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NASA Moon

NASA Scrubs First Test Flight of Moon Rocket After Engine Fault (bloomberg.com) 90

Posted by msmash from the we-shall-overcome dept.
NASA delayed the debut launch of its new massive rocket due to an issue with one of its engines, dealing a temporary blow to the space agency's plan to return to the lunar surface. From a report: With Vice President Kamala Harris in attendance at Florida's Kennedy Space Center and a global audience watching online, the uncrewed Artemis I mission was called off at 8:34 a.m., one minute after its originally scheduled liftoff time. The launch missed its window after controllers were unable to resolve a temperature problem with one of the rocket's four main engines. The rocket and space capsule are in "a safe and stable configuration," NASA said Monday in a statement, adding that engineers were continuing to gather data.

The earliest available opportunity to try again is on Sept. 2, NASA said in a webcast while announcing the scrubbed launch. No decision has been made on rescheduling. Official confirmation of the delay came after the space agency spent the early morning hours investigating issues including a potential crack in material in the main body of the rocket as well as the temperature issue, officials said earlier Monday. Those came after engineers examined and resolved a suspected leak affecting the hydrogen tanking process.
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NASA Scrubs First Test Flight of Moon Rocket After Engine Fault More

NASA Scrubs First Test Flight of Moon Rocket After Engine Fault

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  • Slashdot Scrubs Artemis Article Because??? (Score:3)

    by TigerPlish ( 174064 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @10:37AM (#62832739)

    Slashdot Scrubs Artemis Article because???

    Did we piss off the gods of North American Aviation, Rocketdyne and that bunch? Awwww. How sensitive.

    I'm still sore RS25s are being sacrificed to the God of Inefficiency, the US Gov't.

    • Slashdot Scrubs Artemis Article because???.

      Because the former post's title.... "Watch the Artemis launch, live" was embarrassing considering the scrub.

      The Slashdot editor committed Assumicide.

    • Here's a cool article on the re-use of the motors.

      https://www.popularmechanics.c... [popularmechanics.com]

      They've built dozens and have at least 16 sitting around, so what would be a better use? Keep them mothballed for decades until and unless some application for reuse comes along? They're bound to be overtaken by evolution eventually. For example, "The Raptor has slightly more power at sea level than the RS-25 and is designed for dozens of uses. According to SpaceX founder Elon Musk, it costs less than $1 million to bu

      • how's that "create a frankenrocket reusing old shuttle designs (and parts) will save money" working out NASA?
        • I've been looking at this rocket on the pad and the first thing that hits me is...Why the hell does this thing look like a rust bucket rocket?

          What's the deal with the main body looking, well, like a rusted old hulk of a rocket?

          • Because the body is covered with orange foam insulation, the same as the Space Shuttle tank. On the early shuttle launches, they painted it white, but then they decided that the paint was unnecessary and weighed down the rocket.

            The main thing they seem to have learned from 45 years of working with and rearranging space shuttle hardware has been: For this iteration, move the crew *above* the falling chunks of foam.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by KlomDark ( 6370 )

            I agree, it needed at least a snazzy paint job. That thing looks OLD and shabby.

            • The problem is that a "snazzy paint job" adds cost and hundreds of pounds (the paint on the Shuttle before they ditched it weighed 600 pounds).

    • Re:Slashdot Scrubs Artemis Article Because??? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @11:31AM (#62832961) Homepage Journal

      I'm still sore RS25s are being sacrificed to the God of Inefficiency, the US Gov't.

      Or more accurately, industry lobbyists. Constellation was created as a way to keep money flowing to Shuttle contractors. When that (unsurprisingly) ended up being catastrophically over-budget and behind schedule, the Augustine commission was appointed to recommend a rational way forward for US manned space exploration, and that commission came up with three viable long term strategies. All of these strategies were ignored by the politicians and replaced with a program which prioritized continuing near-term spending rather than any kind of coherent long term vision.

      • I really hate this take. The old trope about how the Saturn V blueprints are missing and thats why we can't build them anymore, of course isn't accurate. What is accurate is that when the Apollo program was ended, many of those highly skilled laborers drifted with the winds to other industries. Part of the utility in maintaining these already operating facilities, is to retain that institutional knowledge because of how complex this kind of rocket is and how demanding their goals are.

        NASA doesn't get to

        • For a publicly traded company, I'd personally find that concerning as an investor when its supposed to launch people next year

          Whew! What a relief that SpaceX is privately owned, then, and NOT publicly traded, right?

