Will AeroJet be building more RS25s or are they just planning to run through the existing inventory, then that's the end of SLS?

Ag_of_08 said:

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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)?

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I worked at various NASA contractors from '91 - '13 after Obama cancelled the shuttle while wanting to turn Orion into a lifeboat for the ISS. It doesn't pay much, but the work is very interesting (simulate spacecraft, robotic arms, out-the-window visual graphics development for sims, cockpit prototyping for the shuttle, lunar lander sims) and at least I got to do things people normally don't get to do, like a ride on the vomit comet and scuba diving down to Aquarius.

Kenneth_2003 said:

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Will AeroJet be building more RS25s or are they just planning to run through the existing inventory, then that's the end of SLS?

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They're building a bunch more. First batch of 10 or so are at a price of $100,000,000 each (slightly higher actually). It's quite the taxpayer gravy train. Next batch will be "a lot cheaper."

https://www.rocket.com/article/nasa-awards-aerojet-rocketdyne-179-billion-contract-modification-build-additional-rs-25

double aught said:

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TexAgs91 said:

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notex said:

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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.

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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.

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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?

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I think we would have made it to the moon, but I doubt we would have done it in a decade. That still blows my mind. JFK's moon speech was in '62 when we just had one 15 minute manned flight under our belt and 7 years later we land on the moon. That's including what a 2 year pause after the Apollo 1 fire?

Granted we don't have the budget we had in the 60s at NASA, but we have past experience to guide us. WTH is taking so long to get back to the moon?

TexAgs91 said:

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double aught said:

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TexAgs91 said:

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notex said:

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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.

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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.

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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?

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I think we would have made it to the moon, but I doubt we would have done it in a decade. That still blows my mind. JFK's moon speech was in '62 when we just had one 15 minute manned flight under our belt and 7 years later we land on the moon. That's including what a 2 year pause after the Apollo 1 fire?

Granted we don't have the budget we had in the 60s at NASA, but we have past experience to guide us. WTH is taking so long to get back to the moon?

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Valid concerns but for comparison I'd look to the development times/costs for aircraft programs today. Whether you look at the A350, 787, or F-35, they are invariably at least a decade longer in the making today vs. the 50's/60's . Yes, NASA as a result of JFK had an extraordinary budget for the Apollo program, but it also was a hindrance moving forward as we saw under Nixon/McNamara. Extremes always lead to an opposite extreme, particularly in politics.

Kenneth_2003 said:

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Will AeroJet be building more RS25s or are they just planning to run through the existing inventory, then that's the end of SLS?

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Aerojet was awarded a contact last year to build more RS-25s.

PJYoung said:

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So what would SpaceX do with these offshore rigs? Float them down towards the equator so that could launch heavier payloads from them?

double aught said:

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PJYoung said:

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So what would SpaceX do with these offshore rigs? Float them down towards the equator so that could launch heavier payloads from them?

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In the short term they could be landing sites for more ambitious starship tests

One of the annoying things about Boca Chica is that they have to deal with airspace restrictions/notifying locals a lot (for tests, not just flights).

If it's floated out to sea...not so much. Equatorial sea launches are always ideal (in the event of unexpected/planned explosions)...but stacking up a SH with a starship at sea sounds...challenging. Are they going to plan launches around hurricane season? LOL.

I'd be curious what the roughnecks might have to say about this concept. That's 400 delicately assembled feet tall, net, on a platform at sea.

I don't think they can realistically launch multiple starships/day from Boca Chica, SPI would lose their minds. Launching them from old oil platforms in the gulf makes a lot of sense if they can get the logistics down.

To give you a comparison, as the crow flies, the southern tip of South Padre is almost the same distance from the Boca Chica launch site as the Kennedy Center Press Complex is from SLC-40 in Florida. I've been at the press complex for a Falcon-9 launch from SLC-40. It is loud. I cannot imagine how much louder the superheavy booster will be, much less multiple times/day should they be able to hit that cadence.

TexAgs91 said:

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notex said:

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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.

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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.

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I don't think that's a fair telling of history at all.

The problem with Constellation was not that Bush didn't push hard enough to keep it funded. Constellation had major foreseeable issues of that plagued the program from Day 1. These were not mere "specifics," but major unfixable technical problems coupled with poor strategy. The program was dead-in-the-water by the time Obama inherited it. I think it's crazy to say Obama "F'd it up" when the bad choices made by his predecessor came home to roost shortly after he took office.

