Launch window opens at 8:30 Eastern.

The largest rocket to ever launch. Will it be the Saturn V or the Soviet N1?

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“No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.” -- François de La Rochefoucauld

"Those who cannot accept the past are condemned to revise it." -- Geo. Mathias

The German word for contraceptive is “Schwangerschaftsverhütungsmittel”. By the time you finished saying that, it’s too late

It'll be the Saturn V, or should be. It's almost all flight proven hardware. Most of the SRB segments and main engines have previously flown multiple times on previous Shuttle flights. This thing should get to orbit easily (or at least stage separation). Will be a blast though, most powerful rocket we have ever launched.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/2022 07:32PM by Carnos Jax.

I have more concern for the ICPS upper stage than for the lower. The lower will probably work flawlessly. Whether the ICPS and Orion are put on the right trans-lunar injection course or not... well... we'll see.
After the god-awful amount of money they've spent so far, I HOPE it works!

Fingers crossed!

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Paul F.
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A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca c. 5 BC - 65 AD
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Good is the enemy of Excellent. Talent is not necessary for Excellence.
Persistence is necessary for Excellence. And Persistence is a Decision.
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Eureka, CA

My nephew worked on this rocket - before he got poached by Bezos. Fingers crossed!

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Ombligo
Will it be the Saturn V or the Soviet N1?

Soviet N1 is probably closer in terms of design-process.

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Oh @#$%&, I just found out that they won't be reusing the boosters! They're just going to throw them away in the ocean after each launch. I knew that was the case with the space shuttle main engines of the core stage, and that was enough of a shame. All that historical hardware. F' this, SLS should've never been even born! They would've saved far more money letting the likes of Blue Origin, SpaceX and ULA take up the challenge. I knew this was kinda a colossal waste of money, but I never knew the extant of it! What a crying shame!

P.S. - I hope the damn thing explodes! Orion can go on Falcon Heavy.

$4 billion a launch, two years between launches. Only the Orion capsule is to be reused - and that is in theory as there is no data on how it holds up to reentry.

As for Starship - it is still untested as a full unit. Falcon Heavy is not human rated and SpaceX has no plans to do so. I wonder if that will change if Artemis fails.

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“No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.” -- François de La Rochefoucauld

"Those who cannot accept the past are condemned to revise it." -- Geo. Mathias

The German word for contraceptive is “Schwangerschaftsverhütungsmittel”. By the time you finished saying that, it’s too late

Here's the thing... What's the point of SLS re-using the SRB's?
The Shuttle SRB's actually cost MORE to re-use than to just let the damn things sink and make new ones!

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Carnos Jax
Oh @#$%&, I just found out that they won't be reusing the boosters! They're just going to throw them away in the ocean after each launch. I knew that was the case with the space shuttle main engines of the core stage, and that was enough of a shame. All that historical hardware. F' this, SLS should've never been even born! They would've saved far more money letting the likes of Blue Origin, SpaceX and ULA take up the challenge. I knew this was kinda a colossal waste of money, but I never knew the extant of it! What a crying shame!

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Paul F.
-----
A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca c. 5 BC - 65 AD
----
Good is the enemy of Excellent. Talent is not necessary for Excellence.
Persistence is necessary for Excellence. And Persistence is a Decision.
--

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--
Eureka, CA

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Paul F.
Here's the thing... What's the point of SLS re-using the SRB's? ...

When the Space Shuttle was retired, lobbyists pressed Congress to continue to fund the aerospace/defense firms that made the engines.

They made NASA come up with a stupid rocket design and a bunch of mostly-useless missions, and even had them plan for a mostly-useless lunar-orbit space-station to justify keeping those companies in business.

It's not just extremely wasteful in terms of money. It's the most hugely polluting rocket ever made. Even ignoring the environmental impact of the manufacturing, it's spewing CO2, water vapor, soot, carbon monoxide, nitric acids, chlorine, ammonia, sulfur, measured in tons and much of it dropped directly into the upper-atmosphere.

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Paul F.
Here's the thing... What's the point of SLS re-using the SRB's?
The Shuttle SRB's actually cost MORE to re-use than to just let the damn things sink and make new ones!

Valid argument from a purely fiscal point of view, but there’s something to be said about trashing the things especially if the difference is financially small, plus can’t be so much of a difference compared to the financial boondoggle the overall program is.

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Tiangou

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Paul F.
Here's the thing... What's the point of SLS re-using the SRB's? ...

When the Space Shuttle was retired, lobbyists pressed Congress to continue to fund the aerospace/defense firms that made the engines.

They made NASA come up with a stupid rocket design and a bunch of mostly-useless missions, and even had them plan for a mostly-useless lunar-orbit space-station to justify keeping those companies in business.

It's not just extremely wasteful in terms of money. It's the most hugely polluting rocket ever made. Even ignoring the environmental impact of the manufacturing, it's spewing CO2, water vapor, soot, carbon monoxide, nitric acids, chlorine, ammonia, sulfur, measured in tons and much of it dropped directly into the upper-atmosphere.

Re-using the SRB's would not change ANY of that. None. Zip.
Not having designed a wasteful turd like SLS would have, but, that's not where we are.

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Paul F.
-----
A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca c. 5 BC - 65 AD
----
Good is the enemy of Excellent. Talent is not necessary for Excellence.
Persistence is necessary for Excellence. And Persistence is a Decision.
--

--

--
Eureka, CA

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Paul F.

