Nibb31

SRBs are used for ICBMs because you light the fuse and they go. LRBs need propellant storage and fueling before you can launch them, which is maintenance intensive. In civilian rocketry, SRBs are often used because they are derived from military rockets, which is a way of assuring solid fuel fabrication and ICBM capability. This also makes them cheaper, because resources are shared between military and civilian contracts. Everyone gets a good deal.

No way could we go there in 4 or 5 years. That time wouldn't even be enough to develop the SCLSS for the hab module. If we assume that we want to use Orion and the SLS, then that thing is designed for a maximum flight rate of 2 per year. You would need at least 5 launches to assemble the MTV, which means at least 2,5 years of orbital assembly. You also need to design and build the parts for the mission. It took 15 years just to develop Orion, the crew capsule. It took 15 years to field the F-35. I don't see how we could design an entire MTV, with crew habitations, ECLSS, SEP propulsion, a cargo lander and a MAV, in less than 15 years, more realistically 20. And that's if we started now and constant funding was assured over 4 presidencies. With politicians' attention span being the same as a domestic house fly, that's not going to happen. I've been quite annoyed by NASA's PR over the last few days, touting Orion as 'the ship that we'll use to go to Mars and beyond". Nobody is going to Mars in Orion. Orion is like the dinghy on Captain Cook's ship. It's only purpose during the mission will be transferring to and from a much larger MTV. Sure, you have to start somewhere, but when you are designing an interplanetary exploration vehicle, you don't start with the dinghy. It's like building a car around the cigarette lighter. Nobody is going to Mars in a dinghy. In fact, NASA has no political mandate or funding to go to Mars at all. So instead of "inspiring future generations", all this baseless PR hype about Mars is doing is setting up future generations for even more disappointment.

Why not? The economical viability of reusable rockets hasn't been demonstrated yet. Again, they only make sense if you have a high flight rate and fast turnaround. SpaceX has been cutting costs through mass production. If the launch market doesn't expand dramatically, they have to choose between maximizing production capacity (lowering costs by building more expendable units) or going reusable (reusing stages but each unit is more expensive). And I don't think that a 10 or 20% lower price tag is going to make space more affordable to thousands of new applications that will expand the market dramatically. Cubesats are typically disposable educational payloads launced by schools and universities. Even if they could afford a ticket on a Falcon 9, those institutions don't usually have the funding or facilities to build larger payloads. The only new market on the horizon is LEO constellations for high-speed global communication. While that will offer a few juicy contracts for launch providers, it's not going to justify going from 50 launches per year to 500. The fact that there is no predictable market for fast turnaround means that Skylon is a non-starter, whichever way you look at it. "Build it and they will come" doesn't work. It's more like a 6-lane "bridge to nowhere".

1) Because politicians during Apollo wanted to land a man on the Moon. Today, all they want is jobs for their constituency. They don't care what NASA does with the rockets once their built, which is why they are not funding any missions or payloads for Orion or SLS. 2) Different time, different era. Political pressure. Unlimited budgets and workforce. Less red tape, review boards, and quality control.

That's for SLS. If we are going to be doing anything interesting, you'll need at least half the launches to be cargo. And I can't see NASA suddenly getting funding for a Mars mission.

They are burnt up and dunked in salt water, including thrusters, valves, and sensors. It uses pyros and parachutes, which need to be replaced, so refurbishing it is impractical. You're better off rebuilding a new one and refurbishing some of the equipment inside. With one flight every two years, it's not like the flight rate is going to make it worthwhile to refurbish the capsules.

It probably goes to KSC or JSC for forensics. Then it gets refurbed and probably gets offered to the Smithsonian.

EFT-1 = Engineering Flight Test. NASA doesn't have an infinitely extensible budget. Neither do their comms with the capsule have infinite bandwidth. The priority will always be on telemetry data. PR is secondary. The views out of the window weren't that valuable in terms of engineering data anyway. Don't worry though, I'm pretty sure those GoPros were recording HD. When the capsule gets back, they can pop out the SD Cards and upload the clips to YouTube.

There is no hurry. It's only going to a museum.

For freak's sake people. It's a dummy LAS with jettison motors and ballast, no abort motors, attitude motors or avionics.

Who cares? It's not going to strike anything if falls off. The insulation is there to prevent boil-off while on the pad. Once you've launched, it doesn't serve much purpose.

24 hour recycle means they are going to try again tomorrow with the launch window based on sunrise and sunset times. They have until then to fix the valve problem.

Scrubbed for today

Here we go again...

Daylight launch and daylight splashdown. Looking at the boiloff smoke, the wind still seems pretty strong...

They are expecting winds to die down in about a hour.

Hold again for the same reason. Wind. Boiloff smoke is flowing horizontal now, so the wind seems to be stronger than earlier.

Folks, we have a multi-page thread on the EFT-1 dummy LAS. Please look it up. It's a dummy ballast LAS with only the jettison motors because only the jettison is being tested. There are no abort motors, avionics, or attitude control motors on it because there is no point in wasting abort motors or attitude control motors when there is no point in saving the capsule. There is no point in saving the capsule because Orion is not designed to be reused and this is just a prototype for this specific test with most of the systems left out. A fully functional LAS on this flight would be a waste of money. Back to T-10.

There are procedures to be followed before T-0. For example, the Orion has to be switched from external power to batteries and T-9. So each time they resume countdown, they roll back to T-10 minutes. When a hold is declared, they have to switch everything back to how it should be before T-10.

No there isn't.

They still have two hours for the wind to calm down. Looking at the LOX boiloff smoke, it doesn't look that bad.

Hold again

Orion is powered up and ready to go. All systems go.

Still on hold due to a boat in the launch area and a problem with 2nd stage propellant, but there is a 2 hour launch window, so it will probably fly later on today.

Looks like it's a no go right now. There's an idiot on a boat again in the launch zone.