Problem pops up during SLS roll back after wet dress rehearsal countdown
Not so fast! According to an update posted by NASA today, during the process to roll back the SLS rocket from the launchpad following the wet dress rehearsal countdown two days ago, crews suddenly detected “interrupted helium flow” in the upper stage that appears to be of some concern.
NASA is taking steps to potentially roll back the Artemis II rocket and Orion spacecraft to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida after overnight Feb. 21 observing interrupted flow of helium in the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket’s interim cryogenic propulsion stage. Helium flow is required for launch.
Teams are actively reviewing data, and taking steps to enable rollback positions for NASA to address the issue as soon as possible while engineers determine the best path forward. In order to protect for troubleshooting options at both Pad B and the VAB, teams are making preparations to remove the pad access platforms installed yesterday, which have wind-driven constraints and cannot be removed during high winds, which are forecasted for tomorrow. This will almost assuredly impact the March launch window. NASA will continue to provide updates. [emphasis mine]
The helium flow is likely used to fill the tanks as the actual and dangerous fuel is pumped out. They need to drain those tanks in order to roll the rocket from the launchpad. If it has stopped flowing, it means they can’t drain the tanks as planned.
During launch the helium is also likely pumped into the tanks to maintain pressure as the fuel burns. If during launch the helium stopped flowing it would almost certainly result in a failed launch.
This issue not only impacts the tentative March 6th launch date that NASA announced yesterday, if a fix is not found quickly it almost certainly means no launch can occur before this launch window closes on April 6th.
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
Not so fast! According to an update posted by NASA today, during the process to roll back the SLS rocket from the launchpad following the wet dress rehearsal countdown two days ago, crews suddenly detected “interrupted helium flow” in the upper stage that appears to be of some concern.
NASA is taking steps to potentially roll back the Artemis II rocket and Orion spacecraft to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida after overnight Feb. 21 observing interrupted flow of helium in the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket’s interim cryogenic propulsion stage. Helium flow is required for launch.
Teams are actively reviewing data, and taking steps to enable rollback positions for NASA to address the issue as soon as possible while engineers determine the best path forward. In order to protect for troubleshooting options at both Pad B and the VAB, teams are making preparations to remove the pad access platforms installed yesterday, which have wind-driven constraints and cannot be removed during high winds, which are forecasted for tomorrow. This will almost assuredly impact the March launch window. NASA will continue to provide updates. [emphasis mine]
The helium flow is likely used to fill the tanks as the actual and dangerous fuel is pumped out. They need to drain those tanks in order to roll the rocket from the launchpad. If it has stopped flowing, it means they can’t drain the tanks as planned.
During launch the helium is also likely pumped into the tanks to maintain pressure as the fuel burns. If during launch the helium stopped flowing it would almost certainly result in a failed launch.
This issue not only impacts the tentative March 6th launch date that NASA announced yesterday, if a fix is not found quickly it almost certainly means no launch can occur before this launch window closes on April 6th.
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
Ah….I now see that Isaacman has posted an update just a little bit ago:
_____
“As an update to my earlier post.
– The ICPS helium bottles are used to purge the engines, as well as for LH2 and LOX tank pressurization. The systems did work correctly during WDR1 and WDR2.
– Last evening, the team was unable to get helium flow through the vehicle. This occurred during a routine operation to repressurize the system.
– We observed a similar failure signature on Artemis I.
– The Artemis II vehicle is in a safe configuration, using ground ECS purge for the engines versus the onboard helium supply.
– Potential faults could include the final filter between the ground and flight vehicle, located on the umbilical, though this seems least likely based on the failure signature. It could also be a failed QD umbilical interface, where similar issues have been observed. It could also be a failed check valve onboard the vehicle, which would be consistent with Artemis I, though corrective actions were taken to minimize reoccurrence on Artemis II.
Regardless of the potential fault, accessing and remediating any of these issues can only be performed in the VAB.
As mentioned previously, we will begin preparations for rollback, and this will take the March launch window out of consideration.
I understand people are disappointed by this development. That disappointment is felt most by the team at NASA, who have been working tirelessly to prepare for this great endeavor. During the 1960s, when NASA achieved what most thought was impossible, and what has never been repeated since, there were many setbacks. One historic example is that Neil Armstrong spent less than 11 hours in space on Gemini 8 before his mission ended prematurely due to a technical issue. A little over three years later, he became the first man to walk on the Moon.
There are many differences between the 1960s and today, and expectations should rightfully be high after the time and expense invested in this program. I will say again, the President created Artemis as a program that will far surpass what America achieved during Apollo. We will return in the years ahead, we will build a Moon base, and undertake what should be continuous missions to and from the lunar environment. Where we begin with this architecture and flight rate is not where it will end.
Please expect a more extensive briefing later this week as we outline the path forward, not just for Artemis II, but for subsequent missions, to ensure NASA meets the President’s vision to return to the Moon and, this time, to stay.”
Link:
https://twitter.com/NASAAdmin/status/2025249086908125630
So, March is definitely out now.
Again, it is good to see Isaacman getting out front with information, if nothing else.
Looks like another issue “fixed” after Artemis 1. Pattern recognition kicking in…
Note that Isaacman blathers about wonderful Artemis is, but fails to note that if this failure had occurred during launch, the launch would have failed and Orion would have had to do a launch abort.
Hello Bob,
And he has to know that, too. He has sufficient technical knowledge now. I’m not sure Bill Nelson ever did, but he surely does.
I’m sure this was meant as morale stroking for his peeps. But he says there will be another briefing shortly, and it sure would be good if a journalist were to ask him about that, point blank.
Or heck, they could fire a tweet at him. He likes to be chatty there, after all.
“We observed a similar failure signature on Artemis I.”
Because of course they did.
Mr. Zimmerman, Isaacman is very clearly telegraphing that while the Artemis program is worthwhile and should continue, the launch architecture will move away from SLS over time. He’s practically winking and nudging. Don’t know how he could say it any more loudly without losing his job.