        • Fail better [Re:Slashdot Scrubs Artemis...] (Score:5, Interesting)

          by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @02:02PM (#62833659) Homepage

          ..NASA doesn't get to blow up rockets anymore or fumblefuck about like Musk does with vague promises with little thought into how it will be delivered. NASA is just expected to deliver what was originally planned, no mess-ups allowed. That assurance costs money and time.

          You've put your finger on it exactly. When SpaceX has a failure, they say "that didn't work, we'll try again." When NASA has a failure, there's a congressional investigation and the NASA Inspector General adds a layer of mandatory safety checks.

          The best way and fastest way to make progress is to try, fail, and learn from your failure (note that the last step, "learn from your failure," is critical.). But NASA is not allowed to fail. As you say, "That assurance costs money and time.".

          To quote Beckett, "“Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

          • Nasa used to work that way. There were a lot of failed unmanned launches early on, and that was OK, they just kept trying. Its not NASA's fault really, its been a problem since the Challenger explosion. The right response was to day "its tragic those brave astronauts died, lets build them a bronze statue, figure out what happened, fix it and launch again". Instead it was made out to be some major *failure* as if it was possible to address the concerns of every engineer on a large project. If you do tha

            • That's not the takeaway from Challenger. For a manned launch, you DO listen to your engineers' concerns -- you don't shut them up. In both Challenger (and to a lesser degree, Columbia) engineers had identified the problems.

              For an unmanned rocket, build it fast and cheap to test your technology, listen to your engineers, and if they have a concern that can't be quickly addressed, make absolutely sure you have instrumentation relative to their concerns, then launch anyway and collect the appropriate data rela

        • Re:Slashdot Scrubs Artemis Article Because??? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Aaaarrrggh ( 8470263 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @02:09PM (#62833693)
          Five years ago your line of reasoning would be more or less feasible. Now you're grasping straws or trolling. Starship is not a direct competition to SLS, Falcon Heavy is. Elon may be an egoistic asshole, but SpaceX's Falcon Heavy has 70% lift of SLS, is ready, is reliable, costs $20,000,000,000 less to develop - and its single launch is more than 10 times cheaper than SLS's. In developing costs of SLS alone NASA has sunk more than 100 launches of Heavy - they could fly 100 times with 70% of cargo, then fly 10 times for the cost of one SLS rocket. They didn't use Heavy only because politicians in Congress forced them not to. Developing Starship is a separate issue - probably more about the future and it will surely take a few years longer than Elon boasted. It will be more expensive than he said, that's for sure. I can't imagine it being more expensive than SLS, though. An mind this - it is a private company that is investing private money, they fail or succeed, who cares. Twenty billion for developing SLS was stolen from your taxes.

          • Starship is not a direct competition to SLS, Falcon Heavy is

            What a lame take. You're being intellectually dishonest in your argument because:

            1. We don't have an actual published rating for how much a finished Starship will be able to tow into any orbit, only the loose assumptions mentioned by Musk which can be taken as accurate as his claims for FSD and Tesla

            2. SLS is in Block 1 configuration with several more interactions that intend to more than double the capability of Falcon Heavy

            Lastly, if a smaller rocket was suitable, then there wouldn't have been a nee

            • Do you actually believe what you write? Are you a paid troll? Who cares about Starship this and that? The point is that there is an existing rocket ready and waiting that is $20 billion cheaper in development, 10 times cheaper per launch and only slightly less capable than extremely expensive but yet to be proven SLS. Future versions of SLS are 10 years in the future and will cost another few billion - and their capability may be mimicked by just launching separete Heavy with another propulsion stage, at fr

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hey! ( 33014 )

          I actually don't mind NASA blowing stuff up. I do mind it being late, over budget and losing its way on a program. As for vague promises -- a concrete milestone promise with no real commitment to deliver or consequences for failure is vague too.

          It took the Apollo program 8 years to get to the Moon from its first Saturn 1 launch to landing on the Moon; in that 8 years it had 11 launches. At its current pace, SLS, assuming it meets all its deadlines (which it has never done yet), SLS will return us to the M

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Don't worry. A dupe will be posted shortly.

  • ...this

    "including a potential crack in material in the main body of the rocket"

    sounds like end of mission to me for a while at least.

    • Re:I'm no rocket scientist but... (Score:5, Informative)

      by juniorkindergarten ( 662101 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @10:45AM (#62832755)
      The crack is in the foam and has already been deemed a non issue.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Viol8 ( 599362 )

        Isn't that what they thought just before the launch of Columbia?

