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Supposed to fire at 1:00 Pacific. My nephew works on it.

Those are the Space Shuttle Main Engines right?

Think this is being done at NASA’s Stennis Space Center down in southern Mississippi.

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Carnos Jax
Those are the Space Shuttle Main Engines right?

Yeah but bundled together, I think.

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jonny

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Carnos Jax
Those are the Space Shuttle Main Engines right?

Yeah but bundled together, I think.

Just wow. This is what, nearly 50 year old tech?

What happened to innovation at NASA?

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sekker

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jonny

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Carnos Jax
Those are the Space Shuttle Main Engines right?

Yeah but bundled together, I think.

Just wow. This is what, nearly 50 year old tech?

What happened to innovation at NASA?

Innovation costs. These were already made, waiting for a purpose. If the SLS program continues, new engines will need to be made. I'm not sure if the tooling that made these engines is still around, but most likely innovation will occur anyway with new engine manufacturing. And if SLS ends, at least nothing was spent on new engine designs.

It’s not like they just pulled these things out of mothballs and they’re ready to go. They’ve been working on retooling the engines for years. I think he started on the project about five years ago.

What I remember is that the first few engines are previously flown space shuttle hardware. There are a dozen or more of these. Hopefully they'll save a few for historical value.

After these are exhausted (since they will be expended after each launch when the first stage burns up in the atmosphere) they'll simply make more of the shuttle engines (formally called RS-25 and made by Rocketdyne). Probably won't be as expensive(?) to make since they don't have to be reusable.

Alas, this 8 min test did not last nearly long enough due to a detected hardware failure in engine 4.

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Carnos Jax
After these are exhausted (since they will be expended after each launch when the first stage burns up in the atmosphere) they'll simply make more of the shuttle engines (formally called RS-25 and made by Rocketdyne). Probably won't be as expensive(?) to make since they don't have to be reusable.

Will they really burn up? Remember that Bezos recovered the Saturn V F-1 Engines from some Apollo launches from the bottom of the ocean.

Well yeah, they’re probably the hardiest part of the rocket and so will survive re-entry relatively intact, but too damaged for refurbishment or reuse (essentially a smoldering clump of metal).

A good take from ars.

[arstechnica.com]