Patrick Underwood: You are right of course. I even noted this in my essay two weeks ago, Isaacman: SLS stands on very thin ice. He is clearly telling all that SLS is in thin ice. It has to work as promised or he will push it aside.
At the same time, I feel no compunction to give NASA or Isaacman any wiggle room on this. Pressure must be brought to bear. We have been wasting billions on SLS for decades, because no one in DC had the courage to say what must be said. If Isaacman is going to join that crowd, I am going to give him hell for doing so.
And in so doing delay a return to the Moon by Americans even more–no thanks.
Blow fixable leaks out of proportion while winking and SpaceX core splitting wide open–Oh it is an experimental this and that. It all is Mr. Zimmerman–and the SLS guys deserve the same respect as the Starship guys
The whole SLS/Orion is a kludge. Garbage system, hugely expensive and short on flight performance as well as being disposable and unable to get any reasonable launch tempo. Why bother?
The fault was in the Delta IV upper stage–not Orion, not SLS
(After overnight data showed an interruption in helium flow in the SLS interim cryogenic propulsion stage, teams are troubleshooting and preparing for a likely rollback of Artemis II to the VAB)
Jeff Wright: Your rationalizations about SLS get weirder by the day. SLS stands for “Space Launch System.” That includes everything, the core stage, the solid-fueled boosters, the upper stage, the ground systems, everything. Making believe the upper stage isn’t part of this system is absurd.
It is a crummy rocket, over-priced, cumbersome, difficult to launch, and after all that, puts too little into orbit far too infrequently for an ungodly cost.
The SLS planned launch cadence cant even qualify it as a back up passenger or cargo rocket for the ISS.
If it does not fly once a month its just another rocket.
The poor excuse that we need a second launch vehicle just in case ALL of the other companies rockets fail at the same time is beyond the pail.
The only way that could happen is if the government shuts down all the launch vehicles from one company for some reason.
The fact that the problem is with the upper stage this time is remarkable — since as Jeff rightly notes, the SLS ICPS stage is really just a lightly modified Delta IV cryogenic upper stage. Theoretically, the most flight proven stage on the entire stack (47 launches if you count Artemis I).
But then again, ULA delivered this stage in 2021, so this has been sitting around in storage for a while…..
Jeff Wright,
I suspect Artemis 2 will fly – eventually. With a bit more duct tape in place than originally intended, likely enough, but fly. But when is definitely an issue. All we know about that now is for sure not in March. So NET April with even that being iffy until further notice.
Nothing about SLS was designed with easy repairability in mind. It’s a bit like working on a modern-day ICE car – the engine bay is so full of peripheral subsystem stuff that most of the labor charge for even minor parts replacement goes toward disassembling half or more of what’s under the hood in order to get at the offending widget, then nearly as much additional labor to slap it all back together.
There now seems a very good chance that Starship mission IFT-12 will fly by mid-March. If the Artemis 2 SLS blows through the April launch window as well as that for March, IFT-13 could also well fly before Artemis 2. After IFT-13, Starship missions should be coming thick and fast so it gets harder to predict how many we might see fly before Artemis 2 if the latter is delayed into late spring or early summer. As things stand, there are no announced launch windows for Artemis 2 beyond April. I’m sure there are some, but we just don’t know what they are yet. Starship, meanwhile, will be in a position to put more points on the board if all goes well.
With Elon now even more eager to get to the Moon than previously, I expect SpaceX is already working beyond flank speed both to get HLS Starship squared away and to develop, in parallel, the SLS-Orion replacement – what we used to call the Dear Moon-class Starship – that will be needed to make consequential lunar missions as frequent as Elon is going to need them to be. I think there’s a decent chance the latter vehicle might be ready – and proven – in time to sub in for SLS-Orion even on Artemis 3. We shall see.
Interestingly, well before he became NASA Administrator, Jared had already called dibs on commanding the first manned Earth-orbital shakedown of the Dear Moon-class Starship as the third of his Polaris missions. Be a heckuva note if he wound up doing that anyway while still in office as NASA Administrator.
Robert Zimmerman: the crux of the issue is, in my opinion: why are we going to space? I have no issue with exploration being part of the reason, just not as the raison d’être of spaceflight. I think it a waste to spend decades and tens of thousands of careers, plus billions or tens of billions of dollars, if settlement and bringing the solar system into our economic sphere are not the summum bonum of our endeavors. The government can be an excellent adjunct in that effort, much as the NACA was a significant benefit to the country and the aviation sector during its tenure-but that leaves most SLS advocates out in the cold.
Nate P, as has often been pointed out, it’s not in NASA’s charter to settle the solar system. NASA has been strictly a political tool, both foreign and domestic, since its inception, and purposely limited in its scope. (And seriously, who in the late 1950s, other than science fiction writers, could contemplate space settlement? Any policy maker would be laughed out of the room for even hinting at such a thing.) Be like me and take heart though—SpaceX, which stands on the shoulders of NASA giants but isn’t beholden to Congress, is leading a private wave of space colonization. For profit. Thank God for capitalism.
Jeff Wright… dude, you need to get a grip. Your home-team obsession is warping your take on reality.
Jeff Wright,
You wrote: “Blow fixable leaks out of proportion while winking and SpaceX core splitting wide open …”
You never learn. Starship is in the development phase, not the operational phase, as SLS is in, and SpaceX is fighting the rocket equation in order to get as much mass into orbit as possible and yet reuse the entire rocket. This is not easy, which is why they are using new engines with significantly higher chamber pressures than any other engine, ever. It is why they are working so hard to lighten the structure. Making a heavy lift rocket reusable is a serious challenge, so one wonders why SLS is so wimpy, considering it is expendable.
If those leaks are so fixable, then why, do you think, hasn’t NASA fixed them yet? They thought they were fixed after Artemis 1 but were wrong, and they only got them to work right once for Artemis II. Now they are discovering new problems in their supposedly operational system.