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Tiangou

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Paul F.
Here's the thing... What's the point of SLS re-using the SRB's? ...

When the Space Shuttle was retired, lobbyists pressed Congress to continue to fund the aerospace/defense firms that made the engines.

They made NASA come up with a stupid rocket design and a bunch of mostly-useless missions, and even had them plan for a mostly-useless lunar-orbit space-station to justify keeping those companies in business.

It's not just extremely wasteful in terms of money. It's the most hugely polluting rocket ever made. Even ignoring the environmental impact of the manufacturing, it's spewing CO2, water vapor, soot, carbon monoxide, nitric acids, chlorine, ammonia, sulfur, measured in tons and much of it dropped directly into the upper-atmosphere.

Re-using the SRB's would not change ANY of that. None. Zip.
Not having designed a wasteful turd like SLS would have, but, that's not where we are.

Not reusing SRBs in the SLS is by design and under instruction from Congress.

They could have designed a modified reusable SRB that could have easily been made by the same manufacturers (and it probably would have been cheaper than incorporating the current SRBs).

More money funneled to the military-industrial complex. That's the bottom-line.

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Tiangou

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Paul F.

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Tiangou

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Paul F.
Here's the thing... What's the point of SLS re-using the SRB's? ...

When the Space Shuttle was retired, lobbyists pressed Congress to continue to fund the aerospace/defense firms that made the engines.

They made NASA come up with a stupid rocket design and a bunch of mostly-useless missions, and even had them plan for a mostly-useless lunar-orbit space-station to justify keeping those companies in business.

It's not just extremely wasteful in terms of money. It's the most hugely polluting rocket ever made. Even ignoring the environmental impact of the manufacturing, it's spewing CO2, water vapor, soot, carbon monoxide, nitric acids, chlorine, ammonia, sulfur, measured in tons and much of it dropped directly into the upper-atmosphere.

Re-using the SRB's would not change ANY of that. None. Zip.
Not having designed a wasteful turd like SLS would have, but, that's not where we are.

Not reusing SRBs in the SLS is by design and under instruction from Congress.

They could have designed a modified reusable SRB that could have easily been made by the same manufacturers (and it probably would have been cheaper than incorporating the current SRBs).

More money funneled to the military-industrial complex. That's the bottom-line.

The part that the re-usable ones are more expensive, in a program already topping two BILLION dollars a launch, complete went over your head...
I'm aware of the where the directive came from - it's been Congress/Senate all along. NASA wanted to kill SLS in the cradle, but, Congress wouldn't allow it.
There is so much pork stuffed in SLS, they should call it the Sausage Launch System.
If the designers gave a crap about about the environmental impact of the SRB's, they wouldn't be using solid fuel boosters AT ALL. They'd be using the original plan for the Shuttle - liquid "flyback" boosters. They'd be expensive to develop, but cheap to fly, instead of the SRB's that are "cheap" to develop, expensive to fly.

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Paul F.
-----
A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca c. 5 BC - 65 AD
----
Good is the enemy of Excellent. Talent is not necessary for Excellence.
Persistence is necessary for Excellence. And Persistence is a Decision.
--

--

--
Eureka, CA

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Paul F.
The part that the re-usable ones are more expensive, in a program already topping two BILLION dollars a launch, complete went over your head...

Trying to re-use shuttle boosters is more expensive than dumping them.

But they could have taken some of that excessive budget and redesigned the boosters to be able to re-use them more cheaply.

They were instructed by Congress not to. It's part of the spec to use only "existing workforce and assets... In order to limit NASA's termination liability costs and support critical capabilities, the Administrator shall, to the extent practicable, extend or modify existing vehicle development and associated contracts necessary to meet the requirements..." They then went on to define the operational requirements so tightly that only those engines could do the job.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2022 04:32PM by Tiangou.

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Tiangou

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Paul F.
The part that the re-usable ones are more expensive, in a program already topping two BILLION dollars a launch, complete went over your head...

Trying to re-use shuttle boosters is more expensive than dumping them.

But they could have taken some of that excessive budget and redesigned the boosters to be able to re-use them more cheaply.

They were instructed by Congress not to. It's part of the spec to use only "existing workforce and assets... In order to limit NASA's termination liability costs and support critical capabilities, the Administrator shall, to the extent practicable, extend or modify existing vehicle development and associated contracts necessary to meet the requirements..." They then went on to define the operational requirements so tightly that only those engines could do the job.

You do realize that 4 out of the 5 segments of these SRB ARE SHUTTLE BOOSTERS? In fact, several segments on the stack right now have been FLOWN as Shuttle boosters...
So, we're talking about the cost to recover, refurbish, and reuse what they HAVE, not what we wish they had. That's what we're talking about. It's cheaper to drop what they have in the ocean, and not recover it, than to recover them... Recovery hardware would cost money and about two tons for chutes and avionics.

Yes, it would be really nice if we weren't saddled with Congress designing our spacecraft... but, we've got what we've got with SLS. I'm looking forward to the day when Starship/Superheavy is ready, and man-rated, and they take SLS out behind the barn and make it dig it's own grave and shoot it.

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Paul F.
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A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca c. 5 BC - 65 AD
----
Good is the enemy of Excellent. Talent is not necessary for Excellence.
Persistence is necessary for Excellence. And Persistence is a Decision.
--

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Eureka, CA