As we approach the Xmas eve launch for Webb, here is a good page about the deployment timeline;

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/4180-Image



https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/deploymentExplorer.html

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2021/news-2021-056

This morning, with their 3rd Falcon 9 launch in fourdays SpaceX sent Cargo Dragon to the ISS on CRS-2 SpX-24. First flight for this new Falcon 9 booster but their 100th successful booster landing.

Their 31st mission this year with a 100% launch/mission success rate and 30th successful booster landing.

With our exploding space industry here why in the world is Webb blasting off from south america??

Towns03 said:

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With our exploding space industry here why in the world is Webb blasting off from south america??

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JWST is a pretty old project right? I'd imagine the contracts pretty much happened before SpaceX was proven.

Towns03 said:

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With our exploding space industry here why in the world is Webb blasting off from south america??

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I found this on quora, so take it with a grain of salt.

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The European Space Agency's contribution to the Webb Telescope project was the Ariane 5 launch vehicle which launches from the ESA Kourou launch site in French Guiana. Otherwise, the launch would have had to be paid for by NASA using a domestic rocket launched from Cape Canaveral. Kourou is used by ESA due to the launch site being closer to the Earth's equator than launch sites like Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg and thus takes full advantage of the Earth's rotational speed. That rotational speed (460 meters/second) gives the launch an extra velocity boost, allowing the rocket to carry a bit more payload to space than it otherwise would were it launched from a higher latitude.

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Yep, free launch (in exchange for telescope time) and closer to the Equator.

Webb is a big satellite, and ultimately its mission life is determined by it's onboard fuel supplies. The less fuel it uses to get from it's orbital insertion point to its final orbit the more fuel it has for years of science.

It will not be in Earth orbit, rather a solar orbit some 1.5 million km from earth.



https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/orbit.html

Also the Ariane 5 has the largest (or one of the largest) fairings available. Webb was designed from the very beginning for this large fairing. I think French Guiana is the only launch site used by this booster.

It's going to the sun. It's leaving from a sunny spot.

How many JWSTs could fit inside Starship?

The Ariane 5 has a 4.6m fairing, and part of the reason the JWST has such an elaborate unfolding process is because they had to engineer it to fit inside that space.

Starship has a 9m fairing, so it could just nearly fit two JWSTs side-by-side. More importantly, with the extra space, it wouldn't need to unfold, so a lot of the risk would be eliminated.

Either way, it's remarkable that JWST has taken so long to launch that it darn near overlapped with a rocket that could send two at a time and be fully reusable.

Here are some comparisons:

This is the JWST folded up


Size of fairings in blue whale units

I didn't see this linked, so my apologies if it was already posted.

12/7/21
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/12/france-seeks-to-build-reusable-rocket-make-up-for-bad-choices-in-the-past/

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Concerned about SpaceX, France to accelerate reusable rocket plans
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On Monday French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire announced a plan for Europe to compete more effectively with SpaceX by developing a reusable rocket on a more rapid timeline.

"For the first time Europe ... will have access to a reusable launcher," Le Maire said, according to Reuters. "In other words, we will have our SpaceX, we will have our Falcon 9. We will make up for a bad strategic choice made 10 years ago."

The new plan calls for the large, France-based rocket firm ArianeGroup to develop a new small-lift rocket called Maia by the year 2026. This is four years ahead of a timeline previously set by the European Space Agency for the development of a significantly larger, reusable rocket.

Although the technical details are sparse, Maia will not be Europe's "Falcon 9." It will have a lift capacity of up to 1 metric ton to low Earth orbit and be powered by a reusable Prometheus rocket engine, which is fueled by methane and liquid oxygen. This engine, which remains in the preliminary stages of development, has a thrust comparable to a single Merlin 1D rocket engine, which powers SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. But since there are nine engines on the SpaceX rocket, it can lift more than 15 times as much as the proposed Maia in fully reusable mode.
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The politics of rockets in Europe are complex and often difficult to disentangle. But there are two major themes underscored by this announcement. One is the distinct and long-running rivalry between France, Germany, and Italy for launch supremacy in Europe, and the other is a tension between institutional launch companies, backed by state governments, and commercial upstarts. This announcement pulls on both of those threads.

