Launch Attempt Scrubbed
blogs.nasa.gov
blogs.nasa.gov
> “SCRUB. NASA launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson has called off today's Artemis 1 launch attempt due to an issue with an engine bleed on the core stage.” https://spaceflightnow.com/2022/08/29/artemis-1-launch-live-...
Given the other issues (crack in the interstage section, comm link issue) mentioned in the live thread, I wonder how many engineers are secretly relieved the launch was scrubbed this morning.
And the fuel and oxygen tanks are only rated for 9 fills which, while I don't have an exact figure, I believe they are close to if not exceeded with this most recent fill and scrub. They can't afford another mistake.
>> while I don't have an exact figure
Well, that is what I call a fact based comment...
- Multiple failures of Starliner
- 737 MAX
- 787
- USAF Replacement Tanker
Do you have any fact based comments that they are an engineering powerhouse? And don't quote me projects older than 10 years.
Pretty sure you ignored that part. Yes, Boeing used to do great engineering. gsibble didn't deny that. The issue is the last decade or so.
At considering 747-8 just another 747, no idea where to start... That as stupid as calling the MAX just another 737, we all agree I hope that this is not the case.
F/A-18 was designed by McDonnel Douglas in the 1970s (Boeing has never designed their own successful fighter jet. Not once..)
The 777 is from the early 90s, close to 30 years ago.
The 747-8 Freighter is highly derivative of the 747-8, a 20 year old program, which is itself derivative of an airframe who's design began in the 1960s.
The 787 is your best counter example, that program started not quite 20 years ago and hasn't been a complete disaster.
The T-7 is a Saab jet; Boeing's contribution is being an American manufacturer so the jet could win the contract.
Hell, Boeing has its issues and problems but not realizing what an imoressive aerospace company it is while ignoring all the issues SpaceX has, and comopletely ignoring all non-rocket programs Boeing has going, is borderline ignorant.
Just another derivative. The F-15 was McDonnell Douglas. Boeing has never designed their own fighter jet, and not for want of trying.
You can't get basic shit right, like pitching the F/A-18 as an example of Boeing design competence. Then you ask people for their backgrounds without sharing your own? Leaning on implicit credentialism when your arguments wilt under criticism. Is it going too far for me to guess that you or some of your colleagues work for Boeing, and thus take Boeing's reputation personally?
Boeing is a stinker, they have been for years and their contributions to SLS is just one example of this, of many. Crewed starliner should be aaaany day now, right? How many years behind crewed Dragon? Is Boeing's excuse that crewed Dragon started development 30 years before Starliner? If it were up to Boeing, America would depend on Russia to get to the ISS.
I do have an issue with people dumping on Boeing, using BS reasons, without any ubderstanding of what theybare talking about. Starliner? Sure, a true delayed program. MAX, as serious a fuck as they get in aerospace. Use those examples, but writting of Boeing as company as whole is more than one bridge to far.
And for now, it is you and the commenter you linked whom resorted to personal attacks. Just saying. Usually, HN is better than that.
> The original launch date of Artemis 1 was planned in December 2016, but it was delayed at least sixteen times due to technical issues with the SLS and the Orion spacecraft.[0]
As excited as I am about the prospect of another super-heavy launch vehicle and a manned return to the Moon, the whole SLS/Orion project still feels like a giant waste of money. We're $40 billion in and each SLS launch costs ~$4B.
"Teams are currently troubleshooting an issue with engine number 3 on the SLS rocket core stage. A new launch date has not yet been confirmed. The next available launch opportunity is Sept. 2."
If this is true, it's not super surprising. The "clean pad concept" means that the amount of work NASA can do on the rocket when it's on the pad is pretty limited.
It seems though that having multiple component vendors should be advantageous. Is there any company working on that premise of integrating systems from multiple vendors? Because somehow it's not working out economically with NASA.
Seems like we are still in early days, with a lot of the money wrapped up in bloated contracts for oversized military companies.
In all seriousness, can’t wait to see this thing take off safely!
Looking at Youtube now, there are clips from some feeds, so it was being streamed somewhere.
They should've just done the full Wet Dress Rehearsal.
Unless there are some serious issues with SLS it will launch first.
Significant delays would be really, really bad for SLS. They already extended the lifetime for the SRBs...
I remember being called a idiot SpaceX fanboy that understands nothing about engineering when I said Falcon Heavy would launch first. And by somebody who worked at NASA as far as I can tell.
Unless there is a longer delay with upper stage refuel, they likely make it first.
> "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.
Falcon Heavy launched four years after he said that. SLS still hasn't.
