million tons of carbon dioxide emitted by humans per year, it's negligible no matter how you count it.
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You weren't previously aware that it's ALL of the vehicles, not any particular one?
OK. Then here's some news for you. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is a collective effect. It's the cumulative effect of all of the vehicles (and other emission sources). It's not due to any one particular vehicle, or one particular power plant.
This is why it is a hard problem.
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and, just because the discussion here is about orders of magnitude... how many is that?
For comparison, there were an estimated 200 mullion SUVs in operation worldwide in 2020.
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Does it produce any? There's no carbon in the fuel as far as I know. There may be pollution caused by the hot gasses interacting with the atmosphere, which I think creates some sulphur compounds, but I think that's fairly minor per launch.
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There will be emissions from the manufacturing process. Anyone got any data on what those are?
Personally I think it's probably worth whatever it does emit.
Re:Fresh Air and Sunshine? (Score:4, Insightful)
There will be emissions from the manufacturing process. Anyone got any data on what those are?
Personally I think it's probably worth whatever it does emit.
Exactly. You're dead-on. It's back to the clean electric car BS. Yes, the car runs clean. No, it's not manufactured clean. No, the batteries don't come from magical clean fairy dust. No, the batteries' chems are not recyclable. No, the car doesn't magically disappear when its life is over - wanna recycle? Cool. Takes crap-loads of electricity. No, no, no, no, and no. Just no. Water comes out of the rear. Cool! Water comes out of my nostrils every breath I take, but I pollute and consume.
Anyhow, back on topic. All of the above 'no's are, of course, accompanied by the background process. The manufacturing takes materials, heat, electricity, etc. Pulling hydrogen out of the air or from other compounds requires electricity. Plating of the materials used in the separation process required metals and ELECTRICITY to oxidize them and bind them to their formations. The manufacturing processes that require heat use electricity, a gas or more than one, and has emissions of leftover/combined/etc compounds.
Look at every single part of the process from beginning to end, and without electricity, it isn't happening. Where does electricity come from? Don't even go there with the clean energy from solar panels and wind farms. with the hundreds of megawatts used in the process, and I'm talking real-time megawatts, not MWh over time. Those panels and few turbines they might have near the manufacturing facilit(y|ies) don't produce enough on windy, sunny days to run the manufacturing process.
I know it's not on direct topic, but it represents the underlying process... Electric cars. Same thing, but now you can look more at the end user as well as the manufacturers. The data is out there, and it's so incredibly obvious when you just look at your damn electric bill. The energy comes from somewhere, and it isn't from partially-reliable sources like wind and solar (I have solar panels, so I see the great disappointment that the cool benefits bring). Okay, so let's put batteries in place to store some of that unused daytime energy for later use. Same damn thing again - batteries aren't magical, clean, and don't disappear when their life is over. Also, they don't hold enough for your electric car unless you have so many of them that you're definitely not living in a subdivision / HOA / apartment / city / etc. You're living on a big piece of land, and the governing state, city, twp, village, whatever it is has to allow for those things to be on your land. So, it's not impossible to be electric and clean (even though solar panels aren't cleanly manufactured or recycled either, but that's yet another topic). Let's leave it alone and say you are a person with enough money to have a large land area (where the heck ever it is), to purchase enough panels to acquire enough on a cloudy day to get you around, have a battery storage system for sunny days/cloudy ones when you're not using much electricity, an electric car (which isn't cheap right now), and the money to upkeep all of the above and repair damages along the way.
How many people that fit into the 'doable' category are there? It ain't half the population, not a third, not even a quarter. Then let's say how many of those people actually WANT to 'go green' and do all of the above. Now (my head, anyway) is far below 1/1000th of the population.
I'm just working with realistic variables and facts here, not the happy 'put a little more down on a new electric car now and save in the long run, as well as save the world, fractionally, in the short-term' general consumer.
I'm all about getting out of the rut, but mentioning only the good and not the bad when proposing or executing is so far from reality it's criminal.
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Does oil rolls out of the ground ready for use in cars? Nope. There is a tremendous industry not only around drilling, but transporting and refining petroleum products. Ironically, there is discrete and distinct electrical cost at every step of the cycle to process oil into your SUV's fuel tank, perhaps not enough to power an EV the full distance, but surely measurable at least. Natural gas will likely backfill most of the electric grid top capacity for now, but solar is getting better quickly.
While my For
Re:Fresh Air and Sunshine? (Score:5, Informative)
It's back to the clean electric car BS. Yes, the car runs clean. No, it's not manufactured clean. No, the batteries don't come from magical clean fairy dust.
