[HN Gopher] Artemis I Launch Attempt Scrubbed
___________________________________________________________________
Artemis I Launch Attempt Scrubbed
Author : Trouble_007
Score : 97 points
Date : 2022-09-03 15:27 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blogs.nasa.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (blogs.nasa.gov)
| [deleted]
| allenrb wrote:
| Consequences of choosing the wrong first stage fuel (hydrogen)
| are many.
|
| Those tiny molecules want nothing more from life than to sneak
| through the smallest of openings. Well, possibly second to mating
| violently with oxygen.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Doolittle: Bomb, what is your purpose?
|
| Bomb: To explode, of course.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Dark Star. Good movie.
| WalterBright wrote:
| A forgotten classic.
| IshKebab wrote:
| IMDB disagrees! 6.2.
| pram wrote:
| It's a gestalt imo, kinda like Lynch's Dune. Flawed film
| with lots of bad parts and bizarre decisions, but also
| unique and memorable enough to elevate it above 'just
| bad'
| melling wrote:
| 6.2 isn't good but this is a John Carpenter movie,
| written and directed.
|
| In fact, it was his student film.
|
| Looks like he was going for a 2001 A Space Odyssey feel.
| pengaru wrote:
| > Looks like he was going for a 2001 A Space Odyssey
| feel.
|
| I thought he was communicating just how _boring_ and time
| consuming space exploration will be, being such vast
| emptiness.
| TT-392 wrote:
| It is what their engines use, and they weren't gonna use
| different engines
| jmyeet wrote:
| "Wrong" by what standard? Hydrogen has the highest specific
| impulse but I'd much harder to work with. We have no better
| propellant.
|
| A lot of other launch vehicles use RP-1, which is basically
| just kerosene. Lower specific impulse so lower payload capacity
| but it doesn't need to be cryogenically stored and cooled with
| everything that entails.
|
| That's a fine choice for single use rockets but when you get
| into reusable rockets you now have a new problem: RP-1 burns
| and leaves a lot of carbon behind. This is costly and slow to
| clean.
|
| For this reason SpaceX's next rocket uses methane. Like
| hydrogen or must be cooled but not as much. Still it's more
| complex engineering.
|
| Artemis to me seems too expensive but it will be the most
| powerful launch vehicle ever created with the highest payload
| capacity.
|
| So how is it wrong?
| wolfram74 wrote:
| as you said, RP-1 is probably a better choice for throwaway
| rockets, which SLS is.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| Unfortunately methane being a GHG brings additional important
| problems. Launching a lot of methane rockets would be really
| expensive to the environment.
|
| (We need to finally replace SRBs with something cleaner too.)
| DanBC wrote:
| > Launching a lot of methane rockets would be really
| expensive to the environment.
|
| What does it turn into when burnt? Would there be much
| unburnt methane leaking into the environment from these
| rockets and the infrastructure to support these rockets?
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Methane is the simplest hydrocarbon. CH4.
|
| One molecule of methane combines with two molecules of
| oxygen to form one molecule of carbon dioxide along with
| two molecules of water. Releasing good amounts of energy
| when this reaction (oxidation of hydrocarbons by simply
| burning them) is taking place.
|
| CH4 + 2 O2 = CO2 + 2 H2O
|
| Hydrogen is the simplest flammable gas. H2, in molecular
| form.
|
| 2 H2 + O2 = 2 H2O
|
| Two molecules of hydrogen combine with one molecule of
| oxygen to form two molecules of water with no other
| byproducts. Lots of energy comes out too when hydrogen
| burns but it is a completely clean gas unlike any other.
| If hydrogen can be manufactured using only green energy,
| it is completely benign to the environment when burned.
| Also harmless when released unburnt as long as it doesn't
| cause any fires or asphyxiation or something.
|
| OTOH when the methane burns it turns into an equal number
| of carbon molecules in the atmosphere in the form of CO2.