If you can't land it, it makes sense to sandwich the 'orbital altitude' and 'smile and wave around the moon' mission into one.
For SpaceX, focusing on the altitude seems to make the most sense. Especially considering that refilling may even be a higher priority than a moon pass.
NASA appears focused on inspirational discovery/science, while SpaceX is focused on making life multiplanetary. These are closely related, but fundamentally different missions.
Trash comments everywhere (but also good ones).
Engine fuckup is minor. But it’s also uncommon with modern engines. (At this stage, assembled and fuelled on the pad.) SLS’s choice to use an old engine is relevant to the discussion.
The issue here isn't really an "engine issue", but an issue with putting cold gases through the engine so it's not thermally shocked at ignition-- some combination of lines and valves probably want a different procedure and thermal profile.
This was their 3rd launch window right?
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-89xl-v0gs&t=2590s for a recent rather larger engine fuckup with the other major launch system under develop.
Still, https://www.noozhawk.com/article/missile_test_ends_in_explos... is a rocket that blew up early last month, 11 seconds into flight. See https://www.space.com/biggest-launch-failures-2021 for a list of notable failures last year.
Failures, particularly with new rockets, are much more common than you believe.
Don’t believe I am. I specifically caveated “at this stage, assembled and fuelled on the pad” because an engine under a fully-assembled rocket has assumptions made about it that one on the test stand obviously does not.
> list of notable failures last year
How many of these are engine failures? None, based on my scan.
The engine can be tested separately. That makes them wildly more predictable in a way the rest of the rocket, which can’t usually be similarly tested, is not. As someone with a background in aerospace engineering, I perk up when someone’s engine fails at the pad, because that—nowadays—shouldn’t happen.
What's is your analysis on the SRB's being 1 month past their validity date per @gsibble reference?
It is possible for something to be preliminarily marked as minor while also still being investigated. There's no need to be pointlessly antagonistic.
Did you notice the post I replied to, was asking the whole discussion to stop?
Delaying the launch is not a big deal.
Launching and going boom is a big deal.
There isn't much to discuss because this is literally business as usual in this line of work.
“NASA & Boeing are the best, props for using cutting edge technology, SpaceX is a scam and not worth taxpayers money, Elon Musk suck!”
?
I guess we'll find out if you leave such a comment in 4 days after SLS successfully launches right? Well, maybe not..
If you look at it as a federal jobs program that just happens to result in a rocket, then I'd say it was pretty successful...
Hint, SpaceX has an assembly line and is cranking out new starships and boosters every couple months while SLS will launch only every few years and then be chunked into the ocean with a hardware cost in the billions PER launch.
For SLS, the hardware cost alone is 1.5 billion. Starship has development cost, but I can guarantee you that the pure cost of ordering the hardware didn't cost 1.5 billion $.
And this is not even a possibility with the non-reusable SLS, which makes continuing it seem kind of crazy.
To do it they need around 6 launches for refueling in orbit.
The very upper limit on a single Starship launch is 0.5 billion.
Developing a working Starship is worth a lot to SpaceX. They could go deeply into debt on the first six launches, and make it up later.
And how SpaceX does pro-bono work for NASA in hopes of ripping them up later.
How NASA, Jeff Bezos, Government Accountability Office as well as courts are blind to it.
(Bezos already dragged NASA trough GAO and courts with regard to HLS)
And Musk is doing that instead of doing it in the honest and straightforward way like Bezos by just lobbing the Congress and asking for a lot of money.
Or you could just accept SpaceX track record on space programs and that SpaceX delivers cheap services.
We don't have insight into SpaceX finances, but this should give you an upper bound on how much money SpaceX is spending on something.
This $10 billion in total investment and annual revenue has financed the development of Falcon 9, Dragon, Dragon 2 and Crew Dragon, Starship, launch pads at Vandenburg, Boca Chica, and two at the Cape, Merlin, Raptor, Starlink development, thousands of Starlink satellites, and all the associated ground infrastructure, recovery and recovery ships, and everything else.
While we don't have any hard numbers on what the Starship development program has cost thus far, it's not likely to be in the billions.
To do it they need around 6 launches for refueling in orbit.
Therefore, the very upper limit on a single Starship launch is 0.5 billion (2.8/6).
And that's without development cost of Starship HLS.
Single SLS launch cost without Orion, including development, will be around 4 billion dollars.
20 billion overall for SLS development + 20 billion for Orion development.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/11/elon-musk-spacexs-starship-i...
Do you have a source behind your estimate that a fully reusable Starship launch is over 20x the cost of a partially reusable Falcon 9 launch?
To do it they need around 6 launches for refueling in orbit.
