BO's problem is that they seem to think they don't need to test....they'll simulate everything, and the booster will fly right the first time. Might happen, but not likely.

"Prototypes are easy, production is hard."

Not just a quick quote, but a mentality. BO is never going to get to a similar state. Bezos comes from distribution, with no real manufacturing people around him (and a lot of sycophants).

We've also seen the "we'll just simulate it" plan in action recently.

Oof, Eric Berger saying he's hearing no SN9 launch until February

bthotugigem05 said:

---

Oof, Eric Berger saying he's hearing no SN9 launch until February

---

Yeah last time they switched out raptors it was 26 days.

Well, theoretically it could happen Tuesday or Wednesday. But yeah he is skeptical and pretty plugged in.

https://everydayastronaut.com/sn9-10-km-flight-live-updates/



2 hour window for SLS opens at 4 CST today for firing (should be pretty spectacular, cost/waste commentary aside).

For the Floridians, another starlink launch should happen Monday. Or tomorrow? I dunno.

Starlink 16.

Quote:

---

Known as Starlink-16 or Starlink V1 L16, the mission will be SpaceX's 16th launch of operational v1.0 communications satellites and its 17th Starlink launch overall. Originally scheduled to follow SpaceX's first dedicated Smallsat Program rideshare launch on January 14th, that Transporter-1 mission slipped to no earlier than (NET) January 21st after a rapid-fire series of chaotic events earlier this year.

Scheduled to launch NET 1:23 pm EST (18:23 UTC) on January 17th, Starlink-16 thus became SpaceX's defacto second launch of the year. Progress towards that working date became visible when, drone ship Just Read The Instructions (JRTI) quickly offloaded its most recent Falcon 9 booster 'catch' and departed Port Canaveral for the second time this year on January 13th. Headed some 633 km (~400 mi) northeast, the autonomous rocket landing platform is right on schedule (and set to be in the right place) to support a Starlink launch around January 17th.

Reading between the lines of comments made on January 12th by a 45th Space Wing colonel, the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) expect to support many as 53 launches in 2021, some 42-44 of which can be attributed to SpaceX.

That figure meshes with CEO Elon Musk's recent note that SpaceX is aiming to complete as many as 48 launches this year, 4-6 of which will likely fly out of the company's Vandenberg Air Force Base, California facilities. If SpaceX does manage 40+ Florida launches in 2021, it's safe to say that half if not more will be Starlink missions. In other words, SpaceX's imminent Starlink-16 launch is likely the first of roughly two-dozen planned over the next 12 months, potentially orbiting almost 1500 satellites in a single year.

---

A stage that size firing will never NOT be impressive. IF the thing launches, it will be awesome to watch, regardless of the waste.

Aaaaaand it shut down early, didn't run the gimble tests.... 10 years and billions of dollars....can't fire 4 engines they launched for decades without failures.

Gonna be grumpy a minute about the SLS test failure.

the more im reading the more pissed off this makes me. This is the whole stage hot firing, and it didn't burn 1/4 the time it was supposed to. This rocket is supposed to be built from existing technologies so it will be more reliable, and cheaper.... can't static fire on a test stand. It truthfully doesn't look like they had them all firing correctly for even less time, the automatics just shut the whole mess down when things went sideways. Testing and finding problems is great..... all this money, time, and re-used tech was supposed to prevent these from happening.

This would have been a serious in-flight abort scenario, with the SRBs still lit. It's one thing to pull an in-flight on a liquid booster with the engines shut down, something different when big solids are involved. I'd like to know what their abort options would have been, and what level of control the booster would have had through thrust vectoring on the SRBs only. I've always heard that was a real concern even with shuttle, a triple out within the +1 min, to maintain control. Im hoping the vehicle would be aerodynamically stable, and srb jettison could be bypassed to jettison the whole upper stage and pull the vehicle away on burnout.

Like I said, I'm all in on test until it works right, but not when these companies are getting paid triple or more the things value to allegedly be able to bypass the iterative prototyping. SpaceX, rocketlabs, hell even ISRO and other countries testing/failing/retrying.... the Soviets beat us to damn near every first in LEO with iterative designs and testing. The failing is not the problem, its failing when you charged us like you couldn't...

