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NASA, Boeing ink $2.8 billion deal to develop SLS rocket for deep space mission

21 points by chton 12y ago

bfwi 12y ago
This article makes it sound like this project is the only chance for the US to launch manned spaceflights again. Clearly, the Dragon capsule has a much better chance of doing this before the SLS. I wonder if Space X is simply not very well known.
- chton 12y ago
  Not for the US, but for NASA in particular. They haven't been able to send anyone themselves since the Space Shuttle, and they sorely need more capabilities in that area. It's mostly notable for its deep-space focus, directly intending to use the rocket to go to mars.
  - antimagic 12y ago
    But I don't understand what NASA gains by buying bespoke hardware instead of simply buying a Dragon launch. It seems weird - a very expensive case of "Not Invented Here". This is particularly true given Elon Musk's publicly announced ambitions for beyond-LEO missions using the Falcon stack, and his demonstrated ability to execute on his ambitions.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - chton 12y ago
      I assume they want to be independent of external companies. Nobody else is seriously developing capabilities to lift >100 tons in orbit at the moment, considering the only other craft ever capable of that was the Energia. If nobody else does it, better do it yourself.
- Tloewald 12y ago
  Time for Space-X to hire lobbyists, I guess.
antr 12y ago
I'm no space exploration expert, yet I find this mission to Mars and other space related news fascinating. Is there a website that explains the details of this kind of mission? Duration of the trip, planning, payload, technology, space craft, biggest challenges, back to Earth mission, etc. I'd love to learn more about this.
rayiner 12y ago
The comments here about SpaceX are totally off-base. The point of the SLS project is to re-purpose the Space Shuttle's technology to develop a launch vehicle. It uses the Space Shuttle's liquid hydrogen/oxygen main engines (SMEs) as well as the solid-fuel rocket boosters (SRBs). SpaceX has no experience working with this technology: its rockets use an RP-1 (kerosene) based design. Also, the target lift capability of the SLS is 2-3x as much as the Falcon Heavy.[1] SpaceX is doing great things, but they have a defined mission and so far have focused their limited resources on a family of related designs with an eye towards that mission. The vast majority of the aerospace engineering talent in the U.S. does not work at SpaceX. They work at Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, etc. It will be a long time before it's reasonable to make a comment implying that NASA chose Boeing instead of SpaceX because of lobbyists. [1] See: http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/falcon-heavy-uncertain-case-lunar-exploration http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/falcon-heavy-uncertain-ca....
- vaadu 12y ago
  THE purpose of this program is to bring pork to Senator Shelby's state. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/16/editorial-no-trampoline-for-the-astronauts/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/16/editorial-no...
  - hga 12y ago
    His state is hardly the only one that will benefit, but it is indeed often called the Senate Launch System. But after Apollo NASA has been more a public works program than anything else, and for that matter one of the explicit goals of Apollo was to spend a lot of money in the South and "uplift" it. You can tell this is propaganda when you see garbage like this: "'The launch abort system (LAS) is a key reason that Orion is intended to become the safest spacecraft ever built. In an emergency it could activate to pull the crew module and the astronauts it will carry away from the launch pad and the rocket in milliseconds' NASA officials wrote on their Web site." The crew modules that preceded the Space Shuttle, Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, all had one as well even when flying on inherently safer liquid fueled boosters; they're safer because you can turn them off. Look at the second paragraph of the link below about how the Air Force figured the Ares I SRB stack made crew survival impossible for an abort 30-60 seconds after launch; hopefully this system can vector the SRBs to the side in an abort, and their presence alone probably makes this system overall less safe than the pre-Shuttle ones. About the only thing I can say in favor of the SLS is that they dropped the Constellation Program Ares I idea of using a primary booster with a 5 segment SRB---and note those, and perhaps the SLS SRBs, were brand new wider versions, throwing away almost all the theoretical cost savings of reusing the Space Shuttle SRBs (look for when they talk about reusing Space Shuttle technology instead of hardware). That extra length version produced vibrations that could by themselves kill the crew (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ares_I#Analysis_and_testing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ares_I#Analysis_and_testing), and the Orion capsule's utility was steadily decreased as they added vibration damping hardware instead of fixing the problem. I sure hope the 5 segment option in the SLS doesn't have this problem.
