Likely no next attempt until October, per Eric Berger (Ars Technica):
- "Hearing a rollback to the VAB of the SLS rocket is likely, but I don't have confirmation. If that happens, it is very likely that Artemis I does not launch before October 17, at the earliest."
- "I'm told that Space Launch System program officials will recommend a rollback to the VAB to investigate the hydrogen leak. The Artemis I mission management team will consider this recommendation at their afternoon meeting, and publicly announce a decision at 4pm ET."
I have my doubts that it will ever launch - the way things are proceeding, they’ll miss October, push to ‘23, and will then end up with parts and systems ageing out due to wear and duty cycles - the rollback to the VAB alone incurs significant wear.
Meanwhile, starship will see its first orbital flight (likely not before a few RUDs) while SLS just grows mould.
That said, the whole purpose of SLS was to provide jobs and to retain technical expertise in the US, which it has achieved - actually launching the thing is almost besides the point.
A lot of work is put into making porn, facebook games, prayer, cigarette manufacturing, the gambling industry etc. I'm not saying these are all useless things, but most people wouldn't bat an eye at someone "discounting" their work. If the work going into SLS doesn't achieve anything, then they discounted the work themselves, no need for a 3rd party.
NASA TV loves to show a great infographic of how many parts have flown to space before and have been reusable... can't help but yell in my mind.. and that's the last time they'll be reusable.
It's not entirely sunk cost - there's reputational effects for a lot of people involved. Politicians who supported it look much worse if all this work (and money) has gone into it, only to have it not launch. How bad they will look is proportional to how much money was spent/work was done, so the work put in does matter to the outcome, at least for them.
That probably shouldn't be the case, but when it comes to politics, perception is very much reality in that people's perceptions translate directly to votes.
What is the point that you're trying to make here?
I'm sure we've all experienced situations where we realize that the work we're being paid to do is futile and will never reach achieve it's intended purpose. It's really demoralizing but the thing to remember in that situation is that you're still getting paid.
Would you rather be an aeronautical engineer who gets paid and doesn't launch of a rocket, or an aeronautical engineer who doesn't get paid and doesn't launch a rocket?
Note: neither Booster 7, nor Booster 8, or Ship 20 and 24 for that matter, are even close to being anything that could be considered "Starship" by even the most generous observer.
Even if B7/S24 do launch in a test flight they are so far removed from anything that could potentially be in the far future an operational and usable spacecraft that they resemble "starship" the same way a wooden mockup of an airplane resembles an actual airplane.
An object being the same general shape and dimensions of something doesn't make that object the "something".
At least SLS exists and has problems that can be, perhaps, probably at tremendous expense, fixed.
In 20 years, I've seen SpaceX start from scratch and develop and launch the Falcon 1, Falcon 9, and Falcon Heavy, and nail propulsive landings on Earth.
Since it's members joined forces to form ULA 15 years ago, I've watched them launch the same machines they've been using since 2002.
I have a lot more faith that SpaceX will launch something new than that ULA will get anything done.
How much is B7/S24 missing compared to an operational vehicle?
Artemis 1 doesn't have the configuration of a fully operational vehicle either. Artemis 1's Orion doesn't have a fully functioning life support system, launch abort system, or docking system – and probably is missing other components too.
To compare apples to apples – SLS (without Orion), to just the components of Starship/SuperHeavy which form part of launch vehicle proper (as opposed to payload) – what is Starship/SuperHeavy actually missing?
Back in 2016, Musk was talking about landing a Crew Dragon capsule on Mars, albeit with no crew on it.
His original 2018 timeline was likely over ambitious, but SpaceX probably could have achieved it by now – if they'd stuck with their plan to do it. By all accounts, it was abandoned, not because of any technical or financial obstacles, but simply because they decided to redirect their resources towards a far more ambitious alternative (Starship).
I think landing an uncrewed Starship on Mars has a fair likelihood of actually happening, before this decade is over.
