Success on second SLS static fire engine test
After the first static fire test of an SLS engine was cut short two weeks ago, NASA successfully completed the full test today.
The first test was cut short because of issues with the test stand, not the engine. This time all went well.
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After the first static fire test of an SLS engine was cut short two weeks ago, NASA successfully completed the full test today.
The first test was cut short because of issues with the test stand, not the engine. This time all went well.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID 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. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
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
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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.
Last weekend, one of my brothers and I went with a couple of cousins to see the Endeavor in Los Angeles. My brother was impressed with the engine (the same type that SLS uses), because the display plaque told us that three of these Shuttle main engines produce as much power as 13 Hoover Dams, meaning that each engine produces about 9,000 MW — roughly the equivalent of nine large power plants.
He was also impressed that the temperatures within the engine reached 6,000 degrees (F), or as the display plaque noted: hot enough to boil iron.
He than felt the need to look up the pressure on his phone, and found that the engine operates at a pressure of 3,001 psi (it wasn’t rounded down to 3,000).
I pointed out to him that it produced all that power at that temperature and pressure in the small combustion chamber, much smaller than the boilers (reactors) of the nine power plants, and much much smaller than the turbines of the 4-1/3 Hoover Dams.
Yet the engine does not melt (cooling is a big part of the design), or explode from the pressure (well, technically, the drop in pressure and expansion of the exhaust *is* an explosion, where explosion is defined as a rapid drop in pressure or rapid expansion of gas, often with a loud noise).
He concluded that it really *is* rocket science.
Fortunately for the test Robert writes about, the engine performed better than the test stand. Then again, they may put more attention and maintenance into the engine than they do the test stand. And for good reason!
SLS is sad.
Are they just using old left over engines from the shuttle or have they actually built a few new ones with all those billions spent?
All they are really doing is redesigning a tube.
The tube that makes the rocket body.
Strap the old shuttle main engines to the bottom, put the old shuttle liquid fuel tanks inside, strap on the old shuttle solid boosters to the sides.
After that just how much of a second stage would they need? They have at least three other second stage rocket systems and engines in production now. Just use those.
By an idiots estimations that could or should get them 2000 tons for the second stage. the weight of the shuttle, empty.
Pzatchok: Yes, you are right, SLS is very sad. No system innovation (beside some tank manufacturing), 45 years propulsion technology (SSME / SLS main engine was designed around 1972). What for a dinosaur and expensive system! The technological solutions chosen for Shuttle propulsion, made between 1969 and 1972 (solid rocket booster, complex and sensitive, extrem high pressure SSME) was already wrong at this time and today even more. It would have been much better to use Saturn-IB launcher further for decades following Apollo’s end , increasing performance of the system incrementally, lowering cost and try to make first reusable as already discussed at those days.
Sorry I got the weight of the total launcher and the orbiter wrong.
The total weight was 2000 ton with the orbiter being just 70 tons.
It doesn’t change the idea that the value per return just doesn’t add up.