This is handwaving — even with their drawbacks, and charging them from coal, EVs have less environmental impact than gassers. This is because ICEs are so grossly inefficient and fueled with formerly sequestered carbon. The combination is what makes them so spectacularly bad. People also forget that while there are scary things going into batteries, there are scary things going into the alloys of the engine and the unibody, too. That makes the total percentage increase of scary stuff much smaller for EVs than most people imagine. That means you.
No, the batteries' chems are not recyclable.
This is not in fact true, and I would link some papers about it but they're paywalled so I can only read the abstracts. The electrolyte is recyclable. It can be done today with solvents.
Okay, so let's put batteries in place to store some of that unused daytime energy for later use. Same damn thing again - batteries aren't magical, clean, and don't disappear when their life is over.
Funny you mention that. Not only are batteries effectively magical (bricks that store electricity!) but the modern ones can last decades, they are very clean, and they are recyclable when their life is over. LiFePo4 batteries in particular fit this description; they do still contain lithium so all the sourcing problems with that still exist (more on that in a moment) but they don't have any cobalt in them, and the other metal in the electrolyte is iron which is even more easily recovered (electrolytically) than the lithium. They are also very clean in operation, especially since lithium iron polymer batteries are very unlikely to combust. Literally none of this is true of fossil fuels.
I'm just working with realistic variables and facts here
You're working with lies and ignorance, and spreading FUD.
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No, I'm not (your last sentence).
What you say is correct. What I'm referencing is the magical 'it's better and will completely make all that's wrong well' garbage that others are spreading. I want to stand in the middle of that. It ain't PERFECT. I'm not "FOR" or "AGAINST". I'm realistic. It's better, but stop believing it's going to turn the planet around in a year and be affordable and have a system for making it feel no different than what you're driving today, other than you "gas 'er up" at home i
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No cars are saving the planet, so that part is true. Even if EVs were literally zero-emissions, personal transport is only a small percentage of total emissions anyway. But suggesting EVs aren't a big improvement over ICEVs is also silly.
We definitely have to give up the bulk of personal auto ownership if we want to beat AGW, and yet that is still a small percentage of the totality of what we have to accomplish, which is why I think we're screwed.
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It's better, but stop believing it's going to turn the planet around in a year and be affordable and have a system for making it feel no different than what you're driving today, other than you "gas 'er up" at home instead of at a fuel pump.
No one in any position to be listened to on this is claiming anything even remotely like this. Nice try though.
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This is handwaving â" even with their drawbacks, and charging them from coal, EVs have less environmental impact than gassers.
Since you most certainly are NOT engaged in hand waiving I'll wait patiently for you to provide evidence to support your claims.
This is because ICEs are so grossly inefficient and fueled with formerly sequestered carbon.
What is a coal power plant fueled with?
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What I said:
EVs have less environmental impact than gassers. This is because ICEs are so grossly inefficient and fueled with formerly sequestered carbon. The combination is what makes them so spectacularly bad.
What you chose to quote:
This is because ICEs are so grossly inefficient and fueled with formerly sequestered carbon.
What you chose to ask:
What is a coal power plant fueled with?
Tuck-tuck? Is that you? Did you wander off from your genital irradiation treatment and stumble across a terminal?
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What I said:
EVs have less environmental impact than gassers. This is because ICEs are so grossly inefficient and fueled with formerly sequestered carbon. The combination is what makes them so spectacularly bad.
No, what you said was:
"This is handwaving - even with their drawbacks, and charging them from coal, EVs have less environmental impact than gassers. This is because ICEs are so grossly inefficient and fueled with formerly sequestered carbon. "
What you chose to quote:
This is because ICEs are so grossly inefficient and fueled with formerly sequestered carbon.
No, what I chose to quote was "This is handwaving - even with their drawbacks, and charging them from coal, EVs have less environmental impact than gassers.
This is because ICEs are so grossly inefficient and fueled with formerly sequestered carbon."
Tuck-tuck? Is that you? Did you wander off from your genital irradiation treatment and stumble across a terminal?
No idea what Tuck-tu
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You forget to mention that BEV and other large batteries are made of cells that are batteries themselves
I didn't mention that because cells aren't batteries, and this is Slashdot.
But seriously, yes, EV batteries have secondary uses. They are more commonly reused than recycled, because they still have around 70% capacity when they're considered worthless for EV use.
Of course, such use could be merely kicking the recycling problem down the road.
Well it is, but if recycling methods don't improve down the road it will be because our civilizations have collapsed, and we'll have bigger problems than some batteries.
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As for other environmental concerns, such as defacing mountains to extract minerals, or stuff piling up in landfills, that is a bummer. But it's not threatening the habitability of the who
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We're pretty close to the same page now. :) I have to add that your mention of bootstrapping is very apt, and also expands to what I was trying to say. There are some that realize the boot needs to happen before it can run. Others think the boot isn't there, it just runs. Some even go to "it's that easy? Why haven't we done it sooner?"
