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NASA's big launch
Rocky Raab
Member Posts: 14,198 ✭✭✭✭
Tomorrow, NASA will attempt to return to space after an 11-year hiatus in which it had no launch vehicles at all. Their Artemis rocket will generate the most thrust of any space vehicle ever launched to date - some 8.8 million pounds. It will send an un-piloted Orion crew capsule to a point thousands of miles beyond the moon, then brush past the moon before returning to earth in October. Liftoff window is set for 8:33 to 10:33 am Eastern; NASA TV coverage will begin about four hours before the launch.
To read lots more about the mission, some press kit material can be found here:
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/around-the-moon-with-nasa-s-first-launch-of-sls-with-orion
I may be a bit crazy - but I didn't drive myself.
Comments
Will be watching. Best of luck with it.
This stuff has amazed me since Alan Shepard took his ride.
+1
When I watched Shepard's flight, I thought it would be great to be an astronaut, but what I really wanted to be was the countdown guy.
Thanks for the video. This is unbelievable. There are a lot of smart people responsible for this. I have trouble putting gas in my lawn mower.😉
I have been a NASA die-hard fanatic for more than half a century. Hard to say, but that has died.
They have become a stodgy, risk-averse, timid organization resting solely on past laurels. It's sad.
This Artemis (named for a female Greek goddess. Female.) is 11 years late and now will cost eight times what they originally said. It's now $4.1 BILLION PER LAUNCH. That is not sustainable. It is doomed.
Elon Musk will have a vehicle on Mars while NASA is still confusedly flipping pages on their clipboard.
Pretty much feel the same. Having worked for a govt contractor who supplied parts for every one of the govt. space programs I just hope mankind can advance and stay ahead of our enemies in technology regardless what company or organization does it.
Seems we are back to the Appolo days, a lot goes up and not much comes back down (hopefully). Musk will have EV re-charging stations up there before NASA gets men there.😈
Fueling continues, but there's a problem with chilling the #3 liquid engine. They're working the issue.
I have watched other rocket launch’s from the top of space mountain. They are really neat to watch at night. I won’t be able to go up on the roof and watch the launch as the park is open for resort guests and being seen on a roof is very much frowned upon.
They've been troubleshooting that cooling issue now for two hours, and there was only a two-hour launch window. I'm predicting that they don't go today.
I have a golf tee time in an hour from now, so I'm going to sign off here for a few hours. Anybody else may update the launch or scrub as desired.
The news says they had a fuel leak. I wonder if they use Speedy Dry to clean it up?
As I was going out the door, I heard that they have scrubbed for today. Next possible launch is Friday, IF they can fix the issue before then.
It was NOT a fuel leak. They could not get Hydrogen to flow to the #3 engine's cooling ducts. A valve issue.
Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson scrubbed the Monday launch at about 8:35 ET, NASA spokesperson Derrol Nail said on NASA’s livestream of the launch.
The postponement was due to an “engine bleed that couldn’t be remedied,” Nail said.
The launch was previously under an “unplanned hold” due to the issue with the third engine, NASA tweeted 20 minutes ahead of the scheduled launch, following reports the launch would be called off for Monday entirely.
Cancelled!
NASA is a joke nowadays. Maybe they should go back to teaching math to muslims or whatever it was barry told them to do.
The first launch of a brand new vehicle cannot be expected to go off without a hitch. I can't think of a new rocket that didn't scrub at least once before the first liftoff.
They will all watch the movie October Sky..then get to work and figure it out.
I say, what was wrong with the Saturn 5?
I think it was cost
There were significant problems with the F-1 Engine leading up to the first test flight. Fuel flow issues, run away turbo pumps, and a buffeting problem that was corrected, but from what I remember, was never really solved.
Obviously Apollo 1 revealed a major flaw that had to be corrected.
Brad Steele
Apollo 1 was a capsule problem, not the rocket. What I meant above was not about problems with the rocket, but that it is almost expected for a first test flight to not go on the first try. Every first launch attempt I can think of scrubbed the first try - and sometimes several more after that. The Saturn V did, too. But it never failed in flight.
It rather surprised me that NASA did not do a Flight Readiness Firing with this SLS, as they did with the Space Shuttle long ago. They only did a "wet dress rehearsal" which involves fueling the vehicle, but not igniting the engines. Even that didn't go well after two tries, but NASA said "Close enough." Which was COMPLETELY out of character for them.
