NASA begins the slow leak process prior to announcing new SLS delays
As it has been doing for the past half decade, NASA has now begun the process of issuing hints about a future announcement of more SLS launch delays, in order to prepare the public and neuter any possible negative news coverage.
The linked article above outlines in great detail the present status of SLS and the assembly of its core stage. The main decision the agency now faces is whether it will do what it calls an “SLS Green Run,” where they assemble that core stage on a test stand at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi and fire it for a full duration static test. Such a test is necessary to validate the engineering models that were used to build the rocket. Without it no one will know if they have modeled the design correctly, meaning that during the first real launch they might find the rocket does not perform as predicted and could even fail.
Doing this test however will guarantee that the first SLS launch, Artemis 1, will not occur in June 2020 as presently scheduled, and will likely be delayed for another year.
The Trump administration has already made it clear it will not take kindly to more SLS delays. It has also made it clear that it will consider already available commercial options, such as SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, if NASA cannot deliver SLS as promised.
This puts NASA in a quandary.
The only way the agency has any chance of meeting the June 2020 date for the Artemis 1 launch would be for it to cancel the Green Run and go straight to launch. To do this however carries the risk of a launch failure, which would certainly kill SLS for good.
If they do the Green Run and delay that first launch, however, the Trump administration might kill SLS anyway, since it will have once again failed to meet its schedule.
NASA’s solution? Dribble out stories, such as this one, hinting of further delays in order to soften the political blow, and make Trump and Congress more agreeable to those delays.
This has been NASA’s strategy since 2014, when it became clear that SLS would not be ready for launch in 2017. They dribbled out information hinting at a further delay, and then announced a one-year delay to 2018. And then repeated the same process in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. Each year they first hinted at more delays, as they are doing now in 2019, and when they were satisfied that the blow was sufficiently cushioned, then announced officially the further delays.
The problem with this dance is that it was patently clear as early as 2012 that the first SLS launch would not occur before 2020, at the very earliest.
The bottom line is that the entire SLS project has been very badly managed. It has cost too much, it has taken too long to build, and as designed it is unaffordable to use for future American manned spaceflight.
In fact, the linked article unintentionally describes SLS/Orion perfectly. The article is entitled “Waiting for Artemis 1 schedule update, official decision on SLS Green Run”, which could have been shortened to just “Waiting for Artemis 1” in homage to Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, since both are about waiting for something that never arrives.
In Beckett’s play the waiting never ends. With SLS/Orion, we might be coming very close to the end, as in the end of SLS itself.
The support of my readers through the years has given 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. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
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. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to 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.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five 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:
5. 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. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
This is obviously all Trump’s fault.
A couple of questions:
1) Is it wise to reuse the core stage tanks after an 8 minute burn?
2) Could Artemis 2 be build concurrently with the Green Run test so that it could be redirected to Artemis 1? Then the Green Run test core be used for Artemis 2?
Ken: Welcome. You seem however to be reading older links on my webpage and slowly working your way to the present. :)
1. It is absolutely wise to test a rocket prior to launch. If it can’t take the strain of that test, it shouldn’t be launched to begin with. Moreover, SLS uses as its firsts stage engines the engines used on the shuttle. These were designed for many reuses.
3. I am not sure I understand your second question. Based on NASA past practice with the rockets it has built, once they have tested a new rocket and are satisfied it works, they end tests. With SLS, as far as I know they do not intend to do a Green Run test on the second SLS mission.
Either way, SLS is so unwieldy that it is impossible for NASA to use the second launch as a tool to speed up the first. The second rocket is not really even built yet.