okan170

Interesting, latest renders from Lockheed and some from NASA now show Orion for A3 and beyond using an extended docking collar. source:

Actually ARM was never an SLS mission except in some initial concepts. ARM was/is to be launched on either Delta IV Heavy, Altas V 551 or Falcon Heavy. The SLS human mission component was un-funded by congress, originally was to be EM-2 but moved to about EM-5 when EM-2 became funded as a test mission. One of the main criticisms of the SLS for a bit was that it wasn't even necessary for the ARM mission at that point except as a launcher for Orion and that congress hadn't even mandated that SLS launch by funding a mission beyond EM-2.

Probably it'll end up bringing crew two and fro from the Moon-orbiting NEXT-Step habitat(s) that are currently being developed. Fortunately funding has been proposed again this year to continue those efforts. ESA remains interested in providing more service modules (waiting on NASA to be directed to do more flights) in exchange for potential astronaut seats, so at the very least you could end up with a small station around the Moon occasionally visited by Orion and resupplied by Commercial Cargo providers (per NASA's comments).

This is incorrect. Funds have been made available to ensure commercial crew comes online in 2017, even with the provision to use Soyuz money to make it happen on time if needed.

Its worth noting that human-rating Ariane 6 has been ruled out already. https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/675007686166097921

One of the great advantages of having your debt in your own country's currency is that you can never technically fail to repay the debt. You can always print enough dollars and despite the horrible massive inflation it would cause, the debt would be repaid at great economic hardship (while also crippling China with a now very low-value sum of currency). Debt between the US and other countries enumerated in US currency operates nothing like household or personal debt and it is misleading to imply that it does.

Fortunately, the NASA budget part of this bill is not one of the contested items. If it were vetoed and sent back, the NASA budget would likely be transferred intact to the next version since nobody is fighting over it (except maybe the tangentially-related RD-180 ban).

Clarification, the idea is that the foam will drastically reduce the amount of uncontrollable ice buildup on the interstage of both the ICPS and EUS stages. This part of the stage is not related to the tank pressurization and is ventilated to prevent general overpressure like all interstages. The area in question is near the top of the LOX tank dome on the core stage but is not part of the tank itself or its thermal protection. If thermal analysis showed ice remained at manageable levels without the foam, it would have just been painted white. Source on this is an SLS program manager.

Ares V was to be a full 10m core with the 6 RS-68Bs on it by the time it ended. SLS is in many ways a throwback to very early Ares V designs with the standard shuttle tank-diameter core and 4 RS-25s (originally 5' date=' but it was unnecessary). There is also a difference in their flight plans, Ares V would stage much lower than SLS does, letting the J2X upper stage push all the way to orbit and circularize. SLS stages almost at orbital velocity (the core can put something into LEO all by itself) letting much more efficient upper stages take over for in-space work. Yeah, SLS is now very far beyond where Ares 1 was when it was cancelled.

This is incorrect. I have been told directly by people involved that they will be painted white for protection against heat, like the filament-wound boosters would have been had they flown on STS. The raw material of the casing is composite giving it its black color.

Apologies, fair enough. Felt a bit of a need to bring it up after it made folks chew me out for merely saying earlier that it was to be orange. Post removed.

They're also painted for thermal reasons. If Orbital-ATK's advanced boosters (Dark Knights) are chosen they would still be painted white.

Just a heads-up, and idk if its important or not, but the actual docking mechanism has the "spades" closed now instead of hollow like they were on earlier designs (and renders)

Love the JEM style surface texture! I think the ISS CAM module was supposed to use the same MMOD protection as JEM so it'd have probably looked like that too.

Actually SES-9 is currently set for a landing attempt. After choosing the "1.2" (Full-thrust), SES-9 also inquired about the possibility that, should the stage be returned, they could lease it for future SES missions. Now that bit was before the CRS-7 incident, so if it ends up being the first recovered stage, I don't know if its going to be possible to figure out a "lease" on what is essentially a testbed. http://spacenews.com/spacex-early-adopter-ses-ready-to-reuse-falcon-9-%C2%AD-for-the-right-price/