The very upper limit on a single Starship launch is 0.5 billion (2.8/6).
The more launches, the cheaper Starship gets.
Of course if you're doing citation for your paper the later one would be better but this is "just" posting on HN. I would even go so far as to say I prefer the tweet link so I can easily retweet, and no information is lost.
It's not usually useful to debate what's "proper". Debating utility is a better use of everyone's time, as you point out.
Now if you try to post a Nitter link on HN, it changes to the Twitter link. Why not sure.
Can you please explain what you see that are "hostile"? I opened this tweet RN in a guest profile and it looks exactly the same as the one I saw when I logged in.
"See what’s happening
Join Twitter to get the full story with all the live commentary."
And you have two options SignUp, Login, or F#^&^#@&^ :-) Now if you don't see it, because you have script blockers, that is a recognition of the interface hostility.
"Twitter disables browsing without an account" - https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/p62que/twitt...
However, even if Twitter didn't have a history of such problems, having to click an extra link is annoying to the majority of users, which is part of why the HN Guidelines say to always link to the original source:
> Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter.
> Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter.
Shuttle was like this too. Not really a surprise as SLS is just a shuttle remix.
It's not as if a Twitter link is "the" source - it's just stochastic what gets submitted, what gets noticed, what version of a story happens to make the front page. Sometimes we change the URL to a better one if we notice it.
To justify pumping billions of USD into Shuttle-era contractors who would've otherwise gone bankrupt a decade ago. NASA is doing the best it can with what it's been given, but Artemis and its predecessors are a Congress-mandated jobs program.
You might have a case with Aerojet Rocketdyne - not sure if they can survive on RL-10 sales alone. But the others: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrup Grumman, aren't depending on SLS contracts to survive. It's just a nice cherry on top of their defense and commercial contracts.
50 Years ago...With less experience, more challenging technical issues, doing something never done, the Kennedy Space Center to the Moon line, had no scrubs and typical schedule delay was 1 second. Think about that...
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/37482/reason-of-ap...
"...Only Apollo 17 had a long launch delay of 2 hours 40 minutes, Apollo 14 of 40 minutes. Most delays were less than a second..."
NASA is out of practice (and it's not being run by Germans anymore).
We are way past the original timeline and budget. You fail!
After 2 decades, time to acknowledge it:
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2004/04/08/the-wrong-stuff/
Literally laghed out loud on this one and had to explain to coworkers what was so funny :)
...This was an enormously expensive and time-consuming process, grinding the stage's production schedule almost to a standstill and jeopardizing the Presidential timetable.
When this happened Webb told von Braun to desist, adding that "We've got to trust American industry." The issue came to a showdown at a meeting where the Marshall rocket team was asked to explain its extreme measures. While doing so, one of the engineers produced a rag and told Webb that "this is what we find in this stuff." The contractors, the Marshall engineers believed, required extensive oversight to ensure they produced the highest quality work. A compromise emerged that was called the 10 percent rule: 10 percent of all funding for NASA was to be spent to ensure in- house expertise and in the process check contractor reliability..."
>The original launch date was planned for early 1967, but was delayed to November 9 because of a myriad of problems with various elements of the spacecraft, and difficulties during pre-flight testing.... These issues delayed the flight through much of 1967.
I wouldn't rise to an unconditional defense of SLS as a whole, but this particular issue is picking nits.
Today, the tolerance for risk is much lower, the costs higher and the budget much more controlled. There are many politicians who want to greatly reduce NASA's budget in favour of private ventures. A failed launch is ammo for their cause. So whereas Apollo could proceed (with some delays) after people burnt to death in a capsule, if that happened today the whole program would be halted indefinitely and NASA heavily questioned as to why it needed to take such risks. 50 years on from Apollo, NASA has learnt that an abundance of caution is needed.
They seem to have produced better results on less money — so if NASA can’t follow the strategy that works, why should we throw more into the money pit?
Also SpaceX plan to make 1000 Starships, and NASA plans to make about 5 of theirs
I don't think you can assert that NASA hasn't or wouldn't fall to Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy. What makes NASA special to be immune to such dysfunction?
It's the curse of waterfall budgeting. A democratic government with typical constraints wants to minimize spending and to have all spending fully accounted for in advance.
"I dunno, maybe it will blow up this time?" is not an acceptable line-item under either standard.
Therefore, budgets must plan for success and design failure out of the process. Minimizing risk maximizes process and cost, ironically sacrificing the very low-cost public policy goal at the feet of risk intolerance. Instead of fifty SLS launches, of which the first dozen or so might fail as learning experiences, we get five that all must go flawlessly.