You have to face the reality before you can see the end goal reached.
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So you're basically deriding EVs because they aren't completely pollution free in their manufacture?
You know what transportation is? Your bare feet. No shoes allowed - those create pollution to manufacture and therefore are a bad option according to your logic.
However, if we actually use reasonable logic, EV-versus-ICE is making a decision about inflicting the least harm, and since it's possible for EVs to transport people and goods without the byproduct of emitting climate-altering gases as a course of n
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You're pulling the extremist route. That's not it. It's not about "completely" and about "fully" and "x free". It's about balancing the advertising, information, and beliefs. It's a better idea than fossil fuels, yes. But it isn't something that magically makes everything go 'clean' and 'green' right away. Perhaps I should have worded it a different way that explicitly said that very thing, and reminded anyone reading that if they're getting pissed off, they're not reading what I'm really saying.
I'm n
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Okay, so let's put batteries in place to store some of that unused daytime energy for later use. Same damn thing again - batteries aren't magical, clean, and don't disappear when their life is over. Also, they don't hold enough for your electric car unless you have so many of them that you're definitely not living in a subdivision / HOA / apartment / city / etc.
If you have an electric car, you already have a huge battery that in the future will be capable of acting as grid energy storage. Vehicle-to-grid schemes are already being rolled out in various countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Fresh Air and Sunshine? (Score:2)
I have a hybrid, so I think I can, with an expensive modification to the vehicle, provide enough power to run a microwave for a half hour.
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batteries ... don't hold enough power for your electric car
Oh ... so electric cars have huge batteries that are not easily recharged
hybrid ... provide enough power to run a microwave for a half hour.
No wait ... electric cars have tiny batteries that can't be used for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Your arguments are contradictory. Electric cars can't simultaneously have huge batteries that put an impossible load on the power grid, and tiny batteries that are of no help for storing power.
Or did you just want to tell me an irrelevant anecdote about your 20 year old Prius hybrid with a battery that has less range than a golf cart?
Re: Fresh Air and Sunshine? (Score:2)
Wow, what's got you in a bad mood today?
You're not even reading what I say in the correct context. You're obviously just in attack mode and have some sort of grudge so there's no talking. Everything I say from this point forward will be wrong and against you. This is not about you and it's not about winning. It's a conversation.
If you look, others responded and understood what I was referring to and saying. One person disagreed with me but once I explain what I was saying realized we were on the same page
Re:Fresh Air and Sunshine? (Score:4, Informative)
Does it produce any? There's no carbon in the fuel as far as I know.
1) HTPB-based fuel in the solid boosters *does* contain carbon. 2) Hydrogen for the sustainer stage is being produced from natural gas; lots of CO2 escape from this process. But most importantly 3) the vast majority of CO2 emitted, especially for a rocket like SLS, comes from the manufacturing process -- you end up with massive CO2 emissions from the years of work of thousands of people before you even start fueling the whole thing.
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Does it produce any? There's no carbon in the fuel as far as I know.
1) HTPB-based fuel in the solid boosters *does* contain carbon. 2) Hydrogen for the sustainer stage is being produced from natural gas; lots of CO2 escape from this process. But most importantly 3) the vast majority of CO2 emitted, especially for a rocket like SLS, comes from the manufacturing process -- you end up with massive CO2 emissions from the years of work of thousands of people before you even start fueling the whole thing.
OK, but the question was about what "come[s] out of the back of one of these things". CO2 is produced manufacturing almost anything.
I had missed the boosters using a hydrocarbon. That's going to chuck a lot out.
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CO2 is produced manufacturing almost anything.
It's about opportunity cost. If for example using a few Falcon Heavies emitted less CO2 for the same total payload carried, then it would make no sense to use the SLS from the CO2 minimization perspective since you'd achieve the same purpose AND emit less total CO2 while doing so.
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IIRC, Solid rocket boosters use ammonium perchlorate mixed with aluminum and various binders. One of the products of combustion is hydrochloric acid. Probably a bunch of other nasty stuff too. It is dirty, but not climate changing dirty.
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Something upwards of 70% of commercial hydrogen is produced from fossil fuel sources, so yes even a H2 / O2 rocket engine has significant carbon release even before it's fueled.
Oh, and those big solid rocket boosters on the sides? Those are hardly carbon-neutral either.
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There's no carbon in the fuel as far as I know.
There is in the solid fuel boosters, possibly polybutadiene acrylonitrile with ammonium perchlorate oxidizer.
Re:Fresh Air and Sunshine? (Score:4, Funny)
Can anyone measure the hot air from Congress? Or more recently the Supreme Court?
What is re-usable about this rocket? (Score:2)
The toilet door handle in the capsule?