| Fortunately the CO2 has a lesser greenhouse effect than
| if the unburnt methane were directly released (or leaked)
| into the environment.
|
| As it is now, any methane likely to be used as rocket
| fuel would alternatively just be turned into atmospheric
| CO2 by some other terrestrial user of natural gas anyway.
| Without launching any spacecraft.
|
| Methane fuel still puts CO2 into the atmosphere at the
| push of a button, which would require a herculean effort
| to remove later, and that removal would not be
| justifiable until the situation is much more dire, as we
| have seen.
|
| Still, methane really can be considered the cleanest
| burning hydrocarbon, but nowhere near the zero-CO2
| exhaust from a hydrogen flame.
|
| Both of these gaseous fuels are so light they do not like
| to be physically liquified at all, not even when highly
| pressurized, and that would require very heavy-walled
| storage cylinders in that case. But they still need to be
| stored as a liquid in order to carry orders of magnitude
| more fuel than the same size tank would hold in gaseous
| form. So they use extreme low-temperature cryogenics to
| liquefy these fuels and the storage & handling is
| accomplished at temperatures so far below zero that the
| product remains liquid without needing to be kept under
| very much pressure. Instead, it's handled _very cold at
| all times_ with lots of insulation & refrigeration. If
| it warms up too much the pressure rise _is certainly
| expected_ to exceed the design maxiumum of the storage
| tank, so all safety relief devices must be highly
| reliable under these conditions.
|
| There's this thing about cryogenics.
|
| Everything can't be expected to work right the first
| time, and success may not be had until all possible
| failures have already been witnessed to occur, and
| further design experience has been gained developing the
| workarounds.
| allenrb wrote:
| It's wrong because hydrogen in the first stage optimized for
| things you don't care about, namely propellant mass. In
| exchange, you get heavier tanks, physically larger engines,
| and (obviously) more complex operations.
|
| Yes, it has the highest practical specific impulse. No, that
| is not the most important metric for a lower stage. Take a
| look at how many new launchers are using hydrogen in their
| lower stages. Hint: it's a big, round sort of a number.
| mabbo wrote:
| Like all engineering decisions, hydrogen is a choice with
| tradeoffs.
|
| It's specific impulse ('fuel efficiency') is unbeatable. That
| buys you a lot more cargo capacity for the same sized rocket.
| And since this program is putting large items into lunar orbit,
| you need that badly.
|
| But as you said, it's... complex to work with.
|
| Hey it worked for the space shuttle.
| xcskier56 wrote:
| Another trade off:
|
| Liquid hydrogen is very low density, and requires extremely
| low temperatures.
|
| This means that you need a much bigger tank for a given
| weight of fuel, and that tank needs to be insulated bc liquid
| hydrogen must be kept below 33 kelvin.
|
| Both of these downsides can come close to negating the upside
| of increased ISP.
|
| But the upside for SLS is that they already had engines that
| can run on hydrogen. Like you said, trade offs all around
| adastra22 wrote:
| > That buys you a lot more cargo capacity for the same sized
| rocket.
|
| I think you mean the same mass rocket, because hydrogen is
| not dense, which factors into the tradeoffs (more structural
| mass to contain it).
| mabbo wrote:
| An excellent point.
|
| Fortunately bigger tanks get better and better the bigger
| they are. The mass of the tanks is _mostly_ a function of
| it 's surface area, growing with n^2, while the fuel stored
| grows by n^3.
|
| And the SLS tank is pretty darned big indeed, with a very
| large diameter.
| wumpus wrote:
| Big tanks are a big part of why SLS is financially
| inefficient.
| numpad0 wrote:
| There are just as many hydrolox(hydrogen + liquid oxygen) as
| kerolox(RP-1 kerosene + LOX). Atlas, Delta, H-II, Ariane 5,
| Long March 5, to name a few, all use hydrolox.
