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After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

arstechnica.com

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Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#91

Post by foobarian »

tailspin2019 wrote: post #37

You have to fail to move forwards. A lack of failure is a sign of a lack of trying anything new. Hasn’t SpaceX proved that? The negative commentary around this seems a little in contrast to how we’d talk about a SpaceX “failure” on HN. I know NASA and SpaceX are very different, but Elon is the king of drifting deadlines too. And SpaceX do fail, but they do a good job of “owning their failures” and they keep moving fo…

Adding to your comment, this closing made me sad: "So what had been viewed as a strength of the program, using heritage hardware, instead became a liability. Saturday was only the first real hardware test for the rocket. It cannot afford too many more liabilities like those on display."

If anything they cannot afford _not_ to have more failures like that. In fact on the spectrum of failures this one was near the best possible outcome since something was learned without destroying the entire assembly. But with this kind of reactive thinking they may turtle up and slow down progress until the program gets canceled.

Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#92

Post by MaxBarraclough »

tailspin2019 wrote: post #37

You have to fail to move forwards. A lack of failure is a sign of a lack of trying anything new. Hasn’t SpaceX proved that? The negative commentary around this seems a little in contrast to how we’d talk about a SpaceX “failure” on HN. I know NASA and SpaceX are very different, but Elon is the king of drifting deadlines too. And SpaceX do fail, but they do a good job of “owning their failures” and they keep moving fo…

> A lack of failure is a sign of a lack of trying anything new.

I may just have blindspots in my history knowledge here, but the moon landing was pretty much an unqualified success, no?

Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#93

Post by stretchcat »

beerandt wrote: post #65
frakkingcylons wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As jobs programs go in the U.S., I’d rather they waste money on an obsolete launch system for space exploration rather than weapons. Unfortunately the bar is pretty low in the U.S..

You think the US funding an alternative, government controlled launch system for redundant access to space isn't ultimately for military purposes?

What would the military applications of SLS be? It seems like absurd overkill for lifting military satellites. And the companies contracted to make SLS (namely Boeing) are some of the same companies already contracted to make the rockets which are used for military launches.

Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#94

Post by tailspin2019 »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #92
tailspin2019 wrote: post #37

You have to fail to move forwards. A lack of failure is a sign of a lack of trying anything new. Hasn’t SpaceX proved that? The negative commentary around this seems a little in contrast to how we’d talk about a SpaceX “failure” on HN. I know NASA and SpaceX are very different, but Elon is the king of drifting deadlines too. And SpaceX do fail, but they do a good job of “owning their failures” and they keep moving fo…

> A lack of failure is a sign of a lack of trying anything new. I may just have blindspots in my history knowledge here, but the moon landing was pretty much an unqualified success, no?

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make?

My comment (in support of NASA) was that an isolated test failure shouldn't be looked upon as a failure of their entire programme. Instead it's actually a signal of progress being made (however slow that progress may be).

There were plenty of isolated testing failures like this (some much worse) leading up to the moon landing.

Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#95

Post by detaro »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #92
tailspin2019 wrote: post #37

You have to fail to move forwards. A lack of failure is a sign of a lack of trying anything new. Hasn’t SpaceX proved that? The negative commentary around this seems a little in contrast to how we’d talk about a SpaceX “failure” on HN. I know NASA and SpaceX are very different, but Elon is the king of drifting deadlines too. And SpaceX do fail, but they do a good job of “owning their failures” and they keep moving fo…

> A lack of failure is a sign of a lack of trying anything new. I may just have blindspots in my history knowledge here, but the moon landing was pretty much an unqualified success, no?

It did go very well overall, but 3 astronauts died in testing (totally avoidable), several of the test-launches of the rockets didn't go to plan, and later Apollo missions had various incidents.

Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#96

Post by Balgair »

Animats wrote: post #54

NASA forgot how to make rockets: “Both NASA and contractor officials explained that nearly 50 years have passed since development of the last major space flight program—the Space Shuttle—and the learning curve for new development has been steep as many experienced engineers have retired or moved to other industries.”

From Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design:

39. (alternate formulation) The three keys to keeping a new human space program affordable and on schedule:

       1)  No new launch vehicles.

       2)  No new launch vehicles.

       3)  Whatever you do, don't develop any new launch vehicles.
https://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_laws.html

Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#97

Post by sidlls »

mdorazio wrote: post #35
sidlls wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if SpaceX has delivered anything that isn’t: a) (effectively) government funded and b) built on the back of decades of NASA engineering effort. Blue Origin hasn’t actually done anything.

I'm really tired of seeing this stupid argument that SpaceX is government funded. The entire aerospace industry is government funded because the government has huge amounts of money and offers large contracts to many companies. By this measure, Palantir and many younger startups are also government funded. It's a meaningless statement. Bash SpaceX for their work culture and other issues all you want, but their busine…

And I’m tired of seeing people worship private entities whose entire success story is dependent entirely on government work. Not just funding, but work (e.g. past research).

A business that lives only with government support is a de facto government entity.

Sorry that facts offend you.

Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#98

Post by TaylorAlexander »

tailspin2019 wrote: post #84
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I listened to a podcast about this... but SpaceX and Boeing/NASA are explicitly taking two different approaches to proving their rocket will work. Obviously we know SpaceX is proving their rocket through system level tests. But for SLS the plan has been to use a long accepted NASA approved method of proving their design where individual parts are so thoroughly tested and proven to work that they don’t need many fl…

Would you mind sharing a link to the podcast? It sounds interesting!

I tried to find it a bit but I’ll do a more thorough search to see if I can figure out where I learned this. I’ll let you know if I find it.

EDIT: Did a thorough google search and looked through my podcast lists but I haven't been able to find it. I did find this podcast in my listening history which may or may not cover the topic, but unfortunately I don't see a transcript I can search through:

https://theorbitalmechanics.com/show-notes/ella-atkins

Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#99

Post by KineticLensman »

dotancohen wrote: post #71
sandworm101 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you aren't going up. Rockets are massive tanks of explosives flying through the air at supersonic speeds. That person is there to protect the people on the ground. Launch escape systems will protect the crew, but given the energies involved, the crew is less important than the potential for killing hundreds on the ground, or potentially thousands onboard a cruise ship.

Why don't airliners have AFTS, then?

Airliners have been proven to be much safer than rockets. By way of example, spaceflight has a 3% fatality rate for astronauts [0]. If (pre-COVID) Heathrow airport (80,000,000 passengers in 2019) had a similar fatality rate, 7000 people would die every day, at that airport alone. Airliners are massively, massively safe.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_ac...

Re: After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test

#100

Post by mchusma »

I think the SLS program at this point adds negative value to getting to space. I wouldn't normally wish for failure, but I think even if development were free I would vote to axe it.

The distraction of this program is immense, and when it's done you have a non reusable rocket in a reusable age.

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