SLS (including Orion) is being treated as an operational system, but it is proving to still be not-yet-ready-for-prime-time. Because NASA treats it as operational, we have great expectations for it to operate better than Starship. Instead, it has launch-delaying problems, just like the developmental-phase Starship has.
SLS should still be in development, working out the kinks that are still being discovered, fixing and verifying the fixable leaks really are fixed, verifying the life support system, and verifying that the heat shield really does work as intended. SLS is such a terrible system that verification is difficult. For all that difficulty, they should have been able to make it reusable.
If the flaw was in the Delta IV upper stage, then why is the flaw there? That bird has been flying for quite some time, so why hasn’t that kink been worked out, yet? Once again, you blow out of proportion that the development program is still in development — why would you expect any different — while winking at the operational system that is flawed beyond launchability. Looks like a serious case of inexperience and bias on your part.
The future of SLS is dim.
Starship, on the other hand, already can launch far more often than SLS, for far less cost than SLS, and it looks like the current version can lift much more than SLS’s third expendable iteration might. You complain that a development program is showing growing pains, but you ignore the horrific flaws in your favored system. Flaws that have proven to be difficult to fix, yet Starship’s flaws are much more quickly fixed. Flaws despite SLS using the same hardware as the Shuttle, yet SpaceX has had to design and verify completely new hardware, and SpaceX is getting that hardware to do what NASA could not get SLS to do.
_____________
Nate P wrote: “The government can be an excellent adjunct in that effort, much as the NACA was a significant benefit to the country and the aviation sector during its tenure-but that leaves most SLS advocates out in the cold.”
The NACA model seems like an excellent use of NASA in the new commercial-space world. Rather than leading the effort in space, which is quickly falling to SpaceX and other commercial space companies, NASA can facilitate those companies in their endeavors. Patrick Underwood is right that commercial space companies can stand on the shoulders of NASA’s giants.
The government may still have some of its own goals for space, and NASA could conceivably be the operator for some or many of those projects.
We seem to be hurrying to return to the moon for our pride. I understand the desire to reach it before China does, but it is beginning to seem that we have forgotten the damage our pride will suffer if SLS experiences a catastrophic failure. More importantly, lives are at stake here.
Sending anything to the moon is an extremely complicated and expensive endeavor. While we have obviously spent huge sums of money on SLS, that money is gone. We need a true and objective study of SLS to determine if it is worth fixing, or if it should be scrapped in favor a fresh start on a better system.
F wrote, “We need a true and objective study of SLS to determine if it is worth fixing, or if it should be scrapped in favor a fresh start on a better system.”
NO MORE STUDIES! What we need is bold and direct action. Obama did it when he unilaterally canceled Ares. Trump did it when he shut down USAID and DEI within days of taking power. SLS can be dumped quite quickly if Trump had the courage. And yes, swamp-creatures like Cruz and others will whine loudly about it, but if done smartly, offering something in return, the move can work.
The groundwork for doing so is right there, with SpaceX and Blue Origin. We now have real alternatives. Let American private enterprise take over and do the job right, while dumping this government rocket with all the flaws that all government projects carry with them.
I don’t know why people here, including myself, continue to argue with Jeff Wright (who I imagine is a perfectly fine fellow IRL but wow, completely incomprehensible online). I should take my own advice and just stay silent.
SLS and Starliner are both doomed. Any launch vehicle relying on solids is doomed in the near term (a few years). Expendable launch vehicles are doomed within a decade, that span only possible because of parochial support (“Europe must have indigenous launch capability” etc.).
Falcon had an upper stage problem too…so I guess it also needs scrapping.
This D-IV upper stage had a pretty decent record too.
NewSpacers look for any excuse to attack things.
Should a Starship depot have a similar leak—it won’t have a MSS either.
Patrick Underwood: no, it isn’t in NASA’s charter, I know. What I’m implying there is that spaceflight should be driven almost exclusively by everyone but the government. It has worthwhile roles, but warping spaceflight (pun intended) to suit niche political goals ain’t it.
“My rocket tech killed 14 people. Its latest iteration requires three years between launches at $4.2B a pop, has yet to launch on time, hasn’t put a single person in orbit, and has a good chance of killing its crew due to known defects that we’ve decided to work around for political expediency. But YOUR rocket tech had some ground testing failures and a couple of minor issues on orbit while putting the vast majority of payload mass into orbit, perfecting booster reuse, and returning human spaceflight capability to the US with a perfect safety record so far. So there! Take THAT, SpaceX fanboi!!”
Whatever, Jeff.
Patrick Underwood: Heh. You asked why people are still responding to Jeff Wright and then provided the answer with this last well written satirical comment. It is because it is FUN. He is so off the wall he allows people an easy target.
Also, as Edward has noted repeatedly, he allows us to hone our arguments.
Jeff Wright,
Yes, Falcon had a 2nd stage glitch. It took SpaceX four days to fix it. Yes, Super Heavy B18 exploded on the Massey’s test stand after a damaged COPV let go. That one cost Spacex about 30 days including the time needed to stack an entire new Super Heavy – which has now passed its own pressure and cryo proof tests. One can only imagine how many years it would take SLS to recover from a comparable anomaly – probably more than my remaining statistical life expectancy. Maybe even more than yours.
Meanwhile, SLS and Orion are still having problems that they also had literally years ago. What have all of those supposed best-in-class engineers at MSFC been doing during all of that time? Not fixing or testing anything it would seem.
Here we see the difference between an organization with a solid goal and an organization with no goal other than self-perpetuation and keeping the parking lots full.
“”””””Meanwhile, SLS and Orion are still having problems that they also had literally years ago. What have all of those supposed best-in-class engineers at MSFC been doing during all of that time? Not fixing or testing anything it would seem.””””””