|
| I believe a part of reasons why launch attempts are called
| "attempts" is because of extreme scrub and failure rate of
| launch vehicle launches, and I think the fact that scrubs are
| now considered abnormal can be attributable to SpaceX and Elon
| Musk. I was old enough to remember watching last few of Space
| Shuttle launch attempts, and from my experience watching launch
| streams, scrubs and recycling due to hydrogen leaks, erratic
| sensor readings, upper atmosphere weather, and private boats
| and planes violating keepout areas were entirely normal events,
| with a global sole exception of the Soyuz launch vehicle flying
| from Baikonur Cosmodrome, which delayed or failed up to once in
| a decade or so.
|
| Apparently it pisses off people in power, sometimes might have
| caused off-season human resource reallocations, but rocketeers
| basically never cared. That was until Falcon 9 started
| launching on first tries of each attempts.
| allenrb wrote:
| I'm a big fan of SpaceX and (when he can keep his mouth shut
| about US politics and a dozen other things) Elon Musk, but
| they're hardly the first ones to launch without regular
| scrubs. ULA does it all the time. So does arianespace. The
| Russians are pretty good at it, though aerospace is yet
| another sector of their economy being destroyed by Putin),
| and the Chinese seem to get off the ground with some
| regularity.
|
| It's about mature vs immature vehicles, mostly. Much as I
| loathe the entire SLS program and design of the rocket, it is
| not because they're having some trouble with scrubs. That's
| going to happen with a unique, complex, and new system.
| jpgvm wrote:
| I think the lack of scrubs of SpaceX launches mostly comes
| from Falcon 9 being an absurdly powerful rocket with great
| margin of safety for the payload/missions it takes. Thus it
| can often launch in sub-optimal conditions, still complete
| it's primary objective -and- recover the booster.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| True, but Delta IV is the only one of those rockets using
| hydrolox for the first stage. I have to imagine storing and
| moving that much hydrogen is a lot more complex than launch
| vehicles that only use it in an upper stage.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I don't quite get the argument. If SLS and rest of those
| rockets belong to a same category, and reliability in the
| same level as well, what's the point of pointing that
| out...besides I believe Delta IV Heavy is towards the side
| of more reliable and regular launching rockets
| theteapot wrote:
| Worked pretty well for 135 shuttle missions.
| wumpus wrote:
| Let's see: killed a ton of people, was extremely expensive,
| ...
| koheripbal wrote:
| A ton? Relative to what space program? Or do you mean a
| physical measurement of the weight of people?
| eternalban wrote:
| How about magnetic containment? Does ionized hydrogen combust
| well or not?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| We've been quoted $4bn per launch. If this pattern of delays
| turns out to be fundamental (a big, if plausible, if), what would
| the launch costs actually be?
| thetinguy wrote:
| Artemis is a federal jobs program.
| tonetheman wrote:
| Military budget for the year was 777B...
|
| Give what you said all of the military is a jobs program
| also.
| DanHulton wrote:
| You think you're being flip, but you're closer to right
| than you probably expect.
| [deleted]
| arrosenberg wrote:
| The military is a jobs program, thats not a secret.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Size of budget doesn't determine jobs or not. Artemis
| exists because Congress didn't like Constellation's
| cancellation. Its Block II configuration underperforms
| Starship at significantly higher cost, both to develop and
| to operate, all without anywhere close to the technological
| progress of even Falcon Heavy. SLS exists first to provide
| jobs. The military-industrial complex has an obvious first
| and foremost purpose, and it's pretty good at it.
| RichardCNormos wrote:
| The mission of Artemis is to land a woman and a person of
| color on the moon. It is a federally funded affirmative
| action program.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| This is normal for any new launch vehicle.
|
| ...which is why it's often a good idea to not use a new launch
| vehicle on the critical path for your crewed spaceflight
| program. (Could have used LEO rendezvous of various types to go
| to the Moon.)