avmich 12y ago
> For the maiden flight, the rocket will be matched with an Orion space capsule, and launched past low-Earth orbit. Although this will test the capability of the SLS to send a human crew into space, the mission will be entirely automated. This is something that was not possible during the Apollo or Space Shuttle programs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_missions#Unmanned_Apollo-Saturn_IB_and_Saturn_V https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_missions#Unmann... There were several - 4, I think - unmanned Apollo spacecraft flights in 60-s.
- chton 12y ago
  None of those went beyond LEO, though. They were also remote controlled, rather than entirely automated.
  - avmich 12y ago
    Agree, they didn't go beyond LEO. However, at about the same time, Soviets launched several Zonds - which were stripped-down versions of Soyuz spacecrafts - to Moon fly-bys, in automatic mode. In 1988 USSR launched Buran - arguably a close technical sibling of the Space Shuttle - admittedly on LEO (would be really amusing to see a bird like that higher than on LEO), also unmanned. I wonder if that still allows to say "this is something that was not possible during Apollo/Shuttle programs".
    - chton 12y ago
      I agree, the article may put this somewhat strongly. I guess we'll see with that first launch what is so special about it. A fully automated launch-to-landing sequence would have been hard to do in the sixties, but I also wouldn't go so far as saying impossible.
  - avmich 12y ago
    Regarding remote-controlled part. Do you think author stresses the differences and really mean that full automation vs. remote control? It's usually convenient to rely on some support from Earth for complex missions - doesn't make sense to make spacecraft fully autonomous - and I haven't heard Orion designers explicitly mentioning that self-sufficient approach.
avmich 12y ago
> "The launch abort system (LAS) is a key reason that Orion is intended to become the safest spacecraft ever built. In an emergency it could activate to pull the crew module and the astronauts it will carry away from the launch pad and the rocket in milliseconds" NASA officials wrote on their Web site. A very strange statement. Safety systems like that are used since Mercury flights. And what kind of milliseconds are we talking here? Thousands? Hundreds? Even with 20g acceleration - pretty harsh by today's standard even for abort systems - in 0.1 second you're only going to get 1 meter away - not quite too far.
- chton 12y ago
  2 Things: Firstly, the quoted sentence, if you shorten it, says "In an emergency it could activate in milliseconds". This is quite different from the speed or time to get away, just how long the engine takes to start burning and pulling away. Anything measured in milliseconds rather than seconds at that point might save lives. Secondly, the system is very much like the one used on Apollo modules, both in philosophy and application, but they haven't been used since. The space shuttle didn't have anything similar, nor does soyuz or anything else. A return to this kind of early-stage abort system is an important development, and one that can only happen if the rocket is designed specifically with it in mind.
  - avmich 12y ago
    > Anything measured in milliseconds rather than seconds at that point might save lives. Yes, but if you're talking about system reaction - the start of motion - rather than result - the safety distance - then it's nothing surprising here. These systems always worked in under 1 second time frame - don't know exact timing, but it's all electronics. At this point it becomes rather misleading about what is being said - this system claims a particularly fast reaction between first sensor detection and detecting raising temperature of the charge of solid rocket pulling the capsule away? Or something else? It's mentioned without specifying necessary details, so it can be understood differently - that's why it looks strange. > The space shuttle didn't have anything similar, nor does soyuz or anything else. Pad abort system is used on all Soyuz spacecrafts, which fly since 1960-s. Was even used in Soyuz-18 flight abort. Pad abort system was used for TKS flights - unmanned, but the spacecraft was built to carry people. Pad abort system is used for Shenzhen spacecraft flights. Those systems weren't used in Space Shuttle - but were used elsewhere. That means the claim "safest spacecraft ever built", considering that some relevant comparable spacecrafts are from outside the US, is lacking specification "in US". Which makes the statement look strange.

