Say this after me - something I wasn't sure I'd ever say - tomorrow, the first SLS Artemis mission vehicle, called the Artemis I stack, will roll out from the VAB to the launch complex. This is according to the NASA Artemis mission page. This is in preparation for the first wet dress rehearsal which will take place on April 1. (I'm not making this up.)
NASA’s new Moon rocket stands poised inside Kennedy Space Center’s iconic Vehicle Assembly Building ahead of its first journey to the launch pad. Comprised of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft, and sitting on its mobile launcher, the Artemis I Moon-bound rocket is ready to roll March 17 to Launch Complex 39B for its wet dress rehearsal test targeted to begin on April 1st.
A WDR is loading the vehicle with its cryogenic fuel and oxidizer, and going through the complete countdown cycle but without starting the engines.
SpaceX is going for a dozen.
SpaceX is keeping up its tempo of one Falcon 9 launch per week this year, with
a launch this Friday night from SLC-40 on the Kennedy Space Center. NET
9:30 p.m. EDT Friday night, which makes it 0130 UTC on Saturday.
The last few launches have been on trajectories to the SE, down near and east of the Bahamas with the recovery drone barge on the NE side of the Bahamas. This launch will be going to the NE as most Starlink launches have gone. Being almost due south of the launch complex, the SE trajectory is a lot better for watching from my side yard. (Except for when the last one went in front of the sun on my line of sight)
The lead-in for this couple of paragraphs is that an "oh, by the way" note on
Teslarati, obtained from another source. This will be the first attempt to
launch a Falcon 9 booster on its 12th mission. Remember when ten flights
was the aspirational goal? The new goal for the number of launches
hasn't been announced that I know of, but they're going to keep testing the
fleet until issues show up.
According to Next Spaceflight, Falcon 9 B1051 will support the mission, becoming the first SpaceX booster of any kind to attempt its 12th orbital-class launch before midnight on Friday, March 18th.
It turns out Pi Day has another special meaning that I wished I'd known of on Monday. Monday was the 20th birthday of SpaceX.
Watch that video. As the timer says, it's one minute and 38 seconds of highlight reel.
Astra's latest orbital launch attempt from Kodiak Alaska was a success with the payload confirmed to be delivered properly and responding to its controllers. Congratulations to them on the success.
I don't have a link handy but have read that regarding
that failed February launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force station
they quickly found the cause for that failure. The failure involved the
mechanisms that controlled releasing the payload fairings in flight. It
was one of those cases where the instructions for wiring the mechanism were
followed to the letter, and the inspectors verified they were followed, but
the instructions were wrong. Anyone who has done product development has seen something similar to that.
I'd like to watch the highlight reel, but your embed doesn't give a live link. It's just a static image with a ridiculously long URL...
ReplyDeleteI'll go look for it on YT.
This is a weirdness. First, I'm assuming you mean the Astra video because it's the only actual video I linked to, and for me it comes up as generic as can be:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYNXoC1qTLo
and not ridiculously long.
It's an hour video, but most of that is chit chat and you can slide the slider over to about the 30 minute mark. That's T-30 seconds, or use this link:
https://youtu.be/zYNXoC1qTLo?t=1800
So SLS is rolling out, it’s so late and over budget why should we care! Private enterprise is rapidly taking NASA out of the picture and it’s way past time. NASA is only a very expensive boondoggle by now!
ReplyDeleteThere's a fight in congress right now where some people are saying NASA should never do "cost-plus" jobs again, but there are people in congress saying they should never do something like hire private companies to transport people and cargo. The reason is obvious - it gives congress more power and attracts more graft money and bribes to the congress critters.
DeleteThere might be reasonable places for a cost-plus structure, like SLS uses, but SLS isn't one of them. If they're really developing something that has never been done before, there is more risk that the estimates will be wrong. I don't think driving a company out of business because the requirements were wrong is necessarily right. SLS shouldn't have been cost plus. It's completely derivative from other jobs. They're using actual Space Shuttle Engines that were in inventory when the program shut down! How can they claim that's too new and risky?
Cost plus should be reserved for things that are truly new, not a "bigger rocket." NASA should be completely out of the "getting there" portion of exploration, except for maybe developing faster than light travel, Warp drives, and very far out things like that.
NASA should be completely out of the "getting there" portion of exploration, except for maybe developing faster than light travel, Warp drives, and very far out things like that.
ReplyDeletePhysics research was funded like that, and it produced "string theories" which are known to have no plausible way to experimentally test them.