France, Germany, and Italy are in a seemingly constant struggle for funding and aerospace jobs. Typically, the European Space Agency sets priorities for rocket development and distributes funding to prime contractors ArianeGroup, which has facilities in France and Germany, and Avio, which is based in Italy.
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Europe realizes that its launch industry has fallen behind more nimble competitors, particularly SpaceX. One of the ways ArianeGroup has sought to compete was to announce job cuts this past September to reduce its costs. However, the French government felt that ArianeGroup's engine development site in Vernon, France, was particularly hard hit by those cuts.

Le Maire's announcement seeks to redress this, as Prometheus rocket engine development is taking place at the Vernon location in northern France, and the Maia rocket will be manufactured there. Le Maire said on Monday there are about 800 jobs at the Vernon-based propulsion site. By 2025, he said, there will be nearly 1,000.

Such statements underscore that the main prize for European governments does not so much seem to be a highly competitive rocket, but ensuring that a maximum number of well-paying space jobs are located within their borders.
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Over the last five years Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom (which is a member of the European Space Agency but not the European Union) have started to foster the development of micro-launch companies that are building rockets capable of lifting several hundred kilograms to low-Earth orbita bit less than the Maa rocket aspires to do.

These companies, including Isar Aerospace, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and HyImpulse in Germany, PLD Space in Spain, and Orbex and Skyrora in Britain, operate much more like the US commercial space industry. Each has relied primarily on private funding for the development of its rocket technologies and plans to compete for commercial contracts to launch small satellites.

France has largely been left out of this new commercial launch industry, and Paris-based ArianeGroup probably would not mind seeing the competition stamped out. In other words, France could be worried enough about losing its launch leadership in Europe.

Giving a large development contract to ArianeGroup for the Maia rocket would be one way to kill off the competition in other countries before it gets going. Giving money to ArianeGroup now is a little bit like the United States funding United Launch Alliance to build a reusable rocket 15 years ago, which would have substantially harmed or perhaps even killed SpaceX during its formative years.
. . .
At the same time, France is also interested in developing a native new space launch industry. French aerospace reporter Vincent Lamigeon said the country plans to soon call for projects on reusable micro-launchers, smaller than the Maia project. Nascent startups French Venture Orbital Systems and Strato Space Systems are expected to compete, with the French space agency providing technical support to the winners and launch contracts.

"It's a real break from French strategy, and clearly inspired by the USA," Lamigeon said.

The new plan from the French, therefore, involves working with Germany, France, and Italy on development of the Ariane 6 rocket, which will perform medium- and heavy-lift launches for the continent, including of European science satellites and other government payloads, and competing globally for commercial geostationary satellite launches. But when it comes to small launchers and fostering a commercial space industry, each country seems to be going its own way.

Whether this is enough to compete with SpaceX is a question that probably can be answered with a simple "no." By 2026 SpaceX probably will be launching Starships for less than Maia's price.

SpaceX has more than a full decade head start on Europe in developing a reusable rocket-the first Falcon 9 rocket landed six years ago. And SpaceX's focus is not on maximizing jobs, it's on minimizing the need for them in its ruthless pursuit of lower launch costs.

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The SpaceX lead really does make it hard for any competitors. No one is anywhere close even within the US.

bmks270 said:

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The SpaceX lead really does make it hard for any competitors. No one is anywhere close even within the US.

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And Starlink is so far ahead of the other constellation companies like ONEWeb that I doubt anyone can provide any real competition in the near or medium term.

Malachi Constant said:

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bmks270 said:

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The SpaceX lead really does make it hard for any competitors. No one is anywhere close even within the US.

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And Starlink is so far ahead of the other constellation companies like ONEWeb that I doubt anyone can provide any real competition in the near or medium term.

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That's if they can ever actually deliver the service they promised. It's already been delayed for most of Texas once, from "late 2021" to "February 2022."

bmks270 said:

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The SpaceX lead really does make it hard for any competitors. No one is anywhere close even within the US.

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I think Europe is approaching it the right way though. The current battle in the USA is for heavy lift vehicles in a market where only so many heavy lift launches are needed. New Glenn is wasteful for a small payload while Starship is more versatile. Either way, that's sucking up a lot of the attention, alongside Vulcan.

Most new money coming in, at least from what I can see, are for smaller launch vehicles. I think that's where you'll see more growth coming in the next decade, there's still room for more entrants.

techno-ag said:

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Malachi Constant said:

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bmks270 said:

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The SpaceX lead really does make it hard for any competitors. No one is anywhere close even within the US.

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And Starlink is so far ahead of the other constellation companies like ONEWeb that I doubt anyone can provide any real competition in the near or medium term.