Re:What is re-usable about this rocket? (Score:5, Insightful)
The money it costs -- spread out over many, many Senate districts.
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The condoms used by the lobbyists who got NASA bureaucrats hired in their districts? I expect all the contractors to be as efficient and effective as cops in Uvalde.
Space Launch System (Score:2)
They misspelled Senate Launch System [competitivespace.org] -- and SpaceX Starship will (probably) eventually kick its ass, for a LOT less money ... Musk may have a few (personal/ity) issues, but he apparently get things done.
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The "environmental review" of SpaceX's launch site bought the STS some time, but I still think that Starship is going to be the better launch vehicle in the long run. Since it was built with reusability in mind, it should bring launch costs down significantly.
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People once said the same thing about Falcon 9 / Dragon. They all look like massive idiots now.
I'm no fan of Musk, especially now that's he's gone full douchebag; but betting against him has been shown to be a really stupid position over and over again.
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Starship is such an incredibly overly complicated system, I don't think it will ever deliver in the same way their Falcon series has.
More complicated because the part that has to be reusable after entry through a planetary atmosphere is much bigger than with Crew Dragon.
A "New" rocket throwing away reusable old engines (Score:4, Insightful)
They take rocket engines built to be reused, that indeed *were* reused many times, and throw them in the sea on a brilliant "new" rocket that costs more to launch twice than it cost Elon Musk to develop a totally reusable, better, actually *new* rocket system.
You couldn't make up how shit and corrupt the thinking behind this is.
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Thanks for your concern.
Frankenrocket (Score:2)
So, they crossed the space shuttle fiery bits with the Saturn 5 layout and got something that burns money like never before.
YAY NASA!
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So, they crossed the space shuttle fiery bits with the Saturn 5 layout and got something that burns money like never before.
YAY NASA!
But burning money emits too many pollutants. We need to stop that. /h
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If you stuffed the boosters full of $100 bills and used them as rocket fuel, it would still be less than the cost of this thing.
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Because I'm curious, here's the math:
Volume of 100 dollar bills (equivalent to the volume of 100 "C-notes"): 0.004 cubic feet
Volume of one US Gallon: 0.133681 cubic feet
Number of 100 dollar bills that could be stuffed into one US gallon: 3,342; or $334,202
Volume of fuel tanks in SLS core stage: 730,000 gallons
Number of 100 dollar bills that could be stuffed into the fuel tanks of the SLS core stage: 2,439,660,000; or $243,966,000,000
Auditor's estimated cost of each SLS launch: $4,100,000,000 [universetoday.com].
So while humoro
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oops - yes, I was referring to the solid rocket boosters and calculated there were about 250 million notes in each but forgot about each note being $100...
Each one is Length: 177 feet Diameter: 12 feet
So approx vol is 0.5 * 6^2 * 3.141 * 177 = 10007 cf
C note is 2.61" x 6.14" x 0.0043" = 0.0689 cubic inches
= 3.98780e-5 cf.
Take the reciprocal to get notes per cubic foot.
so in 1 cubic foot you fit about 25,076 notes, assuming they are as absolutely tightly packed as you can get them.
so in one booster you would
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So, they crossed the space shuttle fiery bits with the Saturn 5 layout and got something that burns money like never before.
YAY NASA!
"Go for jettison external bank!"
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If I hadn't already commented, you'd be getting mod points. This is the most succinct and accurate way to describe SLS that I've seen.
The only way it could be more efficient and burning money, is if they could actually directly convert $100 bills into rocket fuel and start filling the core stage with them.
Starship vs SLS (Score:2)
If the Starship is successful, it seems like the SLS will be totally redundant. This sounds like it could be a replay between the Boeing "Starliner" and the SpaceX Crew Dragon. The former was supposed to launch first, but it's now been 2 YEARS since the Crew Dragon took astronauts into space, and we are still hoping for the Starliner to maybe do it six months from now. It wouldn't shock me for the Starship to be orbiting the moon with a crew while they are still trying to unstick valves or some such nonsens
SLS is stupid (Score:1)
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Don't give money to Musk. Musk is a piece of shit.
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He gets shit done and the results are far better and far cheaper. You’d rather burn ungodly amounts of taxpayer money on a project that supports many pieces of shit (politicians) instead of a lot less money on one piece of shit for better results?
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Trust me, piece of shit Musk will burn ungodly amounts of taxpayer money if he gets the chance. As for his engineering skills... hyperloop... feh.
20 days to launch... (Score:3)
I wonder what it is about the flight termination system that is rendered suspect if 20 days passes? Do some of the "presumed" explosives have a short shelf life requiring replenishment?
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Probably the igniters.
Plus, Florida is pretty humid.
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Wake me (Score:3)
Wake me when it launches.