RCgothic

Scrubbed for today.

Landing pad is looking nice.

Static fire! Looked good to me, but it's not always easy to tell.

Pad is clear, coverage starting soon.

That's probably what I was thinking of. Thanks!

Huh. I was sure at least one flight was conducted immediately after a static fire, but I can't confirm it so I must be misremembering.

I believe that was also the case for SN10.

SN11 may hop tomorrow:

Gantry crane is *finally* installed! Honestly expected it be installed last October. I wonder if this was the major hold up for Superheavy production, or if it just got downgraded to a lower priority relative to more starships?

Starship would have a much greater internal volume than Skylab. Like, 1000m3 vs 361m3. I'm looking forward to more astronauts running laps.

Gateway's core elements are going up on Falcon Heavy. And there is no large surface element that isn't going to have to go down on HLS, which will be commercially launched. So which large elements would SLS be pre-positioning exactly, at maybe one flight a year and an unreasonable cost per flight? From where we are now there's no sensible use case. Falcon Heavy and Commercial Crew changed everything.

Apparently high level winds are bad this week, so we may expect to see some more slippage from Wednesday.

Static fire. Looks good.

Haha, wait, N1 had massively more thrust than SLS at liftoff! Nope, genuinely can't think of a metric under which SLS is most powerful without some sort of qualification.

Well Wikipedia also defines Saturn V as "most powerful (total impulse)", so I'm being a little generous to SLS by considering a definition of total impulse to be "total mass accelerated to final velocity, multiplied by velocity", thus including its heavier final stage and saying "arguably", because stages without fuel don't count as useful payload, as rightly pointed out. But if block 5 can only manage 45t payload to TLI and EUS weighs around ~15.6t at burnout, that's just 60.6t. Saturn V managed 48.5t to TLI and S-IVB weighs 13.5t, then that's about 62t, so SLS won't win even on this metric unless it finds some extra payload somewhere. Bottom lines: Thrust on the pad is not power. SLS will probably not have the highest instantaneous power. SLS probably won't have most payload to TLI. SLS probably won't have highest total mass (total impulse) to TLI. SLS will not have most mass/payload to LEO.

Nope, I mean the S-IVB at burnout weighs less than EUS at burnout.

That'd be SLS ~48t payload to TLI plus ~15t EUS after burnout ~=63t total. Saturn V was ~60t to TLI including S-IVB. Of course Saturn V sent over 48t payload to TLI as well, so in terms of useful work done it'd still be a tossup. It's just that S-IVB is lighter. Hence the argument.

They do like to milk the "SLS is the most powerful rocket ever" propaganda. It's not. SLS will, assuming Superheavy doesn't fly with at least 14 engines before next February, briefly hold the title of most thrust at liftoff of any rocket ever. Most powerful (total impulse) is still Saturn V. 60t total to TLI can't be argued with until Block 2, if that ever happens. Most powerful (instantaneous power) is probably also Saturn V. Thrust times velocity, I'm pretty sure S-IC is producing more power at centre engine cut off and outboard-engine cutoff than SLS is at BECO. SRBs have a vaguely decaying thrust profile. And Superheavy is rapidly arriving to take all of these titles for itself if SLS doesn't hurry up.

High thrust variant of raptor is aiming for 2.9MN (300te) last I heard. The difference a denser propellant makes.

Crew Dragon is 1:276 for a complete ISS mission. That strongly implies a safer ascent. So much for SLS's lofted safety. That was *the one thing* about this launcher that was previously unassailable.

The most powerful static fire this year until BN1 lights up its four engines.

This time BN1 actually is in stack up. (Last time I mistook preparations for the engine section mate for fore and aft section mate :-/)

Nasa stream has started.

13t including payload and propellant seems very light compared to FH's expendable or semi-expendable capability. Both configurations could easily send the heaviest payload either falcon has ever lofted - 15.6t - to TLI. With a payload attachment upgrade it could easily manage 13t of spacecraft NOT INCLUDING 5t of cargo, 18t total. But at the same time 13t is way too heavy for a fully reusable configuration. That'd be more like 8.5t. Not sure why they're reserving semi-expendable performance TBH.