[New] Space Launch System / Orion Discussion Thread

[Cloakedwand72]

2 hours ago, Beccab said:

September 5th is already out, the new NET is October 19th. They're going to try to get a waiver to keep it at the pad a while more and repair it before returning it to the VAB, after which they'll roll it out again for the late October window. If they miss that whole launch period (they'll likely do ~3 tries in that one, same as this), they'll probably just get a few more waivers and retry for the 9th December or so; the date after which the SRBs should have been destacked and restacked has passed long ago, but they've been extending it since instead

Thanks for clarifying it for me! I've read that about the SRB stuff. Oh off topic nice spaceships on your KSP images.

[Cloakedwand72]

Oh during the launch attempt is the LAS armed in case of rocket explosion during ascent?

[Beccab]

2 minutes ago, Cloakedwand72 said:

Oh during the launch attempt is the LAS armed in case of rocket explosion during ascent?

Nope

[tater]

Yeah, they are on there, but not armed. Which seems really, really dumb.

If they have a failure, and they had live LAS that could have been tested, and don't even get that data whoever made that decision should be fired.

Note that the Orion itself is worth a BILLION dollars. Saving it as another boilerplate for what would become Artemis 2 doing a redo would make some amount of sense (course LockMart would probably charge another billion to refurb it).

 

[Beccab]

13 minutes ago, tater said:

Note that the Orion itself is worth a BILLION dollars. Saving it as another boilerplate for what would become Artemis 2 doing a redo would make some amount of sense (course LockMart would probably charge another billion to refurb it).

Not to mention, you need to recover its avionics for Artemis II given that the current plan has them refurbished for the next Orion - accepting Orion getting unnecessarily destroyed in an eventual failure means more unnecessary delays to the schedule to manufacture the parts that should have been recovered from Artemis I

[tater]

40 minutes ago, Beccab said:

Not to mention, you need to recover its avionics for Artemis II given that the current plan has them refurbished for the next Orion - accepting Orion getting unnecessarily destroyed in an eventual failure means more unnecessary delays to the schedule to manufacture the parts that should have been recovered from Artemis I

Wonder why I did not think of this before, since the lack of active LAS has been known.

Yes, the LAS adds another failure mode, but I'm unsure how this will look if they have a RUD—they are not hardware rich.

Guess it's the chance of a LOV during ascent vs the LOV/LOM via a LAS failure (accidentally triggering, I guess).

Seems like a very unlikely failure mode. Is the LAS filled with inert material, or is it flight article, but turned off?

[DDE]

1 hour ago, Cloakedwand72 said:

Oh during the launch attempt is the LAS armed in case of rocket explosion during ascent?

You don't want to arm the LAS for no good reason.

https://www.russianspaceweb.com/soyuz-7k-ok-no1-explosion.html

[Meecrob]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

You don't want to arm the LAS for no good reason.

https://www.russianspaceweb.com/soyuz-7k-ok-no1-explosion.html

No, that's a great example of why you should turn of the LAS after an abort. It was programmed to fire automatically if it detects inertially a certain deflection from vertical an the earth rotated beyond that parameter. Clearly the Soviets knew the Earth rotates. That example sounds like bureaucracy...and we are led right back to NASA, so maybe I agree with you in a round about way?

Edited September 4, 2022 by Meecrob

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, Meecrob said:

No, that's a great example of why you should turn of the LAS after an abort. It was programmed to fire automatically if it detects inertially a certain deflection from vertical an the earth rotated beyond that parameter. Clearly the Soviets knew the Earth rotates. That example sounds like bureaucracy...and we are led right back to NASA, so maybe I agree with you in a round about way?

Agree, in an manned mission you arm it after the crew enter and the ground crew redraw. You keep it armed until ground crew come back in case of an abort. 
Now the Soyuz incident could have happened with an manned flight to if it was an long hold. 
Flight systems was much more primitive back then as in analogue, but turning off the launch abort system after an abort make sense also resetting the gyro because of drift and earth rotation. 
It was some idiot flat earthers who got their hand on an gyroscope and discovered it had an 15 degree hourly drift  

Also https://www.russianspaceweb.com/soyuz-7k-ok-no1-explosion.html
I also assumed the launch abort tower was connected to the orbital module but it might just be an simplify drawing. 

Edited September 4, 2022 by magnemoe

[SunlitZelkova]

20 hours ago, Beccab said:

September 5th is already out, the new NET is October 19th. They're going to try to get a waiver to keep it at the pad a while more and repair it before returning it to the VAB, after which they'll roll it out again for the late October window. If they miss that whole launch period (they'll likely do ~3 tries in that one, same as this), they'll probably just get a few more waivers and retry for the 9th December or so; the date after which the SRBs should have been destacked and restacked has passed long ago, but they've been extending it since instead

Does the continual extension of the destack date for the SRBs pose a credible risk to the flight?

Even if the original destack date was merely cautionary instead of the true design limit, surely at some point the boosters are going to become a major hazard.

[AlamoVampire]

@intelliComI agree whole heartedly about colonies in the Mars area, but to get there, the moon first go we must.

032109052022

[RCgothic]

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Does the continual extension of the destack date for the SRBs pose a credible risk to the flight?

Even if the original destack date was merely cautionary instead of the true design limit, surely at some point the boosters are going to become a major hazard.

 

 

[Beccab]

Looks like the FTS may soon become part of the ever growing list of SLS items out that receive a waiver to extend their life (technically it's already there, they had extended it with one from 20 to 25 days in order to be able to eventually launch on the 5th)

[Beccab]

@tater do you or your MSFC friend have info on the time of the day the windows on late september and october are? I can only find info on the days available, not the hours

[tater]

35 minutes ago, Beccab said:

@tater do you or your MSFC friend have info on the time of the day the windows on late september and october are? I can only find info on the days available, not the hours

I honestly thought the times were posted here...

