14 thoughts on “The Latest SLS Travails”

  1. Gotta love this:
    During a teleconference on Friday, Artemis Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson confirmed that there is a 20-day timeline once the flight safety system is armed. (This is a range safety mechanism used by all orbital rockets that destroys the booster in case it veers off course.) After the system is activated, it will take about a week to make final preparations in the Vehicle Assembly Building and a week to roll to the launch pad and make preparations there. That would leave just a single week for a fueling test, recycling of commodities, and perhaps one or two launch attempts before the 20-day window closes.

    Seems to me if they could reduce the timeline for the range safety system to just 10 days they could abrogate the ability for launch altogether whilst guaranteeing the range safe. For this program, I’m surprised this wasn’t done already.

    1. The naive question is why do it in the VAB rather than on the launch pad? I guess that they’re worried about a booster lighting up either in the VAB or on the way to the pad. Funny how these risk choices have so much synergy.

  2. I say, this is the reason you continue to fund SLS.
    Get NASA to launch this thing.
    If blows up. Do it, again.
    Whether you want to do 3rd try, is questionable.
    But I think, SLS will evenually launch and good chance
    it works. Continue funding it, whatever it is, and get another launch of it.
    In meantime, hopeful Starship is successfully launched. After 10 successful Starship launches, revisit the SLS issue. If SLS has not yet successfully launched, and there some confident it might be able to launch, maybe, continue it.
    It’s doubtful SLS will be as successful as James Webb telescope appears it will be. But James Webb telescope if it works, is still a train wreck. But it’s something. And SLS is also clearly demonstrating how you should not do something.

    1. “Get NASA to launch this thing.
      If blows up. Do it, again.
      Whether you want to do 3rd try, is questionable.”

      We would see people saying that SpaceX did it so could NASA and people are just not accepting enough of risk and it’s all imaginary money anyway so…

      1. well it’s not much money compared to the Dept Energy, Ed, and State and etc spend doing nothing-
        unless amounting to harm counts as something.

        1. I don’t necessarily disagree with you. Failed SLS launches right now would be very expensive but maybe had they designed differently, a failure wouldn’t cost $4 billion or whatever.

          I think that SLS defenders can/will turn some of our arguments against us in some Orwellian twist but it isn’t just the willingness to accept the loss of a rocket, SpaceX also planned for this and built out their production to support it.

      2. We would see people saying that SpaceX did it so could NASA and people are just not accepting enough of risk and it’s all imaginary money anyway so…
        Right, and until they’ve blown up as many SLS’s as SpaceX has Starships, it’s not wasteful, it’s not trying hard enough!

  3. I guess I don’t mind all the money spent, since it’s money going into people’s paychecks. But I do mind the expensive incompetence.

    Our government is shamelessly gluttonous and irresponsible. Everyone gets an award for their participation in the self-loving fiascos.

    Thank God SpaceX exists. Self-respecting engineers have some place to go.

  4. A significant part of the problem is that NASA has no clear goals or strategies beyond “study of space and the Earth in space”. Lots and lots of the Earth in space, despite tens of thousands of organizations, foundations, causes, and others who are studying the Earth.
    The -Ultimate Goal- of human space flight seems focused on the Sisyphean task of NASA boots on Mars before anyone else. The space science guys? Well, they get to pick what they want to study so there’s a hodgepodge of stuff going on there. What is the point of it all? Well…

    Were I in charge, something that will thankfully never happen, I would re-arrange things as follows:
    Goal: Humanity tapping the energy and resources of the Solar system for the benefit and advancement of our human civilization
    Strategy: Step-wise establishment of capabilities ever further out into the Solar system. Transport infrastructure in Cislunar space, esp. EML-1. Study of our Moon for how best to cultivate the resources it offers. Sorties to asteroids of opportunity. Develop a robust capability for transport to Mars and other destinations of interest.
    Science-wise, divest appropriate parts of the Earth study efforts to appropriate entities like NOAA and EPA and USGS and the like. Study of the Solar system would be upped, especially in the context of resource and energy identification, while I would put the deep space folks to work putting together a comprehensive database of the heavens incorporating all work to date on any particular section of space. My NASA would be a busy NASA, delivering results. Because that’s what I do as a manager, I deliver results. And I would use my Masters degree from ISU to hold everyone’s feet to the fire and not tolerate any BS. NASA could be an organization that cultivates U.S. competitiveness in the space industry. It could be the one department that really helps the U.S. get ahead in the next ‘industrial’ field, and be the economic leader that history will always remember as the one that made it happen for humanity.

    The problem is that I would never do well in front of Congress. As an Aspie I’m a bit, shall we say, unfiltered. I would have no problem calling them out on their B.S. either. I’m more of a statesman type than a politician, and really have no respect for the mental masturbation that is politics. So yeah, no, it would never happen.

    We should expect better from our tax dollars. I’ve been against SLS from its earliest incarnations in the 2003-2005 timeframe. I think it’s sad the years that NASA has squandered not making us better established off-Earth, nor providing the kind of leadership in space that the taxpayers give them credit for. Instead it’s a second or third tier priority in the grand scheme of things.

      1. Sadly, the speech remains evergreen.

        I get asked a lot “why don’t I do another one”, and all I can respond is that nothing has changed enough to require a new one.

  5. Looks to me like the program operational procedures might actually be even worse than the engineering design of SLS;

    That 20 day timeline on the FTS… seriously? Why is this not an issue for any other LV? Sounds to me like they have to install the actual explosives before rollout, and for some reason, this explosives aren’t det cord like on so many FTS, and they’ve used something with a very short shelf life.

    In other words, they’ve added, for no good reason, a major time pressure for launch evolution. Awesome way to create “Go fever” and thus risks, plus it’s another nightmare on the operational side (because delays do happen).

    Every time I think that nothing could be worse than SLS, I learn that SLS is even worse than I think.

    1. IIRC, the 20 day limit is because the battery that powers the FTS will run out, and since the detonator has a low-voltage state as the trigger, this is a deadline they have to adhere to, unlike the 12 month lifetime on the SRBs, which was extended because reasons.

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