        • Re:I'm no rocket scientist but... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Tim the Gecko ( 745081 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @11:08AM (#62832863)
          In Columbia's case, the foam was above the orbiter's wing, which it hit at about 500mph. For Artemis the capsule's thermal protection is above the main body of the launcher, and the broken foam.

          • I happened to be watching that clip the other day. Do you know for sure how fast the impact speed was? I was trying to figure out how much the (lightweight?) foam could decelerate (with respect to the air) before the wing hit it,

            • I don't know for sure, but Wikipedia points to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report [archive.org], which in turn points to “STS-107 Image Analysis Team Final Report in Support of the Columbia Accident Investigation,” NSTS-37384, June 2003. CAIB document CTF076-15511657.

            • I think the 530mph figure is based on the video footage of the incident. Knowing where the foam broke off, where it impacted, and how long it took allows you to estimate the impact speed.

              At the time, the shuttle was traveling at a speed of nearly 1600mph - for a non-aerodynamic chunk of insulation foam, the air resistance at that speed would be like hitting a wall and it would decelerate very quickly indeed. It's very lightweight, so it has little momentum.

    • ...this

      "including a potential crack in material in the main body of the rocket"

      sounds like end of mission to me for a while at least.

      Better to find out this way than the much harder way.

    • It's just a flesh wound.

    • ...this

      "including a potential crack in material in the main body of the rocket"

      sounds like end of mission to me for a while at least.

      A little bondo should fix that right up...

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      ...this

      "including a potential crack in material in the main body of the rocket"

      sounds like end of mission to me for a while at least.

      I was kind of hoping they'd launch it anyway regardless of the problems, just to test their safety tolerances. It's an unmanned launch. If it works, great. If not, you learned something.

      That said, I was pretty certain it wouldn't go up today. After all, I happened to be in Cocoa Beach to visit family nearby, leaving on the day of the launch. So that pretty much guaranteed that there was no chance it would go up today. Sorry, everybody. It was entirely my fault. :-D

      On the plus side, I got to see the S

      • But if the known issue causes a problem before any hidden problems emerge it's a waste.

      • Here's what I don't get, though. Artemis 1 rolled out to the pad twelve days ago. It failed the wet dress rehearsal because of a fuel leak that prevented them from doing a bleed test on the engines. Was there really no way to do a bleed test during those twelve days? Did they really have to wait until just four hours before the start of the launch window to make sure the fuel system (that leaked before) was actually functioning? :-(

        Perhaps they figured it couldn't be accurately tested until they got an actual fill started? Maybe they hadn't taken delivery of enough Liq. Hydrogen and/or LOx earlier? The Liquid Hydrogen has to be kept fairly close to Absolute Zero; so I doubt they just have big ol' tanks of that just stashed around Cape Canaveral.

        Just guessing.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          Here's what I don't get, though. Artemis 1 rolled out to the pad twelve days ago. It failed the wet dress rehearsal because of a fuel leak that prevented them from doing a bleed test on the engines. Was there really no way to do a bleed test during those twelve days? Did they really have to wait until just four hours before the start of the launch window to make sure the fuel system (that leaked before) was actually functioning? :-(

          Perhaps they figured it couldn't be accurately tested until they got an actual fill started? Maybe they hadn't taken delivery of enough Liq. Hydrogen and/or LOx earlier? The Liquid Hydrogen has to be kept fairly close to Absolute Zero; so I doubt they just have big ol' tanks of that just stashed around Cape Canaveral.

          Just guessing.

          From memory (I haven't been out near the pads since I was in middle school), they have huge tanks probably about half a mile away from the pad, or maybe a mile.

          Okay, just looked it up. They had to rebuild it because it wasn't big enough for Artemis. The new tank holds 1.25 million gallons of LH2. It's that giant ball in the picture on page 1 [nasa.gov]. Or maybe that's the old one. They all pretty much look like giant white metal spheres, and I can't tell size from a photo. :-D

          Presumably it has been full since th

          • Beyond the PR hit of NASA looking like they're unprepared, these sorts of failures are expensive for other reasons. Half a million people came down for that launch, and if they had just checked the engines a week earlier, it likely would have been scrubbed in time for folks to cancel or change their plans (or perhaps fixed in time for it to launch). Probably a quarter billion dollars was collectively wasted by people going down to see that launch failure, all of which could probably have been avoided by actually finishing the bleed test and any other skipped parts of their wet dress rehearsal during those twelve days that Artemis sat on the pad.