 

[tater]

I read something that said the Oct opportunities might be at night.

Have a text in.

 

[tater]

 

[mikegarrison]

On 9/4/2022 at 1:14 AM, AlamoVampire said:

We simply cannot survive as a species if we do not return.

The horseshoe crab has never gotten to the moon and it has survived as a species for about 500 million years. Humans have only been around for a few hundred thousand, and you are writing us off if we don't send people to the moon (again)?

[Superfluous J]

33 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

The horseshoe crab has never gotten to the moon and it has survived as a species for about 500 million years. Humans have only been around for a few hundred thousand, and you are writing us off if we don't send people to the moon (again)?

The Horseshoe crab has not had the same negative effect on its own living conditions as humans have. Some would argue that makes it a lesser animal.

[SunlitZelkova]

38 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

The horseshoe crab has never gotten to the moon and it has survived as a species for about 500 million years. Humans have only been around for a few hundred thousand, and you are writing us off if we don't send people to the moon (again)?

The family of horseshoe crabs (Limulidae) has survived that long, the actual extant species, of which there are four, date from the Upper/Late Cretaceous, so 100-66 Mya.

We also don’t know the exact status for some of the horseshoe crabs. One species is endangered, another vulnerable, and there isn’t enough data on the two others to know.

That said, I think saying humans need to go back to the Moon to survive is silly. It’s like sitting in a burning apartment complex and saying people can survive if they move to (literally start living in) the parking lot.

Better to put out the fire and rebuild the apartments than brave the weather, criminals, and other health dangers of the parking lot.

In any case, though, SLS is hardly the vehicle to use for such a grandiose endeavor. And humans will certainly return to the Moon one way or another without it.

Edited September 7, 2022 by SunlitZelkova

[intelliCom]

6 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

That said, I think saying humans need to go back to the Moon to survive is silly. 

I'd look at it this way:

We can survive on Earth just fine. We destroy the environment, chances are we'll simply adapt to the damage instead of solving it. If we want humans to thrive- at least technologically and scientifically- the efforts put into making a permanent moon base would do that. The moonbase itself would be a useful base for scientific research of space, but being able to do so needs development of effective technologies like mobile nuclear reactors and self-sustaining life support systems (e.g., converting CO2 to O2 through plants, cultivating enough crops to let humans live anywhere, etc.).

Even though we're (probably) smart enough to survive our own damages, pushing for any major goal creates technological advancement everywhere. Nuclear fission was initially used as a way to win WWII, but it now powers countless cities across the world. The Wright brothers pushed to develop proper air flight, and now we rely on this technology for a decent portion of our transport (both human and cargo). When (and if) nuclear fusion can be controlled, the Moon will be very important in providing fuel for nuclear fusion reactors.

So, the Moon isn't necessary for survival. But it is important for technological development.

[SunlitZelkova]

17 minutes ago, intelliCom said:

I'd look at it this way:

We can survive on Earth just fine. We destroy the environment, chances are we'll simply adapt to the damage instead of solving it. If we want humans to thrive- at least technologically and scientifically- the efforts put into making a permanent moon base would do that. The moonbase itself would be a useful base for scientific research of space, but being able to do so needs development of effective technologies like mobile nuclear reactors and self-sustaining life support systems (e.g., converting CO2 to O2 through plants, cultivating enough crops to let humans live anywhere, etc.).

Even though we're (probably) smart enough to survive our own damages, pushing for any major goal creates technological advancement everywhere. Nuclear fission was initially used as a way to win WWII, but it now powers countless cities across the world. The Wright brothers pushed to develop proper air flight, and now we rely on this technology for a decent portion of our transport (both human and cargo). When (and if) nuclear fusion can be controlled, the Moon will be very important in providing fuel for nuclear fusion reactors.

So, the Moon isn't necessary for survival. But it is important for technological development.

Assuming the gist of your argument is that “goals create progress”, this simply isn’t true (all the time).

Germany had a goal of conquering Europe and it set their science back for a variety of reasons. The USSR had a goal of improving agricultural yields and it literally ended up believing in a person who said cells could be created from egg yolk.

To keep this on topic, I don’t think we need Artemis (and thus not SLS) to drive technological development. I’m skeptical it will provide anything particularly new apart from modernized and more reliable versions of concepts and proposals from the 70s. Even Mars won’t give off a lot.

If we are still no where near fusion on Earth I don’t see how being on the Moon or Mars is going to make it happen faster. It’s not like the Earthlings are slacking off or not trying.

Colony-level developments are science fiction, I would except the Moon and Mars surface facilities of this century to be souped up versions of known solutions derived from ISS research.

[darthvader15001]

I was about to say we were getting quite off-topic

[intelliCom]

Quite right. I think we settled that going to the Moon isn't necessary for survival, and that's good enough.

Now, what are we thinking with regards to how SLS is going to go as it is now? I remember hearing that they'll try a launch in late september instead of october, but I'm unsure.

[SunlitZelkova]

44 minutes ago, intelliCom said:

Quite right. I think we settled that going to the Moon isn't necessary for survival, and that's good enough.

Now, what are we thinking with regards to how SLS is going to go as it is now? I remember hearing that they'll try a launch in late september instead of october, but I'm unsure.

It appears September 19th is just the earliest possible date, not the one they will necessarily do.

It all comes down to how long it takes to get the work done on the leak I think, and of course what happens with the FTS/roll back to VAB.

In other words, we don’t know 

The whole thing just reeks of the type of incompetence that blew up the first N1 though, IMO.