I wonder if the capable engineers at MSFC are allowed to fix things. The limited experience I have with cost plus mentality leads me to believe that effort is valued above results and that the effort will be dictated by the head office. IOW, the capable people often need far more time and effort, not to mention career risk, getting authorization to fix a problem than it takes to fix the actual problem. When your house payments and other living expenses depend on not rocking the boat………
john hare: I have heard many stories from people throughout the space industry who found fixes for all sorts of things, ways to reduce costs while keeping or improving reliability and safety, etc., but were denied because doing so threatened the gravy train. Unsurprisingly they’ve largely left those companies to start their own, or join firms that do encourage such things.
Mr. Zimmerman, yes I’m not good at following my own advice. Have to admit, in this case, Scotch was a contributing factor.
Nate P and john hare, if you haven’t already, check out Casey Handmer’s recollections of JPL. You are spot on.
Patrick Underwood,
You wrote: “I don’t know why people here, including myself, continue to argue with Jeff Wright (who I imagine is a perfectly fine fellow IRL but wow, completely incomprehensible online). I should take my own advice and just stay silent.”
No, no. Jeff is a blessing. To add to Robert‘s comment that we hone our arguments on his topics, in favor or against: Even I have finally realized that the difficulty that SpaceX has with Starship is the rocket equation, which hates carrying extra propellants for boost back burns and detests carrying propellants for powered landings. It is why no one put jet engines on the Shuttle, Buran, the X-15, or other rockets. The weight penalty was not seen as advantageous, but SpaceX saw that the extra propellant and reduced payload capacity was the secret to reusability and greatly reduced cost per kilogram (or pound, in civilized units).
Even you, Patrick, brought out some points that I haven’t heard or rarely heard before. Keep it up.
The part where Jeff is incoherent seems to come from his thinking that we are all just as familiar with historical projects, rejected projects, and science fiction as he is, but we can either ignore the confusing comments or look up the obscure references.
Unfortunately, Jeff also makes me think lesser of NASA, which I consider a downside, because I want Trump and Isaacman to Make NASA Great. Again (MANAGA). It once was a symbol of American technocracy, but now it is not even trying to catch up to commercial space’s more advanced technocracy.
Patrick Underwood:
I read Mr. Handmer’s blog from time to time; he’s a pretty good author, and while I don’t agree with everything he writes (who would?), he at least makes a good effort at being a) positive, b) inspirational, c) math-based, and d) mission-focused. I wish he could post some of the letters that he’s gotten from other JPLers, I’m sure they’d be fascinating and a scathing indictment of the culture there.
Edward:
My issue with Jeff is that he doesn’t appear to understand that none of the rest of us hate NASA, or even MSFC-we don’t object to the SLS for tribal reasons or because we want SpaceX to ‘win,’ we object to the SLS with more robust rationale-whether financial, chronological, the missed opportunities, etc. I object to it for many reasons, but one of them is that the rocket contributes very little to American flourishing. I can see him reading these lines and preparing to retort that it employs thousands, which is true, but it will never open space to settlement or economic use. Whether manufacturing, mining, communications, or energy, the SLS won’t launch a single payload for any of them, and none of the companies tackling those challenges can afford an SLS launch anyway-or the delays waiting on it to be ready. I’m not trying to pick on the SLS or be unfair, but I think if one is willing to honestly examine the SLS’s prospects, its support among politicians, and the comments from the military and private sector, it’s hard to come to any other conclusion. Yes, in principle all sorts of things could happen. They just won’t in practice. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with imagining that our favorite rockets will do this or that. If we hope to persuade skeptics, though, we do ourselves a disservice to not ground ourselves thoroughly in the realm of the possible.
Dick Eagleson: yes, NASA has been captured by bureaucrats, and its mission has transformed from being primarily about spaceflight with the bureaucratic superstructure to support it, into a bureaucracy with a space focus as an appendage. The space part is almost entirely incidental now, the bureaucracy cares much less what is done, and much more where and who is doing it. The unfortunate folks who have been persuaded that NASA is more than a sclerotic morass overrun by apparatchiks will have an increasingly hard time justifying their faith, as NASA becomes less and less effective.
Update from NASA: “Weather pending, NASA will roll the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft for Artemis II off the launch pad at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida as soon as Tuesday, Feb. 24.”
Geez, SpaceX would have had a Starship stack back in the Megabay before dusk.
All this SLS talk made me look up the latest news on the RS-25 engine. The factory is restarting production aiming at a rate of 4 per year!
An amazing engine in raw performance, but it is not better than BE-4 or Raptor 3.
But hey, I posted here a while ago that I expected only one launch of SLS.
I asked google ai “will artemis 2 orbit the moon.”
And it said “Yes, … but formally … no”
Funny double speak.
I sense frustration in Jeff’s comments. It’s understandable.
Jeff sounds like a true believer in the established NASA/contractor ecosystem to once again build something great.
And years ago he had some reasons to be optimistic. The half-baked shuttle program was being wound down and America needed a new way into space. First there was talk of getting to ISS, going to the moon and and even Mars with Constellation, then ISS and the moon with Ares, and ultimately the moon focused SLS.
No SSTO, but at least NASA would be running the show, almost. The ISS mission was being given to private/gov’t contractors but hey no worries, private space might eventually make deliveries to ISS but ya need the real guys at NASA for the serious stuff like heavy lift and human flight. Rocket science is… rocket science and a private company trying to compete with NASA and cronies would be like starting a car company from scratch.
And since the new rockets would be using proven. existing hardware it should be easy to stay close to schedule and budget (with the customary overrun of course).
And it might have worked if that guy who did start a car company hadn’t started a rocket company.
Still, it’s somewhat astounding that even with the ax hanging over their heads the NASA that launched over 100 shuttle flights can’t get an assemblage of shuttle parts ready to launch because of leak issues that they have been aware of for over a year,
Has the institutional knowledge walked out the door? (As john hare and Nate P discussed).