21 points by chton 12y ago

bfwi 12y ago

This article makes it sound like this project is the only chance for the US to launch manned spaceflights again. Clearly, the Dragon capsule has a much better chance of doing this before the SLS. I wonder if Space X is simply not very well known.

chton 12y ago
Not for the US, but for NASA in particular. They haven't been able to send anyone themselves since the Space Shuttle, and they sorely need more capabilities in that area. It's mostly notable for its deep-space focus, directly intending to use the rocket to go to mars.
- antimagic 12y ago
  But I don't understand what NASA gains by buying bespoke hardware instead of simply buying a Dragon launch. It seems weird - a very expensive case of "Not Invented Here". This is particularly true given Elon Musk's publicly announced ambitions for beyond-LEO missions using the Falcon stack, and his demonstrated ability to execute on his ambitions.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - chton 12y ago
    I assume they want to be independent of external companies. Nobody else is seriously developing capabilities to lift >100 tons in orbit at the moment, considering the only other craft ever capable of that was the Energia. If nobody else does it, better do it yourself.
Tloewald 12y ago
Time for Space-X to hire lobbyists, I guess.

antr 12y ago

I'm no space exploration expert, yet I find this mission to Mars and other space related news fascinating. Is there a website that explains the details of this kind of mission? Duration of the trip, planning, payload, technology, space craft, biggest challenges, back to Earth mission, etc. I'd love to learn more about this.

rayiner 12y ago

The comments here about SpaceX are totally off-base. The point of the SLS project is to re-purpose the Space Shuttle's technology to develop a launch vehicle. It uses the Space Shuttle's liquid hydrogen/oxygen main engines (SMEs) as well as the solid-fuel rocket boosters (SRBs). SpaceX has no experience working with this technology: its rockets use an RP-1 (kerosene) based design. Also, the target lift capability of the SLS is 2-3x as much as the Falcon Heavy.[1] SpaceX is doing great things, but they have a defined mission and so far have focused their limited resources on a family of related designs with an eye towards that mission. The vast majority of the aerospace engineering talent in the U.S. does not work at SpaceX. They work at Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, etc. It will be a long time before it's reasonable to make a comment implying that NASA chose Boeing instead of SpaceX because of lobbyists. [1] See: http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/falcon-heavy-uncertain-case-lunar-exploration http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/falcon-heavy-uncertain-ca....

vaadu 12y ago
THE purpose of this program is to bring pork to Senator Shelby's state. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/16/editorial-no-trampoline-for-the-astronauts/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/16/editorial-no...
- hga 12y ago
  His state is hardly the only one that will benefit, but it is indeed often called the Senate Launch System. But after Apollo NASA has been more a public works program than anything else, and for that matter one of the explicit goals of Apollo was to spend a lot of money in the South and "uplift" it. You can tell this is propaganda when you see garbage like this: "'The launch abort system (LAS) is a key reason that Orion is intended to become the safest spacecraft ever built. In an emergency it could activate to pull the crew module and the astronauts it will carry away from the launch pad and the rocket in milliseconds' NASA officials wrote on their Web site." The crew modules that preceded the Space Shuttle, Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, all had one as well even when flying on inherently safer liquid fueled boosters; they're safer because you can turn them off. Look at the second paragraph of the link below about how the Air Force figured the Ares I SRB stack made crew survival impossible for an abort 30-60 seconds after launch; hopefully this system can vector the SRBs to the side in an abort, and their presence alone probably makes this system overall less safe than the pre-Shuttle ones. About the only thing I can say in favor of the SLS is that they dropped the Constellation Program Ares I idea of using a primary booster with a 5 segment SRB---and note those, and perhaps the SLS SRBs, were brand new wider versions, throwing away almost all the theoretical cost savings of reusing the Space Shuttle SRBs (look for when they talk about reusing Space Shuttle technology instead of hardware). That extra length version produced vibrations that could by themselves kill the crew (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ares_I#Analysis_and_testing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ares_I#Analysis_and_testing), and the Orion capsule's utility was steadily decreased as they added vibration damping hardware instead of fixing the problem. I sure hope the 5 segment option in the SLS doesn't have this problem.

