Slow Launch System
“You know, you’re right, the flight rate—three years is a long time.”
jack1983 Smack-Fu Master, in training
12y
93
The Lurker Beneath said:
Do it on a windy day?
There are risks with too high wind speeds as well. High airflow causes static buildup and turbulence. Hydrogen requires very little ignition energy (well below 1mJ at stoichiometric conditions). So even a gust of wind can set off a combustible mixture.
Cryogenic hydrogen is an absolute nightmare to work with.
paulfdietz Ars Scholae Palatinae
7y
1,168
Using hydrogen as the fuel in the first stage was never a good idea. The density is just terrible, making the first stage much larger. Because the first stage is disposed of so quickly, Isp is less important; what's more important is "density impulse" (density x Isp), and LoX/LH2 is inferior to LOX/hydrocarbon by that metric.
Low density also makes the engines more expensive, as more pumping power is needed for a given thrust. //
paulfdietz Ars Scholae Palatinae
7y
1,168
pokrface said:
Right, but the "first stage" of SLS (and STS) is properly the SRBs.
It's more like the first "half stage". What matters for the argument is the velocity at which a stage is done. Even with the SRBs there, that's not that high (although higher than say the Falcon 9, which ends the stage 1 burn at an unusually low velocity so it can be recovered.)
The SRBs do allow the thrust of those LH2 engines to be somewhat lower, since they don't have to lift the fully fueled stack off the pad themselves. By the time the SRBs drop some propellant is gone. This ameliorates to some extent the relatively poor thrust/weight ratio of the engines (73.1 vs 184 for the Merlin 1D.)
What everyone agrees on is that NASA needs a new spacecraft capable of relaying communications from Mars to Earth. This issue has become especially acute with the recent loss of NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft. NASA’s best communications relay remains the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has now been there for 20 years.
Congress cared enough about this issue to add $700 million in funding for a “Mars Telecommunications Orbiter” in the supplemental funding for NASA provided by the “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed by the US Congress last year.
The advertisement on the auction website was titled “Space Shuttle Remove Before Flight Flags Lot of 18.” They were listed with an opening bid of $3.99. On January 12, 2010, I paid $5.50 as the winner.
At that point, my interest in the 3-inch-wide by 12-inch-long (7.6 by 30.5 cm) tags was as handouts for kids and other attendees at future events. Whether it was at an astronaut autograph convention, a space memorabilia show, a classroom visit, or a conference talk, having “swag” was a great way to foster interest in space history. At first glance, these flags seemed to be a perfect fit.
So I didn’t pay much attention when they first arrived. The eBay listing had promoted them only as generic examples of “KSC Form 4-226 (6/77)"—the ID the Kennedy Space Center assigned to the tags. //
It was about a year later when I first noticed the ink stamps at the bottom of each tag. They were marked “ET-26” followed by a number. For example, the first tag in the clipped-together stack was stamped “ET-26-000006.” //
A fact sheet prepared by Lockheed Martin provided the answer. The company operated at the Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans, where the external tanks were built before being barged to the Kennedy Space Center for launch. Part of the sheet listed each launch with its date and numbered external tank. As my finger traced down the page, it came to STS 61-B, 11/26/85, ET-22; STS 61-C, 1/12/86, ET-30; and then STS 51-L, 1/28/86… ET-26. //
Once the tags’ association with STS-51L was confirmed, it no longer felt right to use them as giveaways. At least, not to individuals.
There are very few items directly connected to Challenger‘s last flight that museums and other public centers can use to connect their visitors to what transpired 40 years ago. NASA has placed only one piece of Challenger on public display, and that is in the exhibition “Forever Remembered” at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. //
digital.rain Smack-Fu Master, in training
2y
34
Sarty said:
It is such an extremely NASA thing to do to mark items so mundane and interchangeable as remove-before-flight tags with individually traceable serial numbers.
It has to be one of the quality control check points … you know you placed, say, 56 tags for a specific mission. After removal, you can check that all the 56 tags for that mission have been properly removed.
Harrison Schmitt, speaking with a NASA interviewer in 2000, said his productivity in the Apollo suit “couldn’t have been much more than 10 percent of what you would do normally here on Earth.”
“You take the human brain, the human eyes, and the human hands into space. That’s the only justification you have for having human beings in space,” Schmitt said. “It’s a massive justification, but that’s what you want to use, and all three have distinct benefits in productivity and in gathering new information and infusing data over any automated system. Unfortunately, we have discarded one of those, and that is the hands.”
Schmitt singled out the gloves as the “biggest problem” with the Apollo suits. “The gloves are balloons, and they’re made to fit,” he said. Picking something up with a firm grip requires squeezing against the pressure inside the suit. The gloves can also damage astronauts’ fingernails.