Further, it was the Obama administration that kicked off the Commercial Crew program that first restored American manned space launch. If the Obama administration had not awarded crewed flights to SpaceX in 2014, then there would have been no American crew launches at all during the Trump administration.

The Trump administration should get its share of credit for kickstarting the next round of beyond Earth planning, such as the lunar Human Landing System, which will probably get unfairly attributed to his successor.

Thats awesome!


Talking about the rigs- the other issue being discussed with them is the same as the reason they abandoned Florida launches....apparently the exclusion zone for a full up launch is so massive they'd start interfering with SPI. The size of "boom" associated with the failure of a full stack on one of these is.... impressive.

notex said:

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One of the annoying things about Boca Chica is that they have to deal with airspace restrictions/notifying locals a lot (for tests, not just flights).

If it's floated out to sea...not so much. Equatorial sea launches are always ideal (in the event of unexpected/planned explosions)...but stacking up a SH with a starship at sea sounds...challenging. Are they going to plan launches around hurricane season? LOL.

I'd be curious what the roughnecks might have to say about this concept. That's 400 delicately assembled feet tall, net, on a platform at sea.

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I don't mean launching a starship from a rig, I mean landing it on a rig.

TriAg2010 said:

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TexAgs91 said:

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notex said:

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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.

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I don't think that's a fair telling of history at all.

The problem with Constellation was not that Bush didn't push hard enough to keep it funded. Constellation had major foreseeable issues of that plagued the program from Day 1. These were not mere "specifics," but major unfixable technical problems coupled with poor strategy. The program was dead-in-the-water by the time Obama inherited it. I think it's crazy to say Obama "F'd it up" when the bad choices made by his predecessor came home to roost shortly after he took office.

Further, it was the Obama administration that kicked off the Commercial Crew program that first restored American manned space launch. If the Obama administration had not awarded crewed flights to SpaceX in 2014, then there would have been no American crew launches at all during the Trump administration.

The Trump administration should get its share of credit for kickstarting the next round of beyond Earth planning, such as the lunar Human Landing System, which will probably get unfairly attributed to his successor.

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Again, the Constellation program was about more than the first vehicle it produced. And it wasn't dead in the water, it was underfunded.

Their McGregor test site is less than 10 miles from the ranch. Walls rattle when they test. The night sky lights up.

And it's for an engine that will get used once. They go for a swim and are not salvaged or reused.

Elon has tweeted about both in the last 3 months actually. They're very seriously discussing hopping them out to the platforms, and launch there.

If the catch and load concept can actually happen, they may be talking about 3 launches on the same booster, same day. The could hop three starahip.uppers out, for a single super heavy, and launch/land them like that.

Which is criminal. The rs-25 was designed specifically for re-use after refurbishment, thats a big chunk of why its so expensive/complicated.

I dont think even NASA is believing that they will get new rs-25s at this point. Sls will get the launches it has engines for. But I don't see any new ones being built, if it doesn't fail during launch.

More and less on the oil rig launch/recovery platforms; I think these things will require some very complex modifications to handle this role. The mass, and blast diversion/equipment from both takeoff and landing, plus the crane/tower fueling systems etc. will be a pretty enormous change to the super structures, imho.

Quote:

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The purpose of the newest additions to SpaceX's fleet is both simple and unclear. While the company is currently hard at work building out a land-based launch complex for orbital Starship-Super Heavy launches, vast floating launch and landing platforms have also featured in SpaceX's official artist concepts of the rocket for the last several years. At first centered on enabling suborbital airline-style Starship flights to and from coastal cities, where sea-based platforms would be a necessity to avoid domestic regulations and extreme noise pollution, Musk ultimately positioned sea-launch as a viable alternative or complement to any and all land-based Starship launch operations.

Most recently, in June 2020, the CEO stated that SpaceX "is building floating, superheavy-class spaceports for Mars, Moon, & hypersonic travel around Earth." Now, with work already clearly underway to convert at least two oil rigs into Starship launch and landing platforms, that concept is far closer to reality. It remains to be seen how extensive (and thus expensive) the changes SpaceX needs to make to the platforms will be but it's safe to say that the venture is a whole lot more plausible when a dying industry's asset depreciation is so intense that a billion dollars worth of oil rig hardware can be bought for a mere $7 million just a decade after completion.

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https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-building-floating-starship-spaceports-phobos-deimos/

Back to the RS-25 production with Aerojet Rocketdyne, again, not a defense, but they are trying to cut down on costs moving forward. Keep in mind they had to do some stuff as well like replace computer processors (it had used the same one from the original Apple Macintosh computer) etc.