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That's if they can ever actually deliver the service they promised. It's already been delayed for most of Texas once, from "late 2021" to "February 2022."

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I think a lot of that was due to the LOX shortage they encountered in the later part of the summer, they only recently picked up starlink launches again.

They also did some revision work to the satellite design if I remember right.

Spacex always overpromises on time tables, but they're actually doing pretty damn well on starlink

I am disappointed Europe (ESA) isn't pushing forward with their smaller start ups, but what do you expect, it's not like our gov't politics/NASA folks have a tremendously efficient track record of smart/efficient investments, either. Rocketlab and others (Relativity) will just produce a better/cheaper F9 before they do, not to mention SpaceX.

Good interviews, speaking of which, with Peter Beck who has been on a bunch lately I guess as they push for more funding.







He's a smart/funny guy too, probably my favorite 'celebrity' interviewee other than Elon this year.

nortex97 said:

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I am disappointed Europe (ESA) isn't pushing forward with their smaller start ups, but what do you expect, it's not like our gov't politics/NASA folks have a tremendously efficient track record of smart/efficient investments, either. Rocketlab and others (Relativity) will just produce a better/cheaper F9 before they do, not to mention SpaceX.

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I think it's hopeless Europe will produce a space company rivaling SpaceX. At least not in the next 25 years. It all comes down to the workforce. SpaceX is successful in large part by relatively young, passionate engineers who will work nights and weekends because they share Elon's zeal. They certainly cope with burnout and attrition, but there's another sharp engineer chomping at the bit.

Compare that to the engineering mindset in Europe. First, you don't see nearly as many engineers under the age of 30. It's common to work a trade then start university a decade after Americans would. So your engineering population is just at a different phase of life with families and kids. They aren't going to work 60 hour weeks. Second, I think the European attitude - particularly if Germans are involved - is to bench test until every last bug is fixed before committing to flight. SpaceX has moved quickly to get into integrated flight testing before all sub-systems are debugged. I think that pays dividends for SpaceX because they learn about the system-level interactions the only way possible - by flying - before freezing the sub-system designs.

I don't really disagree with that but the Brits in particular I'd add have a long history of brilliant innovation on the private sector side, then only to suffer from labor/gov't issues. Case in point most recently perhaps is the Sabre/Skylon concept.

They've also had a bit of a tricky history both recently and...going back at least to Roman times with the rest of Europe, so unsurprising they are not really getting a boost from the EU initiatives.

The RFA (Augsburg) folks sound pessimistic about making it. HyImpulse is interesting but just past the sounding rocket/Bezos phase.

Isar, in Munich, unsurprisingly just had an investment from Porsche, which is great and all but like stated above, German attention to detail won't lead to big cost savings/rapid advancements to production in spaceflight/exploration. Still, it's perhaps going to be the 'newbie' most likely to succeed, imho, as the Germans are also the ones most likely I believe to throw just enough funds and incestuous relationships (business/gov't) at it to make sure the "Vega" class competitor does make it to launch, in 5-10 years.

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Metzler said Europe has the capacity to support at least one commercial small satellite launcher. As designed, Spectrum would be less capable than the smallest rocket in Arianespace's fleet, the Vega C booster. But it probably would cost about one-third of that rocket. The German government appears to be considering support of its home-grown launch industry, perhaps both in the form of a spaceport as well as launch contracts.

"Our business case is such that we will not be dependent on institutional launches, although they are very much welcome," Metzler said. The company believes there are a growing number of European companies and other groups that will seek affordable access to space for small satellites. "For our customers, it's a pain to go to Russia, the United States, or India for launch services."

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Whether that is relevant beyond deutschland, when SpaceX might be able to bid a Starship for less than the price of the German wunder-rocket even for a few smallsat rideshare launches, remains to be seen. Their paradigm 'trying to build Aquila engines in weeks, rather than months' seems an order of magnitude...off vs. SpaceX' Raptor production rate/goals.

nortex97 said:

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I don't really disagree with that but the Brits in particular I'd add have a long history of brilliant innovation on the private sector side, then only to suffer from labor/gov't issues.

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When Sir Richard Brandon started a rocket company, he just came here.

Apparently sls has been delayed farther, the #4 engine controller will have to be replaced, with an unknown reason for failure.

So...the question now, do we risk a second lost vehicle to the same SRB design, setting the program back 2+ years and letting Boeing milk the .gov for a few more billion while the investigation happens, or do we let them delay further... I personally think Boeing and the SLS team should be footing the bill for fresh boosters, but..