I started thinking back in 2016 that there was no way that the SLS was ever going to fly. I had a short hiatus of pessimism for the year of 2020 and the progress they were making, but now I'm more convinced than ever that we will never see the SLS fly anywhere.

What we saw yesterday was the culmination of $17 billion wasted.

Now I hear the SRBs only have a one year shelflife. And because they started assembling them a couple of months ago, they will "expire" before they can fly.

What a embarrassing debacle the entire program has been for NASA.

And the engines tested yesterday are the same type that flew on the shuttle, right?

No, they're the ACTUAL engines that flew on the shuttle. None of the shuttle have been retired with real engines, these are those same engines, "upgraded".

Ag_of_08 said:

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No, they're the ACTUAL engines that flew on the shuttle. None of the shuttle have been retired with real engines, these are those same engines, "upgraded".

---

They also have/had a great track record for safety/reliability. Only ULA/SLS program could screw this up.

Right!? The RS-25 is a great engine.... not was, is. One flame out in flight in it's entire operational life. The one and ONLY reason I oppose them being used is the tremendous cost that goes in to producing one.




This is not the first failure in a static fire ULA/sls has had with them. Just ridiculous.

Some hopefully entertaining good news.

Ag_of_08 said:

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Right!? The RS-25 is a great engine.... not was, is. One flame out in flight in it's entire operational life. The one and ONLY reason I oppose them being used is the tremendous cost that goes in to producing one.




This is not the first failure in a static fire ULA/sls has had with them. Just ridiculous.

---

The cost is high and they are being treated as disposable. That's a double hit to the bottom line.

Apparently Tim Dodd is doing a tour of the Boca Chica production plant at 4:00 today.

They made orbit! Congrats to Virgin* orbit!

Indeed, congrats to the VO team.

Scott commentary on SLS failure; sounds like they may be able to re-fire it in February. Kind of a race of sorts I guess as to who gets to light next; starship or the static fire SLS.

Possible static fire scheduled for tomorrow with launch later in the week.

If it happens that fast after switching out 2 raptors last week I think we will all be very pleasantly surprised.

Saw that, the N1 having more flight time was SAVAGE!

I do think they need to do the green run test again but it's interesting they seem to not be sure on that.

Eric thinks they do it, and more details later this week. Nice to see some (rare) transparency;

Quote:

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Worth noting that this is a fairly detailed update on the situation, released in a timely manner. NASA says it will provide more detail in a call with media later this week. (Also appreciated). One complicating factor: Biden appointees could arrive soon, and may want input.

---

The blog post indicates that if it had happened in flight it would have been 'fine.'

Quote:

---

The engines reached their full power of 109 percent producing 1.6 million pounds of thrust, just as they will during the Artemis I launch.

Initial data indicate the sensor reading for a major component failure, or MCF, that occurred about 1.5 seconds after engine start was not related to the hot fire shutdown. It involved the loss of one leg of redundancy prior to T-0 in the instrumentation for Engine 4, also known as engine number E2060.

Engine ignition begins 6 seconds prior to T-0, and they fire in sequence about 120 milliseconds apart. Test constraints for hot fire were set up to allow the test to proceed with this condition, because the engine control system still has sufficient redundancy to ensure safe engine operation during the test. The team plans to investigate and resolve the Engine 4 instrumentation issue before the next use of the core stage.

Engineers also continue to investigate reports of a "flash" around the engines. A visual inspection of the thermal blankets that protect the engine show signs of some exterior scorching, which was anticipated due to their proximity to engine and CAPU exhaust. Sensor data indicate temperatures in the core stage engine section were normal. Both observations are an early indication the blankets did their job and protected the rocket from the extreme heat generated by the engines and CAPU exhaust.

Data analysis is continuing to help the team determine if a second hot fire test is required. The team can make slight adjustments to the thrust vector control parameters and prevent an automatic shut down if they decide to conduct another test with the core stage mounted in the B-2 stand.

---

Ag_of_08 said:

---

Gonna be grumpy a minute about the SLS test failure.

the more im reading the more pissed off this makes me. This is the whole stage hot firing, and it didn't burn 1/4 the time it was supposed to. This rocket is supposed to be built from existing technologies so it will be more reliable, and cheaper.... can't static fire on a test stand. It truthfully doesn't look like they had them all firing correctly for even less time, the automatics just shut the whole mess down when things went sideways. Testing and finding problems is great..... all this money, time, and re-used tech was supposed to prevent these from happening.

