Posted on 06/16/2020 3:08:45 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The steel cylinder, which will help form one of the two, five-segment motors to be mounted to the Artemis 1 SLS core stage, was among the hardware that was delivered by train to NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Friday (June 12). The segments' cross-country journey began seven days earlier at Northrop Grumman's facility in Promontory, Utah, where the hardware had been serviced and loaded with the solid propellant that will provide more than 75% of the initial thrust for the planned 2021 uncrewed launch.
The segments' arrival on the Florida East Coast railroad marked the first delivery of the booster hardware in just over a decade. The last shipment to the Kennedy Space Center in support of the space shuttle was on May 27, 2010.
Loaded onto individual train cars, the 12 segments that arrived on Friday included the 10 fueled segments that will launch on the Artemis 1 mission and two inert common booster segments to be used as test hardware for Northrop Grumman's OmegA rocket.
The Artemis booster segments will be the first elements of the SLS rocket to be stacked on NASA's new mobile launcher inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). They will eventually be joined by the SLS core stage, interim cryogenic propulsion stage, Orion spacecraft and launch abort system before rolling out to Launch Complex 39B for the circumlunar mission.
The SLS is NASA's primary launch vehicle for its Artemis program, which has the goal of returning astronauts to the moon by 2024. The SLS will then be used to support establishing a sustained presence on the moon in preparation for sending the first humans to Mars.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
The steel cylinder, which will help form one of the two, five-segment motors to be mounted to the Artemis 1 SLS core stage, was among the hardware that was delivered by train to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Friday (June 12).
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For the price we’re paying they should be made out of gold.
These space projects are what America is all about. We cannot be distracted by these commies that are bitching about their grievances. Punks.
Wait... you mean to tell me that a giant bomb was transported by rail?
Isn’t it amazing what free market capitalism and liberty can do?
5.56mm
The cost for the single use engines on the core are estimated to be over one half billion dollars per launch. These are Shuttle engines that have been around for nearly fifty years, not some fancy new technology. The total cost of each launch is estimated to be two billion dollars.
As of now the first launch is four years behind schedule. The schedule started in 2011.
Best known for a 14 year strike (marked by murders, bombings and shootings committed by Union thugs) and resulted in freight trains being operated without cabooses (a couple of decades before the industry caught up).
The segments' arrival on the Florida East Coast railroad marked the first delivery of the booster hardware in just over a decade. The last shipment to the Kennedy Space Center in support of the space shuttle was on May 27, 2010.
Pretty neat. Of course, the SLS is the first of the many proposed Shuttle-Derived Vehicles to be built.
Isnt it amazing what free market capitalism and liberty can do?
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Yes, but SLS is an example of government waste and ineptitude.
Ping.
The U.S. standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. Thats an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because thats the way they built them in England, and English expatriates designed the U.S. railroads.
Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and thats the gauge they used.
Why did they use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because thats the spacing of the wheel ruts.
Roman chariot
So, who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.
Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. In other words, bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a specification, procedure, or process, and wonder, What horses ass came up with this?, you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses.
Now, the twist to the story:
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, you will notice that there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah.
The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit larger, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the worlds most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horses ass.
And you thought being a horses ass wasnt important! Now you know, Horses Asses control almost everything
Explains a whole lot of stuff, doesnt it?
SLS wil be a capable super heavy lifter with a nice big fairing - but it’s already out of date (non-reusable) and a money sinkhole, costing taxpayers many multiples of what could largely have been obtained commercially from SpaceX.
Seen those choo choos a time or two and the ET transport barges up close and real familiar. Thanks.
But..but..solids are supposed to be cheap and simple, right?!
And to think that SpaceX is doing multiple launches a month.
Was there a problem with a train being operated without a caboose?
Train safety issue...caboose was for brakemen and conductors...they were replaced by the “End of Train Device”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-train_device
Exactly.
SLS should be cancelled immediately.
Its a decade late and 10 billion short.
Anybody look at the O-rings?
No problem leaving the cabooses off. Just hang a device on the end of the last car that signals the engineer if the back of the train doesn’t stay connected to the front. Cut the crew size in half. And for some reason, they didn’t seem to need a fireman to shovel the coal on those diesel locomotives.
Side note - the Railroad is owned (for the last couple of years) by Mexicans now.
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