“That squeezing against that pressure causes these forearm muscles to fatigue very rapidly,” Schmitt said. “Just imagine squeezing a tennis ball continuously for eight hours or 10 hours, and that’s what you’re talking about.”
Barratt recounted a conversation in which Schmitt, now 90, said he wouldn’t have wanted to do another spacewalk after his three excursions with commander Gene Cernan on Apollo 17.
“Physically, and from a suit-maintenance standpoint, he thought that that was probably the limit, what they did,” Barratt said. “They were embedded with dust. The visors were abraded. Every time they brushed the dust off the visors, they lost visibility.”
Getting the Artemis spacesuit right is vital to the program’s success. You don’t want to travel all the way to the Moon and stop exploring because of sore fingers or an injured knee.
“If you look at what we’re spending on suits versus what we’re spending on the rocket, this is a pretty small amount,” Rubins said. “Obviously, the rocket can kill you very quickly. That needs to be done right. But the continuous improvement in the suit will get us that much more efficiency. Saving 30 minutes or an hour on the Moon, that gives you that much more science.”
“Once you have safely landed on the lunar surface, this is where you’ve got to put your money,” Barratt said.
NASA has never before cut short a human spaceflight mission for medical reasons. “It’s the first time we’ve done a controlled medical evacuation from the vehicle, so that is unusual,” Kshatriya said.
The Soviet Union called an early end for an expedition to the Salyut 7 space station in 1985 after the mission’s commander fell ill in orbit.
In a sense, it is surprising that it took this long. Polk said predictive models suggested the ISS would have a medical evacuation about once every three years. It ended up taking 25 years. In that time, NASA has improved astronauts’ abilities to treat aches and pains, minor injuries, and routine illnesses.
Crews in orbit can now self-treat ailments that might have prompted a crew to return to Earth in the past. One astronaut was diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis, or a blood clot, in 2018 without requiring an early departure from the space station. Another astronaut suffered a pinched nerve in 2021 and remained in orbit for another seven months.
One of the more compelling reasons for the space station’s existence is its ability to act as a testbed for learning how to live and work off the planet. The station has served as a laboratory for studying how spaceflight affects the human body, and as a platform to test life support systems necessary for long-duration voyages to deep space.
FranzJoseph Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
11m
1,581
DavidEmami said:
Hope the everything turns out well for the crew member. It does make me wonder, though -- how would they deal with something life threatening? And have any medical procedures been done in space before? Did some searching and the closest I can find is a post-splashdown injury on Apollo 12 that the crew treated before egress, but that wasn't in free-fall. In particular, I assume the medical concept of the "golden hour" has to be abandoned.
First, obviously IANAD, so take it with a big grain of salt.
"Golden hour" is usually talked in the context of massive traumatic injuries and/or massive haemorrhaging. Even there it's a bit controversial, as it might be more useful only in the context of triage of massively multiple casualties with limited medevac resources down here.
IOTW, if any massive traumatic injury happens on the ISS (say a micrometeorite going through an astronaut or a pressurised cylinder failure resulting in an open fracture and haemorrhaging), the casualty is likely to be fucked anyway.
For things that develop over a longer time (appendicitis ‑‑> septicaemia), the astronauts are hopefully so well monitored that it would be caught early on.
You can find a full equipment list in the CHeCS onboard here (PDF, 2011 link). https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20110022379/downloads/20110022379.pdf
Includes BP/ECG, AED, basic dental & surgery stuff (nothing quite major, scalpel and forceps etc), detox kit, airways kit, ambu bag and low‑flow mask and endotracheal oxygen supply, IV with pump and IV solutions, chest drain valve for pneumothorax, dressings, sutures and splints. Plus medicines, obviously.
Not really sure what the survival rate of somebody with a tension pneumothorax would be, even if quickly drained with the drain valve and intubated. I presume NASA has some procedures for getting an intubated or IV'd astronaut back home, even if it might mean not wearing their suit?
What's the max acceleration experienced during re‑entry and chute deployment? Not Soyuz, hopefully something gentler like CrewDragon (I assume Soyuz's retrorockets are less gentle here)?
henryhbk Ars Tribunus Militum
12y
1,891
Subscriptor++
FranzJoseph said:
First, obviously IANAD, so take it with a big grain of salt.
"Golden hour" is usually talked in the context of massive traumatic injuries and/or massive haemorrhaging. Even there it's a bit controversial, as it might be more useful only in the context of triage of massively multiple casualties with limited medevac resources down here.
