Posted on 01/17/2021 7:15:21 AM PST by BenLurkin
A critical test-firing of NASA’s Space Launch System moon rocket in Mississippi ended just 67 seconds after it began Saturday, well short of a planned eight-minute burn that was supposed to clear the way for the space agency to finally ship the rocket’s core stage to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch preparations.
The SLS core stage, built by Boeing, lit its four Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 engines for the first time at 5:27 p.m. EST (4:27 p.m. CST; 2227 GMT) Saturday for a burn that was expected to last more than eight minutes, the culmination of a year-long series of checkouts at the Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi.
Fastened to the mammoth B-2 test stand at Stennis, the 212-foot-tall (98-meter) SLS core stage throttled up to full power after the four main engines lit at 120-millisecond intervals.
The engines, leftovers from the space shuttle program, built up to 1.6 million pounds of thrust, making Saturday’s hot fire test the most powerful rocket firing at the Stennis Space Center since NASA tested the Apollo-era Saturn 5 moon rocket on the same stand in the 1960s.
But after rumbling to life and generating a ground-shaking thunder for a little more than a minute, the RS-25 engines cut off on command of the rocket’s on-board computer system, which detected an unspecified fault in one of the powerplants.
(Excerpt) Read more at spaceflightnow.com ...
Absolutely. Just mind blowing that it’s such a “dirty” construction project, not some white-coated clean room. I’d ask “how much farther ahead could he be with pristine circumstances” but he’s so far ahead of everyone else I have to wonder why “pristine” is supposedly superior.
Because none of the parts exist anymore. And retooling an entire manufacturing chain to backwards in technology like that would cost a mint, and you’d lose lots of advantages.
Rockets aren’t easy, any new one is going to go through growing pains. That’s why we don’t put people on them for a while.
My cars consistently die around 250K.
I do note that after 100K it’s probably cheaper to just buy a new car, given required repairs needed to reach a quarter-million miles.
...and Musk’s other venture is producing cars built to million-mile specs. No, I don’t want to return to cars of the ‘60s.
It was a engine controller on engine 4 that shut down that engine and ended the test.
And therein is the miracle, a wonder really.
Something that should be praised!!!
The know how no longer exists.🤔
You beat me to it.
Yea, and to the nae sayers, watch the 2 minutes from Falcon Heavy two years ago landing the boosters. Russia, China, Ariane, anyone else is 5 years behind in even trying. And now they are all admitting that they need to go reusalbe. Give SpaceX their due.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5I8jaMsHYk
Over the ocean.
Starship tonnage delivered to the moon requires tankers (plural) for a fuel refill in LEO. Wouldn’t count on more than 100Mt to LEO before three years of engine power upgrades and endurance testing.
As with the Soviet N1’s engines, a bolt or nut passed through a turbo pump?
We all agree here that the level of fraud by the NASA entity is the most astounding feat of flim flam that a country could be made to believe.
And my youngest lost the bet on how long the engine test would run before it failed, he has clothes washing duties today.
I believe the test conductor called out mcf or main controller failure. I was watching on the nasaspaceflight.com live webcast.
Yes the engines are a design marvel. Used for 30yrs
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