Posted on 02/08/2025 8:32:16 AM PST by SunkenCiv
['Civ: Did anyone not see this coming?]
Boeing Expects NASA to Cancel SLS Contracts, Signaling The Demise of SLS... | 10:03
Ellie in Space | 179K subscribers | 69,824 views | February 7, 2025
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
Didn’t know. Wow.
Yes, and Meritocracy.
Boeing has no merit. Zero, zip, zilch, nada.
Ask Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams...
Is this Elon’s competition?
For now...
They’re late. They’re over budget and they’ve proven themselves to be completely unreliable.
space launch System. To replace shuttles that last flew in 2011. NASA hasn’t had much success since.
Yes, there's nothing like tried and true, 50-year old technology. The Soyuz systems may be crude, but at least they work.
He doesn’t currently have any.
Boeing and Lockheed have been trying to peddle the United Space Alliance joint venture for a few billion.
NASA’s going to get transformed in the next little while (Elon works fast) into an actual mission-based agency that is about space exploration. And it will likely spend less money and get a lot more done.
There are a bunch of other aerospace entities in the world, including a bunch of small ones in the US.
Sierra has that minishuttle, but no ride to space, and it really needs to be tested with no crew, at least a few times. I’d love to see them succeed. There was even scuttlebutt that they wanted to buy ULA. The problem they seem to have is the same as the old-line aerospace companies, they take too much time to get too little done.
They have only one prototype, if memory serves the drop test they did a few years ago resulted in damage to the craft because of landing gear failure, which they blamed on the landing gear manufacturer.
If the orbital test results in partial or complete failure, it’ll be years and millions of dollars to do their second test. It’s likely they’ll either watch a competitor or more than one build and test such a vehicle and succeed first.
My guess is, RocketLab (from NZ I think) is going to emerge among the other private enterprise launch outfits. They are working on reusability, but are being very careful about how they spend.
The Indian gov’t’s space program has done more for less than other national programs. The only problem they’ll have with manned flight [racist joke alert] will be the hundreds trying to ride on the outside of the thing.
Who needs success?
Everyone’s getting paid, right?
Everyone’s stock options are up, right?
So why should anyone bust their a$$ and take a chance on screwing up, thus derailing the (USAID?) gravy train for all of them.
They have a simple design. They are terrible to ride, and even worse when they land. They have no cargo capacity.
Starship is Ready to Light It Up! Here We Go!
20:47
Marcus House
559K subscribers
66,273 views
February 8, 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEyFWrCoODw
Only a few weeks after Starship Flight 7, here we are preparing the Flight 8 Starship for static fire. Yes my friends, here we go! Starship is Ready to Light It Up! We also talk about the new PEZ loading box that we believe will be used to add the dummy payload for Flight 8. It has been an intriguing week in general actually so there is a lot to cover today. Falcon 9 action with WorldView Legion 5 & 6, Two Starlinks missions, Blue Origin NS-29 with a twist this week (well, a lunar gravity rotation), and some pretty incredible news around Asteroid Bennu Samples. As always, no rest when coving space news.
Lunar Gravity Simulation via Suborbital Rocket (New Shepard)
https://www.nasa.gov/stmd-flight-opportunities/flight-summaries/lunar-gravity-simulation-via-suborbital-rocket/
https://www.youtube.com/@MarcusHouse/videos
There is nothing racist about that, everyone has seen those pics of Indian trains! That’s funny, I don’t care who you are!
DEI strikes again.
Engineers should be hired because of their competency - NOT their genitals, sexual preference, religion, political beliefs, ancestry, or skin color.
DEI = DEATH and DESTRUCTION
End the rot! Blitzkrieg The Culture War!!!
I believe probability of failure might of been appreciably higher in the Shuttle’s early days.
“20,000 Seconds of Terror” This is the title of one chapter in the book by a retired Pratt & Whitney engineer, referring to the troubles NASA had with the early O2 main engine turbopump development. The turbopumps had a tendency to self destruct on the test stand, and ended up with a prediceted mean time to failure in the low single digit figure (as I recall) of launches. A major overhall was needed after each flight. The 20,ooo seconds referred ot the total time the pumps were in operation until their replacement several years later by improved designs. Until then, those in the know “sat on their hands” each launch until main engine shutown.
According to the book, P&W originally won the development contract, but that award was rescinded by NASA (apparently due to political considerations) and production was given to Rocketdyne instead; P&W’s protest of the award failed.
In light of the O2 pump problems, P&W was recruited by NASA to work with Rocketdyne for a re-design effort. Having enough on their plate by then, they were reluctant to asume that task but were strong-armed by NASA (stating that a shuttle blowing up with certain loss of crew would adversely impact the whole space effort).
P&W found an unnecessarily complex pump design with undesirable vibrational modes and questional manufacturing techniques among the problems. After replacement by the new designs the pumps functioned well throughout Shuttle lifetime, without incident. .
Thanks, but as you see, it didn’t seem to slow me down. ;^) :^D
Worthless thread since no one knows what the F SLS is.
My younger brother worked at the Kennedy Space Center for years. He had daily conversations with astronauts. Those who rode home on the Soyuz told him that it was a gut-wrenching and physically abusive landing following an uncertain descent.
He also told me that the Russian side of the ISS is a cobbled mess of mostly non-functional equipment haphazardly strung together with external replacement parts designed for other purposes.
Choose your ride carefully.
In San Diego the maritime museum has a couple old submarines. One American the other Soviet. The contrast of quality was very obvious. The Soviet sub was pure junk.
That is why so many of them rest on the bottom, including their "breakthrough" dream boats.
Isn’t the Vice President the Head of the space program?
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