L O L. I saw some headlines on this yesterday and just tried to ignore it. Nothing on this 'upgraded' engine controller looks 'modern' to me. I know the old one must have used 1980's chips/storage/boards, but my guess is the new one is using basically the same cabling with some updated chips. Unsurprising this stuff is enormous for it's computational requirements and also overly complex/prone to failure. This is what happens when you try to just recycle 40 year old parts/designs/engines into a new rocket in 2022, to ostensible 'save a few billion.'





Head shaking:

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The engine controller for the SSME and the new unit for the RS-25 is a primary component of the engine. The controller directly operates the engine, from diagnostics and checkout before firing, through thermal conditioning and purges for startup during vehicle propellant loading, through ignition and throttling during mainstage operation, all the way through shutdown and post-shutdown purges and safing.

The controllers accept commands and relay data to and from the SLS flight computers in the Core Stage for launch operations. In addition to the new controller for the RS-25, new control software that runs on the controllers was certified for use on SLS.

The new engine controllers still employ two redundant digital computer units (DCU) that operate on independent control channels, A and B. The DCUs can operate independently to provide full redundancy, but can also share or access some data from the other.

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Gotta wait for the moon to be in the right spot in March now;

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If NASA, its contractors, and broader organizations such as Range Safety were hypothetically all ready to fly in early March, that would be too late for the February period but would provide a few days of margin prior to the opening of the March period on March 12. However, if one or more of those organizations isn't ready to support a launch until April, then even March won't be possible regardless of the status of the spacecraft, rocket, and ground systems.

Finishing integrated testing before first rollout

Although time was lost due to the engine controller troubleshooting, EGS and Jacobs continued working through a series of integrated tests of the vehicle and ground-based launch support systems during December. As a part of the overall Integrated Test and Checkout (ITCO) series, the remaining standalone parts of Interface Verification Testing (IVT) were completed on the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) followed by PSETs on the SLS in-space, second stage.

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Wayne Hale, the former shuttle launch director, has an amusing tale about one of those power cables necessitating a last second replacement before.

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Suddenly, the electronic brains of one of the three Space Shuttle Main engines winked off. Just like that, with no notice. It was dead, no activity, no signals, no nothing. It was as if all the redundant power feeds had been switched off at once.

This was not good.

Clearly this was a violation of the Launch Commit Criteria. With the SSME Controller failed, the engine could not start. At T-31 seconds when the onboard Redundant Set General Purpose Computers took control, they would immediately halt the launch sequence.
…
By the way, when they got that Engine Controller into the shop and opened it up, a power cable had broken. No doubt due to contraction of the device as the engine chilled down. No way that computer was going to run.

The new RS-25 Engine Controllers are more reliable and resilient
But it is still hard to get a rocket the first foot off the ground.

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If I gambled, I'd be willing to bet that the unit is probably on par, from a computational power standpoint, with a raspberry pi or one of the more advance units in that same class, probably similar to a beaglebone black. Obviously the hardware is more robust, but I bet it's not much if any more powerful in the end...

The stupidity of using the rs-25 for this project was.... astounding. The rs-25 was, and is, an amazing engine, but it was NOT built for this application, and the "simplification" being done to it has been a joke. If you're going to building an expendable core rocket, youve got to build the engines as absolutely cheap as possible. Why we did not pursue the f1-b, or a second gen j-2 design..... even something like a man-rateable rs-68 based platform absolutely baffles my mind. Hell buying rd-171s probably would have been better in the end.

It's the SLS way. Why go for cheap/simple when you can pay $100 million/engine to the 'right' contractors, especially if they can just refurb some old stuff that has been sitting around for a couple decades?

I actually came around to SLS as a concept this year. Let the old dogs chase that ball one more time before unavoidable realities starve the program.

But now I just want Old Yeller put down.

Meanwhile, thanks to Bezos' sham lawsuit being thrown out, Artemis folks are touring SpaceX BC facilities.

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Thanks to the failure of Blue Origin's NASA Human Landing System (HLS) lawsuit, SpaceX and the space agency were finally able to get back to work last month.

Taking advantage of that, NASA astronauts and Artemis Program leaders recently took a tour of SpaceX's South Texas Starship factory and launch pads a massive hub of activity that the company has deemed Starbase. In doing so, save for updates from SpaceX and even members of the public over the last 6-9 months, NASA officials were finally able to get up close and personal with the progress SpaceX has made while the space agency was temporarily forced to halt all work on HLS.

