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Leak ruins NASA moon rocket launch bid; next try weeks away
- perihelions 4y agoRelated threads from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32702211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32702211 ("NASA – Artemis I – Liquid Hydrogen Leak Detected Once Again", 94 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32702761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32702761 ("Artemis I Launch Attempt Scrubbed", 108 comments)
- newaccount2021 4y agoSadly emblematic for the US; tens of billions spent with no visible outcome No different than our approach to infrastructure, education, Healthcare, broadband....plenty of money, no results
- admax88qqq 4y agoWe could have an interesting discussion about the challenges of literal rocket science. Or we can turn this into yet another bitchfest about government inefficiency.
- zionic 4y agoIs that applicable when the rocket scientists themselves mostly despise this thing? SLS as a platform was forced on the scientists by the politicians. Also from a science perspective: the funding of this boondoggle has sucked the air out of the room, lots of other projects weren’t funded to make this thing happen. Seems like all SLS discussion is inherently political.
- gsibble 4y agoTotally agree.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fnordpiglet 4y agoI consider a highly complex engineering effort identifying a bug before production and preventing an incident before the system has ever been tested end to end a victory. But I’m sure your systems never have production issues.
- ryanSrich 4y agoI think OP could have better illustrated their point. Which I believe is that governments are pretty bad at succeeding with projects that require innovation. This is especially true of the US in the last 20 years. Not to mention the public sector pays 2-5x more than government agencies. I’m not saying this is a problem purely solved by better pay and greater talent, but I don’t think we can say it’s not.
- kiba 4y agoThe US government is plenty fine of funding technological innovation. Look at the military industrial complex. F-35, despite being a gold plated boondongle is a really capable aircraft that is getting cheaper to produce.
- fnordpiglet 4y agoBuilding an orbital fueling station and a moon base isn’t innovative? Artemis isn’t about hydrogen fuel pumps.
- newaccount2021 4y ago
- gsibble 4y agoDon't let the downvotes get to you. You're right. See the train to nowhere in CA as another example.
- elurg 4y agoLaunch delays for new rockets are extremely common for all providers everywhere. While there big problems with the SLS program such a small delay on the pad is not one of them.
- inglor_cz 4y agoHydrogen is stuff from hell when it comes to engineering challenges. Not as bad as some of the "Things I Won't Work With" chemicals [0], but still. I am almost convinced that whatever direction the future carbonless energy production takes, hydrogen won't be a significant part of it. [0] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-dioxygen-difluoride https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...
- zionic 4y agoExactly. This event just makes all the hydrogen car people even more entertaining. At this point I’m fairly convinced hydrogen cars were a coordinated plan by oil companies to delay EVs. It probably would have worked if Tesla hadn’t come out of nowhere.
- microtonal 4y agoCould you explain what the problems are? I don't have a strong opinion either way, but you can buy hydrogen cars. In the city where I live there are hydrogen buses and garbage trucks and they seem to do fine?
- mikepurvis 4y agoI think it's an okay fit for fleet vehicles where the headaches are closer to worth it, but the volatility + the difficulties in safely and reliably containing the compressed gas are the main issues.
- senectus1 4y ago>I think it's an okay fit for fleet vehicles This is the thing... there is no "one size fits all" but the nay sayers look at hydrogen and say "nah too hard for anything". They're wrong. Hydrogen will be huge in the NEAR future... it just wont be a silver bullet.
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- Victerius 4y agoI think HN is at least somewhat qualified to speak to the talent side of the issue. Is this a matter of NASA failing to attract and retain the best engineers because of non-competitive TC? In this case, where are the 10x rocket engineers who would have prevented these problems? Is this a matter of lost institutional knowledge, where it's been so long these kinds of rockets were launched that the people who knew everything about them died or retired? Or is this just a matter of a problem being hard to solve, even with the best engineers and the institutional knowledge that comes with decades of experience?
- aposm 4y agoI am not one of those people you describe who is qualified to speak on the talent side of things (although I suspect the hypothetical 10x rocket engineer who would prevent this does not exist). The real answer is quite clear and well documented by the press: This is a matter of NASA being dependent on hiring defense-industry contractors in the districts of key Congressional sponsors for almost all of its funding, rather than making good financial or engineering decisions.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoLast time I looked there were a lot of defense contractors on Apollo.
- kiba 4y agoIt's not a problem of engineering talent but of politics. They made the problem harder to solve by choosing architecture that makes congresscritters happy at the expense of making the rocket way more expensive than it needs to be.