Self-imposed pressure because the thing is a decade late as is? Maybe. But it's a damn good thing there's no crew on this one.
The Saturn 5 was an "oldie but a goodie." Why didn't they just build a new Saturn 5?
Because of the issues described above. Yes, it always worked, but it was horribly inefficient and never fully solved the F-1 engine "pogo" issues of surging. POGO was a longitudinal thrust oscillation in which the engine thrust increased and decreased in cycles of once a second to several times a second. It was like getting kicked in the butt at those rates and could actually shake the whole vehicle apart. Other rockets actually did blow up for that reason. Engineers likened it to riding a pogo stick. It was a serious issue.
It is not just the rocket. EVERYTHING from the VAB to the mobile launch platform to the pad towers, fuel storage, piping, and zillions of other things would have to be changed to fly Saturn 5s again. They were all massively altered to go from Saturn to Shuttle and then again to SLS. Not to mention that all of the manufacturing jigs and facilities are gone forever.
We might as well ask, "Why don't they just build more '57 Chevys?"
In reality thay can't duplicate the Saturn 5 F-1 engines because while they were fiddeling (tuning ) with the engines in search of a solution to various problems they just kept notes and didn't update the master drawings along the way. They never did update those drawings. The final configuration was never documneted and all the problems never solved.
The company I worked for made several components for contractors to NASA - mosstly for North American. We made teh gearing for teh fuel pumps on the Atlas rockets and the fuel pump shaft for the F-1 engine = a 55,000 HP fuel pump shaft. On a summer job as a stock mover i used ot move these shafts from work center to work center and they were still making them when I joined teh company after graduating from collegs. Cousin Neal also graduated form the same school but quite a few years before me. Purdue produced a fair percentage of the early astronauts.
Just read they have rescheduled the launch for Sunday.
"Why don't they just build more '57 Chevys?"
I know what you mean. I've been asking that for 40 years.
The agency announced today (Aug. 30) that it's now targeting Saturday (Sept. 3) for the launch of Artemis 1, a crucial mission whose first liftoff attempt on Monday (Aug. 29) was scuttled by a technical issue.
If all goes according to plan, Artemis 1 will launch from Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida during a two-hour window that opens at 2:17 p.m. EDT
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Should be cool
Well, I know on rockets you gotta have the right amounts of baking soda and vinegar
No no, that's for Science Fair volcanoes.
Tomorrow Afternoon
Gonna be a long day in my chair. Air Force football, the Artemis attempt, and then Notre Dame.
Hey Rocky, can you pull a few strings for me and have them hold the launch until 3 o'clock? Michigan vs Colorado starts at noon and might not be over before 2:17. Oh who am I kidding, Michigan will be ahead by at least 20 pts by then, so I can turn them off and catch the launch. 😁 Bob
Nor is there any strong likelihood the launch will go at 2:17, either. As I said earlier, first test launches never go as expected.
I'll be watching Air Force, which won't be TV broadcast. So I'l have to stream it online and switch back and forth to NASA.
These days it's Diet Coke and Mentos(sp?)..........I think. 🤔
Fueling THAT candle would take a whole bunch of 2-liter bottles.
They're fueling it right now. It takes six hours to fill it. And they've already had to stop while they troubleshoot another hydrogen leak.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s new moon rocket sprang another dangerous fuel leak Saturday, forcing launch controllers to call off their second attempt to send a crew capsule into lunar orbit with test dummies.
The first attempt earlier in the week was also marred by escaping hydrogen, but those leaks were elsewhere on the 322-foot (98-meter) rocket, the most powerful ever built by NASA.
There was no immediate word on when NASA might try again. After Tuesday, a two-week launch blackout period kicks in. Extensive fuel leak repairs could require that the rocket be hauled off the pad and back into its hangar, possibly pushing the flight into October.
Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson and her team tried to plug Saturday’s leak the way they did the last time: stopping and restarting the flow of super-cold liquid hydrogen in hopes of removing the gap around a seal in the supply line. They tried that twice, in fact, and also flushed helium through the line. But the leak persisted.
Blackwell-Thompson finally halted the countdown after three to four hours of futile effort.
Thanks for posting, Allen. I was out doing a grocery run.
"Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson and HER team"
I think I've discovered the problem.