Four hours until liftoff!? NASA is scheduled to launch its first heavy-lift rocket since retiring the space shuttle in 2011.
At long last, the SLS rocket will soon launch. After a dozen years and more than $20 billion, the Space Launch System rocket has been cleared for launch by NASA's Flight Readiness Review process. This week I wrote a feature about the rocket's history, my history with it, and where I think it is taking the space program. In the end, I have decidedly mixed feelings about the launch. I most definitely want it to succeed, but I also cannot let go of the fact that its production was in some ways responsible for a lost decade of US space exploration.
So it's bad, but also it may be good ... Between the rocket, its ground systems, and the Orion spacecraft launching on top of the stack, NASA has spent tens of billions of dollars. But I would argue that the opportunity costs are higher. For a decade, Congress pushed NASA's exploration focus toward an Apollo-like program, with a massive launch vehicle that is utterly expended, using 1970s technology in its engines, tanks, and boosters. The good news is that, in building Congress' favorite rocket, NASA has recently been able to wrangle money from Congress for an actual deep space exploration program—Artemis. I'm not sure that happens without SLS.
Meanwhile, SpaceX has been busy. It has independently developing its own heavy-lift rocket called Starship. With a designed lift capacity of 100 metric tons to low-earth orbit AND reusability, too. First nearly round-the-earth flight is slated for later this year and to Mars in a "couple years". Was this worth the expense to NASA? Who will use it?
[Update 0755 UTC - JR] They are having a problem filling the hydrogen tanks but the countdown is continuing while they are trying to resolve the problem. Launch is expected at 0833 EDT.
[Update 1047 UTC - JR] Live stream of the action on youtube. Problems getting engine 3 to the correct temperature and this is currently being actioned using bleed hydrogen from the other engines through engine 3.
[Update 1244 UTC - t] Artemis I: NASA has missed the first launch window for its SLS rocket
The next launch window opens on 2 September, with another on 5 September. If the spacecraft has to be rolled back inside to fix the engine issue, it will likely be delayed beyond that.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by janrinok on Monday August 29 2022, @08:01AM (3 children)
Good Luck to the Artemis team - hope they manage to launch successfully.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday August 29 2022, @02:53PM (2 children)
My fingers are crossed too!
See my post below which is more detailed. In short, I sincerely hope for the best possible outcome for SLS. (that it blows up on the launch pad taking all of its infrastructure with it.)
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday August 29 2022, @06:11PM (1 child)
I halfway agree with you. The SLS program needs to die. However, blowing up on the pad would only kill the program if nearly the entire US Congress were watching from inside the launch tower.
Too much money, too much politics. Even in the face of catastrophe, the program will stagger on, an unkillable zombie sucking the budget out of actual, useful space missions.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 30 2022, @12:51AM
You did send the invitations, didn't you?
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0, Troll) by Vasabhandu on Monday August 29 2022, @08:04AM (3 children)
takyon and khallow will be so disappointed it this goes well. I mean, SpaceX could have done the same for much less, letting the power of the market leverage science into tourism and advertising. Another missed Must opportunity.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2022, @09:33AM
Classic ari, shilling for the world's largest pork blaster out of spite.
If will be a successful mission if it lands on your head.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2022, @02:29PM
Quick, post a picture from the JWST. Coo! [thomaskinkade.com] Relax everybody, your leaders have it figured all out. Back to American Gladiators.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday August 30 2022, @12:15AM
"IF". I notice that they had to scrub due to hydrogen leaks. One of the interesting things that SLS has done is blow up good will from people who normally would support NASA. For example [twitter.com]:
Wayne Hale worked for 32 years, including spending 15 years working with the Shuttle. When you lose people like him, you have no non-political support left, just special interests look in for their piece of pork.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by martyb on Monday August 29 2022, @08:13AM (3 children)
Wit is intellect, dancing. I'm too old to act my age. Life is too important to take myself seriously.