IOTW, if any massive traumatic injury happens on the ISS (say a micrometeorite going through an astronaut or a pressurised cylinder failure resulting in an open fracture and haemorrhaging), the casualty is likely to be fucked anyway.
For things that develop over a longer time (appendicitis ‑‑> septicaemia), the astronauts are hopefully so well monitored that it would be caught early on.
You can find a full equipment list in the CHeCS onboard here (PDF, 2011 link).
Includes BP/ECG, AED, basic dental & surgery stuff (nothing quite major, scalpel and forceps etc), detox kit, airways kit, ambu bag and low‑flow mask and endotracheal oxygen supply, IV with pump and IV solutions, chest drain valve for pneumothorax, dressings, sutures and splints. Plus medicines, obviously.
Not really sure what the survival rate of somebody with a tension pneumothorax would be, even if quickly drained with the drain valve and intubated. I presume NASA has some procedures for getting an intubated or IV'd astronaut back home, even if it might mean not wearing their suit?
What's the max acceleration experienced during re‑entry and chute deployment? Not Soyuz, hopefully something gentler like CrewDragon (I assume Soyuz's retrorockets are less gentle here)?
Click to expand...
IAAD, most of the survivable emergencies require only a critical but generally simple procedure to buy time. Often I am faced with surgical emergencies in the hospital overnight, and while on paper we have at least one trauma and one cardiac OR on hot standby, it's not like surgeons are standing there in stasis waiting to operate, and often will be several hours until they can formally operate on someone (or we need some test to complete). So for instance for the appendicitis above we use broad spectrum IV antibiotics, then figure it out later, Broken bones easy - splint and transport, pneumothorax (particularly tension) you can do a needle decompression (all it takes is a 20ga IV catheter and a stopcock) and again you've bought plenty of time for surgeons to get ready to do a definitive thoracostomy (chest) tube, most bleeding can be stopped with pressure.
Things where this isn't true would be a stroke or intracranial bleeding. Not 100% sure if the aircraft carriers that picked up Apollo astronauts even have the ability to treat that onboard. depending where the bleed is. If it is an epidural (in the skull, outside the brain but hydraulically crushing the brain) then the answer is simply we drill a hole and relieve the pressure (trepanning) and then some actual neurosurgeon can fix the issue, and when I was the intern, that's who did the burr hole, a 4 minute procedure that bought you hours to the OR. But if the bleed is deeper (such as a sub-arachnoid bleed or interparenchymal bleed) well not much you are doing outside an interventional neuroradiology suite, and those patients often have a poor prognosis on land. Not sure if they screen for berry aneurysms in the astronaut core with a head angiogram? Penetrating trauma management is battlefield medic level care to buy time to get to surgery, and a lot can be done to stall exsanguination within reason without much clinical skill or equipment. There are military medic deployed pro-coagulants that can be put into a wound to form instant clot, and of course the tried and true tampon in the hole. In a penetrating wound something like a tampon works by absorbing blood and expanding to put pressure on the bleeding vessels, which works surprisingly well in the absence of definitive medical care.
As for g-forces anyone who has ridden in an ambulance on our pothole strewn streets in the northeast knows you subject you patient to a surprising number of shock loads, but I worry more about needing to put a critically ill patient into a chair for the descent when bleeding has stopped while lying prone or on their back. Does crew dragon have a stretcher capability?
While Rocketdyne’s ownership merry-go-round kept spinning, the company’s competitors pushed forward. SpaceX and Blue Origin, backed by wealthy owners, took a fresh approach to designing rockets. Apart from the technical innovations that led to reusable rockets, these newer companies emphasized vertical integration to cut costs and minimize reliance on outside supply chains. They wanted to design and build their own rocket engines and were not interested in outsourcing propulsion. Rocketdyne’s business was—and still is—entirely focused on selling ready-made engines to customers.
The launch startups that followed in the footsteps of SpaceX and Blue Origin have largely imitated their approach to insourcing. There are at least nine medium to large liquid-fueled rocket engines in production or in advanced development in the United States today, and just one of them is from the enterprise once known as Rocketdyne: the RS-25 engine used to power the core stage of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. //
The RS-25 engine, by far the largest in L3Harris’ portfolio and a former Rocketdyne product, is not part of the sale. The RS-25 was initially known as the Space Shuttle Main Engine and was designed for reusability. The expendable heavy-lift SLS rocket uses four of the engines, and NASA is burning through the 16 leftover shuttle-era RS-25 engines on the first four SLS flights for the agency’s Artemis Moon program. The second SLS flight is set to launch in the coming months on a mission carrying four astronauts beyond the Moon.
