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from the we-don't-know-what-we-don't-know dept.
After a decade, NASA's big rocket fails its first real test:
For a few moments, it seemed like the Space Launch System saga might have a happy ending. Beneath brilliant blue skies late on Saturday afternoon, NASA's huge rocket roared to life for the very first time. As its four engines lit, and thrummed, thunder rumbled across these Mississippi lowlands. A giant, beautiful plume of white exhaust billowed away from the test stand.
It was all pretty damn glorious until it stopped suddenly.
About 50 seconds into what was supposed to be an 8-minute test firing, the flight control center called out, "We did get an MCF on Engine 4." This means there was a "major component failure" with the fourth engine on the vehicle. After a total of about 67 seconds, the hot fire test ended.
During a post-flight news conference, held outside near the test stand, officials offered few details about what had gone wrong. "We don't know what we don't know," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. "It's not everything we hoped it would be."
He and NASA's program manager for the SLS rocket, John Honeycutt, sought to put a positive spin on the day. They explained that this is why spaceflight hardware is tested. They expressed confidence that this was still the rocket that would launch the Orion spacecraft around the Moon.
And yet it is difficult to say what happened Saturday is anything but a bitter disappointment. This rocket core stage was moved to Stennis from its factory in nearby Louisiana more than one calendar year ago, with months of preparations for this critical test firing.
Honeycutt said before the test, and then again afterward, that NASA had been hoping to get 250 seconds worth of data, if not fire the rocket for the entire duration of its nominal ascent to space. Instead it got a quarter of that.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday January 18 2021, @05:29AM (2 children)
That's the sort of insight that turned the billions of dollars we poured into NASA projects over the decades into the leading space agency NASA is today: overtaken by Russia and China, and about to be outdone by social media moguls building rockets to relocate their billionaire friends to the Moon or to Mars to escape the plebs on Earth.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Socrastotle on Monday January 18 2021, @02:45PM (1 child)
Bridenstine was, for some time, the best administrator that NASA has had in decades. I think the problem is much more systemic. The reason other administrators like Bolden were not so great is because they simply were unable to deal with the political aspect of the job. And so he ended up little more than a tool. Bridenstine was able to stand firm against this for some time, but somehow they managed to get him to bend and now he has a spine of overdone spaghetti.
The issue is that government agencies are driven by a desire to see their own growth and continuation. And that growth and continuation tends to lead directly to cronyism, corruption, and intentional inefficiencies. Think about the Arecibo Telescope. It was (until China recently developed an even larger telescope) the largest radio telescope on this planet - it was a very big deal, literally and figuratively. And we literally let it fall to pieces instead in lieu of the ~$10 million per year it'd take to sustain it. $10 million, for context in terms of government expenditures, would be 0.04% of NASA's budget. And about a millisecond of our "defense" spending. Why'd we let this happen? I suspect it was because it was a genuine scientific instrument and no bellies were getting buttered, so who cares? Certainly nobody in DC!
If you want to succeed in DC, you butter bellies. If you gave NASA's budget to SpaceX, that'd fund literally hundreds of launches (per year) and leave billions of dollars still for actually having things to put on those flights, including humans. I mean seriously we'd be jumping, almost immediately, towards real progress on becoming a space faring civilization. But when NASA and congress are is in charge of NASA's budget? You get an occasional probe, an occasional rover, and a *whole lot* of butter. Ultimately I just don't think government is the proper vessel for space achievement anymore. SpaceX will live or die based on their progress and achievement in space. NASA's fate will live or die based on how many kickbacks congress can get from it. Our whole system is becoming deeply dysfunctional.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Monday January 18 2021, @03:11PM
At the time of that quote, Bridenstine is about as much of a lame duck as you can get. He's already announced that he will step down and he has days or perhaps weeks left on the job.
NASA and the Air Force are already giving a decent amount of money to SpaceX. SpaceX will probably be able to get a larger piece of the pie, but only after Starship is mostly proven to work.
This might be a blessing in disguise. A decade or so ago, NASA was planning a mission to Mars by around 2035. Now we have the Artemis program with a 2024 manned landing and Lunar Gateway construction, parts of which will certainly slip to around 2028.
SLS is an unfortunate drain on science funding, but a $100 billion effort to go to Mars using old technology would be worse. Further delays will help put SpaceX in charge as a working Starship is simply impossible to ignore. There will still be plenty of butter, but at least the butter can be launched on fully reusable rockets. SpaceX itself is gaining a decent political backing, as it operates in California, Texas, Florida, Redmond, WA, Virginia, and D.C.
Charlie Bolden says the quiet part out loud: SLS rocket will go away [arstechnica.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]