- ethbr0 4y ago> that makes congresscritters happy Read: prevents program cancellation Many politicians don't care about science. No politicians ignore high paying jobs in their districts. People throw stones at NASA for optimizing within its system of funding, but it was a fairly brilliant move in the 50s and 60s, and is still a brilliant move today. Both NASA and SpaceX et al. can be optimal in their own funding landscapes.
- kurupt213 4y agoSeems like this has all been a show and that the SLS was never expected to launch
- bowsamic 4y agoHow did you ascertain this?
- politician 4y agoIt’s so astronomically expensive ($2B per vehicle, no reuse) that if it does launch, I would predict they’ll only ever launch a few until the next group of politicians arrive to cut wasteful spending.
- jfengel 4y ago"Wasteful" is always in the eye of the beholder. Spending in one's own district is never "wasteful". It's only other people's spending that is a waste. So while politicians love to talk about cutting "waste", they never actually do. It's something that exists in aggregate but somehow no actual program ever gets cut. Each program does exist for a reason. Cutting the budget is about making hard choices between reasons. And nobody ever loses reelection for failing to make hard choices. The US has the luxury of being able to borrow cheaply, and it's not necessarily a bad thing to do so. But that means that the politicians campaigning most loudly about "waste" get to say a lot without ever grappling with genuine issues.
- panick21_ 4y agoNot sure that I agree with the comment. However, the reality is NASA has tried to fuel this rocket before. They had rolled out the rocket in a Wet Dress rehearsal. They tried multiple times and failed each time. Then they rolled it back in and said, in a few weeks we are gone launch. And everybody that was following this was like 'Seriously? You failed to fuel this rocket every single time you tried, and now you want to launch?'. So when they tried again 2 times fuel the rocket and both times it failed to be fueled nobody at all was surprised. We are now at 10+ attempts and not a single time has the rocket ever been actually fully fueled. So really this was more of a Wet Dress rehearsal then a launch attempt. Many people now demand of NASA, do a real Wet Dress rehearsal and actually prove that you can actually fuel this thing before you actually try to launch it.
- dmitrybrant 4y agoI'm afraid this might actually keep fueling moon-landing denial conspiracy theories: "Look how hard it is to get to the moon in 2022! How can we have possibly done it in 1969?"
- gjsman-1000 4y agoPerhaps a good reason to go back. Every day that passes makes it more suspect purely from natural reason.
- jfengel 4y agoThis won't change anything. They are surely gearing up to deny that Artemis goes to the moon even after it does. Hell, today we actually could do it with CGI, which we couldn't in 1969. Or they'll just continue to assert that it didn't happen with Apollo. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. There my be good reasons to have another moon mission, but demonstrating things to paranoiacs isn't on the list. Even if it would accomplish anything, I simply don't care what they think. They don't have anything to contribute, and can only distract.
- endisneigh 4y agoWhat would your response to that be?
- xwolfi 4y agoThat if it was fake Russia wouldn't have stopped everything, would have tried a little bit more to go there and would have proven the world how fake the US was. These theories make no sense in the context of intense surveillance both blocks were subjecting each other to and it's quite recent, after the advance in movie making and recorded television, that we think the US could have faked it all. I mean, we can ping the mirror on the moon, they came back with rocks and they went to walk on the moon several times, there s no doubt.
- ramraj07 4y agoThe scientists and engineers were actually trying to get to the moon back then. This thing in the launchpad is just a giant dildo monument to bureaucracy and “jobs creation” with going to the moon being merely an undesirable side goal they’d rather not have to do anyway.
- aetherson 4y agoNot that two failed launch attempts are all that big a deal in the grand scheme, but they just add more evidence to the already weighty pile that says that SLS is a bad rocket and a dead-end path.
- was_a_dev 4y agoIt's a dead-end path because the private space industry is now maturing to the point they can provide launch services for all use cases. If the private launch services didn't exist how they are, SLS would be heralded as the latest generation of rocket. The timing is terrible for all sorts of reasons.
- pohl 4y agoSpaceX doesn’t have this capability yet. Soon, maybe, but not now.
- aetherson 4y agoIf you asked me to bet at even odds on who would be first to orbit, SLS or Starship, I'd probably bet on SLS. If you asked me to bet at even odds on who would be able to do two, or five, or ten launches to orbit first, my bet would be on Starship.