L3Harris will retain total ownership of the RS-25 program. The company has a contract with NASA to build new RS-25 engines for SLS flights beyond Artemis IV. But the new RS-25s will come at an expense of about $100 million per engine, significantly more than SpaceX sells an entire launch on a Falcon 9 rocket. The engine contract is structured as a cost-plus contract, with award and incentive fees paid by the government to L3Harris.
Sending astronauts to the red planet will be a decades-long activity and cost many billions of dollars. So why should NASA undertake such a bold mission?
A new report published Tuesday, titled “A Science Strategy for the Human Exploration of Mars,” represents the answer from leading scientists and engineers in the United States: finding whether life exists, or once did, beyond Earth.
“We’re searching for life on Mars,” said Dava Newman, a professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-chair of the committee that wrote the report, in an interview with Ars. “The answer to the question ‘are we alone‘ is always going to be ‘maybe,’ unless it becomes yes.”
The damage will therefore test the current leaders of Russia. How committed are they to the International Space Station partnership with NASA? Before, they were willing to play out the string to 2030 and the end of the station’s lifetime, but that required minimal investment in new capabilities. In fact, Russia recently cut the number of crewed Soyuz missions to the station from four every two years down to three, to save money. Now they must devote significant resources to the Soyuz program critical to the ISS.
“This is a real-life test of their resilience,” Jeff Manber, a senior Voyager official and former Nanoracks chief executive with long-time expertise in Russia’s space program, told Ars. “We are going to learn just how important the ISS is to leadership there.” //
The at least temporary loss of Site 31 will only place further pressure on SpaceX. The company currently flies NASA’s only operational crewed vehicle capable of reaching the space station, and the space agency recently announced that Boeing’s Starliner vehicle needs to fly an uncrewed mission before potentially carrying crew again. Moreover, due to rocket issues, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 vehicle is the only rocket currently available to launch both Dragon and Cygnus supply missions to the space station. For a time, SpaceX may also now be called upon to backstop Russia as well.
blackhawk887 Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
9y
19,694
100% TNT equivalent is crazy. Even 25% is probably twice a reasonable figure. The FAA uses 14% for LOX/hydrogen and 10% for LOX/kerosene. Hydrogen is more than twice as energetic per mass of methane, and kerosene about 80% as energetic as methane.
LOX and liquid methane are miscible, unlike the other combinations, but there aren't any plausible scenarios where you'd get better mixing than a rocket falling back on the pad shortly after liftoff, which both kerolox and hydrolox are also perfectly capable of doing. //
mattlindn Ars Centurion
7y
231
NASA's current blast range evacuation area ranges from 3 to 4 miles as shown in the diagrams in this article (I measured it on google maps).
It's worth mentioning that the privately run Rocket Ranch down in South Texas where people can pay money to get closer to the Starship launches is only 3.9 miles from the launch site. The people who watch from the Mexico can get as close as 2.4 miles.
Where most people (including myself) watch(ed) from, South Padre Island, is almost exactly 5 miles away.
So yeah this seems kind of excessive. //
Jack56 Ars Scholae Palatinae
7y
672
For the nth time, a fuel-oxidiser explosion is not a detonation. It is a deflagration. They are far less violent. An intimate mixture of gaseous oxygen and methane can detonate but liquid methane and liquid oxygen cannot mix intimately - are not miscible - because methane is a solid at lox temperatures, especially the sub-cooled lox which Starship uses. A detonation takes place in under a millisecond. Deflagrations are fires. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be bad but comparisons with an energetically equivalent mass of TNT are way out of line. //
mattlindn Ars Centurion
7y
231
Jack56 said:
For the nth time, a fuel-oxidiser explosion is not a detonation. It is a deflagration. They are far less violent. An intimate mixture of gaseous oxygen and methane can detonate ....
Didn't think about this, but yes you're correct. The boiling point of Oxygen is 90.2 K and the melting point of Methane is 90.7 K. If you mix the two together, before any Methane can melt all the oxygen has to boil off. Though there should still be some local melting given the outside air temperatures are MUCH warmer than the liquid oxygen.
Though at the same time given the temperatures are so close together I don't think much Methane will freeze before an explosion happens. So maybe the point is moot? //
SpikeTheHobbitMage Ars Scholae Palatinae
3y
1,745
Person_Man said:
I have to imagine a fully fueled stack with optimal mixing for the biggest explosion would probably be the largest non nuclear explosion ever.
Most of Starship's propellant is oxygen. The full stack only carries 1030t of methane (330t on Ship, 700t on SuperHeavy). Methane also has a TNT equivalent of only 0.16. Using the omnicaluclator, I get 1030t of methane* = 164.8t of TNT. That doesn't even make the top 10 list.