avmich 12y ago

> For the maiden flight, the rocket will be matched with an Orion space capsule, and launched past low-Earth orbit. Although this will test the capability of the SLS to send a human crew into space, the mission will be entirely automated. This is something that was not possible during the Apollo or Space Shuttle programs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_missions#Unmanned_Apollo-Saturn_IB_and_Saturn_V https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_missions#Unmann... There were several - 4, I think - unmanned Apollo spacecraft flights in 60-s.

chton 12y ago
None of those went beyond LEO, though. They were also remote controlled, rather than entirely automated.
- avmich 12y ago
  Agree, they didn't go beyond LEO. However, at about the same time, Soviets launched several Zonds - which were stripped-down versions of Soyuz spacecrafts - to Moon fly-bys, in automatic mode. In 1988 USSR launched Buran - arguably a close technical sibling of the Space Shuttle - admittedly on LEO (would be really amusing to see a bird like that higher than on LEO), also unmanned. I wonder if that still allows to say "this is something that was not possible during Apollo/Shuttle programs".
  - chton 12y ago
    I agree, the article may put this somewhat strongly. I guess we'll see with that first launch what is so special about it. A fully automated launch-to-landing sequence would have been hard to do in the sixties, but I also wouldn't go so far as saying impossible.
- avmich 12y ago
  Regarding remote-controlled part. Do you think author stresses the differences and really mean that full automation vs. remote control? It's usually convenient to rely on some support from Earth for complex missions - doesn't make sense to make spacecraft fully autonomous - and I haven't heard Orion designers explicitly mentioning that self-sufficient approach.

avmich 12y ago

> "The launch abort system (LAS) is a key reason that Orion is intended to become the safest spacecraft ever built. In an emergency it could activate to pull the crew module and the astronauts it will carry away from the launch pad and the rocket in milliseconds" NASA officials wrote on their Web site. A very strange statement. Safety systems like that are used since Mercury flights. And what kind of milliseconds are we talking here? Thousands? Hundreds? Even with 20g acceleration - pretty harsh by today's standard even for abort systems - in 0.1 second you're only going to get 1 meter away - not quite too far.

chton 12y ago
2 Things: Firstly, the quoted sentence, if you shorten it, says "In an emergency it could activate in milliseconds". This is quite different from the speed or time to get away, just how long the engine takes to start burning and pulling away. Anything measured in milliseconds rather than seconds at that point might save lives. Secondly, the system is very much like the one used on Apollo modules, both in philosophy and application, but they haven't been used since. The space shuttle didn't have anything similar, nor does soyuz or anything else. A return to this kind of early-stage abort system is an important development, and one that can only happen if the rocket is designed specifically with it in mind.
- avmich 12y ago
  > Anything measured in milliseconds rather than seconds at that point might save lives. Yes, but if you're talking about system reaction - the start of motion - rather than result - the safety distance - then it's nothing surprising here. These systems always worked in under 1 second time frame - don't know exact timing, but it's all electronics. At this point it becomes rather misleading about what is being said - this system claims a particularly fast reaction between first sensor detection and detecting raising temperature of the charge of solid rocket pulling the capsule away? Or something else? It's mentioned without specifying necessary details, so it can be understood differently - that's why it looks strange. > The space shuttle didn't have anything similar, nor does soyuz or anything else. Pad abort system is used on all Soyuz spacecrafts, which fly since 1960-s. Was even used in Soyuz-18 flight abort. Pad abort system was used for TKS flights - unmanned, but the spacecraft was built to carry people. Pad abort system is used for Shenzhen spacecraft flights. Those systems weren't used in Space Shuttle - but were used elsewhere. That means the claim "safest spacecraft ever built", considering that some relevant comparable spacecrafts are from outside the US, is lacking specification "in US". Which makes the statement look strange.