This would have been a serious in-flight abort scenario, with the SRBs still lit. It's one thing to pull an in-flight on a liquid booster with the engines shut down, something different when big solids are involved. I'd like to know what their abort options would have been, and what level of control the booster would have had through thrust vectoring on the SRBs only. I've always heard that was a real concern even with shuttle, a triple out within the +1 min, to maintain control. Im hoping the vehicle would be aerodynamically stable, and srb jettison could be bypassed to jettison the whole upper stage and pull the vehicle away on burnout.

Like I said, I'm all in on test until it works right, but not when these companies are getting paid triple or more the things value to allegedly be able to bypass the iterative prototyping. SpaceX, rocketlabs, hell even ISRO and other countries testing/failing/retrying.... the Soviets beat us to damn near every first in LEO with iterative designs and testing. The failing is not the problem, its failing when you charged us like you couldn't...

---

Agreed. What do you think is the problem? Bad design? Brain drain? Bad management? All of the above?

Ah yes, a failure that would cause a powered abort from a billion dollar + rocket with people on board is fine, we'll just hotwire it to not turn off and figure it out before we launch.

Starting to sound an awful lot like the **** show post starliner, when the Boeing apologists started shooting down anyone who spoke up about safety concerns...right uo until they admitted had the timer glitch not occurred, the vehicle could have been lost on SM seperation at least....

Not talking about you in anyway notex, just frustrated with the whole boondoggle. I have a hunch they're doing their damndest to ram it through before the Biden folks show up, so they can force a launch commitment.

Those Ag08 conclusions were a bit premature, imho. (Note: I detest ULA/SLS as much as any poster on this thread I think).

Several anomalies/faults, but I don't think it would have been 'disastrous' for instance in flight if all 4 could have stayed lit as NASA is stating. We will know more on Thursday, but some of this is just instrumentation/test rig stuff.

Testing stuff is good, and so is flying it as a test (without people on board), which is what this particular rocket is slated to do. I for one hope it manages to do that, this year, quite successfully, as otherwise...2024 person on the Moon goal is already up in smoke/vapors. The Boeing attitude about tests being unneeded...is happily not Nasa's.

Now, the next precarious step is whether Biden appointees decide they need to weigh in asap on next steps etc. Having new bosses can lead to new 'risk decision thresholds' if you get my subtle point.

Heh, no worries. I get it, believe me! Was typing when you posted. I still think more info is needed to figure it out...can't just pull the plug this week and move on.

Ag_of_08 said:

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Ah yes, a failure that would cause a powered abort from a billion dollar + rocket with people on board is fine, we'll just hotwire it to not turn off and figure it out before we launch.

---

The post linked above says that the problem wouldn't have caused an in flight abort.

TexAgs91 said:

---

Ag_of_08 said:

---

Gonna be grumpy a minute about the SLS test failure.

the more im reading the more pissed off this makes me. This is the whole stage hot firing, and it didn't burn 1/4 the time it was supposed to. This rocket is supposed to be built from existing technologies so it will be more reliable, and cheaper.... can't static fire on a test stand. It truthfully doesn't look like they had them all firing correctly for even less time, the automatics just shut the whole mess down when things went sideways. Testing and finding problems is great..... all this money, time, and re-used tech was supposed to prevent these from happening.

This would have been a serious in-flight abort scenario, with the SRBs still lit. It's one thing to pull an in-flight on a liquid booster with the engines shut down, something different when big solids are involved. I'd like to know what their abort options would have been, and what level of control the booster would have had through thrust vectoring on the SRBs only. I've always heard that was a real concern even with shuttle, a triple out within the +1 min, to maintain control. Im hoping the vehicle would be aerodynamically stable, and srb jettison could be bypassed to jettison the whole upper stage and pull the vehicle away on burnout.

Like I said, I'm all in on test until it works right, but not when these companies are getting paid triple or more the things value to allegedly be able to bypass the iterative prototyping. SpaceX, rocketlabs, hell even ISRO and other countries testing/failing/retrying.... the Soviets beat us to damn near every first in LEO with iterative designs and testing. The failing is not the problem, its failing when you charged us like you couldn't...