And poor Jeff is left like Gil the salesman from The Simpsons. He keeps trying to make the sale hoping the product will one day actually work.
As it happens many in the auto industry have similar questions especially in regard to GM’s 6.2L V8. An evolution of an old school engine is now eating crankshafts and GM doesn’t know how to, or doesn’t care to fix it, even though it’s costing millions in warranty claims and wrecking the reputation of their most profitable models. Why can’t they do what they had been able to do for decades?
With respect, the only way there will be no studies for SLS as a program and system would be for it to continue on its current course. You can bet good money that if the program were canceled, there would be all kinds of studies, demanded by politicians on both sides of the aisle and for their own purposes.
From the standpoint of good management, I agree that we have all the information we need to have determined that SLS is deeply flawed. In reality, however, we must also contend with politics.
It isn’t just SLS…right now the S.S United States is set to be sunk as some bloody reef. A ship with OUR NATION’s name on it mind you.
That has me angrier. I want a MSS for Artemis ASAP.
Jeff Wright: you’re not going to get one. That’s what the VAB is for.
You generally avoid direct questions, but I’ll be foolish and ask one anyway: assume the SLS and ISS programs have ended, and Congress/the White House won’t authorize any further space station or rocket development by NASA. They have to stick solely with commercial providers for both. What would you like to see MSFC doing in that world?
Nate P,
“My issue with Jeff is …”
Don’t worry about Jeff. He does not listen. Mitch S. is correct that Jeff is a true believer, and no amount of logic, intelligent argument, or other persuasivenesses will change his mind. Anyone with alternate opinions, he thinks, is a heretic.
However, sometimes looking up his obscure references can give us an education on things that we didn’t know before. It is too bad that he is not open to similar educations.
The Ansari X-Prize changed the world, and many people are unable to cope with civilians now being capable of doing what once took entire major governments to do. The rest of us are excited at the prospects that the X-Prize brought, the competition that commercial space brought, and the reduced launch prices that innovations brought. We are finally beginning to get the things in space that Disney and von Braun told us about, seven decades ago. We had expected these great things from NASA, thinking that the government works for us (after all, we are the ones who pay them the money), but we have now learned that if we want those great things, we have to do them ourselves. And it turns out that we can make money doing them, too! How great is that?
Jeff will never understand that SLS is a much worse version of Saturn, and that Artemis is a much worse version of Apollo. He will never understand the difference between SLS and Starship or that Starship is, like Apollo, trying to do the absolute impossible. The rocket equation tells us just how difficult it is to get into space, and it tells SpaceX just how impossible it is to make a reusable rocket that takes 250 tons of payload into orbit. But, 250 tons is SpaceX’s stretch goal with Starship (up from 100 tons and 150 tons), and their latest version of Raptor gives them a snowball’s chance in hell, but that is a better chance than anyone else would give them.
So, don’t worry about Jeff. He will always treat us as nincompoops for not being fellow NASA true believers. Let that water roll off your back and continue to work for a better future in space and better products from space. Finally, rejoice in the part that he played in drawing you into writing to me an entire paragraph focused on what you believe. Would you ever have put all that together if Jeff had not been there to tease you into gathering your thoughts in one place? You have expressed yourself well and succinctly, which is more than I can say with this particular comment to you.
The point is not to sway or persuade Jeff. The point is that you have an audience when you respond to him. You bring your ideas to the rest of us, and we take them in, ponder them, reject some but incorporate others into our own thinking and our own future arguments. Because we do not always agree with him, Jeff may think that we are an echo chamber (I have used a few for acoustic testing of flight hardware — and I have used anechoic chambers to test the very same hardware, go figure), but in reality we present each other with a variety of differing ideas. Jeff may think they are all the same idea, because they are not his idea, and he may live in a world where there are only two ideas: 1) his, and 2) others.
Edward observed: ” . . . but we have now learned that if we want those great things, we have to do them ourselves.”
It has always been so. The United States of America was founded on the idea that individual vision and effort unfettered by mediocre busybodies is the best way in an imperfect world to realize Human potential.
Nate P writes:
“Dick Eagleson: yes, NASA has been captured by bureaucrats, and its mission has transformed from being primarily about spaceflight with the bureaucratic superstructure to support it, into a bureaucracy with a space focus as an appendage. The space part is almost entirely incidental now, the bureaucracy cares much less what is done, and much more where and who is doing it.”
I think there’s another contributor to the present NASA sclerosis and that is that when it was created it was given a single, well defined highly focused goal: land people the moon before 1970. Which it did.
And after that there were no well defined, focused goals. It wouldn’t be the first organization – or human for that matter – who excels with a well defined goal but once that goal is accomplished and they are now faced with being able to do anything – and having to choose it – flounder. In this sense NASA was not – and is not – a leader. It was a talented engineer who does great when given a well defined, focused task but who fails when it has to then chart a future. Good at engineering; bad at life planning.
“I think there’s another contributor to the present NASA sclerosis and that is that when it was created it was given a single, well defined highly focused goal: land people the moon before 1970.”
That wasn’t NASA’s mission until 1961, though!
Jeff Wright,
The S.S. United States has a certain amount in common with SLS in that it is a distillation and apotheosis of a certain technology that had the misfortune to come along at a time when a completely new paradigm was replacing it and its entire ancestry. The S.S. United States was a hot rod ocean liner that would have kicked ass in the 1920s and 1930s but had the misfortune to have been built just as large airliners were taking over the trans-Atlantic passenger transport business. Similarly, SLS is the last in a line of expendable rockets that had the misfortune to come along just as reusable rockets appeared and rendered it redundant.
I had a dream that Issacman took the crew off Artemis II and turned it into an unmanned test flight.
Could it come true? Before SpaceX put humans on F9/Dragon it had over 20 successful flights. Issacman rode on a well tested rocket.
