NASA's Moonshot 2.0 programme starts here with one beast of a rocket. The launch window opens for two hours from (I think) 1:30pm.
Live stream:
Not going well so far!
“engineers are currently investigating a crack in the intertank – linking the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks”
‘Crack’ isn’t a word you want to hear just before take off 😬
Bit of gaffa tape, it’ll be reet…. 🤣
Is anyone local? Could you nip over with a quart or two of Stans?
No doubt a daft question but watching it just now (13:17) and the picture is showing the bottom of the rocket on the take off pad...and it is steaming...what is the steam from and why? I'm aware they have a load of water in that hollow where the bottom of the rocket sits - assuming it helps cool the heat from the engines, but why and what is causing the steam? (asking as I don't know and I'm curious)
I'm no rocket scientist, but I don't think it was a good idea to build their rocket out of some rusty scrap iron
It's unpainted to save weight, I assume. This is why later Shuttle fuel tanks were brown instead of white.
Today's launch has been 'scrubbed' it seems. Got as far as T-40 but engine bleed didn't go to plan, so that's it over for today. Next opportunity for launch is 2nd Sept subject to fixing the issue they had today. Oh well.
Apparently it's the insulation.
Anyway, it's scrubbed for today 😥
Wish it had launched, but kinda glad I didn't miss it. 🙂
the picture is showing the bottom of the rocket on the take off pad…and it is steaming…what is the steam from and why?
It uses liquid hydrogen and oxygen fuel. The fuel has to be cooled to something like 250 degrees below zero and stored in an insulated pressure tank. I assume the steam is caused by condensation as air contacts the insulated fuel tank.
Bet my boss is gutted. She was booked on a trip round Cape Canaveral today with her family whilst on holiday over there and was hoping to see it go up.
They also use water as sound suppression
Nasa water
I’m guessing they’re not on a hosepipe ban.
Good job it's not on southern water at least
I hope it takes off this time..... In many directions all at the same time!
Massive waste of money spent on ancient technology purely on political grounds.
It needs killing now so that SpaceX, etc can do a proper job with more reusable hardware.
(They haven't even completed a wet dress rehearsal yet, without overriding the launch control due to various issues cropping up)
Half agree but for all the stupidity of artemis, now we've got it it'd be a shame to blow it up.
Well it might blow itself up!
Can’t we just crash it into the Kremlin and claim it was an accident?
I hope it takes off this time….. In many directions all at the same time!
It needs killing now so that SpaceX, etc can do a proper job with more reusable hardware.
Blah blah, Elon will save us all...
Space X have promised plenty and delivered some of it, as clever as the self landing rockets are, that "old tech" is at least proven in terms of having put people in orbit and on the moon long before Elon started bullshitting his way towards US government funds.
I'm sure Artemis would have been scrubbed long ago if NASA really thought Space X were actually going to be capable of supporting moon missions on their desired schedule...
long before Elon started bullshitting his way towards US government funds.
No Musk fanboy but his company seems to have a decent track record for delivery so far and he’s brought some real innovation particularly around reusability.
I’m sure Artemis would have been scrubbed long ago if NASA really thought Space X were actually going to be capable of supporting moon missions on their desired schedule…
Utter bollocks.
The only reason Artemis still exists is because of Boeing and other state supported companies and the US political system.
that "old tech” is at least proven in terms of having put people in orbit and on the moon
You do know that the tech in question are the engines and SRBs from the space shuttle don't you?
None of which made it anywhere near the moon.
Seeing as NASA has just awarded SpaceX the balance of the Crew Dragon missions up to the end of the ISS's life, it seems they do have confidence in them.
They're having another go tomorrow (Saturday)
Canned again 🙄
Yes, well.... 🤔
It's not a good look is it?
So they're having a problem loading the hydrogen tank it seems.... This time it was only 11% full before they scrubbed due to a big leak from one of the filling connectors.
This all goes back to the politicians stating that Artemis had to use legacy engines/tech which means using hydrogen.
In all its history the shuttle never launched without at least one scrub and most of the issues related to using hydrogen which is very leaky.
Despite all their previous experience with hydrogen NASA couldn't put up a fight against the politicians who were effectively designing the rocket.
And now they're stuck with a core stage that is already 2.5 years old* that they haven't managed to fill completely a single time.
Without SpaceX the US would currently have no manned space program.
I've just read that, at current funding levels, a delay to mid-october would cost $495 million, or the total development cost of Falcon Heavy, or the total development cost of Falcon 9 plus four flights.
.... That's the cost of JUST the delay! 🤷🏻♂️
* It seems there are limits on how many times a system can go through a cryogenic load due to the stresses caused by the temperatures involved
I read that this is the 6th time they've tried and failed to fully fuel it? I mean, spaceflight is hard, but surely that's something that had to be nailed in the dress rehearsals, assuming it was practical (and I'm reasonably sure it was) rather than rolling out full stacks that don't work.