*omnicalculator lists natural gas, which is mostly methane. //
blackhawk887 Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
9y
19,694
mattlindn said:
Didn't think about this, but yes you're correct. The boiling point of Oxygen is 90.2 K and the melting point of Methane is 90.7 K. If you mix the two together, ...
Mixing with oxygen should depress the freezing point of methane. For example, if you take water at its freezing point, and mix it equally with alcohol that is itself, say, 10 degrees colder than the freezing point of water, the resulting mix will be well below 0 C but will not contain any frozen water.
Also, you can mix butane and water under a little pressure, even though at atmospheric pressure butane boils a half-degree below the freezing point of water. They aren't miscible, but that's just because of polarity - they are happy to both be liquids at the same temperature and a little pressure.
Methane and LOX are considered miscible and were even considered for monopropellants at various mix ratios. The mixture is reportedly a bit shock sensitive though. //
SpikeTheHobbitMage Ars Scholae Palatinae
3y
1,745
Mad Klingon said:
For the many debating using eminent domain to expand launch facilities, that would likely be the simple part of the issue. Most of that area is considered sensitive wildlife area and dealing with the current piles environmental regulations and paperwork could take decades for a major expansion. Look at all the grief SpaceX gets when they build on the relatively bland bit of Texas coast they are currently using. It would be much worse at the Florida site.One of the great legacies of Apollo was we got a well built out area for launching stuff before most of the environmental legislation was passed.
One of the great legacies of Apollo was that the exclusion zone around Cape Canaveral preserved enough of the wetlands in good enough condition to become a protected nature reserve.
“Until we get that data from the testing that is ongoing and the analysis that needs to occur, we’re going to continue to treat any LOX-methane vehicle with 100 percent TNT blast equivalency, and have a maximized keep-out zone, simply from a public safety perspective,” Chatman said.
The data so far shows promising results. “We do expect that BDA to shrink,” he said. “We expect that to shrink based on some of the initial testing that has been done and the initial data reviews that have been done.”
That’s imperative, not just for Starship’s neighbors at the Cape Canaveral spaceport, but for SpaceX itself. The company forecasts a future in which it will launch Starships more often than the Falcon 9, requiring near-continuous operations at multiple launch pads. //
The Commercial Space Federation, a lobbying group, submitted written testimony to Congress in 2023 arguing the government should be using “existing industry data” to inform its understanding of the explosive potential of methane and liquid oxygen. That data, the federation said, suggests the government should set its TNT blast equivalency to no greater than 25 percent, a change that would greatly reduce the size of keep-out zones around launch pads. The organization’s members include prominent methane users SpaceX, Blue Origin, Relativity Space, and Stoke Space, all of which have launch sites at Cape Canaveral.
The government’s methalox testing plans were expected to cost at least $80 million, according to the Commercial Space Federation.
The concern among engineers is that liquid oxygen and methane are highly miscible, meaning they mix together easily, raising the risk of a “condensed phase detonation” with “significantly higher overpressures” than rockets with liquid hydrogen or kerosene fuels. Small-scale mixtures of liquid oxygen and liquified natural gas have “shown a broad detonable range with yields greater than that of TNT,” NASA wrote in 2023. //
SpaceX said it has conducted sub-scale methalox detonation tests “in close collaboration with NASA,” while also gathering data from full-scale Starship tests in Starbase, Texas, including information from test flights and from recent ground test failures. //
The company did not disclose the yield calculation, but it shared maps showing its proposed clear areas around the future Starship launch sites at Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center. They are significantly smaller than the clear areas originally envisioned by the Space Force and NASA, but SpaceX says it uses “actual test data on explosive yield and include a conservative factor of safety.” //
Concerns as mundane as traffic jams are now enough of a factor to consider using automated scanners at vehicle inspection points and potentially adding a dedicated lane for slow-moving transporters carrying rocket boosters from one place to another across the launch base, according to Chatman. This is becoming more important as SpaceX, and now Blue Origin, routinely shuttle their reusable rockets from place to place. //
Space Force officials largely attribute the steep climb in launch rates at Cape Canaveral to the launch industry’s embrace of automated self-destruct mechanisms. These pyrotechnic devices have largely replaced manual flight termination systems, which require ground support from a larger team of range safety engineers, including radar operators and flight control officers with the authority to send a destruct command to the rocket if it flies off course. Now, that is all done autonomously on most US launch vehicles.
The Space Force mandated that launch companies using military spaceports switch to autonomous safety systems by October 1 2025, but military officials issued waivers for human-in-the-loop destruct devices to continue flying on United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket, NASA’s Space Launch System, and the US Navy’s ballistic missile fleet. That means those launches will be more labor-intensive for the Space Force, but the Atlas V is nearing retirement, and the SLS and the Navy only occasionally appear on the Cape Canaveral launch schedule.
