Posted on 08/30/2022 2:58:38 PM PDT by BenLurkin
On Monday, NASA failed in its first attempt to launch the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission, with engineers struggling to resolve an engine cooling issue. It’s a wholly unsurprising result, given that NASA was unable to complete a single wet dress rehearsal, of which four were attempted earlier in the year. The space agency appears to be winging it, with the botched launch attempt effectively serving as the fifth wet dress rehearsal, in what is a troubling sign.
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) was supposed to take flight on Monday morning, but instead we’re left wondering about the state of the program as a whole. NASA will provide more updates about the rocket later this evening, including whether a launch on Friday or Monday might be possible, or whether the 322-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket will have to make its now-familiar 4-mile (6.4-kilometer) trek back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs.
The unflown SLS megarocket is critical to NASA’s Artemis program, which seeks a permanent and sustainable return to the Moon. For the Artemis 1 mission, an uncrewed Orion rocket will be sent on a multi-week mission to the Moon and back. A successful integrated test of SLS and Orion would set the stage for a crewed Artemis 2 mission in roughly two years, and a crewed mission to land on the lunar surface later this decade.
A launch on Friday seems unlikely, and not just because of the grim weather forecast. NASA’s launch attempt on Monday came nowhere near to succeeding, with the countdown clock proceeding no further than T-40 minutes. An “engine bleed” issue prevented one of the rocket’s four RS-25 engines from reaching the required ultra-cold temperature for liftoff, resulting in the scrub.
(Excerpt) Read more at gizmodo.com ...
With the energy involved, there is no winging it.
Who would even sign off on the risk of destroying an entire program without a successful safety check of the entire launch system. Oh wait, someone with the initials KH was there to show off the successful management of NASA under Biden.
53 years ago, we landed men on the moon...Today, we can’t even launch an unmanned vehicle...
yeah but on the bright side, at least the engineering team is the most diverse ever
Nasa is now incompetent at its actual job because it is a politically corrected government-run legacy agency whose mission has become the imposition of mediocrity and humanist ideology above achievement.
Artemis is intended to land the first woman and the first black man on the Moon!
It is a political mission—NOT a scientific and exploratory mission like Apollo!!!! Therefore, it is jinxed!!!! And kamala helps jinx it!!!!
We shall long for the days of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin!!!! Computers were much more primitive then than they are now. But the purpose and the patriotism behind the earlier missions were MUCH stronger and more laudable!!!!
“...seeks a permanent and sustainable return to the Moon...”
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For what?
More wodnerful things like Tang, Velcro,
and ball-point pens that can write upside down?
Well we can always catch a ride with China or Russia.
Any guess at amount of “necessary testing” omitted in every government high tech program, in the name of pleasing congressional staffer’s schedule objectives?
Perhaps they should ask Elon Musk for help. He not only did it with private funding but he has managed to get the first stage to come home to be used again.
“… It is a political mission—NOT a scientific and exploratory mission like Apollo!!!! Therefore, it is jinxed!!!! And kamala helps jinx it!!!!…”
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Well, at least Kamala provides the needed CACKLING to the program.
Super Diversity and Inclusion is destroying NASA
Cobbled together rocket engines on wings and prayers hoping no one would notice ... another big NASA fail.
All problems being discussed right now via media briefing, next launch attempt is saturday
Starship will launch no later than the end of 2023, and there’s a good chance that it will fly this year.
That’s the game changer.
SLS is the “traditional aerospace” approach. It’ll fly, but at a cost that makes Artemis unsustainable.
MIT Aero-Astro undergrads who build model rockets and test them in the desert are doing better than NASA!!!!
And I don’t think that today’s NASA engages in prayer!!!! NASA in the 1960s did!!!!
Ah yes the Orange Turkey
I predicted this failure. it was really easy cause the odds were 1000 to one in my favor.
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