Posted on 03/15/2019 2:19:14 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The Space Launch System (SLS) is struggling to meet its schedule, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said at a Senate hearing Wednesday. The rocket wont be ready for a launch in June 2020, when NASA had planned the Exploration Mission-1 flight of its Orion spacecraft around the moon.
The agency is now exploring options for meeting that deadline using commercial capabilities, Bridenstine said. He stressed that the agency remains committed to Boeings SLS, the largest rocket in U.S. history and a critical capability for future deep-space missions.
An October 2018 audit by NASAs Inspector General found multiple management flaws in the SLS program, and said that Boeing was likely to spend at least $8.9 billion for the rocket, double the original budget for the contract. A test flight of the Orion capsule was launched in early 2015 aboard a Delta IV rocket built by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Without the SLS, NASA would be forced to purchase two heavy-lift vehicle launches and then integrate the Orion with an upper stage in orbit, adding to the cost. Bridenstine told the Senate panel that NASA may need further financial assistance from Congress.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.com ...
That’s correct.
SLS will be the most powerful rocket ever used for manned space flight.
More lift than Atlas.
Different software; different department.
“The SLS was out dated the first time SpaceX landed a rocket vertically. “
Nonsense.
Space X has never shown heavy lift capability. Yeah,. they have it on the drawing board, but no such capability has ever been shown.
Then they would have to take their launch system through manned certification.
NASA can't compte, even with taxpayer's money. NASA has two commercial options to the SLS and Orion. Use them.
sure:
The good news is that muzz slimes have been outreached at/to. /s
I knew one of the worlds foremost rocket scientists, he told me in so many words that the SLS was stupid the wrong direction to go.
He spent years and designed his own. he gave some of designs and technology to Blue Origin for free (and they used them) because he was dying and wanted to have some kind of legacy I guess?
Like so many companies Boeing is not really Boeing anymore. You can easily trace that back to the McDonalds merger, and move of HQ to Chicago
He designed a plane based on 787 pieces for Boeing and showed it off to the ceo who liked it but told him they were only interested in milking their existing lines for as long as they possibly could, even though they could have easily built his plane. (the patent fight took lots of money too).
Falcon Heavy has flown , It has the heaviest lift of any operational vehicle (26,700 kg to GTO). It put the Tesla Roadster into solar orbit. It has two flights scheduled for this year.
The Falcon 9 Block 5 is scheduled for manned flight this June. It will carry the Dragon 2.
Thank you for the update.
With Boeing, Aerojet/Rocketdyne and NASA behind the SLS, it will fly. And soon.
And unlike Falcon Heavy, it will be certified for manned flight.
It will carry fully TWICE the load of Falcon Heavy.
Nearly 300,000lbs into LEO. That’s a monster that dwarfs Saturn V.
Yep. Save the money.
14 Billion spent and still not ready to fly.
*ping*
So what became of this scientist’s outlines and ideas? Are they more sensible and efficient? Is anyone following them up or using them? Is there a website with details?
We’re not getting the space elevator in our lifetime because nothing having the combined tensile strength and lightness seems attainable in our universe’s rules of physics.
We COULD have a ramp system that goes up to mid-atmosphere, runs through the existing air jet-wise then goes rocket for the short run to gravitational freedom.
Some near-equatorial nation would surely love a monstrous roller coaster to the clouds covering a huge amount of acreage in exchange for billions of dollars.
Is this just more of the leftist Maoist purge of anyone or anything of higher intelligence who has become deemed a threat to the leftist order?
Is Boeing's recent troubles with the improper documentation of new features of the 737 MAX being propagandized into justification for destroying them, because they are our most successful company in the aerospace field?
-PJ
-—The Space Launch System (SLS) is struggling to meet its schedule, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said at a Senate hearing Wednesday.-—
This kind of talk was what led to the Challenger disaster in the mid eighties. They had been under heavy pressure to launch and NASA rolled the dice, even though the temperatures were unusually chilly. If memory serves, the cold caused the O-rings to malfunction.
Let’s hope cooler heads prevail this time around.
“More lift than Atlas.”
How about the F1 booster on a Saturn?
They could kill SLS and have plenty of money for the Orion craft and a lander and other goodies. NASA is a government works program and not interested in doing bold exploitation anymore.
I meant Saturn V and misspoke.
What is needed is a high Tesla (not the car, not the genius) magnetic environment sufficient to push from above on the water molecules within the body. Figure out how to do that on the cheap, with wide coverage to simulate gravity’s physical loading effect to give a 1 G workout.
Thanks fieldmarshaldj. Since the SLS was a (non-existent) solution in search of a problem, and would have eventually just been used to build and then maintain and crew the so called Deep Space Gateway (a.k.a., the new bridge to nowhere), cancelling it at long last will save a fortune, and probably save NASA at the same time.
The liquid-fueled core booster wouldn't be able to get itself off the ground, which is why it would need two or four (depending on the mission) SRBs -- the obvious need then is a five-SRB main booster, which would be cheaper, easier to recycle, easier to develop, and have a much greater payload capacity. Oh, and cheaper, did I mention that? And it would cost much less too. Liquid-fueled upper stages would still be necessary, but would be tiny by comparison.
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