|
| https://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_laws.html
|
| _> 39. The three keys to keeping a new human space program
| affordable and on schedule: 1) No new launch vehicles. 2) No
| new launch vehicles. 3) Whatever you do, don 't develop any new
| launch vehicles._
| somenameforme wrote:
| The initial SpaceX Falcon rocket was entirely privately
| funded, at a total cost of of ~$100 million. The first 3
| launches were failures. The 4th launch was a success, and the
| rest is history. And that vessel would ultimately go on
| (through various again largely privately funded innovations)
| to revolutionize spaceflight.
|
| The same is now true of the Starship, which is again being
| entirely privately funded. The cost is certainly going to be
| much more than $100 million, but also nowhere near the absurd
| extremes of cost that Boeing imposes on the taxpayer. At this
| point "we" have spent tens of billions of dollars on this
| catastrophe. And the icing on the cake is that _if_ this
| monstrosity is ever deemed flight worthy, it will likely
| already be obsolete.
|
| It's quite difficult to understand why giving a company
| billions of dollars a year, _unless_ they succeed, does not
| seem to be leading to great outcomes. Maybe we should just
| give them more money. That 'll fix everything.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > The initial SpaceX Falcon rocket was entirely privately
| funded, at a total cost of of ~$100 million.
|
| And just to put things in perspective: SLS (not Orion,
| _just_ SLS) is projected to cost a total of $30 Billion
|
| The shuttle cost $1.5BN/launch and SLS, forty years later?
| Over $2BN/launch.
|
| Absolute insanity.
| gsibble wrote:
| I was downvoted a few weeks ago on a "Rah, rah, rah!
| Artemis!" post here on HN for pointing out the same a few
| weeks ago.
|
| People on here sure are fickle.
| perihelions wrote:
| Likely no next attempt until October, per Eric Berger ( _Ars
| Technica_ ):
|
| - _" Hearing a rollback to the VAB of the SLS rocket is likely,
| but I don't have confirmation. If that happens, it is very likely
| that Artemis I does not launch before October 17, at the
| earliest."_
|
| - _" I'm told that Space Launch System program officials will
| recommend a rollback to the VAB to investigate the hydrogen leak.
| The Artemis I mission management team will consider this
| recommendation at their afternoon meeting, and publicly announce
| a decision at 4pm ET."_
|
| https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1566088891395883009
|
| https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1566104350635835393
| madaxe_again wrote:
| I have my doubts that it will _ever_ launch - the way things
| are proceeding, they'll miss October, push to '23, and will
| then end up with parts and systems ageing out due to wear and
| duty cycles - the rollback to the VAB alone incurs significant
| wear.
|
| Meanwhile, starship will see its first orbital flight (likely
| not before a few RUDs) while SLS just grows mould.
|
| That said, the whole purpose of SLS was to provide jobs and to
| retain technical expertise in the US, which it has achieved -
| actually _launching_ the thing is almost besides the point.
| hfgbvhevrt wrote:
| When is that first starship orbital launch again?
| rocket_surgeron wrote:
| Starship doesn't even exist yet.
|
| Note: neither Booster 7, nor Booster 8, or Ship 20 and 24
| for that matter, are even close to being anything that
| could be considered "Starship" by even the most generous
| observer.
|
| Even if B7/S24 do launch in a test flight they are so far
| removed from anything that could potentially be in the far
| future an operational and usable spacecraft that they
| resemble "starship" the same way a wooden mockup of an
| airplane resembles an actual airplane.
|
| An object being the same general shape and dimensions of
| something doesn't make that object the "something".
|
| At least SLS exists and has problems that can be, perhaps,
| probably at tremendous expense, fixed.
| joe-collins wrote:
| In 20 years, I've seen SpaceX start from scratch and
| develop and launch the Falcon 1, Falcon 9, and Falcon
| Heavy, and nail propulsive landings on Earth.
|
| Since it's members joined forces to form ULA 15 years
| ago, I've watched them launch the same machines they've
| been using since 2002.
