NASA to conduct second SLS launch dress rehearsal in June
In announcing a press conference later today about the status of NASA’s SLS rocket, the agency revealed it now plans to conduct a second SLS launch dress rehearsal in June.
NASA’s SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft arrived back at Kennedy’s Vehicle Assembly Building April 26 after a 10-hour journey from launch pad 39B. Since their arrival, teams have worked to replace a faulty upper stage check valve and repair a small leak within the tail service mast umbilical ground plate housing. The teams also have been performing additional checkouts while the spaceport’s supplier of gaseous nitrogen makes upgrades to their pipeline configuration to support Artemis I activities.
We will likely find out NASA’s new launch schedule for the rocket today.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
In announcing a press conference later today about the status of NASA’s SLS rocket, the agency revealed it now plans to conduct a second SLS launch dress rehearsal in June.
NASA’s SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft arrived back at Kennedy’s Vehicle Assembly Building April 26 after a 10-hour journey from launch pad 39B. Since their arrival, teams have worked to replace a faulty upper stage check valve and repair a small leak within the tail service mast umbilical ground plate housing. The teams also have been performing additional checkouts while the spaceport’s supplier of gaseous nitrogen makes upgrades to their pipeline configuration to support Artemis I activities.
We will likely find out NASA’s new launch schedule for the rocket today.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
If we find out the SLS launch date, we may finally find out when the Permit for SpaceX to launch Starship Super Heavy will be allowed. :)
You know, with the number of parts in something like SLS/Orion, it seems like every time you run a dress rehearsal that it is a chance for something else to fail, so you end up doing “whack-a-mole” endlessly. Perhaps wearing out other parts so they are ready to fail. And then, even if you have got matters so that everything is “fixed”, there’s no guarantee that some other part, having successfully performed N number times won’t decide to fail on N+1. Am I off the beam, here? If I am correct, “what is to be done”?
Col B – It seems like Musk consciously or unconsciously has conceived of a product and test program that attempts to address your observation about complex systems testing resembling Whack a Mole.
On the wall of many senior engineering managers there is sign which all say substantially: “There comes a time in every project life that you have to kill (fire / layoff / send away) all the engineers. At some point you have to just go test. But if has taken your project 2 decades to get there and the test article is ungodly expensive than understandably there is a reluctance to fly unless you can be **SURE**. Anyone with half a brain KNOWS that in complex systems like this there cannot be certainty with all capital letters.
That being said, I think Musk’s genius is to have tried to come up with a vehicle which is such that a single failed test is not a catastrophe. His relentless desire to build products gives him the flexibility to build – test fly – analyze and fly again.
Also, the Musk quote that the best part is NO part. is another recognition that at some point the game of whack a mole begins and having one less mole is a good thing.
SLS is a simpler beast….I would suspect sabotage. I wish Nick Saban would get into rocketry. He could have told that pixie punk that blew his elbow out at the Gala that arm-tackles don’t work. I have to get Musk and Saban in the same room…and to get SLS foam Crimson.