(Score: 3, Funny) by coolgopher on Monday August 29 2022, @11:31AM (2 children)
Currently in hold at T-40:00 due to a hydrogen bleed issue on engine 3.
Plenty of things to come up, just not the SLS rocket...
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Monday August 29 2022, @12:36PM (1 child)
And there we go. Scrub called for today.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 29 2022, @12:59PM
Based on memories of Shuttle launches in the early 80s, I would expect three scrubs for every launch for at least the first 6 launches.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Monday August 29 2022, @12:10PM (17 children)
I'll be very surprised if it launches today. To be honest, I'm no longer confident Boeing has the engineering expertise to pull it off.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 29 2022, @12:56PM (16 children)
They have the smarts, the question is whether management has the actualized process maturity to deliver a project this complex.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Monday August 29 2022, @12:58PM (10 children)
I suspect they've laid off all the old-timers that actually knew how to build and QA complex things. Everyone from the wire solder inspector to the manager of QA.
Heh. Fark just named it Artemissed.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 29 2022, @01:48PM (9 children)
>they've laid off all the old-timers that actually knew how to build and QA complex things.
See, that's process maturity... low level build should never be complex, soldering a wire should be soldering a wire to standard XYZ, and QA of that solder work should be equally formulaic and easily reproduced. If you need old timers to make it happen adequately, that means that the old timers haven't passed their knowledge into the procedures and training - again: process maturity. Management should ensure that the new hires are adequately trained, preferably apprenticed to the old timers while they learn the content of the training documents, but if not they still need to learn how to do it properly. Hiring a new batch of kids and telling 'em "Git-r-Done, we got a schedule to meet" is the opposite of process maturity for management.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2022, @02:32PM (1 child)
Bb.ut... what about inspirational speeches???
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 30 2022, @12:16AM
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Monday August 29 2022, @02:58PM (4 children)
What it means is that when you jerk people all around the country trying to save a buck and issue bonuses to facilities engaged in subpar work, there's little reason to even bother passing that information on. Ever since Boeing left Seattle in favor of Chicago, it's been a slow steady decline. I'm just surprised there haven't been more fatalities that resulted from the cost cutting with all the shoddy work being done in the Carolinas.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 29 2022, @04:49PM
Yeah, Boeing isn't smelling too good lately... there were reasons for the relocations, certainly not all good ones.
If the people paying the bills (ultimately: us) will demand quality, and be willing to pay the money and time it takes to get it, it will happen _eventually_, if there's competition.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 29 2022, @04:51PM (2 children)
And. that "jerk people all over the country" is a pretty classic military thing to do... it's great for breaking in new recruits, not so much for established professionals with families and social networks. Unfortunately, some of the people who get promoted in places like Boeing tend to be ex-military types who never really "grew up" to have a family and social network. They "know" about these things, but can't really value them properly in their judgement calls.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Monday August 29 2022, @04:58PM (1 child)
The military can get away with that because there's enough people staying in a given area at any given time to make it work. If they didn't have an ironclad agreement by the folks being jerked around, they'd probably have similar results to boeing. There aren't a lot of ways out of the military before you're due for discharge that don't ruin your life. Working for Boeing though, is trivial to quit and there are other jobs out there, possibly with similar work requirements that won't jerk you around so much.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 29 2022, @06:44PM
We've got relatives working for Gulfstream, they're in their early 30s - starting to hate the hours but every time they start to find offers elsewhere, their pay takes another big jump at Gulfstream... coincidence? Unlikely.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday August 30 2022, @02:44AM (1 child)
It's a different issue, actually. Once upon a time I had a project with a little company that did testing of things. If you want a bolt in space you go to them, give them the bolt, and they will tell you if it is good for the task or not. They told me there were a dozens of companies like this during Apollo project, but only them survived. I asked them how they managed to produce such a quality.