My antennae started twitching about Trump and Isaacman on Monday, when space reporter Eric Berger (probably the best in the business) published this story for Ars Technica: Capitol Hill is abuzz with talk of the “Athena” plan for NASA.
Long story short, Athena was Isaacman's plan for cutting costs at NASA and restoring the agency's "mission-first" culture — and getting us back to the Moon, at a price we can afford and before China does. Needless to say, Athena involved upsetting an awful lot of well-anchored apple carts and taking way some gold-plated iron rice bowls.
For starters, Isaacman wants to ditch the stupidly expensive, technological dinosaur knowns as the Space Launch System (SLS), meant to carry Americans back to the Moon. Not only is SLS built from yesterday's disposable rocket parts, but "at $4 billion a launch, you don’t have a Moon program," interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy (and full-time Transportation Secretary) said back in September. //
Washington read that as "Isaacman is too close to Elon Musk and too far from Lockheed," and that's when the long knives came out for the 42-year-old billionaire and record-setting private astronaut.
AND ANOTHER THING: "Old Space" refers to old-school contractors who have been in the business forever, mostly doing the same things in the same ways — and also to NASA. "New Space" encompasses the free-thinking startups, large and small — and hopefully to NASA under new leadership. //
Cliff_Hanger
a day ago
Thanks for the "ANOTHER THING."
I thought "Old Space" was a cheap knock-off cologne but couldn't figure out what it had to do with NASA.
anon-a-miss Cliff_Hanger
a day ago
It smells almost like "Old Spice", but not quite...
Why settle for Old Space cologne when you can use Musk! //
KS
a day ago
SLS was specified by the Senate to use existing equipment. "Senate Launch System"
The whole point is to spend money on companies that make nice paybacks to politicians.
The reason SpaceX can lauch so cheaply is because they do blow stuff up to find out what works and what doesn't.
If NASA did that, congresscritters would complain "They're wasting taxpayer money! I prefer other ways of wasting taxpayer money!"
I have seen this for 45 years, not just space but FAA. The ATC computer system was seriously obsolete in 1980, but Congress didn't want to allocate money to update it. One big deal to handle the ATC strike was "flow control" - monitoring how busy airspace would be so planes could be held on the ground when there would be delays. The PROTOTYPE was more capable than the deployed system, because Congress insisted the FAA use the obsolete IBM mainframes they bought in the 1960's instead of more modern computers.
(Which is why I think Air Traffic Control should be privatized and paid for by user fees, not funded by Congress. They would be able to make better decisions).
Snowblind KS
a day ago
Which Is crazy as IBM mainframes are transaction monsters. Always have been. But 20 years is a LONG time, 6 or 7 genrations.
I mean sure, the mean time between failures is 25 years.... but that does not mean you should keep them that long! Maintenance goes way up after 2nd Gen has passed, or 6 years. Cost less to replace them.
KS Snowblind
a day ago
These were 360/30's and 40's customized for real-time operation and called 9020's after the Univacs they replaced. By the 1980's, the connectors were suffering metal fatigue.
Both hardware and software had advanced quite a bit and newer more reliable distributed systems were possible.
KS Snowblind
a day ago
Better would be a distributed system. Even replacing the 360's with 370's would have been better, but PDP-10's were quite capable (the flow control prototype I mentioned was written for a PDP-10) and better at real-time work. Although minicomputers such as PDP-11's would do a lot of the I/O.
The problem was, the old mainframes were customized and software would not necessarily run on a newer 360/370 system.
What was done was to somehow get IBM or IBM clones to run the software.
Of course, if this was a government project, we'd still be working on it, and consultants would have made a lot of money.
BTW, back then, I was a subcontractor to DOT from a small company as their cash cow; that company never did make it (technology wasn't ready for a "specification language") but it did have a connection with the space program. HOS - Higher Order Software, started by Margaret Hamilton and Saydean Zeldin (sp?). Look up Margaret Hamilton - did a LOT for the Apollo program. //
polyjunkie
a day ago edited
Elon Musk will greet NASA from his condo on the moon by the time NASA builds a rocket to get there. And his grandchildren will greet NASA on Mars by the time it gets there.
Here’s the way fix NASA: Close it. Make in an Accounts Payable Desk with a list of projects it will pay for:
1) $5B for the first 30 day sojourn on the moon.
2)$2B for an additional 6 months.
3) 25B for the first round trip to Mars with a 30 day stay.
4) $100B for the first 2 year stay on Mars and return for 50 people.
Etc.