---

Agreed. What do you think is the problem? Bad design? Brain drain? Bad management? All of the above?

---

The design is what, thirty years old, going back before constellation for the concept.

99.9% of the problem is that congress uses NASA as their personal revenue generation stream to the states. Evne the choice of engines is being driven by what money goes to whom. I hate to say it, but I don't think we're going to get another NASA manned vehicle..... there's too much money at stake, and no incentive to make it happen.

What I'm the most afraid of, bluntly, is losing a crew. I was a baby for challenger, but I was a junior in high school, who watched Columbia fall out of the sky with my own eyes. My dream was always aerospace engineering, and the loss of Columbia killed that dream.... I never thought we would go back, and it was a hard hit to a kid that had always dreamed of the stars. It killed the programs momentum, it disillusioned a great many of my 10yr age group, and it nearly stopped manned space flight in it's tracks.

The last time Biden was in an office, rather admin hamstrung NASA even worse, and it took a group like soacex to drive spaceflight back to the forefront. Call me a homer all you like, even Elon's biggest critics can't deny the massive positive impact that goofy stoner has had on space.

I'm afraid we're not going to survive a third in flight disaster. The public won't tolerate it, the next gen of engineers will run from the collapse...it just can't happen.

This "we'll just sim it because EXPERIENCE!" Methodology has proven to be as dumb as it sounds. I'm truly afraid to put a manned crew on starliner or SLS. I am concerned for their lives as humans.... they know what they're signing up to do, but I still don't want to see someone killed, but I'm terrified what a failure that proves to be ANOTHER avoidable accident brought on by institutionalized arrogance and blunders will do to our future.

I dont have a lot of big dreams left, but I do believe we stand on the precipice of the greatest explosion in human exploration in half a millennium. I dont want to see it halted because senator "XXX", or representative "yyy" wants to get re-elected and handed a contract to some *******.

If the MCF does end up being instruments...they don't know that yet.

And if the completely un flight tested APU wasn't having a failure, which could have cascaded.

The link seems to point to them thinking it would have been fine from what in reading. I will wait and see what both malfunctioning issues are.

I'm still wondering, and NASA will likely never say, if the TVC capabilities of the SRBs is great enough to maintain attitude control if this happened in flight conditions.

notex said:

---

Now, the next precarious step is whether Biden appointees decide they need to weigh in asap on next steps etc. Having new bosses can lead to new 'risk decision thresholds' if you get my subtle point.

---

That's the problem with NASA. Every 4-8 years presidents feel they need to play rocket scientist and start dictating strategies for NASA. I haven't seen one yet who didn't want to completely change NASA's direction other than Bush Sr.

Although I do agree with W's Constellation program whole heartedly, if only he would have then pushed to keep it funded. You can argue specifics on the rockets developed for the Constellation plan, but Constellation defined why we wanted to explore space and went beyond just the next vehicle to define our space strategy for the next several decades.

Then Obama totally F'd it up and did a Pelosi to the Constellation plan.

Then Trump pushed to get NASA back to doing meaningful missions beyond LEO.

I just wish that something like a Constellation plan would happen once every generation or two to define what NASA's overall mission is, and then presidents in the meantime would just decide how aggressively or not we would pursue that plan. When you keep changing the plan every 4-8 years we'll get nowhere.

Ag_of_08 said:

---

TexAgs91 said:

---

Ag_of_08 said:

---

Gonna be grumpy a minute about the SLS test failure.

the more im reading the more pissed off this makes me. This is the whole stage hot firing, and it didn't burn 1/4 the time it was supposed to. This rocket is supposed to be built from existing technologies so it will be more reliable, and cheaper.... can't static fire on a test stand. It truthfully doesn't look like they had them all firing correctly for even less time, the automatics just shut the whole mess down when things went sideways. Testing and finding problems is great..... all this money, time, and re-used tech was supposed to prevent these from happening.

