Live data from Hacker News

Artemis I Launch Attempt Scrubbed

blogs.nasa.gov

51–60 of 115 posts

Re: Artemis I Launch Attempt Scrubbed

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When is that first starship orbital launch again?

Musk said he was going to Mars by 2018.

SpaceX could absolutely launch a mars mission with their existing rocket platforms and launch infrastructure.

It would be tedious launching little pieces of a larger ship and assembling them in orbit but it could absolutely be done.

Instead of doing that they're choosing to build better, bigger rockets, and more infrastructure to make the eventual launches to mars more cost-effective and substantial.

Re: Artemis I Launch Attempt Scrubbed

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have my doubts that it will ever launch - the way things are proceeding, they’ll miss October, push to ‘23, and will then end up with parts and systems ageing out due to wear and duty cycles - the rollback to the VAB alone incurs significant wear. Meanwhile, starship will see its first orbital flight (likely not before a few RUDs) while SLS just grows mould. That said, the whole purpose of SLS was to provide jobs a…

It’s a big, complex project and it’s failed two tests. I’m happy to take the bet that it will launch successfully

It's a big complex project that legislators decreed should re-use ancient engines and structural components from the shuttle - a project that was the world's first space-faring barrel of pork, infamous for its operating expenditures.

One of the arguments for doing so was that the engines were "proven."

checks news story

Oh hey, it's the engines that are causing these delays.

NASA has been so over-budget on the project, they had to commit accounting fraud to try and cover it up.

Re: Artemis I Launch Attempt Scrubbed

#53

We’ve been quoted $4bn per launch. If this pattern of delays turns out to be fundamental (a big, if plausible, if), what would the launch costs actually be?

Artemis is a federal jobs program.

The mission of Artemis is to land a woman and a person of color on the moon. It is a federally funded affirmative action program.

Re: Artemis I Launch Attempt Scrubbed

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have my doubts that it will ever launch - the way things are proceeding, they’ll miss October, push to ‘23, and will then end up with parts and systems ageing out due to wear and duty cycles - the rollback to the VAB alone incurs significant wear. Meanwhile, starship will see its first orbital flight (likely not before a few RUDs) while SLS just grows mould. That said, the whole purpose of SLS was to provide jobs a…

When is that first starship orbital launch again?

Starship doesn't even exist yet.

Note: neither Booster 7, nor Booster 8, or Ship 20 and 24 for that matter, are even close to being anything that could be considered "Starship" by even the most generous observer.

Even if B7/S24 do launch in a test flight they are so far removed from anything that could potentially be in the far future an operational and usable spacecraft that they resemble "starship" the same way a wooden mockup of an airplane resembles an actual airplane.

An object being the same general shape and dimensions of something doesn't make that object the "something".

At least SLS exists and has problems that can be, perhaps, probably at tremendous expense, fixed.

Re: Artemis I Launch Attempt Scrubbed

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have my doubts that it will ever launch - the way things are proceeding, they’ll miss October, push to ‘23, and will then end up with parts and systems ageing out due to wear and duty cycles - the rollback to the VAB alone incurs significant wear. Meanwhile, starship will see its first orbital flight (likely not before a few RUDs) while SLS just grows mould. That said, the whole purpose of SLS was to provide jobs a…

Think about all the work done by people that you are discounting...

The work is shit, despite being done with forty year old, thoroughly understood and matured technology?

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/new-report-finds-nas...

Cost overruns would have put NASA 33% over budget a few years ago, but they committed accounting fraud to cover it up.

The SLS is nothing more than a welfare check to Georgia and Florida.

Re: Artemis I Launch Attempt Scrubbed

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is normal for any new launch vehicle. …which is why it’s often a good idea to not use a new launch vehicle on the critical path for your crewed spaceflight program. (Could have used LEO rendezvous of various types to go to the Moon.) https://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_laws.html > 39. The three keys to keeping a new human space program affordable and on schedule: 1) No new launch vehicles. 2) No new launch vehi…

The initial SpaceX Falcon rocket was entirely privately funded, at a total cost of of ~$100 million. The first 3 launches were failures. The 4th launch was a success, and the rest is history. And that vessel would ultimately go on (through various again largely privately funded innovations) to revolutionize spaceflight. The same is now true of the Starship, which is again being entirely privately funded. The cost is…

> The initial SpaceX Falcon rocket was entirely privately funded, at a total cost of of ~$100 million.

And just to put things in perspective: SLS (not Orion, just SLS) is projected to cost a total of $30 Billion

The shuttle cost $1.5BN/launch and SLS, forty years later? Over $2BN/launch.

Absolute insanity.

Re: Artemis I Launch Attempt Scrubbed

#58
post #46

I feel like they need to go the SpaceX route and build dozens of these things and just launch them with the expectation that most will fail, but they learn from each failure to improve the next ones.

Do you think they would have learned something worthwhile by proceeding with the launch?

The worst case would at least yield data from an incontrovertibly true-to-life, no faking, test of the Launch Abort System:

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/launch-abort-motor-for-or...

Re: Artemis I Launch Attempt Scrubbed

#59
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk said he was going to Mars by 2018.

SpaceX could absolutely launch a mars mission with their existing rocket platforms and launch infrastructure. It would be tedious launching little pieces of a larger ship and assembling them in orbit but it could absolutely be done. Instead of doing that they're choosing to build better, bigger rockets, and more infrastructure to make the eventual launches to mars more cost-effective and substantial.

>Musk said he was going to Mars by 2018.

>SpaceX could absolutely launch a mars mission with their existing rocket platforms and launch infrastructure.

If they launched today they’d be 4 years late

Re: Artemis I Launch Attempt Scrubbed

#60
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are just as many hydrolox(hydrogen + liquid oxygen) as kerolox(RP-1 kerosene + LOX). Atlas, Delta, H-II, Ariane 5, Long March 5, to name a few, all use hydrolox. I believe a part of reasons why launch attempts are called "attempts" is because of extreme scrub and failure rate of launch vehicle launches, and I think the fact that scrubs are now considered abnormal can be attributable to SpaceX and Elon Musk. I w…

True, but Delta IV is the only one of those rockets using hydrolox for the first stage. I have to imagine storing and moving that much hydrogen is a lot more complex than launch vehicles that only use it in an upper stage.

I don't quite get the argument. If SLS and rest of those rockets belong to a same category, and reliability in the same level as well, what's the point of pointing that out...besides I believe Delta IV Heavy is towards the side of more reliable and regular launching rockets
Post reply on HN