Six decades have now passed since some of the most iconic Project Gemini spaceflights. The 60th anniversary of Gemini 4, when Ed White conducted the first US spacewalk, came in June. The next mission, Gemini 5, ended just two weeks ago, in 1965. These missions are now forgotten by most Americans, as most of the people alive during that time are now deceased.
However, during these early years of spaceflight, NASA engineers and astronauts cut their teeth on a variety of spaceflight firsts, flying a series of harrowing missions during which it seems a miracle that no one died.
Because the Gemini missions, as well as NASA's first human spaceflight program Mercury, yielded such amazing stories, I was thrilled to realize that a new book has recently been published—Gemini & Mercury Remastered—that brings them back to life in vivid color.
The book is a collection of 300 photographs from NASA's Mercury and Gemini programs during the 1960s, in which Andy Saunders has meticulously restored the images and then deeply researched their background to more fully tell the stories behind them. The end result is a beautiful and powerful reminder of just how brave America's first pioneers in space were. What follows is a lightly edited conversation with Saunders about how he developed the book and some of his favorite stories from it.
After nearly half a century in deep space, every ping from Voyager 1 is a bonus
Powered by plutonium, running on pure stubbornness
It is almost half a century since Voyager 1 was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on a mission to study Jupiter, Saturn, and the atmosphere of Titan. It continues to send data back to Earth.
Although engineers reckon that the aging spacecraft might survive well into the 2030s before eventually passing out of range of the Deep Space Network, the spacecraft's cosmic ray subsystem was switched off in 2025. More of the probe's instruments are earmarked for termination as engineers eke out Voyager's power supply for a few more years.
On September 5, 1977, the power situation was a good deal healthier when the mission got underway. Launched just over two weeks after Voyager 2, Voyager 1 was scheduled to make flybys of Jupiter and Saturn. It skipped a visit to Pluto in favor of a closer look at the Saturnian moon Titan, which had an intriguing atmosphere.
The launch was the final one for the Titan IIIE rocket and was marred slightly by an earlier-than-expected second stage engine cutoff. NASA averted disaster by using a longer burn of the Centaur stage to compensate, and Voyager 1's mission to Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond began.
Voyager 1's journey to the launchpad began with the "Grand Tour" concept of the 1960s, in which Gary Flandro of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) noted an alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune would occur in the 1970s, allowing a probe to swing by all the planets by using gravity assists. //
Voyager 1 could have performed the same Grand Tour as Voyager 2, and would have if disaster had befallen the latter at or soon after launch. However, it was Voyager 2 that swung past Uranus and Neptune, while Voyager 1 took a trip past Titan before finally heading away from the planets. It used its cameras to take one last set of images – the famous "Solar System Family Portrait," comprising six of the solar system's eight planets and, of course, the "Pale Blue Dot" image.
Voyager took the images on February 14, 1990. "That was always our farewell thing," said Hunt. "That was our Valentine's present for 1990."
Farewell? Not quite. Voyager 1 continues to send data back to Earth, 48 years after its launch.
Launched in 1975, the probe outlived its 90-day mission by years and set the standard for Mars landings //
It's been 50 years since NASA sent Viking 1 on a mission to Mars.
Launched on a Titan-Centaur rocket from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on August 20, 1975, Viking 1 was one of a pair of probes sent to land on Mars.
Viking 1 consisted of an orbiter and a lander and followed earlier US missions to Mars that had begun with Mariner 4 in 1964, continuing with the Mariner 6 and 7 flybys, and the Mariner 9 Mars orbital mission. //
The Viking 1 spacecraft arrived in orbit around Mars on June 19, 1976.
Power came from a pair of 35 W radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), connected in series on top of the lander. According to NASA [PDF], "the computer was one of the greatest technical challenges of Viking." There were two general-purpose computer channels, each with a storage capacity of 18,000 words. One was active while the other was in reserve. There was also a tape recorder.
Viking 1 was an unparalleled success. The orbiter and lander lasted far longer than initial expectations. The orbiter was eventually shut down in August 1980 after it ran out of attitude control propellant. It had begun to run low in 1978, but engineers were able to eke it out for a further two years. The lander kept on going until its final transmission on November 11, 1982.
Unfortunately, the lander's failure wasn't due to its hardware or the harsh environment of Mars. It was instead "a faulty command sent from Earth," according to NASA. The command resulted in loss of communication. Controllers spent the next six and a half months attempting to regain contact with the lander before the overall mission came to an end on May 21, 1983.
It is debatable how much longer the lander could have lasted. Viking 2's lander transmitted data until April 12, 1980, but its batteries eventually failed. Both landers and their respective orbiters had operated far beyond their planned mission lifetimes.