            That's why it seems bizarre to me that they didn't. It made NASA look unprepared, wasted a lot of time and money for a lot of people, and wasted far more resources (both personal and governmental) than it would have wasted having only the personnel needed for a non-launch test of the engines.

            Anyway, I hope they fix their problems. But on the other hand, I hope SpaceX succeeds in pulling off the short turnarounds that they're targeting for Starship and the Super Heavy booster. If they are successful, the forty-year-old space shuttle technology that Artemis was built around will be thoroughly obsolete before Artemis 3 even launches.

            I agree with all of that; but with the number of battle-proven STS engines they have just sitting-around (120?), it does sort of seem reasonable to try and re-use all those tax-dollars, and give those "old soldiers" one more chance for glory. . .

            And, from what I have read, Starship has its share of problems, too!

            But is still soooo cool to see SpaceX actually land those reusable boosters straight on their tail, just like all those cheezy 1950's SciFi movies!

  • ...which was yesterday, I had a strong feeling this was going to happen. You usually can't fix something like that overnight.

    I'm all for taking multiple approaches and having backup plans, but this thing is expensive as hell, turns into garbage after the mission, and was funded entirely by massive amounts of congressional pork. It was always little more than an extremely pricey jobs program.

    Meanwhile, SpaceX is making everyone else look like dogshit. If they can get Starship into orbit, all similar p

    • Re:After they started talking about engine trouble (Score:4, Insightful)

      by pz ( 113803 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @12:11PM (#62833117) Journal

      Meanwhile, SpaceX is making everyone else look like dogshit. If they can get Starship into orbit, all similar projects should really be mothballed immediately.

      Single-sourcing any mission-critical item is a bad idea. We need multiple independent services who are able to provide heavy lift.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tragedy ( 27079 )

        Single-sourcing any mission-critical item is a bad idea. We need multiple independent services who are able to provide heavy lift.

        Right, but it's hard to see how SLS accomplishes this. It seems to have been a very obvious boondoggle right from the start.

    • Starship is a pretty dogshit design in comparison to SLS. The hull is very thin welded steel sheets which is weak unless under pressure, the LOX and LH tanks share a common bulkhead which saves space while introducing incredible risk for ruptures and explosions (see SN10), they have trouble cooling the engines on super heavy because they're packed in so tightly, ridiculous refueling timeline expectations, and they're playing very loosely with their interior diagrams of starship, showing very little in how t

      • That seems to be a rather premature assessment. SN10 was an early prototype design, which has been very much superseded by subsequent revisions. Those early starship prototypes were practically designed to fail. Plus, why would they spend a lot of time showing off the interior right now? They are tying to get the actual booster into proof of concept into orbit, and no astronauts are expected to fly until 2024 at the earliest. If successful, the Starship has a lot more potential than the SLS given its comple

        • why would they spend a lot of time showing off the interior right now?

          Since people will ride on this thing, that happens to be one of the most important things to design. If Musk intends to support 100 passengers on this thing (laughable in my opinion), then its pretty damn important to determine how much those systems are going to weigh and how they are going to be implemented. It shouldn't be a secondary priority.

          If successful, the Starship has a lot more potential than the SLS given its complete reusability and lower launch costs.

          Theres a lot left to accomplish before determining that its cheaper and more viable than SLS.

          I don't see how you can say it's any less viable than the SLS, which has already failed in its first launch attempt.

          Are you really trying to suggest a launch scrub as a launch failure? A

          • A spacecraft like this is necessarily going to be configured in different ways. Some Starships will be cargo only (like for launching satellites), others will be LEO for small crews, others might carry 100 one day. There's no point to designing a 100-passenger layout version when the first versions almost certainly WON'T be used in that capacity. In fact, I doubt it will actually be used in the 100 person capacity, something that won't be viable any time in the next 10-15 years as a minimum unless it's only

      • even if Starship ever flies, 99% of the public will never be wealthy enough to step foot on one.

        Let's see: 1% of 8 billion people ("the Public") is still a healthy 80,000,000 potential passengers.

        Sounds like enough to me.

        • Wow, may to be pedantic in the most unintelligent way. Do you honestly think 80,000,000 people will be able to afford a ride on Starship? You're incredibly naive if you think that to be true.

          • Wow, may to be pedantic in the most unintelligent way. Do you honestly think 80,000,000 people will be able to afford a ride on Starship? You're incredibly naive if you think that to be true.

