NASA Space Launch System (SLS)

For the sake of comparison, I've been told at NASAspaceflight that SLS flight rate (even with shitload of money threw at it) can't go above 2 per year: so 1 every six months.
- 5 days (365/5 = 73 per year - hello, planned Shuttle launch rate !)
- 6 months ( = 2 per year)
Ouch. It hurts...
 
Last edited:
The tragedy for me is that Elon hasn't really discovered anything new here, he's building and testing, building and testing. Which is the way anything new really gets built. You just have to accept that there are going to be failures and keep moving forward. SLS and NASA seem to be stuck in creep forward mode.
 
jeffb said:
The tragedy for me is that Elon hasn't really discovered anything new here, he's building and testing, building and testing. Which is the way anything new really gets built. You just have to accept that there are going to be failures and keep moving forward. SLS and NASA seem to be stuck in creep forward mode.
Click to expand...

Browse "Boeing Space Freighter" (1977 study for SBSP). It is like a freakkin' BFR-Starship at a time when Musk was barely six years old.
 
Archibald said:
jeffb said:
The tragedy for me is that Elon hasn't really discovered anything new here, he's building and testing, building and testing. Which is the way anything new really gets built. You just have to accept that there are going to be failures and keep moving forward. SLS and NASA seem to be stuck in creep forward mode.
Click to expand...

Browse "Boeing Space Freighter" (1977 study for SBSP). It is like a freakkin' BFR-Starship at a time when Musk was barely six years old.
Click to expand...

Done just that Archibald, the top stage of the Space Freighter design looks just about like the Starship but with wings and a tail fin, it is Starship on steroids. :cool:
 
With the SLS rolled back, yet again, yet again, what are the odds it will not fly before ~2025 ??
 
It was supposed to roll back. That was always the plan. They weren't going to test the pressurization and then just launch it. My guess is they knew they would encounter problems and need to fix them.

Also, Space-X can move faster because it's controlled by one person who is willing to take the development hit of losing multiple vehicles to learn from. NASA has to answer to congress and Wall Street. One doesn't like budgeting money to them and having it blow up, because re-election optics and the other is more about profit than progress. Investors don't like seeing "their" money blow up. So, NASA has to go slow and try to get it right the first time. Which is one of the roads that lead us to paralysis by analysis.
 
FighterJock said:
Archibald said:
jeffb said:
The tragedy for me is that Elon hasn't really discovered anything new here, he's building and testing, building and testing. Which is the way anything new really gets built. You just have to accept that there are going to be failures and keep moving forward. SLS and NASA seem to be stuck in creep forward mode.
Click to expand...

Browse "Boeing Space Freighter" (1977 study for SBSP). It is like a freakkin' BFR-Starship at a time when Musk was barely six years old.
Click to expand...

Done just that Archibald, the top stage of the Space Freighter design looks just about like the Starship but with wings and a tail fin, it is Starship on steroids. :cool:
Click to expand...

Even better: it looks like a Shuttle-ized BFR-Starship, and it was a Boeing design with that. So many ironies with that one (SLS shuttle legacy; Boeing SLS core... Starliner, cough !)
And on top of that, the lower stage & flyback booster was to burn... methane !

image49.jpg
 
Here's a link to the latest 2022 SLS reference document (Up to date to about week 15 IIRC).
 
Archibald said:
jeffb said:
The tragedy for me is that Elon hasn't really discovered anything new here, he's building and testing, building and testing. Which is the way anything new really gets built. You just have to accept that there are going to be failures and keep moving forward. SLS and NASA seem to be stuck in creep forward mode.
Click to expand...

Browse "Boeing Space Freighter" (1977 study for SBSP). It is like a freakkin' BFR-Starship at a time when Musk was barely six years old.
Click to expand...

Very true Archibald, and you can see why it was never built. NASA would have been terrified of the development process, of the necessary number of failures it would have entailed and cost and drama of going before congress all the time to explain what went wrong on the latest iteration. It's insane. This is why NASA take so long to do anything. Theyre always on the lowest risk path. Sadly, that inevitably means congress runs out of patience before the US has a viable system in place. With the NASA development model, the US will get back to the moon in about a thousand years.

Maybe Elon's example will wake them up.

My two cents.
 
Not quite. In fact it was NASA itself which gave Boeing a contract for a peculiar need: Peter Glaser / Gerard O'Neil Space Based Solar Power. NASA was trying to make itself useful in the eye of Carter in the post-1973 oil shocked world. Also the reason why Space Freighter burned methane: it was to be produced from coal as a synthetic fuel.
 
