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NASA completes engine test firing of moon rocket on 2nd try
- rdxm 6y agoAfter something like 6+ months of introspection from the first test fire fail...after a decade plus of missed schedules...blah, blah, blah. The SLS is a shit-show, everyone knows it and it's getting tedious being a tax payer given this bull shit, the F35 debacle, etc. I'm a NASA fan, but the reality is that the age of G funded space travel is OVER. time to move on....
- mhh__ 6y ago> G funded space travel is OVER Who do you think is going to be paying for the launches?
- uomo 6y agoThe first green run was on January 16th, so only about 2 months between the issue popping up and the fix being implemented and verified.
- rst 6y agoAlso, the first test did not reveal any kind of flaw in design or construction of the stage. It aborted early because of hydraulic pressure fluctuations that were within spec -- but exceeded extremely conservative limits in place for that test to protect the stage. The main thing that differed in the second test was a software tweak to relax those limits. I personally think continuing the program is throwing good money after bad, given the availability of alternatives and the limited missions left for SLS (I'm not sure they're planning to use it for anything other than Orion at this point) -- but test failures are expected in rocketry (SpaceX has plenty in public), and it makes no sense at all to beat NASA up for this one.
- PopePompus 6y agoThe difference is that as bad as the F-35 is, cancelling it would have huge repercussions. On the other hand, the SLS could be cancelled tomorrow and nobody outside of NASA and the contractors would even notice.
- rdxm 6y agoplease elaborate. are you a taxpayer or a beneficiary of the overall program as an employee or sub contractor....
- mhh__ 6y agoComparatively the F-35 is a lot better anyway. Its nowhere near as bad as people like to scream about it, it was just built for a world that doesn't really exist anymore and didn't meet the ambitious targets set for it originally. New F-16s are just as expensive (flyaway, presumably cheaper to maintain, but an F-16 is going to be a sitting duck against a stealth fighter with a modern sensor package as time goes on)
- Rebelgecko 6y agoJanuary was only 2 months ago
- rdxm 6y agofair enough, but would you care to comment on the reality of the program's overall schedule slippage???
- nickik 6y agoGovernment funded is not over, but government building rockets and working with specific contractors on Cost-Plus contracting is over.
- azernik 6y agoFalcon 9 was government-funded. If Starship sends people or cargo to the lunar surface, it will be NASA-funded through the HLS program. What is dead is the old cost-plus contracting model.
- BelenusMordred 6y agoIt's great to see things all coming together but this part made me chuckle: > officials declined to say whether this first SLS launch will occur by year's end as had been planned or will bump into 2022 SLS was meant to fly in 2018. It's clear there's something very wrong with the NASA/Boeing/Lockheed combination. These companies have perfected the art of milking the taxpayer and impeding advances like orbital refuelling and depots as much as possible for the sake of higher profitability. There's been over ten years of prominent people and ex-NASA administrators calling for it to be scrapped, these people have proven right time and time again, because now it's a $20bn white elephant with little future and everyone just going through the motions until it is shuttered. NASA just signed a new contract for the already developed single use RS-25 engines on SLS, they are paying $150m per engine. This is about the same cost as a fully resuable Starship by SpaceX.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago>These companies have perfected the art of milking the taxpayer I work in defense. Bingo.
- echelon 6y agoHow much of this pork can be carved up by companies like SpaceX? What about drones, missiles, fighter planes, etc.?
- airstrike 6y agoSpaceX doesn't have the domain knowledge of a defense prime to be able to really compete with them, at least certainly not today. Drones, missiles, fighter planes are chock full of proprietary software developed by the primes and hardware developed either by themselves or often Tier 2 or Tier 3 suppliers. Replicating that isn't done overnight and would be an immensely challenging uphill battle against entrenched corporations with decades of experience and very close ties with Washington, which makes competing with NASA look like a walk in the park. SpaceX would need to hire former lobbyists, managers and engineers from primes and their suppliers and play a really long game to try to get there. Doesn't seem feasible in less than 10 years and even that is an outrageously optimistic timeline.
- 908B64B197 6y ago"Let’s be very honest, We don’t have a commercially available heavy-lift vehicle. The Falcon 9 Heavy may some day come about. It’s on the drawing board right now. SLS is real."(2014)[0] - Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator, 2009 – 2017 [0] https://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/item/NASA-Adrift-Part-2-29938.php https://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/item/NASA-Adrift-Part...
- BelenusMordred 6y ago> After a thorough review of the rocket program, the agency committed to a maiden flight by November 2018, but officials kept open the possibility of having the SLS ready to fly sooner — perhaps as early as late 2017 on the scheduled NASA touted since the launch vehicle’s inception. https://spaceflightnow.com/2014/12/16/despite-budget-boost-space-launch-system-will-not-fly-before-2018/ https://spaceflightnow.com/2014/12/16/despite-budget-boost-s...
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- hiharryhere 6y agoBolden's recently changed his tune: “SLS will go away," he said. "It could go away during a Biden administration or a next Trump administration… because at some point commercial entities are going to catch up. They are really going to build a heavy lift launch vehicle sort of like SLS that they will be able to fly for a much cheaper price than NASA can do SLS. That’s just the way it works.” https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/09/former-nasa-administrator-says-sls-rocket-will-go-away/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/09/former-nasa-administ...
- zachrose 6y agoTook me a second to realize he said this before the election. Whew.