- panick21_ 4y agoIt depends with what you mean with 'this capability'. What specifically are you talking about, a rocket that can throw 39t to moon rather then 23t. Ok sure I guess, but at the price you can launch 300t the moon. If you design a mission specifically for SLS then yeah, SLS difference matters, but if you simply want to make a good architecture, you much rather go with the smaller cheaper rocket. In terms of Orion, can Dragon do everything it can do. No not by itself Orion plus the Orion service module can do some thing Dragon can't. But Dragon can do most things and with a few simple add-ons like extend tank in the trunk. So in reality if NASA had the freedom to plan, a few years ago they could have switched a Falcon Heavy/Dragon architecture and achieved the same thing. SpaceX would likely even have been willing to do things like cross feed and potentially even a Raptor based upper stage. All of these would have been ready far earlier then when Orion will actually launch with humans. So just saying, SpaceX doesn't support something is a really narrow view. It doesn't support it but SpaceX certainty would have the capability to do the Artemis 1/2 missions if NASA had asked them too. And all of that while completely ignoring Starship, just with the capabilities they had in 2019. Between then and now SpaceX could have already done this mission quite easily. And likely they could have done it 5 more times before Artemis 2 launches.
- verytrivial 4y agoI confess I hope this programme is quietly shelved. From everything I've read it is at best refining decades old tech, not really pushing to whole new areas. This launch is literally re-using Shuttle engines. And I can't seem to find a good, non-hand-wavey explanation as to why we should be going to the Moon at all. I'd personally trade this whole thing for an autonomous rover on Venus that lasts a month.
- jameshart 4y agoReusing shuttle engines only to throw them into the sea. The RS-25s are engines that were designed for the shuttle program to be able to be refurbished and reused after each flight. Using them on this disposable rocket stage is like using a Stradivarius as firewood because you happen to have one lying around.
- bitcharmer 4y agoThe reason for going to the Moon is that it's close to impossible to launch a manned expedition to any other planet directly from earth. Hope this explanation is not too hand wavy.
- Shared404 4y agoOn top of that, have people forgotten all the scientific progress that the first moon shot ignited? It stands to reason that the the next step (a semi-permanent moon base, progress towards being able to launch more stuff into deeper space) will provide similar benefits.
- panick21_ 4y agoMost people are not against going to the moon. What they are against is giving untold billions to old Shuttle contractors to fly a overpriced single use rocket. We will not get advanced technology from a moon program unless the moon program FINANCES ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY. This moon program is the opposite, it tries to keep old technology alive. If you want a moon program that finances advanced technology, what you should do is build large reusable rockets that deliver small modular nuclear reactors to the moon. And also some drone/robots that build habitats autonomously. That would actually be providing technology benefits on earth.
- TheJoeMan 4y agoI read somewhere (and can’t seem to find the link) that the rollback to the VAB is because there is a small battery powering the abort system that has an approximate 3 week lifespan. And this past sat was near the end of that timeframe.
- snewman 4y agoThe lifetime of the launch abort battery is indeed a factor. It is normally rated for 20 days, and they extended the rating to 25 days for this launch, but when that time is up the entire vehicle stack does need to be rolled back to the VAB to access and (replace? recharge? retest?) the battery. However, my understanding is that the current rollback is needed to address the hydrogen leak; they are not (quite) yet at the end of the rated battery lifetime.
- icegreentea2 4y agoThere are two reasons to rollback to VAB. The first is as you say, there's a timeline constraint based on the launch abort battery. It's previously been stated that NASA could attempt to get a waiver for the timeline. But second reason is that the number of remedial and inspection actions you can perform on the launch pad is obviously more limited than in the VAB. Given that NASA did try for an immediate relaunch, it's likely that they've already tried and exhausted their highest value launchpad inspection and remedial actions.
- perihelions 4y ago- "Due to the orbital dynamics of the Artemis I mission to fly an uncrewed Orion spacecraft to the Moon, NASA will next have an opportunity to launch from September 19 to October 4. However, making that window would necessitate fixing the rocket at the pad, and then getting a waiver from the US Space Force, which operates the launch range along the Florida coast." - "At issue is the flight termination system, which is powered independently of the rocket, with batteries rated for 25 days. NASA would need to extend that battery rating to about 40 days. The space agency is expected to have those discussions with range officials soon." - "If the rocket is rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building, which would be necessary to service the flight termination system or perform more than cursory work at the launch pad, NASA has another Artemis I launch opportunity from October 17 to October 31." https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/years-after-shuttle-nasa-rediscovers-the-perils-of-liquid-hydrogen/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/years-after-shuttle-...
- modeless 4y agoAnyone taking bets on whether Starship will beat SLS to orbit?
- panick21_ 4y agoI already won a bet that Falcon Heavy would beat SLS to orbit so I'm not gone push my luck. I still think it has a good chance.
- snewman 4y agoA very good article here: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/years-after-shuttle-nasa-rediscovers-the-perils-of-liquid-hydrogen/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/years-after-shuttle-...