This would have been a serious in-flight abort scenario, with the SRBs still lit. It's one thing to pull an in-flight on a liquid booster with the engines shut down, something different when big solids are involved. I'd like to know what their abort options would have been, and what level of control the booster would have had through thrust vectoring on the SRBs only. I've always heard that was a real concern even with shuttle, a triple out within the +1 min, to maintain control. Im hoping the vehicle would be aerodynamically stable, and srb jettison could be bypassed to jettison the whole upper stage and pull the vehicle away on burnout.

Like I said, I'm all in on test until it works right, but not when these companies are getting paid triple or more the things value to allegedly be able to bypass the iterative prototyping. SpaceX, rocketlabs, hell even ISRO and other countries testing/failing/retrying.... the Soviets beat us to damn near every first in LEO with iterative designs and testing. The failing is not the problem, its failing when you charged us like you couldn't...

---

Agreed. What do you think is the problem? Bad design? Brain drain? Bad management? All of the above?

---

The design is what, thirty years old, going back before constellation for the concept.

99.9% of the problem is that congress uses NASA as their personal revenue generation stream to the states. Evne the choice of engines is being driven by what money goes to whom. I hate to say it, but I don't think we're going to get another NASA manned vehicle..... there's too much money at stake, and no incentive to make it happen.

What I'm the most afraid of, bluntly, is losing a crew. I was a baby for challenger, but I was a junior in high school, who watched Columbia fall out of the sky with my own eyes. My dream was always aerospace engineering, and the loss of Columbia killed that dream.... I never thought we would go back, and it was a hard hit to a kid that had always dreamed of the stars. It killed the programs momentum, it disillusioned a great many of my 10yr age group, and it nearly stopped manned space flight in it's tracks.

The last time Biden was in an office, rather admin hamstrung NASA even worse, and it took a group like soacex to drive spaceflight back to the forefront. Call me a homer all you like, even Elon's biggest critics can't deny the massive positive impact that goofy stoner has had on space.

I'm afraid we're not going to survive a third in flight disaster. The public won't tolerate it, the next gen of engineers will run from the collapse...it just can't happen.

This "we'll just sim it because EXPERIENCE!" Methodology has proven to be as dumb as it sounds. I'm truly afraid to put a manned crew on starliner or SLS. I am concerned for their lives as humans.... they know what they're signing up to do, but I still don't want to see someone killed, but I'm terrified what a failure that proves to be ANOTHER avoidable accident brought on by institutionalized arrogance and blunders will do to our future.

I dont have a lot of big dreams left, but I do believe we stand on the precipice of the greatest explosion in human exploration in half a millennium. I dont want to see it halted because senator "XXX", or representative "yyy" wants to get re-elected and handed a contract to some *******.

---

I most definitely hear you on losing crew. I worked with Willie McCool who lost his life on Columbia. That was devastating.

Damn :-(. Do you/did you work at NASA ( I can understand a no comment on that one as well....I know a few of y'all do work around aerospace, and there's considerations yall have to make)?

TexAgs91 said:

---

notex said:

---

Now, the next precarious step is whether Biden appointees decide they need to weigh in asap on next steps etc. Having new bosses can lead to new 'risk decision thresholds' if you get my subtle point.

---

That's the problem with NASA. Every 4-8 years presidents feel they need to play rocket scientist and start dictating strategies for NASA. I haven't seen one yet who didn't want to completely change NASA's direction other than Bush Sr.

Although I do agree with W's Constellation program whole heartedly, if only he would have then pushed to keep it funded. You can argue specifics on the rockets developed for the Constellation plan, but Constellation defined why we wanted to explore space and went beyond just the next vehicle to define our space strategy for the next several decades.

Then Obama totally F'd it up and did a Pelosi to the Constellation plan.

Then Trump pushed to get NASA back to doing meaningful missions beyond LEO.

I just wish that something like a Constellation plan would happen once every generation or two to define what NASA's overall mission is, and then presidents in the meantime would just decide how aggressively or not we would pursue that plan. When you keep changing the plan every 4-8 years we'll get nowhere.

---

This invites the question: Would NASA have made it to the moon if Kennedy hadn't been killed? I assume Johnson and the congress felt pressure to fulfill his mandate after he died.

If JFK lived and was reelected he could've seen Apollo through to '69, but would he have gotten pushback on funding from legislators?

Especially given the Apollo 1 fire would have still occured.