- Rebelgecko 6y agoI mean, he's right. AFAIK SpaceX dropped whatever plans they had to get the F9H man-rated
- peter303 6y agoNo one really cares, except the people on that project. NASA already contracted SpaceX Heavy for the Lunar Gateway station.
- cromwellian 6y agoIt's sad that these reusable engines (the test fired ones have flown lots of times and are super-reliable and battle tested) are going to be discarded on an expendable launcher. There are only a handful of RS-25s left in existence, they're all going to be used, when some of them should be in a museum. NASA is ordering more, but Rocketdyne/Aerojet are claiming new ones will cost, I kid you not, $100 million per engine, more than the cost of Falcon Heavy launch -- for ONE engine. How can this possibly be competitive with BE-4 that ULA is using, or the Raptor that's going to be used on Starship? Rocketdyne is clearly defrauding the government here with massively inflated costs.
- pixl97 6y agoAngry astronaut just had an episode talking about the, really expensive, RS-25s getting dumped in the ocean after use.
- sephamorr 6y agoI think saying they're 'super-reliable and battle tested' is a bit strong. The SLS program has been plagued by engine problems in the last year. They've already replaced at least one fuel (preburner?) valve, and had issues with the ox (preburner?) valve during the green run. Rocket engines are hard, they're eternally finicky. I think there are very few engines in the world (SpaceX Merlin might come close) that reasonably get more reliable after more use; RS-25...I would not put high on the list.
- cromwellian 6y agoAccording to (https://www.rocket.com/sites/default/files/images/media/news-features/green-run-review/GreenRun_EngineHistory_10-2.pdf https://www.rocket.com/sites/default/files/images/media/news...), the engines being flown have flown like 6-12 times, for 4000-7000 seconds of firing. Engine 2045 flew 12 missions, 14 restarts, and 7016 seconds. No Merlin has yet achieved that, and we don't know how much refurbishment they need relative to the RS-25 either. But no RS-25 has ever failed during flight, whereas Merlins have failed multiple times, and Raptors at this point seem to fail quite often. Now, I'm a SpaceX fanboy so I'm rooting for Raptor and Starship/Super Heavy, but I think it's unfair to say that the RS-25 hasn't proven itself.
- BurningFrog 6y agoNASA did great work in its first decade. Then it slowly grew into the bureaucratic pork delivery organization we know now. I think all organizations go that route over some decades. Private companies get replaced by new spry ones, but government agencies just keep going. Maybe government agencies should be closed down every 50 years, and replaced by a brand new organization with the same responsibilities?
- ironmagma 6y agoThat sounds insanely wasteful. The new ones get created with the exact same mission as the old ones?
- BurningFrog 6y agoIf it works, it would be insanely profitable. Don't know if it's ever been tried in an organized way.
- afterburner 6y agoIt's been done with police departments, when the old one gets out of hand. Minneapolis is doing this after a litany of problems culminating in George Floyd's murder. https://www.cbs58.com/news/this-city-disbanded-its-police-department-7-years-ago-heres-what-happened-next https://www.cbs58.com/news/this-city-disbanded-its-police-de... Sometimes the only way to really fix a problem is to start over, because the current actors have a stake in resisting change.
- andrewflnr 6y agoI'm sure in practice you would tweak it on each iteration. My worry is more about the incentives around the end of the cycle, knowing that your job and entire organization is about to be scrapped.
- chriswarbo 6y agoNASA is certainly a victim of misaligned incentives and Darwinian selection. Its budgeting process rewards political savvy (e.g. jobs programs and pork), rather than effective delivery of its stated goals. It's tempting to align their incentives more towards outcomes, but we saw how that rewarded risk taking in the Shuttle program (and self-deception about those risks, e.g. Challenger's o-rings). The current two-level model seems like the worst of both worlds, with NASA being budgeted politically, then funneling that money to monopolistic private contractors which are 'too big to fail' (ULA, etc.). The disruption of those contractors by SpaceX, Rocket Lab, Relativity, etc. (and perhaps Blue Origin, if they actually deliver anything) was sorely needed. For NASA, this gives a credible alternative to the pork, without politicians appearing to be 'anti-NASA/science'.
- nickik 6y agoA textbook Pyrrhic Victory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory As even the current NASA Administrator said: > If we can't do a rocket for $11.5 billion, we ought to close up shop. It took 2x as long (and counting) and 2x as expensive. NASA own evaluation made it totally clear that SLS as designed was a terrible design: Check this amazing resource here: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceLaunchSystem/comments/kt1vlf/rac_stuff_summary_kinda_idk_anymore/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceLaunchSystem/comments/kt1vlf/r... Specially this summation: https://preview.redd.it/gxyh0ri46hc61.png?width=787&format=png&auto=webp&s=8f88513338183d29e605b40059e01144c10cb461 https://preview.redd.it/gxyh0ri46hc61.png?width=787&format=p... RAC1 is the current SLS (basically) and RAC 2 was basically modern Saturn V. I remember in 2016 people saying 'we can't cancel it, its almost ready' but the only thing that makes sense, if you do any sort of analysis, even the most optimistic (that will 100% not happen) its a terrible project that is gone hold NASA back for years.
- bryanlarsen 6y agoLots of talk about the expense and delays of SLS, but some people consider the SLS to be horribly unsafe to fly humans on, which is an even better reason to cancel it. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/02/24/sls-is-cancellation-too-good/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/02/24/sls-is-cancell...