Quote:

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The economics of rocket engines are not that simple, Aerojet argues. "People want to do the simple math and attribute it all to the engine, and there's really a lot more going on in this contract," said Jim Maser, senior vice president of Aerojet Rocketdyne's space business unit, in a May 5 interview.
Besides the fabrication and testing of individual engines, the contract also covers the use of special test equipment, overhead associated with technical and financial information that's required for NASA human spaceflight projects and mission assurance. "There's a fair amount of labor above and beyond just making parts," he said.

Maser declined to give the cost of an individual engine alone, without the additional labor and overhead. "There's a lot of other activity included in there that is well beyond just assembling and testing engines," he said.

The $40 million cost estimate widely cited for the SSME does not have a date attached. If it comes from 2000, around the time the Block 2 SSME design was in production, that $40 million would be about $64 million in 2020 dollars, using NASA's New Start Inflation Index. If it comes from 1980, just before the shuttle started operations, it would be nearly $150 million in 2020 dollars.

While not providing a specific cost for an RS-25, the contract includes an estimated 30% reduction in the cost per engine when compared to the SSME, which he said would be phased in over the course of the production contract. Those cost reductions come through application of additive manufacturing and reducing the number of parts in the engine, as well as using manufacturing practices from the company's RS-68 engine developed for the Delta 4.

"The majority right now is new manufacturing methods and the new techniques," he said of the cost redu. "We're not changing the fundamental design. We want to make sure that the engines run essentially the same but they're more cost effective to build and have the same overall reliability."

The company, though, is looking at ways for additional cost reductions. Maser said studies the company is doing with NASA are examining changes to the nozzle to replace the tubes within it to a "slotted channel" design, as well as using additive manufacturing to produce the powerhead portion of the engine.
"Both of those changes, should we be able to move forward with them, would take the next 20% out, for a total of 50% reduction," he said, and cut production time from four years...

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I vaguely recall Aerojet's previous slush fund contract for the J-2X for the stillborn Aeres.

Quote:

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Keith's note: Only NASA would spend billions to develop a reusable engine and then spend billions more to make the reusable engine into a disposable engine. But wait - there's more. Its not the first time NASA spent vast sums of money upgrading an old engine design. Aerojet Rocketdyne also got a pile of money to develop the modified Apollo era J-2 (J-2x) engine for use on the SLS' predecessor the Ares V. And where did the $1.4 billion J-2x funding go? Answer: a bunch of engines that will never be used and hardware that needed to be re-redesigned for RS-25.

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Of course, they were just sold to Lockheed, which ironically (thru ULA JV) had selected Orbital for the SRB's recently over Aerojet. I'm not a big fan of Aerojet's contracting/performance over the past 10 years, so here's hoping the LMT guys change some of the culture there.

Good Lord. I shouldn't have changed my major from Aerospace engineering. Sounds like failing for years is part and parcel...

I think the rigs have been bought because they're cheap, and will make good experimental platforms. Some ofnthe renders that got Elon's endorsement showed more permanent structures being purpose built with a hangar and launch facility.

At least the J-2X had potential. Just like the rl-10, the j-2 in a simplified form is a pretty good upperstage high energy engine that probably could be competitive on a non reusable upper stage even today. Kind of like the f1-b proposals, if reusability hadn't become a reality they'd have ended up working well

Moving the little guy out this morning to test.

Probably right. But to get a couple 500 million ea. platforms for 7 million each is pretty worthwhile to think about re-designing/imagining the plan.

Good news, yet another starlink launch.

No doubt, and there are rigs up and down the coast that are waiting for the breakers... there used to be like 6 in Sabine pass, I know some had been in Freeport.

Scheduled launch tomorrow but no time posted yet that I can find

(Boca Chica)

Rocket has been on the pad for over a week. I'll be watching. Hopefully can narrow down time window tomorrow morning

Won't be launching tomorrow, the static fire for today apparently isn't happening

Too bad. Calmest day wind wise that we've had in a while

If static fire does happen today, then...TFR/Notam's etc. would be the indicator. I really, really doubt they fly tomorrow, though I think they do have a TFR window tomorrow still in place. Live stream;

bthotugigem05 said:

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Won't be launching tomorrow, the static fire for today apparently isn't happening

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They just vented a few minutes ago, which usually is around 30 minutes out. I think it's too early to know yet if it happens today.

You're right, I was misinformed, looks like they'll try again

I jinxed it