The answer was shocking to me as I just came from a soviet state. They simply used socialism. All their workers and engineers were hired life time. They had their own restaurant, child care, stadium and so on. They would find employment for significant others and even grown up children. They would help with university fees for children. They would give zero rate mortgage if a house to be brought is withing 10 miles from the office. They often canceled part of it as a bonus.
The result was extremely qualified and motivated work force that actually worked for relatively little money so overall they saved. Also, folks spent most of their free time within the company.
See, coders are commodity. People who can build new rockets are not and have to be treated differently.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 30 2022, @12:29PM
>People who can build new rockets are not and have to be treated differently.
That's one way to do it, and certainly was appropriate during the Cold War when you didn't want your rocket experts wandering, such a shame to have to arrange those fatal car crashes when that happens.
As for relatively low cost? By the time you factor in the "care for life, them and their family" aspects, these people are costing more than military personnel. The paychecks may look small, but the benefits outweigh them by significant multiples.
It's also a somewhat vulnerable way to run an operation, unless you ramp up costs further by having multiple parallel operations (as they did in Apollo), when your one expert dies (maybe a competitor arranged a car crash?) you can be significantly hurt.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday August 29 2022, @02:50PM (3 children)
Boeing's current management has reinvented itself to be the very best at boosting Boeing's stock price. That is what really matters.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Monday August 29 2022, @03:26PM (2 children)
I'm not even sure they care about that, given that they seem to exist primarily to siphon dollars from the federal government to light on fire. Having planes crash because of incompetent design isn't good for shareholder value.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday August 29 2022, @03:41PM (1 child)
We may now be past the point of maximum shareholder value. But I think it worked.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2022, @12:35AM
If you know what you are doing you can make as much money on the way down as on the way up. The bad thing is when the share price holds steady. How the hell do you make money on a quality company that just produces good work without all the booms and busts?
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Monday August 29 2022, @04:39PM
They really do not have the smarts anymore. They are skinsuited by diversity hires that trade on the good reputation of the company's name.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2022, @12:40PM (2 children)
Launch has been scrubbed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2022, @04:31PM (1 child)
Squeaky clean, like ready for surgery?
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Monday August 29 2022, @04:54PM
They have a livestream ready to go on September 2. But if they have really bad luck they'll have to roll it back inside to get it away from a tropical storm [noaa.gov].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday August 29 2022, @02:48PM (11 children)
As a taxpayer, I truly and sincerely hope for the best possible outcome for SLS! That would be for SLS to blow up on the launch pad taking all of its infrastructure with it.
Once Starship is operational, there will be no need for SLS. It isn't impossible that Starship might launch before SLS ever does.
The conservative per launch cost for SLS is $4 Billion. Each SLS booster has four expensive reusable Space Shuttle engines ($140 million each) on an expendable booster. That makes sense.
Elon has estimated Starship launches to be $10 million each. But suppose it costs ten times that! At $100 million per launch that is still a huge win over $4 Billion (conservatibely) per launch, and likely higher. And even that launch cost is less than one of the four engines on the main booster of SLS. Even if Starship launches cost fifty times what Elon predicts, it is way cheaper than SLS.
I don't think most people even understand the magnitude of the difference.
So SLS, I truly wish you the best possible outcome on your first launch attempt!
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 2) by OrugTor on Monday August 29 2022, @05:07PM (2 children)
I have the same feelings. But not the same hopes. The problem, as I see it, is the iron grip the space launch industrial complex has on the pork-pushers in congress. That grip won't be loosened other than by a sea change in congressional attitudes towards pork, so never. Catastrophic failure of SLS launches will actually result in additional government money thrown at the aging colossus to keep it going. So I don't want the launch to fail; rather I want to see continued progress in our journey to the stars even if it comes from poor engineering and worse politics.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 30 2022, @01:02AM (1 child)
It's coming. When AOC is Speaker of the House, it's going to be seaweed slushies, insect burgers, fungi steak, and vat grown veggies.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday August 31 2022, @01:25PM
I am less optimistic. I don't believe that will happen until she is president. Or possibly vice precedent.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 2, Troll) by turgid on Monday August 29 2022, @08:16PM (3 children)
If Elon gets to the Moon and Mars before NASA, expect them to be claimed, homesteaded, dug up and ruined before the good science can begin. Oh, and don't expect to be able to land there without paying big bucks or being shot out of the sky. If there is or was life on Mars, he'll contaminate it and/or destroy it one way or another.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday August 30 2022, @06:37AM (2 children)
Why is this a troll? Is it not a valid point? Why should an individual own a planet?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by martyb on Tuesday August 30 2022, @01:34PM
I suspect the Outer Space Treaty [wikipedia.org] may play a role?