            Hey, I'm not the one that pulled a statistic out of my ass!

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Megane ( 129182 )

        the LOX and LH tanks share a common bulkhead

        Well there's where you are wrong, because they are LOX and LCH3 tanks. LH2 needs a good bulkhead between it and LOX simply to keep it from freezing the LOX. You really don't want your LOX icing up, especially in the pipes, that's "crossing the streams" bad. The LCH3 and LOX are kept at roughly the same temperature. There's also the whole other problem of hydrogen embrittlement that goes away with methane.

        Life support systems? That's putting the cart before the horse. Do you know what "prototype" means? Tha

  • ... It's Not Going! What a farce of a company.

  • I want this launch to be a success, but really I am thinking SpaceX ought to be the winner. I don't think we should be stuffing cash into Boeing's pocket when reusable rockets are the way to go. Even a billionaire wouldn't throw away his Rolls Royce after each trip. Now, if someone wealthy won't do that, why should poor taxpayers? It ought to be a felony to throw away a rocket after using it one time. I can't believe we're okay with our elected officials being cool with it. Do you realize the whole non-reus

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by sloth jr ( 88200 )
      It's even shittier than that. The RS-25s used in the SLS were designed to be reusable from the day of conception (and we had reusable space hardware with the space shuttle) - but now we're putting it in a throw-away vehicle. The space shuttle sure wasn't perfect: expensive to maintain, expensive to fly - but it was achieving reusability while Elon Musk was jacking it as a teenager.

      We'll see how much of a market there really is for 100-150 ton lift capability - maybe at the right price point, it can change w

      • Yess ... and Rocketdyne was recently given $600 million to design the Orion Main Engine as non-reusable. What possible excuse does NASA have to be giving out a such a large contract to design non-reusable engines? It's madness. I can understand them doing that maybe 20 years ago using a lame excuse that they didn't know engines can be reused. But now we need some sort of legislative prohibition against this clear corruption.

      • Problem with the Space Shuttle was the "reusability" didn't actually add all that much value. There was so much mass devoted to allowing the winged reentry that it ended up needing way too much fuel relative to the payload. The solid boosters were an awkward kludge to cope with the tyranny of the rocket equation. The SpaceX rockets with vertical landing capability are really the first rockets that live up to the promise of reusability as they only need minimal additional fuel to be reused.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tragedy ( 27079 )

      Even Goddard developed military applications. He effectively invented the bazooka, for example.

    • Starship has a lot more problems than people realize. It isn't going to be flying to the moon anytime soon.

      • Hmm .. really? Like what? You don't think they will make it to orbit this year? What's your upper limit of "anytime soon" .. 2025?

        • No, I don't think its going to be in orbit this year if for no other reason than SpaceX hasn't (and probably won't) be cleared to launch Starship from Texas. And 3 years is not "soon". I'd honestly be shocked to see an unmanned orbital flight for Starship in 2025 as well. The problems are many, including a lack of abort systems, untested fuel transfers, a rocket engine that wants to burn up due to the density they are placed in, and cost cutting measures like using extremely thin steel sheets for the hull a
      • Agreed. Elon is a twat waffle. The guy's timelines are really ridiculous too.

  • Considering the ridonculous cost of one SLS launch, it's hard to get excited about Artemis. Consider, it's estimated that it costs $4.1B to launch 95 tons to LEO with SLS compared to $97M to launch 63 tons to LEO with one Falcon 9 Heavy. That is, for the price of one SLS, you can launch about 27 times the mass to LEO with FH.

    I can well imagine Artemis landing on the Moon, only to find that SpaceX is already there.

  • The shuttle era featured delays quite frequently (in addition to this being a "new" system). A quick search brings up this article from Space.com [space.com] quoting data from an AP study:

    "A 2007analysis of shuttle launch delays by the Associated Press found that the NASA spacecraft launched about 40 percent of the time. The AP analysis found that of the 118 shuttle flights that had flown at the time, 47 lifted off on time. More than half of the delays were caused by technical malfunctions, while foul weather made up about a third of the delays, the Associated Press reported then."

  • Than to be flying and wishing you were on the ground.

  • Every commercial airliner you have ever flown on failed in multiple ways on its first flight, some better, some worse. Rooting out flaws is the the purpose of the program, everything is proceeding as it should.

  • "Oh noes, another delay that will earn us a billion cost-plus dollars."

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