True "risky" development is reserved for programs of true national urgency (e.g. the original defense focus of the space race) or for programs that can operate well outside the public's watchful eye.
You don’t get to decide where the money goes at all. Senators do so they can boast about bringing jobs to their state in reelection campaigns.
We’ve heard the same story for 50 years.
Cancel the project now. There should be a price for taking the wrong path.
Let's not diminish the brilliant, flawless execution of the Apollo program, with the argument that they cared less for the lives of Astronauts.
The comment you replied to is correct. Every launch has a non-zero chance of death, and the Apollo program was simply willing to tolerate a higher probability of loss than we are today. I think if you want to call that "they cared less for the lives of Astronauts" that that's your own interpretation.
Acknowledging that their risk tolerances were higher than politics necessitates today doesn't "diminish" anything.
In a redesigned spacecraft (based on the Block II that was already in development) that replaced the pure oxygen environment at launch with a Nitrogen/Oxygen atmosphere that was slowly bled off to pure O2 at the desired partial pressure once it was in space.
Grissom was one of the three astronauts that died in the Apollo 1 fire.
"Houston, we have a problem"
yet SpaceX can launch a lot more often and a lot more reliably, and cheaper too. Strange, huh?
The lander contract is a 'safe' contract for SpaceX to win, despite their absurd proposal, since the whole program is very unlikely to ever get to the stage where the lander is actually put to use and sent to the moon.
ULA has 148 launches with NO accidents. SpaceX has put up more, but had an accident in flight with the Falcon 9 in June 2015, and another on the pad in September 2016.
Mind you, ULA started with a known rocket design. While SpaceX has been iterating as it goes.
But still, we don't have significant statistical evidence about which is actually more reliable.
And ULA had a number of issues in that time. For example a failure in an Atlas first stage and the only just managed to deploy the sat because the upper stage had just enough margin.
And ULA had major delays, way longer then what SpaceX could afford for things like their Delta 4 Heavy launches.
ULA of course also got 1 billion $ in subsidies per year to ensure launch safety, a luxury SpaceX never had.
> But still, we don't have significant statistical evidence about which is actually more reliable.
Actually we do. It you look at the launch rates and how often Falcon 9 has launched already the statistical significant of the results gets bigger and bigger.
Unfortunately I can't find the list that shows this data and explains the methods used right now.
But Falcon 9 is very clearly on top of the list.
Furthermore the Starlink constellation 'only' has 3,000 satellites so far, but SpaceX has sought approval for 30,000 more than the 12,000 already approved. To launch and maintain a constellation that huge with Falcon 9? It might be commercially viable, but I doubt it, they already have a very rapid launch cadence with Falcon 9 starlink launches and they evidently think they need much more.
The ULA workhorse was the Atlas 5. Over its whole lifetime, both under Lockheed and ULA, it had 95 launches of which one was a partial failure (declared success). Wikipedia is good enough for that.
The SpaceX workhorse is the Falcon 9. https://www.spacex.com/launches/ puts it at 176 launches with 1 failure and 1 partial failure. This is not counting one that blew up on the pad with the satellite aboard.
The measured failure rate of the Atlas 5 is 0/95. Of Falcon 9 is 1/176. Note that 0/95 < 1/176.
The measured "not perfect success" rate of the Atlas 5 is 1/95. Of Falcon 9 is 2/176 = 1/88. Note that 1/95 < 1/88.
Also anyone with basic statistical knowledge will immediately see that the sample size is sufficiently low that we cannot draw any conclusion at 95% confidence.
Now what Falcon 9 does have the crown on is the longest string of uninterrupted successes of any rocket family. They are now at 148. (Not counting, of course, the one that blew up on the launch pad with the satellite on board.) But not enough to be statistically strong evidence that they are best. Also ULA has over 150 launches across their rocket platforms without any being declared a failure - which exceeds SpaceX's current winning streak.
That said, I agree with you about ULA's advantages, and I agree that SpaceX is the future. But I'm not going to lie about the math. And the math says that there isn't significant statistical evidence that SpaceX is better on safety.
In low sample size cases such measures are a better predictor of the future.
Insurance rates also reflect this same reality, as SpaceX has industry leading safety rating.
If I can find this document again I will send it, but somehow I can't find the damn thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Spacecraft_Qualificatio...
SLS is one and done. It’s the old Apollo and Shuttle strategy, with the post-Columbia and Challenger risk management. It’s a bad strategy.
Getting your launches right is always a challenge for any new rocket family, and delaying your early test flights when (not if) you see unexpected telemetry data during the countdown should be seen as normal while you're learning how your rocket works in the real world.