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Starbase, Tx Launch Site
11 month difference pic.twitter.com/pfrJ0Co5ZT

— RGV Aerial Photography (@RGVaerialphotos) December 7, 2021

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In other words, once SpaceX is confident that the tank farm is safe to store liquid methane, the first Super Heavy wet dress rehearsals and static fire tests eventually simulating full thrust just before liftoff could begin almost immediately. Once the tower's three arms are at least partially functional, SpaceX will also be able to install a Starship on top of Super Heavy for the second time and test a fully-integrated two-stage Starship launch vehicle for the first time, paving the way for the first orbital-velocity launch attempt as soon as as the FAA grants a license.

Though SpaceX technically hasn't started building a prototype of the actual Starship Moon lander that will returns humans to the lunar surface, every single Starship and Super Heavy booster it builds and tests mature's the foundation of that crewed variant's design, as well as the fleet of boosters and ships that will be required to fuel it in orbit. By all appearances, Starship S20 the first completed orbital-class prototye has passed all the tests thrown at it and is ready for the program's first orbital-velocity launch attempt. If the speed of recent testing continues, Super Heavy Booster 4 may not be far behind it.

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First comment is funny;

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You should all note that construction at Cape Canaveral began in 1950...but it did not see its first launch till 1959 !!!! 9 years to build the launch facility for a just a pathetic little 150 ton titan missile with a 15,000km range....NO ONE....can fairly say that StarBase which is going to launch the biggest ship ever conceived, that is going 150 million miles and back, is going slow on construction......

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Ag_of_08 said:

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The stupidity of using the rs-25 for this project was.... astounding. The rs-25 was, and is, an amazing engine, but it was NOT built for this application, and the "simplification" being done to it has been a joke. If you're going to building an expendable core rocket, youve got to build the engines as absolutely cheap as possible.

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There's something kind of sad about taking these engines with a history of reliability on mission after mission and throwing them away on a single flight. I'd rather they stay on the orbiters in their museums.

double aught said:

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Ag_of_08 said:

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The stupidity of using the rs-25 for this project was.... astounding. The rs-25 was, and is, an amazing engine, but it was NOT built for this application, and the "simplification" being done to it has been a joke. If you're going to building an expendable core rocket, youve got to build the engines as absolutely cheap as possible.

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There's something kind of sad about taking these engines with a history of reliability on mission after mission and throwing them away on a single flight. I'd rather they stay on the orbiters in their museums.

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Agreed. It's a waste and a shame. Although who knows if an SLS will ever actually take off.

My understanding is that the reusability of those engines is greatly overstated. That they required so much refurbishment that it would have been cheaper to use older and more simple engine technology and just replace them each time.

I agree, it is a shame to see engines that have a huge historical significance be thrown away for no better reason than padding contractors pockets.

The reusability definitely was an issue with them though. They likely needed a mid life redesign and simplification anyway, but we stubbornly refused. A lot of their capabilities in throttle control and gimbal range aren't... really needed with this style of launch vehicle.

So, for us anyway, JWST is going tomorrow morning. Merry Xmas. Hope it doesn't interfere with Santa's routes.

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The space telescope is scheduled to launch at 7:20 a.m. EST (4:20 a.m. PST) on Christmas morning from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana. An Ariane 5 rocket will perform the heavy lifting, blasting off from launch complex ELA-3. The 32-minute launch window for the day will end at 7:52 a.m. EST (4:52 a.m. PST).

NASA TV will provide a rocket fueling update at 3:00 a.m. EST (12:00 a.m. PST), but the real show begins at 6:00 a.m. EST (3:00 a.m. PST). Live feeds of the launch will be made available at NASA TV, YouTube, and on ESA WEB TV ONE.

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So for those of us up around 6:00 CST tomorrow morning unencumbered by anything else going on, good thing to throw on the TV.

JWST has me the most anxious of any launch since maybe STS-114. So much time and money on the line and such awesome scientific potential. Ariane V is good, but she's not exactly anomaly-free. Fingers crossed, rub the rabbits foot, and all that.

So is this truly a one shot try or is there any contingency to send a crew if something doesn't work? L2 is roughly a million miles out so 4 times the distance to the moon. If there were a man rated craft it wouldn't be crazy. But there's not one for that duration.

One shot, with like 337 points where everything could go wrong.