|
| I have a lot more faith that SpaceX will launch something
| new than that ULA will get anything done.
| imtringued wrote:
| Musk said he was going to Mars by 2018.
| Teever wrote:
| SpaceX could absolutely launch a mars mission with their
| existing rocket platforms and launch infrastructure.
|
| It would be tedious launching little pieces of a larger
| ship and assembling them in orbit but it could absolutely
| be done.
|
| Instead of doing that they're choosing to build better,
| bigger rockets, and more infrastructure to make the
| eventual launches to mars more cost-effective and
| substantial.
| dwighttk wrote:
| >Musk said he was going to Mars by 2018.
|
| >SpaceX could absolutely launch a mars mission with their
| existing rocket platforms and launch infrastructure.
|
| If they launched today they'd be 4 years late
| dsl wrote:
| > SpaceX could absolutely launch a mars mission with
| their existing rocket platforms and launch
| infrastructure.
|
| Which highlights the major difference between public and
| private sector exploration. SpaceX killing everyone on
| their first attempt is a tragedy and they quickly move
| on, NASA doing it is a 10 year halt to any further work
| until a full public investigation takes place.
| gw99 wrote:
| Angostura wrote:
| It's a big, complex project and it's failed two tests. I'm
| happy to take the bet that it _will_ launch successfully
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| It's a big complex project that legislators decreed should
| re-use ancient engines and structural components from the
| shuttle - a project that was the world's first space-faring
| barrel of pork, infamous for its operating expenditures.
|
| One of the arguments for doing so was that the engines were
| "proven."
|
| _checks news story_
|
| Oh hey, it's the engines that are causing these delays.
|
| NASA has been so over-budget on the project, they had to
| commit accounting fraud to try and cover it up.
| kylegordon wrote:
| Outright wrong.
|
| "Multiple troubleshooting efforts to address the area of
| the leak by reseating a seal in the quick disconnect
| where liquid hydrogen is fed into the rocket did not fix
| the issue"
| mlyle wrote:
| > Oh hey, it's the engines that are causing these delays.
|
| ??? Last scrub was because of a problem with providing
| bleed cooling to cold soak everything.
|
| This scrub appears to be a problem with a quick
| disconnect used in fueling operations or the piping just
| inside it.
|
| Neither are the "engines".
|
| I'm skeptical of Artemis, but _come on_.
| yarpnird wrote:
| Think about all the work done by people that you are
| discounting...
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| The work is shit, despite being done with forty year old,
| thoroughly understood and matured technology?
|
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/new-report-finds-
| nas...
|
| Cost overruns would have put NASA 33% over budget a few
| years ago, but they committed accounting fraud to cover it
| up.
|
| The SLS is nothing more than a welfare check to Georgia and
| Florida.
| colordrops wrote:
| A lot of work is put into making porn, facebook games,
| prayer, cigarette manufacturing, the gambling industry etc.
| I'm not saying these are all useless things, but most
| people wouldn't bat an eye at someone "discounting" their
| work. If the work going into SLS doesn't achieve anything,
| then they discounted the work themselves, no need for a 3rd
| party.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Since the rocket gets thrown in the ocean at the end of
| this, this is literally the sunk cost fallacy at play.
| gonesilent wrote:
| NASA TV loves to show a great infographic of how many
| parts have flown to space before and have been
| reusable... can't help but yell in my mind.. and that's
| the last time they'll be reusable.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Those engines belong in a museum.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Maybe we should just park the turkey in the VAB and turn
| the VAB into a museum.
| awillen wrote:
| It's not entirely sunk cost - there's reputational
| effects for a lot of people involved. Politicians who
| supported it look much worse if all this work (and money)
| has gone into it, only to have it not launch. How bad
| they will look is proportional to how much money was
| spent/work was done, so the work put in does matter to
| the outcome, at least for them.