Bezos could fund Space Freighter for Boeing. It would be nice to see him and Airbus all work together for this powersat launcher.
 
NMaude said:
jeffb said:
SLS and NASA seem to be stuck in creep forward mode.
Click to expand...

It doesn't help that NASA should be getting twice its current annual federal budget allocation, the US can easily afford to increase it.
Click to expand...
Pretty sure they should be getting twice (at least) for the money they've been given. Imagine what SpaceX could do in BC with SLS's budget.
 
jeffb said:
Archibald said:
jeffb said:
The tragedy for me is that Elon hasn't really discovered anything new here, he's building and testing, building and testing. Which is the way anything new really gets built. You just have to accept that there are going to be failures and keep moving forward. SLS and NASA seem to be stuck in creep forward mode.
Click to expand...

Browse "Boeing Space Freighter" (1977 study for SBSP). It is like a freakkin' BFR-Starship at a time when Musk was barely six years old.
Click to expand...

Very true Archibald, and you can see why it was never built. NASA would have been terrified of the development process, of the necessary number of failures it would have entailed and cost and drama of going before congress all the time to explain what went wrong on the latest iteration. It's insane. This is why NASA take so long to do anything. Theyre always on the lowest risk path. Sadly, that inevitably means congress runs out of patience before the US has a viable system in place. With the NASA development model, the US will get back to the moon in about a thousand years.

Maybe Elon's example will wake them up.

My two cents.
Click to expand...
If he's allowed to.
 
Sundog said:
It was supposed to roll back. That was always the plan. They weren't going to test the pressurization and then just launch it. My guess is they knew they would encounter problems and need to fix them.

Also, Space-X can move faster because it's controlled by one person who is willing to take the development hit of losing multiple vehicles to learn from. NASA has to answer to congress and Wall Street. One doesn't like budgeting money to them and having it blow up, because re-election optics and the other is more about profit than progress. Investors don't like seeing "their" money blow up. So, NASA has to go slow and try to get it right the first time. Which is one of the roads that lead us to paralysis by analysis.
Click to expand...

The issue now is that they're probably going to have to roll it out, do another WDR, then roll back again, arm the flight safety system, and roll out again for launch. Unless they are confident that can arm the FSS, roll out, conduct a successful WDR, resolve any open items from the rehearsal and launch in 20 days or less.
 
Never laugh at the other guys rocket troubles. The SLS haters howled and Starship caved in. Hex nothing.
 
NASA is going to have a press-conference on May 5 concerning the status of the Artemis-1 pre-launch wet-rehearsal and the repairs being done on the rocket:

Link

NASA will hold a media teleconference at 3:30 p.m. EDT Thursday, May 5, to discuss the status of the next wet dress rehearsal test of the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The teleconference will stream live on the agency’s website.



The agency plans to conduct another attempt of the wet dress rehearsal in early June to demonstrate the ability to load propellant into the tanks and conduct a full launch countdown ahead of the Artemis I launch this summer.



Teleconference participants include:



  • Jim Free, associate administrator, Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington
  • Cliff Lanham, senior vehicle operations manager, NASA Exploration Ground Systems Program, NASA Kennedy


To participate by telephone, media must RSVP no later than two hours prior to the start of the event to: ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov.
Click to expand...
 
Archibald said:
Not quite. In fact it was NASA itself which gave Boeing a contract for a peculiar need: Peter Glaser / Gerard O'Neil Space Based Solar Power. NASA was trying to make itself useful in the eye of Carter in the post-1973 oil shocked world. Also the reason why Space Freighter burned methane: it was to be produced from coal as a synthetic fuel.
Click to expand...
So NASA funded yet another launch vehicle paper study - big whoop. As I have quoted before on this esteemed forum: "The Earth is covered by two-thirds water and one-third space launch studies." Secretary of the U.S. Air Force Sheila A. Widnall, December 1992.
 
