Thursday, March 17, 2022

SLS On the Way to the Pad

It's really a major milestone that the Artemis 1 mission SLS has begun its move to the launch pad this evening.  Yeah, it wasn't at 5PM EDT as advertised, slipping until 6PM, but in the big picture of the whole Artemis program, it's an important step.  Every major step from here on is more important. 

As you can see by the time in the upper left, five minutes after first motion (possibly a few more - they may have started a few minutes before 6PM), the crawler transporter wasn't fully out of the Vehicle Assembly Building, but the booster was far enough out of the building to catch some sunlight.  

The crawler can only move around 1mph when fully loaded like this, and it's about 5 miles from the VAB to pad 39B, so it won't be completing its journey until after 11PM tonight.  Add to that time that it can't go 1 mph all the time, especially not during the climb up the inclined ramp at the pad.  The NASA Spaceflight commentators are saying the official number for the time to complete the task, as determined by the crawler transferring the full weight of the mobile launcher tower onto the supports at the pad, is for it to take 11 hours.  That will be early tomorrow morning.  If it's before 5AM Eastern on 3/18, the live video coverage is here.

The Wet Dress Rehearsal is No Earlier Than (NET) April 1st.  The actual first test launch is NET "June" (no date specified).  


For anyone intending to watch tomorrow night's Falcon 9 launch, either on the YouTube feed, or outside live, SpaceX is saying the launch time has been backed out to 11:24PM EDT tomorrow night from the 9:30PM time I reported yesterday. 



3 comments:

  1. (Still trying to figure out what we're spending money on here?)

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    1. Aside from way too much spent on the rocket itself along with the launch tower and everything else you can see, don't forget that some percentage went to line the pockets of all sorts of swamp creatures, probably prominently NASA administrator Bill Nelson who used to be our Senator when this all started.

      Back in 2010, Nelson said the total cost of the rocket was going to be $11.5 billion and "If we can't do a rocket for $11.5 billion, we ought to close up shop." I think we're currently around $25 billion with each launch costing $4 b. They really should have closed up shop.

      There's currently 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 money and bribes to the congress critters.


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    2. Great response . . . votes and bacon-wrapped shrimp at lobbyist parties. I should have known.

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