|
| That probably shouldn't be the case, but when it comes to
| politics, perception is very much reality in that
| people's perceptions translate directly to votes.
| Teever wrote:
| What is the point that you're trying to make here?
|
| I'm sure we've all experienced situations where we realize
| that the work we're being paid to do is futile and will
| never reach achieve it's intended purpose. It's really
| demoralizing but the thing to remember in that situation is
| that you're still getting paid.
|
| Would you rather be an aeronautical engineer who gets paid
| and doesn't launch of a rocket, or an aeronautical engineer
| who doesn't get paid and doesn't launch a rocket?
| xwdv wrote:
| I'd rather just be the aeronautical engineer who gets
| paid to do nothing except stay in the U.S.
| theteapot wrote:
| > ... the thing to remember in that situation is that
| you're still getting paid.
|
| That's the spirit.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| I would rather NOT be the engineer who pays taxes so that
| another engineer makes something that will never fly.
| mholt wrote:
| It's like the programmer who just runs their code again without
| actually testing it in the hopes that something changed
| bastawhiz wrote:
| It's not, actually. They're not running anything. In fact,
| they're doing the literal opposite of what your comment
| suggests.
| adastra22 wrote:
| It's an accurate description of todays launch attempt. They
| decided to repeat assuming the sensor problem that scrubbed
| the last launch was a sensor issue only. It was not.
| endymi0n wrote:
| Does anyone get the point with Artemis? Because I really don't.
|
| To my untrained eye the current outlook on the program looks like
| that rocket is right now only supposed to make two roundtrips
| along the moon -- and then in that third ,,Starship HLS" mission
| Artemis' only job is to take up the astronauts to orbit: while
| Starship (notably designed to be human rated) will be doing all
| the heavy lifting of the mission.
|
| In this context it all looks like a total sham, it would
| literally be cheaper and easier to send them up in another
| reusable Starship.
|
| What other purpose does Artemis have except building the most
| expensive trip to orbit existing so NASA can say ,,hey, we did
| something about this moon mission too!"?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Does anyone get the point with Artemis?
|
| Making Senators happy.
| imglorp wrote:
| Right, the Senate Launch System maximizes transfer of cash
| from taxpayers to defense contractors.
|
| There is absolutely no need to fly any hardware in the
| process.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| They have the goal to build a moon base and establish human
| presence there. This could lead to better research and we could
| see the start of the industrialization of the moon. This looks
| like something governments like to do and do it in government
| style :)
|
| Their site is a good start:
| https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis/
|
| And I've just skimmed this, but looks like a decent comparison
| of SLS vs Starship:
|
| https://everydayastronaut.com/sls-vs-starship/
| theteapot wrote:
| > Does anyone get the point with Artemis? Because I really
| don't.
|
| They want to go to the moon.
| endymi0n wrote:
| That's exactly what I mean. In their newest plan, they don't.
| Someone else does.
| theteapot wrote:
| Who? They're all on the same team, team USA! Or are you
| implying the glacial pace will inevitably mean China gets
| there first?
| endymi0n wrote:
| So even if it was this easy and logical, the only logical
| consequence would be scrapping SLS right now.
|
| Artemis 3 isn't just depending on one, but two super
| heavy launchers that haven't even left the ground yet.
|
| And if you put Starship in the critical path, why would
| you spend billions to introduce _another_ bottleneck
| that's literally just duplicating Starship's ground to
| orbit capability?
|
| If NASA agenda really only was getting the USA to the
| moon, the only rational choice would be doubling down on
| Starship all the way.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| They want to keep lots of people employed.
| jackmott wrote:
| engineer_22 wrote:
| When they started the project (2011) Starship wasn't even a
| twinkle in Elon's eye (BFR around 2016). Starship started
| looking like a real product in 2020. In hindsight, you're
| right, SLS looks silly, but not many people were betting on
| SpaceX developing a super heavy launch system in 6 years like
| they've (apparently) done. They've invested a lot of money in
| SLS and there's probably still lessons to learn there. If
| Starship is successful SLS will probably not be deployed very
| frequently.
| minxomat wrote:
| What's the record amount of scrubs?
|
| I guess we have to ask TLC...