Wit is intellect, dancing. I'm too old to act my age. Life is too important to take myself seriously.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday August 31 2022, @01:30PM
He might not own it. He may simply appoint himself and his heirs as Lord Protector of the planet. For the planet's safe keeping for the future. It only seems right to preserve the planet for future generations of rich people.
Why should an individual own almost all of the farm land in the US?
Why should an individual own and hoard other vast amounts of resources?
Why should an individual own an island?
Because it is their divine
GOPGod given right.Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2022, @01:50AM
The money stays on Earth, in the hands of people. The spaceship goes to the moon.
The difference seems to me to be in whose hands the money ends up.
If Musk gets it, that money ends up in the hands of people who have a passion for building things. We end up buying knowledge.
If Boeing gets it, I get the idea most of it will end up in entertainment and executive bonuses which will be used to buy investments like rental homes for the rich master's degree of handshakes.
YouTube is full of videos made by the old school engineers detailing the schism which developed between engineers and management as corporate focus shifted from " build the best " to " faster, better, cheaper " in pursuit of Wall Street.
Wall Street won.
As noted in these forums before, even the Pharaoh of Egypt, with incredible wealth, couldn't even put a BB in orbit.
To me, Musk represents a passion for knowledge.
Boeing represents a passion for wealth for highly paid bean counters, working for Wall Street bonuses, who see space exploration as just a job.
I used to work in the early days of aerospace, and it was a passion. Many of us forsook everything else ( marriage, family, chances for wealth ) to pursue it.
Then we made enough money to attract the MBA, and when we " won" the cold war, the government no longer needed us, and dropped us, and we found private employment.
Engineers prided themselves on their ability to direct physics to accomplish some desired thing. We worked with things.
The leadership class that wedged itself between us and the funders ( Congress ) prided themselves in controlling engineers. We use physics. They use psychology. First thing they used psychology for is to get who is subordinate to who in place.
So that a Morton Thiokol engineer with his knowledge of properties of O-rings is subordinate to a Master's Degree in Paper Signing, Handshakes, and ranking people.
The result was disastrous.
So, maybe the Artemis Team learned the lesson our highly paid decision makers thought they had the authority to ignore. I can be compelled to salute idiocy, but no one can violate the laws of physics, no matter what rank the decree-issuer holds.
I am glad they put things on hold when the engineers discovered something wasn't right. We didn't. And paid the price. Money is made out of nothing. But trust and credibility is very hard to earn, and we lost it to such a level people adopted the mantra that NASA stood for "Need Another Seven Astronauts" to appease the arrogance and lack of respect for natural law our leadership class was demonstrating.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Tuesday August 30 2022, @03:15PM (2 children)
As a taxpayer, you should be happy for every single company that tries to build something to compete with something else. The last thing you should want is one company having your country by the balls because they're the only ones that can deliver crucial services.
(Score: 3, Informative) by theluggage on Tuesday August 30 2022, @04:19PM
Problem is, the Artemis program seems to rely on SpaceX providing the “crucial service” of building the lander and getting it to the moon anyway.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday August 31 2022, @01:31PM
The fallacy is that nothing about the SLS is competitive or even trying to compete. It's only purpose is to funnel money into certain pockets. Without or without any successful result.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?