Now despite the engineers assurances, he’s about to put humans on a rocket that flew once. Could he be hearing Bob Z’s concerns as the rocket is rolled back into the VAB for more unanticipated repairs?
If you are finding problems before launch, what might come up after you “light the candle”?
One of the things that aerospace has no problems doing is turning its vehicles into lawn ornaments when they are replaced by something better, cheaper, more operable, or because they don’t work anymore. Most of the airframes you see in or around military bases were perfectly operable airframes. For those of us who used to be in the business, it is a sadness to see something like that on a pedestal.
Usually, the airframes end up at the Boneyard where they wait a while before being cut into scrap. Sometimes they are immediately scrapped (YB-35 / YB-49). Sometimes they are returned to service (A-1 Skyraider)
Likewise, we have the S-V stacks for Apollo 18, 19 and 20, all perfectly operable, now lawn ornaments. Add to that the 4 orbiters and the second Skylab in Air and Space. Even SpaceX keeps prototypes for a while in their Rocket Garden.
If SLS can’t fly, it can be retired, turned into a couple lawn ornaments that we can contemplate at our leisure. There are worse things. Cheers –
Richard M writes:
“That wasn’t NASA’s mission until 1961, though!”
That’s true. Before that it was to get someone into space. But the fact that the moon goal didn’t appear until 1961 doesn’t affect my point:
NASA, so far has, been like a talented engineer who can do wonders when told what to do. But without focused direction it flounders.
The fantasies that people still hold of a “great NASA” able to accomplish great things remain nothing more than fantasies. NASA is a government agency. It can never accomplish anything even close to what free enterprise and private industry can do. Never. It will always be saddled with Congressional and Presidential politics that warp its effort in ways that prevent the best achievement.
SLS is the worst example of this. But the shuttle program was not much better.
The 1960s space race was the exception to the rule, a rare coming together of events producing a successful government program. Sadly we as a nation have become conned by that unusual exception, and continue to believe that we can repeat it easily.
We now have a half century of history post-Apollo telling us this fantasy is a lie.
It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. It appears to me that when it comes to NASA, the American people remain quite insane.
GeorgeC,
That 4/yr. production rate for new RS-25s is likely most of the reason they will cost well north of $100 million apiece. What is even sadder is that, as ridiculous as that mingy production rate sounds, it’s actually twice as fast as needed to keep up with the fly-every-other-year pace for SLS that NASA plans currently contemplate. Even that pathetic cadence, though, is still aspirational. Assuming nothing catastrophic ensues with Artemis 2, that cadence will only be achieved if Artemis 3 flies in 2028.
Without SpaceX, the US would be well and truly screwed where manned spaceflight is concerned. We can only eagerly await the debut of what I’ve been calling the Dear Moon-class Starship so that the long national nightmare that is SLS can finally be put behind us. Elon absolutely needs such a beast to realize his recently articulated lunar plans and it is likely already quietly paralleling HLS Starship in development. That no official word of such has come, as yet, from SpaceX I attribute entirely to political discretion on Elon’s part. We probably won’t hear about it, officially, until shortly before its first unmanned test flight.
Dick Eagleson: I long ago predicted the first SLS/Orion manned landing mission would not happen prior to 2030. I stand by that prediction.
Saville wrote: “I think there’s another contributor to the present NASA sclerosis and that is that when it was created it was given a single, well defined highly focused goal …”
More accurately, the goal and mission came after NASA’s creation, but the point is well taken. After Apollo, NASA’s mission was less clear. It was still the sole caretaker of America’s space program, as directed by the president and funded by Congress. NASA follows these leaders, who did not lead anything in space. Thus, little American activity occurred in space that was not government run.
This changed with the Ansari X-Prize. Americans discovered that they had the resources to do it ourselves. There had been previous attempts, but funding was difficult, as the competition was the very powerful government. Even Steely Eyed Rocketman, Truax, couldn’t get funding to start up his own launch company, sometime around 1980, and the government soon after declared that the Space Shuttle would be America’s sole launch provider. The great and powerful Oz — I mean government — had spoken!
The X-Prize showed everyone that there was a curtain, and we more recently discovered what was behind that curtain, and he wasn’t so great and powerful after all. Sure, he huffed and he puffed, but he didn’t get much done. By Obama’s presidency, NASA was adrift, given bizarre tasks, such as capture an astroid, but it had insufficient hardware and minimal funding. Now that NASA has another goal — oh, wait, it is the same goal as before! — NASA still has insufficient hardware and minimal funding. Government is not serious about space, but many Americans are.
So, yes, after Apollo, government should have gotten out of the space business and left it to We the People. Instead, we relied upon government, which is supposed to be of us, by us, and for us, and we assumed that government would do what we expected. We didn’t realize it then, but we were already turning marxist. Conned, as Robert noted, above.
No wonder America has lost its way. We were trained to rely heavily upon government for things we could do ourselves — and do them the way we wanted, not the way government would give them to us. So we are waking up and smelling the acrid flames of our crashed hopes and dreams of a NASA-run space program. Yet another failure of socialism in America.
‘There is far more capital available outside of NASA [for use by commercial space marketplace] than there is inside of NASA.’ — paraphrased from an interview with NASA Administrator Bridenstine on the Ben Shapiro radio show on Monday 3 August 2020.
_____________
Robert wrote: “I long ago predicted the first SLS/Orion manned landing mission would not happen prior to 2030. I stand by that prediction.”
SLS is already down to 3½ years between launches, so it still has a chance to launch in 2029. Or it would have that chance if its second launch can actually be 3½ years after the first.
Dick Eagleson: “We can only eagerly await the debut of what I’ve been calling the Dear Moon-class Starship… We probably won’t hear about it, officially, until shortly before its first unmanned test flight.”
Is it possible that the “Dear Moon” version would be essentially identical to the HLS as designed to work with Orion, to the point that, in what would surely be the ultimate “Hold My Beer” moment of all time, SpaceX could context-switch and do the mission without SLS?