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| The record for the shuttle was 6
| somenameforme wrote:
| Make sure you're comparing apples to apples. Launches are
| usually scrubbed because of weather. Repeatedly bringing a
| rocket to the pad on launch day that's ultimately not flight-
| worthy is different than scrubbing because of higher than
| nominal cross winds.
|
| And this case is particularly spectacular because while it's
| ostensibly just a test, they are literally using the exact
| same engines that the Space Shuttle used. Not as in the exact
| model, but literally refurbished RS-25 engines that already
| completed successful flights on the Space Shuttle.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Sure, STS-61c had 4 scrubs for mechanical issues. STS-71
| had a similar ratio. So 4 mechanical scrubs on a semi
| mature vehicle
| koheripbal wrote:
| Failure condition is an exploded rocket, not the number of
| scrubs.
| UberFly wrote:
| The complexity is astronomical, so I'm glad they're being overly
| careful. Once perfected I hope they keep up the cautiousness so
| we don't start seeing shuttle-type neglect in the program.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| the_third_wave wrote:
| I assume this means the SRBs need to be disassembled to replace
| the sealing between the segments seeing as how these were stacked
| beginning in January 2021 [1] and the sealing is guaranteed for
| 12 months. This has already been extended for 7-8 months but if
| the launch is to be postponed until October or later they're
| coming up to 2 years:
|
| _The joints connecting each piece of Space Launch System's five-
| segment rocket motors are certified for one year once booster
| stacking begins, a clock that began ticking Jan. 7 with the
| hoisting of the SLS's left-hand aft center booster segment on top
| of the booster's lowermost piece.
|
| But the 12-month certification limit, a holdover from the space
| shuttle program, could be extended with an engineering review,
| according to John Honeycutt, NASA's Space Launch System program
| manager at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.
|
| Honeycutt said in January engineers planned to make measurements
| and collect data as ground teams stacked each segment of the
| Artemis 1 boosters inside the Vehicle Assembly Building. The data
| could help NASA and Northrop Grumman extend the certification of
| the rocket motor joints beyond 12 months.
|
| "That gives us the best opportunity to do some sort of a life
| extension on the booster stacking in the event that we need
| that," Honeycutt said._
|
| [1] https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/03/09/stacking-complete-
| for-...
| DougWebb wrote:
| Yeah, it's not like NASA has ever had a problem ignoring their
| own procedures when it comes to the seals on these kinds of
| rockets...
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Those who do not learn from history are doomed to... blow up
| their rockets?
| gsibble wrote:
| It's pretty clear they don't care at this point. They were
| extended by 6 months and no one has brought it up since then.
| NASA is feeling political heat to just fly this thing at any
| cost at this point.
| irrational wrote:
| I feel like they need to go the SpaceX route and build dozens of
| these things and just launch them with the expectation that most
| will fail, but they learn from each failure to improve the next
| ones.
| jve wrote:
| Not even SpaceX is going to test launch when there are obvious
| issues.
| jbay808 wrote:
| Do you think they would have learned something worthwhile by
| proceeding with the launch?
| everybodyknows wrote:
| The worst case would at least yield data from an
| incontrovertibly true-to-life, no faking, test of the Launch
| Abort System:
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/launch-abort-motor-for-
| or...
| quartesixte wrote:
| Leak was on launch tower side, no?
|
| 8-inch quick disconnect hoses have to be really gnarly to do
| anything with.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| At this rate it seems really unlikely to me that the next mission
| will have humans on it.
| krisoft wrote:
| Why?
| gsibble wrote:
| Agreed. I doubt the capsule part of the mission.....you know,
| the actual mission.....will go smooth either.
| cantaloupe wrote:
| More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32702211
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