Obviously the choice of components and design isn't really on NASA, the politics of it are so openly corrupt. But this bit seems like execution only?
as excited by a lunar return and a big artemis rocket as i am....it does look silly tech compared to spaceX
I'm yet to be convinced by the SpaceX approach to interplanetary travel. Taking a huge craft like Spaceliner all the way from an Earth launchpad and landing it in its entirety on another planet. I think a more sensible scheme is to build craft in Earth orbit, put an orbital station in place around the destination planet with a dedicated lander (a la Artemis). But hey, I'm not a brain surgeon, let alone a rocket scientist.
Whoop whoop! Artemis launched successfully this morning. The Orion capsule is in free flight off to the moon. My 2 yo is enthralled by rockets currently so this programme could really inspire him over the next few years!
Dang - where was this thread yesterday when I needed it?!? 🙂
Well I'm not going to lie, I'm surprised it got off the ground! But that was bloody cool to watch. Something about those big ol motors and their huge exhaust plume triggered a core memory.
When I went to bed they still had the red team poking about inside it doing the old "if we tighten up the bolts maybe it'll stop leaking" familiar to all project car owners
Something about those big ol motors and their huge exhaust plume triggered a core memory.
Yep, took me back to watching Saturn V.
It hoiked itself of the platform at a fair old lick, great news!
Mighty impressive launch but who thought the massively overenthusiastic scripted buzz lightyear commentary was a good idea? Thankfully he was replaced shortly after launch by someone who was calm, technical and professional.
Grumpy of Herts who watched the 60s/70s apollo launches in glorious black and white.
Amazing to think that the SpaceX starship booster will produce more power from just 16 of its 33 engines!
.... And that they are producing 1 Raptor 2 engine per day compared to 4 RS-25 (SLS) engines per year (@ 100 million dollars each)!
Wow, those are some stats!
Here's another.... The Raptor 2 engine produces almost the same power as the RS-25 at about 1-2% of the cost!
And the Raptor can be re-lit whilst the RS-25 cannot which is why they're disposable.
(US politics at it's best!)
Well, that's not why they're disposable in this application though- they're being one-shotted because they had some old pre-used space shuttle engines lying around, so they decided to use them up instead (SLS wasn't the first attempt to do that) Disposable makes perfect sense when you've already got the bits, even if it's incredibly wasteful and inefficient otherwise.
But then once they'd started making a new spaceship program with those old bits, it turned out that they didn't have enough, so then they had to order a bunch more. It's exactly like that time I accidentally built a titanium cross country bike because I had a fork that I couldn't sell. So they've ended up with a perfect combination of all the drawbacks of reusable motors- ie, they're more complicated, much more expensive, less efficient- and all the drawbacks of disposable- ie the disposability. Exactly like that time it turned out I didn't want a cross country bike after all.
NASA get a lot of crap for this but it's not their fault, their procurement and budget is absolutely drowned in politics and pork. Want the budget to do X? Fine but you have to give Y million dollars to a company in my state who gives me a load of money. The system's designed to be dysfuncitonal. Want a million dollars for x? No, but you can have 100 million dollars for y, which does the same job as x but maybe not as well, but can also do z buuuuut oh no wait we've cancelled z but we're commited to y now anyway because we've spent $95m on it and it'd be unthinkable now to bin it and use the $1m option even though yes that would still be cheaper and quicker, but it'd make us look silly
There's brilliant long-term irony in it though... Since the RS25 was a mistake for the shuttle in the first place. They were brilliant, clever motors, but it didn't need brilliant clever motors, it needed cheaper simpler disposable motors on the bottom of a middle stage, instead of a detachable unpowered tank and 3 bloody big anchors in the back of the orbiter. Oh hey, exactly like SLS now does, and Energia.
But "reusability" was the watchword so they had to haul those dead motors all the way to orbit and bring them all the way back, using up more fuel and space and reducing the reentry payload. But then they had to be basically completely rebuilt before they were "reused" anyway, at least until about block b iirc, and the shuttle never came close to the level of flights to make the usability worthwhile anyway, and nobody ever really though it would except they had to lie about that all the time to get the program to happen and you can get a bit too used to lying about stuff like that.
So now, they finally have a disposable core stage with disposable rockets which is what they should have done in the first place, except that because of the original choice they're doing disposable with stuff that was engineered for reuse.
Disposability of core stage still does make a lot of sense for really heavy lift rockets tbh- reusing boosters is easier, if you could magic a new launcher onto the pads today with the dream design it'd most likely have reusable boosters but a disposable core stage with disposable engines that uses every gram for impulse. But it'd be built for cost effectiveness, rather than having very expensive motors then throwing them away.
But all that said, I'm glad it worked because cynical as I am, that was a bloody excellent launch. FWOOOOOOOOOOSH. The spaceship I would have drawn when I was a kid, none of this boring spacex millenial crap with its little blue cones of effectiveness.
I'm sure I heard on the news this morning that there is one passenger aboard, which will be a great quiz question in years to come - but had to Google it to make sure I wasn't hallucinating
It's funny that the uk/euro stuff all mentions shawn but not snoopy, and all the nasa stuff mentions snoopy but not shawn. Maybe this will be the line that the next cold war starts over