Artemis II Booster now stacked
There has been talk about the SLS being dropped going forward. Some of those rumors include the entire Artemis program being dropped, and more. In light of that it might be that the last SLS launch vehicle that will ever fly was stacked over the weekend. If, indeed, it will ever fly.
Working inside the iconic 52-story-tall Vehicle Assembly Building, ground teams used heavy-duty cranes to first lift the butterscotch orange core stage from its cradle in the VAB's cavernous transfer aisle, the central passageway between the building's four rocket assembly bays. The cranes then rotated the structure vertically, allowing workers to disconnect one of the cranes connected to the bottom of the rocket.
...
Finally, ground crews lowered the rocket between the Space Launch System's twin solid rocket boosters already stacked on a mobile launch platform inside High Bay 3, where NASA assembled Space Shuttles and Saturn V rockets for Apollo lunar missions.
It's not fully stacked - the adapter to the Orion spacecraft and the Orion itself are not in place. There is a large number of tests that need to be done to verify things before a cone-shaped adapter can be placed on top of the core stage, followed by the rocket's upper stage, then another adapter, and finally the Orion spacecraft that will be home to the four-person Artemis II crew for their 10-day journey around the moon.
Will it fly? The tyranny of numbers and the "sunk cost fallacy" that so many congress critters seem to follow may well push them to fly Artemis II. Artemis II has been delayed so many times (like all Artemis and SLS hardware) that in December of '24, we were warned the planned September '25 launch was looking more like another six month slip to the spring of '26. It seems to be a situation where the errors of the past have wiped out any chance of fixing the hole the program dug itself into.
Four RS-25 engines left over from NASA's Space Shuttle program will power the SLS core stage poised here between and above the two solid rocket boosters. Credit: NASA/Frank Michaux
Isar Aerospace: Weather Caused this morning's scrub
Isar's Spectrum rocket launch that had been scheduled in a window that opened at 7:30 AM EDT (1130
UTC)
was scrubbed due to "unfavorable winds"
and the launch recycling began. It didn't show up until late in the
afternoon on NextSpaceflight, but
the launch is rescheduled for the same three hour window
tomorrow.
An interesting side note to this launch is that the Isar Spectrum is
the largest German rocket since the V-2
used widely in WWII and The Battle of Britain, mostly as a weapon of terror
because it didn't have functional guidance and just fell where it was at the
time.
The first launch from Cape Canaveral
was a V-2 that had a second stage made by adding another missile called the WAC
Corporal into system called Bumper.
NASA's history says, "WAC possibly stood for Without Attitude Control, since the rocket had no
guidance system." Seriously. It's in that linked story.
What will happen first? SpaceX makes it to Mars or the Moon or SLS successfully flies with Orion and returns crew safely?
ReplyDeleteKill it. Keep it on display as an example of how not to do big programs.
And from what I've read lately, Boeing is failing across the board with all its projects. The Death of Boeing may be within the next year or two.
So sad. The Division I worked for only had minimal "issues" like this. It was the best place I've ever worked, and the best people I've ever worked with.
DeleteThey killed the 758 in the 2000's with nothing to really replace it except the 737-Max. The 777 program is troubled. The 'new' (read 'vaporware') 797 is handwavium and hopium. The 767 is on its last production legs, relegated to air cargo only. Airbus is outselling and outproducing them by three fold.
DeleteThey lost big on Starliner. Doubt if it will ever fly or be certified.
They've got, what, Next Gen Fighter? We'll see about that.
They're having problems with the aerial refueling 737 version. So that's going to Airbus, too, domestically produced, but still Airbus.
Their X-37B is flying great, so they've got support for that. But that's basically a dead end program.
They've screwed the pooch on replacement Presidential 747 and flying command center 747 programs and only because the current ones are getting knackered are they probably going to keep those, maybe, but with less money and more control from the government.
Which leaves... SLS. Which should have been killed off years ago.
And they're trying to divest from ULA, too.
Between strikes and corporate stupidity, it's rough seas for Boeing, and I doubt they'll survive. Unless something big happens and the whole culture turns around and suddenly becomes cost-effective and failure-free.
It is sad. I have several books written by people intimate with Boeing over the years. The details of that once great company and it's long history are fascinating. Imagine all of that packed into a bit more than one hundred years.
DeleteAll of that now teetering on the edge of the abyss because of corporate malfeasance. I thought the move to Chicago was the first death toll.
W. E. must be spinning his grave.
SLS. Must. DIE!!
ReplyDeleteSo, the heat shield?
ReplyDeleteI do wonder if they're stacking on a pace to reduce the risk of termination by the Trump admin. That is, is ward off cancellation.
That would be a risky gambit against a business mogul used to controlling costs.
Each Artemis mission is over $4 Billion. The prudent businessman would see that even paying termination costs to the contractors would be a net savings
There likely still are plenty who want SLS to fly. Their gambit is to stack (no pun) the odds in their favor. Bought Congress critters, inclusive.
The answers I've seen about fixes on Orion's heatshield are along the lines of Underwear Gnomes. A. Steal underwear. G. Money. All the stuff in between is vague at the most.
DeleteThe Orion's shield is fine, they say. Big holes because we tried an entry profile that was 'hot,' they say. Less energetic entry profile will be fine, they say.
The same type of people said the Covid was totally deadly, that hydrocloroquin and ivermectin were deathly poisons, the vaccines and boosters were totally safe and dying in a spectacular splatter death by motorcycle and the remains showing positive for influenza antibodies (not COVID, regular flu) means that the death is listed as a Covid death.
Yeah, faith totally lost on Orion. And SLS. And the European 'Exploration Stage' upper stage that's supposed to be whiz-bang good.
Whole flying turd, all parts of it, even the solid boosters, are a massive jobs program and kickback system.
The whole Artemis program with its Lunar Gateway, and everything designed to fly on the SLS is just begging to be cancelled. The last numbers I have, from last October, are that SLS missions are estimated to cost $4.4 billion while a Falcon Heavy launch costs $178 million.
ReplyDeleteThe FH lifts 2/3 of the payload of the SLS, but the cost for the FH won't even buy the main engines for one SLS. Launch two Heavies and you've spent $356 million as opposed to around $4,400 million for the SLS and even put more payload into space than one SLS launch.
Artemis and SLS should be DOGEd.
ReplyDeleteDad worked on Corporal missiles when he was in the Army in the early 1950s.
ReplyDeleteWAC Corporal, Nike, Redstone, and of course the Mercurys, Geminis, Apollos were available as scale models. Me, brother, friends all were into making the models. Mostly from Revelle.
DeleteThen came rocketry courtesy of Estes and others.
LDRS
DeleteLast one should be converted for getting the largest possible LEO payload for the rest of the upcoming moon missions, say a large payload of fuel for Starships, one good load would get ahead of things, might make a lot of positive difference, get some practical use out of it.
ReplyDelete