A Dragon would have to transfer a crew to a fully-filled HLS in LEO. Then the crewed HLS would go TLI and land on the Moon. It would then support the crew’s explorations, and re-launch from the lunar surface. So far this is all within existing vehicle capabilities already demonstrated, or expected in support of Orion.
The rest of the mission would be designed to get HLS back to an orbit where the crew could transfer to a Dragon and re-enter and land on Earth. This would certainly involve a “down” Dragon in addition to the “up” one, but the real trick would be to define the HLS / Dragon handoff to take advantage of the capabilities of both vehicles within comfortable safety margins.
Yes, additional tankers could be involved, but adding more ships and more docking at this point seems to go back towards the complexity that makes the current mission architecture ugly!
What could trigger this mission? A late attempt to get in a landing prior to the Chinese or the end of Trump’s service would probably be politically unwise.
But if the present trend of problems continue to multiply, Isaacman could well say “Enough!”, and point his finger toward Elon!
Robert Zimmerman,
I would not necessarily say you nay on that 2030 prediction. Thing is, if SLS-Orion indeed takes that long to be ready for its third go, I think it highly probable that SpaceX will be able to ninja SLS-Orion to the Moon for Artemis 3 with a Dear Moon-class Starship in combination with an HLS Starship well before that. NASA and the political Amen Corner for SLS-Orion wouldn’t like that. But, given that a lot of said Amen Corner is also part of the Beat the Chinese[tm] Caucus, I think they’d put up with the swap. They might hold their noses while doing so, but they wouldn’t put up any roadblocks.
Whatever befalls, the next four years seem all but certain to be more eventful than any comparable interval since the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Dick Eagleson wrote, “if SLS-Orion indeed takes that long to be ready for its third go, I think it highly probable that SpaceX will be able to ninja SLS-Orion to the Moon for Artemis 3 with a Dear Moon-class Starship in combination with an HLS Starship well before that.”
Yup. Which is why I have been saying now for almost a year that the real American space program is not Artemis but SpaceX. This is exactly what I believe will happen.
In fact, I can see nothing in the way of Starship/Superheavy plus a lunar landing Starship getting there before SLS or Orion are ready. If anything, SLS and Orion have too many issues to beat SpaceX to the Moon.
And the political pressure to beat China will work in SpaceX’s favor.
No one in Washington realizes it yet, but NASA is NOT America’s space program, and hasn’t been now for at least a decade.
Ray Van Dune,
No. The Dear Moon-class Starship will be equipped to launch a large crew directly from Earth’s surface to lunar orbit where said crew will transfer to an HLS Starship for descent to the lunar surface. It will have a standard docking adapter under a swing-away nose cap like Dragon, as well as flaps and TPS tiles capable of handling a direct-entry EDL back to Earth. There will be no Dragons involved. Elon is going to need to be able to send hundreds of people to the lunar surface and support them there. That ain’t gonna happen four-at-a-time with Dragons.
I suppose I should mention once in a while that I am not as convinced as some that Starship will be as effective as many suggest. It will succeed technically but fall short financially is my prediction.
Better than SLS is such a low bar that comparison is an insult. Electron is better than SLS. Apologies to electron.
I do not see Dragon involved except as an early stopgap for initial crews. I have great doubts that Starship could be ready in time if it was expected to launch with a crew.
In the long run, I think it is an open question whether spaceships launch from the ground with their full crew. Ferry up and down for the crew may make more sense. Ferries (capsules, spaceplanes) do the Earth gravity well, spaceships do space.
To Mitch,
Never bet against dreams.
I have to push back on the idea of SLS being a worse vehicle than Saturn, in that you really don’t see 3rd stages across the board.
Musk’s Starship is supposed to be a Two-Stage-To-BEO (TSTB) to coin a new acronym–but with Rube Goldberg refueling.
Had SLS been SpaceX, and had Starship been MSFC ‘s I would still call to support both.
Bad leaks in LEO are concerning to me. If SLS gets killed, and Starship comes apart up there–damage that one-two punch will have will be substantial.
On-orbit refilling is essential to escape the tyranny of the rocket equation. Without it, you are forced to launch huge amounts of mass to lift comparatively tiny payloads. See Apollo and SLS. With it, you get to start over outside of the gravity pit we live in, go on from there!
Jeff Wright: you can push back all you like, it won’t change reality. The SLS flies less often, carries less, and costs more.
Refueling is Rube Goldbergian? Maybe if one is a rube themselves. You’re concern trolling, trying to convince people to stop supporting developing cryogenic refueling.
john hare,
I’m not sure what you mean by Starship “falling short financially.” If it costs less to turn around a Starship stack than it does to turn around an F9 booster and build a new F9 2nd stage – which seems likely – then Starship will have better economics than F9 even for F9-class payloads. But, except when transporting crews, I think Starships will mostly carry maximum payloads. The most frequent Starship mission type seems certain to be Earth-to-LEO-depot tanker runs. These will always carry maximum payloads. So will freight-only Starship missions heading Moonward. These will mainly be in service of Elon’s lunar industrialization project.
Profit margin on the launch itself is not a relevant concept for intra-company flights. For such missions, Starship will succeed financially if it provides the cheapest per-pound freight rate possible on that run – which I think is quite a safe assumption. The profit comes down the road from what revenue will be generated, either directly or indirectly, by the transported payloads as is currently the case with Starlink satellites. In short, if Starship works technically, it pretty much can’t “fall short” financially.
Anent 2nd party payloads, I see no competitive pressure in prospect that would force SpaceX to price Starship launches so low as to actually lose money on each such. In terms of what’s coming up, the worst scenario I can foresee is that Stoke’s Nova winds up with operating economics good enough to successfully challenge Starship for small payloads. This seems to me to be a fairly likely outcome. SpaceX won’t miss that business as it will have its hands quite full with internally-generated maximum payloads and Golden Dome-related maximum payloads.