Even with Starship, where cratering the first few test article hops was considered pretty likely, they had a bunch of holds and scrubs during the countdowns to those launch attempts. I expect the next test flight not to have zero delays either.
And SLS is being cautious. Delays should be expected, and not seen as some terrible bit of mismanagement. "Go fever" is real, and is a bad thing.
NASA had a manned spaceflight program after Apollo that was specifically designed for safety and efficiency—the Space Shuttle—which turned out to be expensive and unsafe. After the Columbia disaster the Shuttle was cancelled, but the subcontractors for the Shuttle cried foul and Congress pretty much forced NASA to build a new rocket out of Shuttle parts—first Ares, then SLS.
If it were up to NASA, they would either build the rocket out of something other than old Shuttle parts or just outsource rocket development and focus on operations. The politicians are the ones making them build SLS.
We are pretty close to (if not already at) the point where we don't need Government funding for space exploration.
He's hellbent on building Starship I think, but Mars? I don't see it. He's invested a lot of time and money into building a booster that will excel at putting satellites into orbit for Starlink and DoD contracts. But how much has he invested in Mars colony habitat technology? Virtually nothing.
Starship is a satellite launcher, not a Mars rocket. The Mars talk is a recruiting tactic.
No actually they want to give NASA more money so NASA can buy what it needs from private ventures.
Perspective helps
Doesn't get much clearer than that chart. Oof!
The part about the NASA budget is at 2:00 though it's all a good watch.
edit for humility: I had to look up the Artemis details last night to see that SpaceX is part of the critical path to a moon landing, so I'm not faulting someone for ignorance. It happens.
Understandably, her face was all in turmoil. It is three first picture popping into my mind whenever Challenger comes up.
People don't seem to understand that we make good use of space and space flight, but humans in space just aren't that useful at the moment. At the beginning of the space age it seemed like they might be; there were ideas for a manned spy satellite, such as the Manned Orbiting Laboratory[1]. But as tech advanced, the people who actually using space flight to accomplish things realized that automated systems functioned better.
NASA spends 44.9% of its budget on human space flight, and just 3.5% on aeronautics[2], when it's likely the aeronautics research improves people's lives much more than the human space flight efforts.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Orbiting_Laboratory [2] https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/nasa-budget
There's zero useful science being accomplished here that cannot be accomplished minus humans on the craft for less money, faster.
It's a national embarrassment that we have teachers being paid a pittance, doing unpaid labor, paying for basic supplies out of pocket, and children go hungry at school because we think they should have to pay for a meal - but we can spend billions on what amounts to a blank check to the aerospace defense industry in the name of "science."
People always talk about the benefits of space exploration for developments in science and technology that are necessitated (when really, most of the tech was developed for spy satellites and nuclear weapons delivery, and the doe-eyed "exploration" missions are post-facto justifications and emotional manipulation.)
What would be the benefits for science and technology if every kid in the US was fed at school, had enough (and current) textbooks, sufficient stationary supplies in their classrooms, and teachers who were fairly compensated for their labor (and their school staffed sufficiently such that teachers didn't have to put in nearly 100% more labor than they are paid for?)
Do you really think single-digit billions is going to pay for a meaningful increase to teachers' wages, plus feeding students?
NASA gets $22B per year - less than $12B of that goes to manned flights.
There's 3.1M public school teachers in the US. If you took ALL of that money and gave it all to teachers (which is ridiculous - they're paid by states, not federally) - that amounts to a ~10% raise - and if you count future pensions - it's not even a ~3% raise.
You have $0 left over to pay for hungry students. There's also another 3M employees at public schools beside teachers that get nothing...
It's almost as if NASA's budget has nothing to do with anything you mentioned.
Antarctic exploration is a good analogy. A little over a century ago, it was the new frontier. But as we advanced, the excitement gave way to cold reality. Though it was exciting at the time, I doubt most people could tell you who the first person to reach the South Pole was. And the doubtful that the journeys actually provided any benefit to modern researchers there. If we had simply waited a few decades and started exploring when the technology was there (the so-called "Mechanical age" of Antarctic exploration), fewer lives would have been lost and we would have been in the same place we are today.
Half of century is a a lot of advancement in safety. You have many orders more of magnitude of data, sensors and understanding of what to look for.
Is Artemis a good program? Hell no. But that’s not a way to compare it.
So "no scrubs and typical schedule delay was 1 second" is totally untrue.
But if we are going to include previous programs before Apollo 7, then we should include the predecessors programs of Artemis 1. Meaning, none...What speaks to the delays and lack of execution. Also caused of course, by Congress mandates.