Sad-600x216.png


If this is accurate and happens, do not expect Boeing to ever produce anything of note ever again, certainly not on time or anywhere near budget. The *next* SLS will be ready for launch about the time SpaceX attaches rocket engines to Mars and moves the planet closer to the sun for easier terraforming.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB8vk8Zrwak
 
Last edited:
Well the SLS upper stage propulsion system has reached another milestone:

While the Artemis I team prepares for its upcoming mission, NASA and contractor teams are already building rockets to support future Artemis Moon missions. In United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) factory in Decatur, Alabama, major components have been completed for the Artemis III interim cryogenic propulsion stage (ICPS) that will provide the power to send astronauts to the Moon. The ICPS, which is built by ULA under a collaborative partnership with Boeing, provides in-space propulsion for the Orion spacecraft after the solid rocket boosters and core stage put SLS into an Earth orbit, and before the spacecraft is flying on its own. The liquid hydrogen tank (left) is built, and soon it will be mated to the intertank (right) that connects it with the liquid oxygen tank. The intertank is comprised of composite-material truss structures in an X design. The eight bottles around the perimeter of the trusses store helium used to pressurize the stage's propellant tanks. The liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks provide propellant for a single RL10 engine built by Aerojet Rocketdyne in West Palm Beach, Florida. The Artemis III ICPS will provide the big push needed to propel Orion toward the Moon and send the crew on the first mission where humans once again will land on the lunar surface.
Click to expand...

220308_icps_art3_1.jpg


220308_icps_art3_2.jpg

Assuming the LOX tank has already been manufactured and since the stage's RL10 rocket-motor is already on hand the upper-stage will no doubt be in final assembly in June and be structurally complete by the end of the month.
 
The parts for the Block 1A (100 tons) are coming together nicely now.

The ground support is the problem now—for SpaceX too.
 
Do you have a link or links to any online articles which would go into detail about ML2's problems' please?
 
Nasawatch and Ars love to take shots at SLS:

arstechnica.com

Another launch tower built for the SLS rocket has “encountered some challenges”

NASA has issued a “second letter of concern” to Bechtel.
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com

Space explored seems neutral to a bit anti-SpaceX:

spaceexplored.com

NASA comment on SpaceX Dragon heat shield [Update]

NASA has since responded, contradicting our reporting. NASA’s full comment below. SpaceX’s Dragon capsule has been very successful since its...
spaceexplored.com spaceexplored.com


Choose your poison.

Haters gonna write.
 
Last edited:
LOL. They may as well have titled it, "We Are Relevant". Once Starship flies (assuming it's allowed to) it'll all be over but the cryin'.
 
IIRC, that launch tower was beset by NASA's insistence they start construction before launcher's design was even beginning to approach 'finalised'.

You have two ways to deal with such potential for a thermo-nuke 'Murphy Bomb': One is to design in such flexibility and modularity that you can take 'mission creep' in your stride. Other is to half-build it as specified. Then retro-fit. Then re-work. Then retro-fit. Then re-work...
snark:
Former is 'Good Engineering'. Latter is 'Cost-Plus Contract', no ??
/
 
SLS is technically sound at least, and will probably fly well. It is everything else that is infuriating: the pork, the cost, the lack of payloads, the flight rate... it is so sad.
I grew up with Mars Direct, I was 10 when it made its big splash in the early 1990's. For the next twenty years the main obstacles to it (except Zubrin, eeerhm, difficult character) were
(in the eye of Congress holding NASA purse)
- 1 lack of political comitment to Mars
- 2 Shuttle and ISS standing in the way
- 3 SD-HLV cost and lack of payloads outside NASA.
So it seemed the SD-HLV could never be build, in the name of Congress-budget-OMB fiscal austerity.

What happened in 2010, as described in Lori Garver recent book, was (and still is) mesmerizing.

Congress with just a single stroke of a pen, flattened all three major roadblocks above. In the worst possible way and for the worst reason, but frack, it happened at least: 30 years after "The case for MArs" the SD-HLV described in the book and needed for Mars Direct will soon fly.

But let's face, the result is pretty apalling - except on technical ground. Oh wait, not even close: BFR-Starship has made it obsolete, too.
 
I think that it is all former President Obama's fault for getting rid of the Constellation Program when he was elected. If they had flown there would have been no need for the Space Launch System. And NASA could have got to the Moon far quicker than it is going now with the SLS.
 
FighterJock said:
I think that it is all former President Obama's fault for getting rid of the Constellation Program when he was elected. If they had flown there would have been no need for the Space Launch System. And NASA could have got to the Moon far quicker than it is going now with the SLS.
Click to expand...
Yep. But hey, we couldn't let George Bush have that one, right? /sarc
 
sferrin said:
FighterJock said:
I think that it is all former President Obama's fault for getting rid of the Constellation Program when he was elected. If they had flown there would have been no need for the Space Launch System. And NASA could have got to the Moon far quicker than it is going now with the SLS.
Click to expand...
Yep. But hey, we couldn't let George Bush have that one, right? /sarc
Click to expand...

And the US paid the price for that stupid decision. :mad:
 

Similar threads

Please donate to support the forum.

Back
Top Bottom