SpaceX could absolutely launch a mars mission with their existing rocket platforms and launch infrastructure.
It would be tedious launching little pieces of a larger ship and assembling them in orbit but it could absolutely be done.
Instead of doing that they're choosing to build better, bigger rockets, and more infrastructure to make the eventual launches to mars more cost-effective and substantial.
> SpaceX could absolutely launch a mars mission with their existing rocket platforms and launch infrastructure.
Which highlights the major difference between public and private sector exploration. SpaceX killing everyone on their first attempt is a tragedy and they quickly move on, NASA doing it is a 10 year halt to any further work until a full public investigation takes place.
It's a big complex project that legislators decreed should re-use ancient engines and structural components from the shuttle - a project that was the world's first space-faring barrel of pork, infamous for its operating expenditures.
One of the arguments for doing so was that the engines were "proven."
checks news story
Oh hey, it's the engines that are causing these delays.
NASA has been so over-budget on the project, they had to commit accounting fraud to try and cover it up.
"Multiple troubleshooting efforts to address the area of the leak by reseating a seal in the quick disconnect where liquid hydrogen is fed into the rocket did not fix the issue"
I assume this means the SRBs need to be disassembled to replace the sealing between the segments seeing as how these were stacked beginning in January 2021 [1] and the sealing is guaranteed for 12 months. This has already been extended for 7-8 months but if the launch is to be postponed until October or later they're coming up to 2 years:
The joints connecting each piece of Space Launch System’s five-segment rocket motors are certified for one year once booster stacking begins, a clock that began ticking Jan. 7 with the hoisting of the SLS’s left-hand aft center booster segment on top of the booster’s lowermost piece.
But the 12-month certification limit, a holdover from the space shuttle program, could be extended with an engineering review, according to John Honeycutt, NASA’s Space Launch System program manager at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.
Honeycutt said in January engineers planned to make measurements and collect data as ground teams stacked each segment of the Artemis 1 boosters inside the Vehicle Assembly Building. The data could help NASA and Northrop Grumman extend the certification of the rocket motor joints beyond 12 months.
“That gives us the best opportunity to do some sort of a life extension on the booster stacking in the event that we need that,” Honeycutt said.
It's pretty clear they don't care at this point. They were extended by 6 months and no one has brought it up since then. NASA is feeling political heat to just fly this thing at any cost at this point.
Does anyone get the point with Artemis? Because I really don‘t.
To my untrained eye the current outlook on the program looks like that rocket is right now only supposed to make two roundtrips along the moon — and then in that third „Starship HLS“ mission Artemis’ only job is to take up the astronauts to orbit: while Starship (notably designed to be human rated) will be doing all the heavy lifting of the mission.
In this context it all looks like a total sham, it would literally be cheaper and easier to send them up in another reusable Starship.
What other purpose does Artemis have except building the most expensive trip to orbit existing so NASA can say „hey, we did something about this moon mission too!“?
When they started the project (2011) Starship wasn't even a twinkle in Elon's eye (BFR around 2016). Starship started looking like a real product in 2020. In hindsight, you're right, SLS looks silly, but not many people were betting on SpaceX developing a super heavy launch system in 6 years like they've (apparently) done. They've invested a lot of money in SLS and there's probably still lessons to learn there. If Starship is successful SLS will probably not be deployed very frequently.
'"Let's be very honest again," Bolden said in a 2014 interview. "We don't have a commercially available heavy lift vehicle. Falcon 9 Heavy may someday come about. It's on the drawing board right now. SLS is real."'
To put a pretty positive spin on it: to use extant launch hardware to carry out some key heavy lift missions while developing future, replacement heavy lift launchers.
To put an uncharitable spin on it: to full federal space spending into the same places where its been since the 70s, to not rock the boat.
I think one of the reason some people are so cynical about it is that it appears to have succeeded at the second goal while being ineffective at the first.
