The coming final flight of the shuttle’s solid rocket booster segments
Link here. As NASA begins the assembly process for its first long-delayed SLS launch sometime in the next year. the article at the link outlines in detail the space shuttle history of the many reused segments used to build the rocket’s two solid rocket boosters.
All together, the Artemis I solid rocket booster segments previously helped launch 40 space shuttle missions dating back 30 years.
The oldest cylinder, which will fly as part of the booster mounted on the right side of the SLS core stage, first lifted off on the STS-31 mission with the Hubble Space Telescope on April 24, 1990. It was then used for six more shuttle flights, including Endeavour’s debut on STS-49 in 1992 and STS-95 in 1998, which lifted off with Mercury astronaut and senator John Glenn as part of its crew.
Other notable missions that are part of the Artemis 1 boosters’ legacy include: STS-71, which marked the first shuttle docking with the Russian space station Mir in 1995; STS-93, which deployed the Chandra X-ray Observatory and marked the first spaceflight commanded by a woman, Eileen Collins, in 1999; STS-114, the return to flight after the loss of the space shuttle Columbia in 2005; and STS-133, the final launch of the space shuttle Discovery in 2011.
The hardware also includes new components, including the two forward domes, two cylinders and four stiffeners.
This first SLS launch however will be the last time these segments will fly. Unlike the shuttle, NASA is making no effort to recover and reuse these boosters.
The shuttle effort to reuse these booster segments was never really very cost effective, so not reusing them on SLS might actually save money. Those savings however are chicken feed when compared to SLS’s overall cost. The problem really is with SLS’s fundamental design: cumbersome, slow, expensive, and difficult to use.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Link here. As NASA begins the assembly process for its first long-delayed SLS launch sometime in the next year. the article at the link outlines in detail the space shuttle history of the many reused segments used to build the rocket’s two solid rocket boosters.
All together, the Artemis I solid rocket booster segments previously helped launch 40 space shuttle missions dating back 30 years.
The oldest cylinder, which will fly as part of the booster mounted on the right side of the SLS core stage, first lifted off on the STS-31 mission with the Hubble Space Telescope on April 24, 1990. It was then used for six more shuttle flights, including Endeavour’s debut on STS-49 in 1992 and STS-95 in 1998, which lifted off with Mercury astronaut and senator John Glenn as part of its crew.
Other notable missions that are part of the Artemis 1 boosters’ legacy include: STS-71, which marked the first shuttle docking with the Russian space station Mir in 1995; STS-93, which deployed the Chandra X-ray Observatory and marked the first spaceflight commanded by a woman, Eileen Collins, in 1999; STS-114, the return to flight after the loss of the space shuttle Columbia in 2005; and STS-133, the final launch of the space shuttle Discovery in 2011.
The hardware also includes new components, including the two forward domes, two cylinders and four stiffeners.
This first SLS launch however will be the last time these segments will fly. Unlike the shuttle, NASA is making no effort to recover and reuse these boosters.
The shuttle effort to reuse these booster segments was never really very cost effective, so not reusing them on SLS might actually save money. Those savings however are chicken feed when compared to SLS’s overall cost. The problem really is with SLS’s fundamental design: cumbersome, slow, expensive, and difficult to use.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
I have been looking, but not yet found, a good argument for why the expendable SLS system is better.
I mean, big. Okay. Lots lift, yes. But why so committed to this design.
I know the argument here. It’s for jobs in congressional districts/states. But what argument is being made from their side on why this is better?
The argument has always been that SLS is necessary to do deep space missions. The expense and severe production limitation are ignored or hand-waved away. There has never been any argument that SLS is better than some alternative because there is nothing that can put as much mass into LEO. SH-Starship, will, of course, exceed SLS’s LEO payload numbers but SH-Starship seems to be “that which we do not acknowledge” around MSFC and Boeing. Also unacknowledged, or hand-waved away, is that a pair of FHs can also put more mass into LEO than SLS and at a small fraction of the latter’s cost, even if both FHs are also totally expended in the process.
SLS isn’t going to die of logic or it would have succumbed long since. It’s going to die of terminal irrelevance once SH-Starship is operational – assuming it doesn’t die first due to a massive test failure.
sippin_bourbon,
When SLS was started, the commercial cargo program was not yet proved, and many had doubts that a commercial company could be capable of getting a spacecraft to successfully berth at a space station, much less be able to keep astronauts alive in space. Thus Orion-SLS was better than anything available.
The current Commercial Crew spacecraft are not designed for deep space work, so there is not enough confidence that they could be used for that purpose. So far, this makes Orion-SLS better. (I find it so very ironic that Boeing, with its decades of experience, including ISS manufacture (prime contractor), was the company that had trouble docking to the ISS. No wonder NASA is so disappointed in them.)
On the other hand, it all depends upon what “better” means. The Block 2 version of SLS is meant to carry more to low Earth orbit than Starship. That could make SLS “better” than Starship. Since this capacity was one of Congress’s requirements, there is a possibility that Congress could fund SLS even after the less expensive Starship becomes operational.
In the meantime, I consider SLS to be the U.S. equivalent of (or response to) Russia’s Energia, which flew a grand total of two times. If SLS beats that, would it make SLS better than Energia?