Longest period of continual operation for a computer
Who
Voyager Computer Command System
What
43:70 year(s):day(s)
Where
Not Applicable
When
20 August 1977
The computer system that has been in continual operation for the longest period is the Computer Command System (CCS) onboard NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft. This pair of interlinked computers have been in operation since the spacecraft's launch on 20 August 1977. As of 29 October 2020, the CCS has been running for 43 years 70 days.
Plans were well underway to launch the Space Shuttle at Vandenberg in the early 1980s. The shuttle was what a rocket could never be: A flying aircraft with a human pilot. //
After the Challenger disaster, the entire program underwent an audit, and it was discovered that the SLC-6 launch pad — recycled from previous canceled Air Force projects like the never-launched Manned Orbital Laboratory — would be destroyed by the force of the first shuttle launch. The effect would have been similar to the April 2023 SpaceX Starship launch in Texas that hurled concrete powder miles from the launch site and damaged the launch vehicle. //
That was all in the future as a Boeing 747 jet carried a Space Shuttle to Vandenberg (then an Air Force base) for a promotional look at what was hoped would be a West Coast base of operations for the shuttle. If my recollection is correct, there has never been a manned flight launched from Vandenberg. In a full circle moment, SLC-6 launch pad is now leased for an expansion of the SpaceX Falcon program. The Falcon is a smaller rocket, carrying about 25% of the shuttle’s maximum. //
Reporters and photographers line up to watch and photograph the space shuttle and 747. The plane and cargo circled over Santa Maria and Lompoc before landing on time at the base. The brand new space shuttle Discovery visited Vandenberg Air Force Base on Nov. 6, 1983. Tony Hertz Telegram-Tribune file //
The newest orbiter will leave Vandenberg on Tuesday for Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it will fly at least three missions before returning for the first Vandenberg launch. Between five and 10 annual missions may be launched from Vandenberg. The craft weighs 148,000 pounds empty and will weigh about 210,00 pounds in flight. It is 122 feet long and 78 feet wide; about the size of a DC-9 commercial airliner. It is removed or placed aboard the 747 with a bridge-like crane called a mating facility. The Air Force has spent $2.5 billion to build the space shuttle launch complex. Construction included the pouring of 250,000 cubic yards of concrete — enough to build a 25-mile four lane freeway — the use of 9,000 tons of steel reinforcing bar and 15,000 tons of structural steel. The latter would build a 120-story office building. Shuttles launched from Vandenberg will be put on polar, or south to north, orbits; Florida launches are put on equatorial orbits.
Read more at: https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/photos-from-the-vault/article297956698.html#storylink=cpy
tigas Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
21y
7,000
Subscriptor
SomewhereAroundBarstow said:
And that's as close as you're going to get an active astronaut to saying that what some people call the Deep State is actually where the heroes that keep everything from falling apart work.
What actually makes you a "steely-eyed missile man" isn't bravery, mojo, having XY chromosomes or white skin, it's to
sit in their cubicle for decades studying their systems, and knowing their systems front and back. And when there is no time to assess a situation and go and talk to people and ask, 'What do you think?' they know their system so well they come up with a plan on the fly
"Hey, this is a very precarious situation we're in." //
As it flew up toward the International Space Station last summer, the Starliner spacecraft lost four thrusters. A NASA astronaut, Butch Wilmore, had to take manual control of the vehicle. But as Starliner's thrusters failed, Wilmore lost the ability to move the spacecraft in the direction he wanted to go. //
Wilmore added that he felt pretty confident, in the aftermath of docking to the space station, that Starliner probably would not be their ride home.
Wilmore: "I was thinking, we might not come home in the spacecraft. We might not. And one of the first phone calls I made was to Vincent LaCourt, the ISS flight director, who was one of the ones that made the call about waiving the flight rule. I said, 'OK, what about this spacecraft, is it our safe haven?'"
It was unlikely to happen, but if some catastrophic space station emergency occurred while Wilmore and Williams were in orbit, what were they supposed to do? Should they retreat to Starliner for an emergency departure, or cram into one of the other vehicles on station, for which they did not have seats or spacesuits? LaCourt said they should use Starliner as a safe haven for the time being. Therein followed a long series of meetings and discussions about Starliner's suitability for flying crew back to Earth. Publicly, NASA and Boeing expressed confidence in Starliner's safe return with crew. But Williams and Wilmore, who had just made that harrowing ride, felt differently.
Wilmore: "I was very skeptical, just because of what we'd experienced. I just didn't see that we could make it. I was hopeful that we could, but it would've been really tough to get there, to where we could say, 'Yeah, we can come back.'"
So they did not.