They have the goal to build a moon base and establish human presence there. This could lead to better research and we could see the start of the industrialization of the moon. This looks like something governments like to do and do it in government style :)
So even if it was this easy and logical, the only logical consequence would be scrapping SLS right now.
Artemis 3 isn‘t just depending on one, but two super heavy launchers that haven‘t even left the ground yet.
And if you put Starship in the critical path, why would you spend billions to introduce another bottleneck that‘s literally just duplicating Starship‘s ground to orbit capability?
If NASA agenda really only was getting the USA to the moon, the only rational choice would be doubling down on Starship all the way.
Consequences of choosing the wrong first stage fuel (hydrogen) are many.
Those tiny molecules want nothing more from life than to sneak through the smallest of openings. Well, possibly second to mating violently with oxygen.
Like all engineering decisions, hydrogen is a choice with tradeoffs.
It's specific impulse ('fuel efficiency') is unbeatable. That buys you a lot more cargo capacity for the same sized rocket. And since this program is putting large items into lunar orbit, you need that badly.
Liquid hydrogen is very low density, and requires extremely low temperatures.
This means that you need a much bigger tank for a given weight of fuel, and that tank needs to be insulated bc liquid hydrogen must be kept below 33 kelvin.
Both of these downsides can come close to negating the upside of increased ISP.
But the upside for SLS is that they already had engines that can run on hydrogen. Like you said, trade offs all around
Fortunately bigger tanks get better and better the bigger they are. The mass of the tanks is mostly a function of it's surface area, growing with n^2, while the fuel stored grows by n^3.
And the SLS tank is pretty darned big indeed, with a very large diameter.
That is only a first order approximation. Second order effects scale badly. Larger tanks for the same amount of propellant have more weight, which means they need to be built sturdier, which means even more weight, etc. LH2 can’t have a common bulkhead with LOX like Falcon 9 has, so that’s more weight, and sitting on top of the tank so the tank needs to be studier still. And LH2 is way lower temperature so you need foam insulation, which adds weight. And you don’t want that foam peeling off and hitting the SRB on the way up, so you need a layer of sealant, which (all together now!) adds weight.
“Wrong” by what standard? Hydrogen has the highest specific impulse but I’d much harder to work with. We have no better propellant.
A lot of other launch vehicles use RP-1, which is basically just kerosene. Lower specific impulse so lower payload capacity but it doesn’t need to be cryogenically stored and cooled with everything that entails.
That’s a fine choice for single use rockets but when you get into reusable rockets you now have a new problem: RP-1 burns and leaves a lot of carbon behind. This is costly and slow to clean.
For this reason SpaceX’s next rocket uses methane. Like hydrogen or must be cooled but not as much. Still it’s more complex engineering.
Artemis to me seems too expensive but it will be the most powerful launch vehicle ever created with the highest payload capacity.
It’s wrong because hydrogen in the first stage optimized for things you don’t care about, namely propellant mass. In exchange, you get heavier tanks, physically larger engines, and (obviously) more complex operations.
Yes, it has the highest practical specific impulse. No, that is not the most important metric for a lower stage. Take a look at how many new launchers are using hydrogen in their lower stages. Hint: it’s a big, round sort of a number.
Unfortunately methane being a GHG brings additional important problems. Launching a lot of methane rockets would be really expensive to the environment.
(We need to finally replace SRBs with something cleaner too.)
> Launching a lot of methane rockets would be really expensive to the environment.
What does it turn into when burnt? Would there be much unburnt methane leaking into the environment from these rockets and the infrastructure to support these rockets?
One molecule of methane combines with two molecules of oxygen to form one molecule of carbon dioxide along with two molecules of water. Releasing good amounts of energy when this reaction (oxidation of hydrocarbons by simply burning them) is taking place.
CH4 + 2 O2 = CO2 + 2 H2O
Hydrogen is the simplest flammable gas. H2, in molecular form.
