Posted on 09/03/2022 1:11:37 PM PDT by Pollard
NASA's star-crossed Space Launch System moon rocket was grounded Saturday for the second time in five days after engineers tried and failed to remotely stop a hydrogen leak in a quick-disconnect fitting where propellants are fed into the giant booster's first stage.
Engineers made three attempts to properly "seat" a suspect seal in the 8-inch fitting, but none of them worked and after a "no-go" recommendation from the engineers working the problem, Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson called off the countdown at 11:17 a.m. EDT.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
Most likely the best and brightest are working in the private sector of space.
Don’t forget - the Lincoln Project types are claiming that HYDROGEN is the fuel of the future.
Wow. That says it all. What a disaster NASA has become.
And we pay for it.
What does everyone expect considering the head of NASA is none other than Dufus Nelson, former democrat senator. yes he is a former astronaut which means little, they must have been really hard up for astronauts back then.
As we all know former senators are just as useless as current ones and Nelson has no business being in charge of NASA and should resign before he gets someone killed.
Put some of the SpaceX team in charge of NASA and get rid of the politics then sit back and watch it fly.
I’m sorry but this project just has disaster written all over it.
They'll get it off the ground, eventually. Unfortunately the pieces will be all over the ground for a mile around.
Over $30 Billion tax payer money spent on this program and it is still
having issues. For that kind of money it should have launched on time
several days ago. Where did NASA spend the money?
The core stage contains reused space shuttle engines, which are hydrogen fueled. That has some benefits, such as high specific impulse and is clean burning, but it costs a ton of money to pump all that supercooled liquid hydrogen in just prior to launch. One wonders why they couldn’t just design a newer engine, or why whatever bugs they are encountering weren’t cleared up in the 20 or so years that the space shuttles were operating.
The best and brightest at NASA are at Goddard space center where all the unmanned probe work is. The ones at Kennedy, not so much.
Flexseal
Then I took a look at the Goddard current mission list, and have to reconsider. Impressive!
I would have thought that Curiosity was run out of JPL, but this page seems to say it's run out of Goddard.
I am a member of the last generation who can remember a time when man had never walked on the moon. I was hoping to see men walk on the moon again during my lifetime but it isn’t looking likely.
My son worked at Goddard. I’ve toured all over the campus and was show some pretty impressive stuff. I was in the clean room with the Hubble parts they brought back from the last repair mission. The worst part of one of my trips there was Meeting James Hanson, LOL.
“The best and brightest at NASA are at Goddard space center....”
ROFL
Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo were accomplished with paper, pencil, and slide rules.
Today with all our super-duper supercomputers and hi-tech equipment they couldn’t even dream of back then, they can’t get it up. Pun intended, by the way.
I’m a space buff from the Mercury program on, and I’m really getting disgusted with our “ woke” space program. They had better WAKE UP and start getting 💩 right!
Let’s send em some duct tape…
How did they do it in their heyday, I wonder? Can’t they use the same type of seals they used back then? They are copying everything else…
Pretty sure no one working at Space X would leave Musk.
It will be worth it if they leave her there.
Boy did he ever hit the bullseye!
As I am typing this, Fox News has a segment on Congress’ role in funding the space program. I was wondering how long it would take before the people with the bankroll would get involved.
I don’t care WHAT party starts reaming NASA out, it’s about time, asses need to be kicked, and HARD.
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