One question mark is what becomes of the Transporter and Bandwagon rideshare missions in a post-Falcon era. Perhaps SpaceX will see fit to continue these using Starship. But it would not shock me if SpaceX simply left that market to other low-cost, smaller-scale providers such as Stoke. We shall see.
Ray Van Dune,
Your posited ferry-to-in-space-transport-to-lander architecture may eventually make sense for deep space missions beyond the Moon, but I don’t see it making much sense for going somewhere as close as the Moon. Adding an extra rendezvous and crew transfer step to a mission that short would make it materially longer and time is money.
At the other end of very deep space missions, only Mars and Titan, which have atmospheres, would perhaps benefit from specialized landers – or the Venusian upper atmosphere I suppose. Everywhere else would be places where the long-haul transport craft would just land or even just fly in formation with the destination. For long stays at such places, a rotating space station would best be sent ahead or in company too. The transport vehicle and such a station might even be combined.
Jeff Wright,
Refueling multiple times at high speed in a turbulent atmosphere is a lot more “Rube Goldberg-ish” than what SpaceX plans to do in LEO and yet the USAF has been routinely doing so for decades in order to conduct “global reach” missions of various kinds. The Iranians can testify to the efficacy of the approach.
The SpaceX refilling architecture also allows the recipient spacecraft to only need to mate with its orbiting milch cow once per mission. The multiple missions needed to fill the milch cow’s tanks take place previously – perhaps quite a bit previously – and are just exercises in robotic dancing far less demanding than the pas de deux between the Pan Am shuttle and the rotating space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey..
John hare,
“I suppose I should mention once in a while that I am not as convinced as some that Starship will be as effective as many suggest. It will succeed technically but fall short financially is my prediction.”
Starship could be a loss leader to other projects in space, but it can lift so much – already 100 tons and potentially 200 tons, or four to eight times as much as Falcon 9 — that it could be priced fairly high and still find many, many customers. It would be as inexpensive per pound if it were priced four to eight times as much as Falcon 9. The per pound price for Starship is likely to be astonishingly low.
___________
Jeff Wright wrote; “Had SLS been SpaceX, and had Starship been MSFC ‘s …”
SpaceX would never have made something as awful as SLS. That would have put them out of business and lost the respect of everyone on the planet.
Had MSFC made Starship, then they would still be the gods of the space industry. They didn’t, so they aren’t.
Reaction being the main reason I don’t mention it that often. Trying for just enough to let some know that I see it differently. I don’t even bash SLS/Orion that often for similar reasons. A joke may or may not be funny the first time. It is annoying after dozens to hundreds of repetitions. Similar with opinions.
Edward: per-pound cost is useful, but a Starship carrying 200 tons that cost $200 million wouldn’t command nearly so many customers as one priced at $50 million. It would still find customers when more expensive if there was quite a bit of money being made off Earth, such as if asteroid mining, manufacturing, or space solar power were all big business, but we’re not there yet.
john hare: where do you see SpaceX’s least compressible costs? Personnel? Manufacturing? Lifespan amortization? Ground facilities? A mix? Something else?
Bob Z writes:
Which ought to be undeniable at this point. Most of the denial out there is driven by a) nostalgia, or b) motivated reasoning (ideology or a paycheck).
Charles Murray’s telling of the Apollo story argues that NASA got away with that rare coming-together only because agency leadership was able to take advantage of NASA being a brand new government organization to manage it ruthlessly to reach Apollo’s objective just barely in time before NASA got “bureaucratized” and Pournelle’s Iron law of Bureaucracy finally took hold.
But it’s quite thoroughly bureaucratized now, and worse, politicized, too. God willin’ and the creek don’t rise, Jared Isaacman might be able to optimize what remains (at least until the day he leaves the job), but that will be of limited value if any of what he optimizes is the kind of activity the agency really has no business doing any longer. Like launching stuff into space, for example.
Nate P,
“per-pound cost is useful, but a Starship carrying 200 tons that cost $200 million wouldn’t command nearly so many customers as one priced at $50 million. It would still find customers when more expensive if there was quite a bit of money being made off Earth, such as if asteroid mining, manufacturing, or space solar power were all big business, but we’re not there yet.”
That was the point I thought I had made. Even at Falcon 9 prices there would be plenty of customers, especially customers that wanted to launch heavier payloads, such as deep space probes that have the propellant for high delta-v, heavy low Earth orbit space station modules, or something in-between. The price will still be affordable. A lower the price tag for the launch encourages even more payloads to be built, just as happened with Falcon 9.
SpaceX has an even greater incentive to reduce its own costs of launch. High costs will inhibit its plans for Mars colonization and for lunar facilities. As with the Falcons, finding the right price point is important. Right now, their Falcons are very busy, pretty much as many launches as possible, and they are launching all the demand for them. The price point seems to be about right. If demand for launches increases, then the price of the Falcons can increase in order to moderate the demand back down so that SpaceX can continue to meet that demand (including launching its own Starlinks). If they increase the Falcon cadence (more supply) beyond the demand, then they can reduce the price of launches in order to modulate the demand to fill the supply of launches.
The same philosophy applies to Starship. Finding the proper price point so that customers come as fast as Starship can launch is important. A price that is too low would result in customer demand that they cannot meet, frustrating the customer base and likely harming SpaceX’s own plans for Starship use as they work to meet the demand from other customers.
SpaceX wants a high launch cadence capability in order to support its Mars colony, but that has a window that comes around every couple of years, so what will they do with that capability in the meantime? They will launch other customers’ payloads. Their lunar and orbital data centers plan can cover some of those other launches, for the eighty percent of the time between launch windows.
A business can try to maximize profit, but it can also try to maximize its productivity. Starship is not only being designed to maximize its lift capability (can they reach a 250 ton payload?) but to be cheap to manufacture and operate. This leaves plenty of room for a price point that maximizes profit or that rectifies the demand to completely fill the eventual launch cadence.