2 H2 + O2 = 2 H2O
Two molecules of hydrogen combine with one molecule of oxygen to form two molecules of water with no other byproducts. Lots of energy comes out too when hydrogen burns but it is a completely clean gas unlike any other. If hydrogen can be manufactured using only green energy, it is completely benign to the environment when burned. Also harmless when released unburnt as long as it doesn't cause any fires or asphyxiation or something.
OTOH when the methane burns it turns into an equal number of carbon molecules in the atmosphere in the form of CO2. Fortunately the CO2 has a lesser greenhouse effect than if the unburnt methane were directly released (or leaked) into the environment.
As it is now, any methane likely to be used as rocket fuel would alternatively just be turned into atmospheric CO2 by some other terrestrial user of natural gas anyway. Without launching any spacecraft.
Methane fuel still puts CO2 into the atmosphere at the push of a button, which would require a herculean effort to remove later, and that removal would not be justifiable until the situation is much more dire, as we have seen.
Still, methane really can be considered the cleanest burning hydrocarbon, but nowhere near the zero-CO2 exhaust from a hydrogen flame.
Both of these gaseous fuels are so light they do not like to be physically liquified at all, not even when highly pressurized, and that would require very heavy-walled storage cylinders in that case. But they still need to be stored as a liquid in order to carry orders of magnitude more fuel than the same size tank would hold in gaseous form. So they use extreme low-temperature cryogenics to liquefy these fuels and the storage & handling is accomplished at temperatures so far below zero that the product remains liquid without needing to be kept under very much pressure. Instead, it's handled very cold at all times with lots of insulation & refrigeration. If it warms up too much the pressure rise is certainly expected to exceed the design maxiumum of the storage tank, so all safety relief devices must be highly reliable under these conditions.
There's this thing about cryogenics.
Everything can't be expected to work right the first time, and success may not be had until all possible failures have already been witnessed to occur, and further design experience has been gained developing the workarounds.
There are just as many hydrolox(hydrogen + liquid oxygen) as kerolox(RP-1 kerosene + LOX). Atlas, Delta, H-II, Ariane 5, Long March 5, to name a few, all use hydrolox.
I believe a part of reasons why launch attempts are called "attempts" is because of extreme scrub and failure rate of launch vehicle launches, and I think the fact that scrubs are now considered abnormal can be attributable to SpaceX and Elon Musk. I was old enough to remember watching last few of Space Shuttle launch attempts, and from my experience watching launch streams, scrubs and recycling due to hydrogen leaks, erratic sensor readings, upper atmosphere weather, and private boats and planes violating keepout areas were entirely normal events, with a global sole exception of the Soyuz launch vehicle flying from Baikonur Cosmodrome, which delayed or failed up to once in a decade or so.
Apparently it pisses off people in power, sometimes might have caused off-season human resource reallocations, but rocketeers basically never cared. That was until Falcon 9 started launching on first tries of each attempts.
I think the lack of scrubs of SpaceX launches mostly comes from Falcon 9 being an absurdly powerful rocket with great margin of safety for the payload/missions it takes. Thus it can often launch in sub-optimal conditions, still complete it's primary objective -and- recover the booster.
I’m a big fan of SpaceX and (when he can keep his mouth shut about US politics and a dozen other things) Elon Musk, but they’re hardly the first ones to launch without regular scrubs. ULA does it all the time. So does arianespace. The Russians are pretty good at it, though aerospace is yet another sector of their economy being destroyed by Putin), and the Chinese seem to get off the ground with some regularity.
It’s about mature vs immature vehicles, mostly. Much as I loathe the entire SLS program and design of the rocket, it is not because they’re having some trouble with scrubs. That’s going to happen with a unique, complex, and new system.
True, but Delta IV is the only one of those rockets using hydrolox for the first stage. I have to imagine storing and moving that much hydrogen is a lot more complex than launch vehicles that only use it in an upper stage.
I don't quite get the argument. If SLS and rest of those rockets belong to a same category, and reliability in the same level as well, what's the point of pointing that out...besides I believe Delta IV Heavy is towards the side of more reliable and regular launching rockets
It's a gestalt imo, kinda like Lynch's Dune. Flawed film with lots of bad parts and bizarre decisions, but also unique and memorable enough to elevate it above 'just bad'
What? Hydrogen fuel nor the RS-25 had anything to do with either Shuttle loss. In fact RS-25 has an almost flawless history. Yeah it was expensive - nothing like all those other space planes that were way cheaper hey.
Make sure you're comparing apples to apples. Launches are usually scrubbed because of weather. Repeatedly bringing a rocket to the pad on launch day that's ultimately not flight-worthy is different than scrubbing because of higher than nominal cross winds.
And this case is particularly spectacular because while it's ostensibly just a test, they are literally using the exact same engines that the Space Shuttle used. Not as in the exact model, but literally refurbished RS-25 engines that already completed successful flights on the Space Shuttle.
I feel like they need to go the SpaceX route and build dozens of these things and just launch them with the expectation that most will fail, but they learn from each failure to improve the next ones.
We’ve been quoted $4bn per launch. If this pattern of delays turns out to be fundamental (a big, if plausible, if), what would the launch costs actually be?
…which is why it’s often a good idea to not use a new launch vehicle on the critical path for your crewed spaceflight program. (Could have used LEO rendezvous of various types to go to the Moon.)
> 39. The three keys to keeping a new human space program affordable and on schedule:
1) No new launch vehicles.
2) No new launch vehicles.
3) Whatever you do, don't develop any new launch vehicles.
The initial SpaceX Falcon rocket was entirely privately funded, at a total cost of of ~$100 million. The first 3 launches were failures. The 4th launch was a success, and the rest is history. And that vessel would ultimately go on (through various again largely privately funded innovations) to revolutionize spaceflight.
The same is now true of the Starship, which is again being entirely privately funded. The cost is certainly going to be much more than $100 million, but also nowhere near the absurd extremes of cost that Boeing imposes on the taxpayer. At this point "we" have spent tens of billions of dollars on this catastrophe. And the icing on the cake is that if this monstrosity is ever deemed flight worthy, it will likely already be obsolete.
It's quite difficult to understand why giving a company billions of dollars a year, unless they succeed, does not seem to be leading to great outcomes. Maybe we should just give them more money. That'll fix everything.
Size of budget doesn’t determine jobs or not. Artemis exists because Congress didn’t like Constellation’s cancellation. Its Block II configuration underperforms Starship at significantly higher cost, both to develop and to operate, all without anywhere close to the technological progress of even Falcon Heavy. SLS exists first to provide jobs. The military-industrial complex has an obvious first and foremost purpose, and it’s pretty good at it.
The complexity is astronomical, so I'm glad they're being overly careful. Once perfected I hope they keep up the cautiousness so we don't start seeing shuttle-type neglect in the program.
Boeing has outsourced so much of their engineering they can't even build airplanes anymore. What's the point of this beyond funding life support for a defense industry dinosaur?
It’s an accurate description of todays launch attempt. They decided to repeat assuming the sensor problem that scrubbed the last launch was a sensor issue only. It was not.
Admitting you don't have enough information to make an informed decision for an investment to implement a fix but also not enough information to be sure the problem isn't transient doesn't seem like that at all.
- "Hearing a rollback to the VAB of the SLS rocket is likely, but I don't have confirmation. If that happens, it is very likely that Artemis I does not launch before October 17, at the earliest."
- "I'm told that Space Launch System program officials will recommend a rollback to the VAB to investigate the hydrogen leak. The Artemis I mission management team will consider this recommendation at their afternoon meeting, and publicly announce a decision at 4pm ET."
https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1566088891395883009
https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1566104350635835393