Artemis Moon Program

What a joke. I thought the whole justification for the gold-plating, delays, and budget explosions, was so this thing would actually be ready when they tried to launch it.
 
NMaude said:
indicisivedivide said:
If the rocket fails then will they they cancel the program.
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No they won't, the Artemis 2 rocket is fairly advanced in production and numbers 3 and 4 could be advanced if Artemis 1 fails on launch.
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And there's no way in hell the politicians would allow that hog trough to dry up.
 
"Please do not post disinformation in this thread."

Huh ?? Please note I asked, "Can any-one confirm either way ??"
 
Nik said:
"Please do not post disinformation in this thread."

Huh ?? Please note I asked, "Can any-one confirm either way ??"
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Because you posted information that was not true the launch had not been moved when you posted and the leak was long resolved.
 
SLS/Artemis 1: The next launch opportunity, assuming the problems encountered today can be resolved in time and assuming an additional fueling test is not required, is 12:48pm Friday; if so, the countdown would begin at 2:38pm Wednesday
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https://twitter.com/x/status/1564231324021432320
View: https://twitter.com/cbs_spacenews/status/1564231324021432320?cxt=HHwWgICx7b-GorUrAAAA


SLS/Artemis 1: A final launch opportunity is available 9/5 with a 90-minute window opening at 5:12pm; after that, the SLS will have to be hauled back to the VAB to service its self-destruct system batteries and to resolve any other open issues
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https://twitter.com/x/status/1564231878709854208
View: https://twitter.com/cbs_spacenews/status/1564231878709854208?cxt=HHwWgIC-zeSmorUrAAAA
 
Weather may have scrubbed the launch anyway.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1564236992153534465
View: https://twitter.com/sciguyspace/status/1564236992153534465


It's currently raining over the launch pad at 39B, so unless Artemis I had hit the top of the window, they may not have been able to go today due to weather.
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https://twitter.com/x/status/1564239793449566208
View: https://twitter.com/joroulette/status/1564239793449566208


Wouldn’t have been the best launch weather anyway - this storm just swept over the SLS launchpad after NASA called a scrub.
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Interesting post by Woods170 on NSF quoted below.

Yes. The engine bleed chill down was a planned part of the WDR. But the 4 inch QD issue prevented exactly that from being tested during WDR. But instead of fixing the issue with the 4 inch QD and do another WDR, to tick off that checkbox, NASA chose to test it early in todays launch attempt. That was an informed gamble, but still a gamble.

Murphy just loves gambles like those. And that is why NASA just completed WDR #5, instead of performing an actual launch. Let's just hope they don't need a WDR #6 to tick off the engine bleed checkbox.
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By the way the likelihood of SLS flying at all in this launch window is probably less than 50%. Probably won’t get off the ground in October either. Now December maybe a better bet. Because to be blunt they are still troubleshooting stuff, but you never know maybe they’ll get lucky.
 
siegecrossbow said:
sienar said:
siegecrossbow said:
Let Musk do it.
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That is what Artemis III is for, assuming Bezos doesn't score an upset
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Is there a reason why they couldn’t cut out the middle man and let the Starship carry the crew to the moon directly?
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Yes. Believe it or not, the lunar Starship does not have the delta-v to return from the moon. And even the standard Starship isn't spec'd to reenter from trans-lunar orbit (much faster than normal reentry from LEO).
 
Cancel this waste of money, scandalous that failing launch after the billions of money in it, let Space X doing the job, Since the Space Shuttle stop flying Nasa is unable doing the job. Realy this Moon program is a failing. Invest massively in Starship.
 
NMaude said:
I'm getting fed up with these incessant delays,
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From the signature I use on a model rocketry forum, a concept to keep in mind, “There are a thousand things that can happen when you go light a rocket engine, and only one of them is good.” — Tom Mueller, SpaceX propulsion chief, Air and Space magazine article, January 2012
 
ALS/NLS looked to be two big liquids side by side. It would take some doing-but what could SLS/SuperHeavy offer? Cleaner launches for starters. No solids. No CO2 from Starship.
 
dark sidius said:
Cancel this waste of money, scandalous that failing launch after the billions of money in it, let Space X doing the job, Since the Space Shuttle stop flying Nasa is unable doing the job. Realy this Moon program is a failing. Invest massively in Starship.
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Blame stupid Congress, not NASA please. SLS was quite literally rammed into them in a rather scandalous blackmailing way, back in spring 2010. When SpaceX was recovering from near bankruptcy and was still largely in infancy (their COTS contract from NASA very much saved their sorry a$$ in 2008, when Tesla and Falcon 1 were at rock bottom, and so was Elon fortune).

According to Lori Garver, in the years 2010-2013 the SLS Congressmen threatened (and raided the budget of) COTS and CCDEV to fund precious SLS. Guess why NASA had to buy Soyuz seats until 2019 at least, and why even Dragon 2 was so late ? (don't start me on CTS-100 !) ? they had been starved of budget years before in the development phase.

Garver makes clear in her book the 2010 SLS deal, while quite a bad one, was unavoidable. The SD-HLV lobby in Congress was entrenched, Verdun style. Try to ignore it and they would screw COTS and CCDEV and the science budget into oblivion.

That the sheer absurdity of the situation. NASA build a technically sound rocket (they know their stuff !), but on many other levels (from pork barrel to reusability to cost overruns to lack of payloads outside Orion, among others calamities) indeed it doesn't make any sense.

I realized (after chatting with some people at NASAspaceflight forums) that, whether Artemis I fails or succeeds, next launch will be in two years (!). The only difference is: repeat Artemis I or go Artemis II. But two years to wait whatever happens. That's really the root cause of what makes the damn Senate Launch System such a grossly inefficient lunar transportation system.

Heck just for the fun of it I asked once whether the SLS, with its 100 tons lift capability to orbit, could be used to haul methalox for a waiting Starship. Ding dong, it can't even do that, not only because it is $2 billion+ per launch, but also because the flight rate is bottlenecked to 1.5 per year. Not even 2, not even 8 annual launches achieved by the Shuttle fleet in the glorious year 1996. DIRECT could have launched 4 times per year. But Boeing and Michoud have severe bottlenecks on SLS core manufacturing. And they can't easily be removed or not all - not even throwing boatloads of money at NASA or SLS inside it.

It is a lose-lose game. The only ray of hope in Artemis is their use of Starship for HLS. Now that was one bright idea and success, even if the resulting architecture is kind of absurd (tiny Orion mating to huge HLS in NRHO looks a bit pathetic).

What - cynically - presently matters is: just like COTS in 2008, HLS is some clever use (at least !) of NASA taxpayer money - as it indirectly funds an intelligent architecture: not Artemis-Orion-SLS, but Musk Mars plans. Making lemons into lemonade.

We can only hope it is the proverbial wolf in sheep clothing: injecting some Starship into Artemis, so that hopefully in the long term it sweeps away the SLS-Orion side of Artemis.

Even if Musk is not interested in the Moon, NASA's HLS will provide some lunar experience if somebody later wants to turn the BFR-Starship matured system from Mars to Moon.

Provided of course they ever fix and launch that Booster number 7 in Boca Chica...
 
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Archibald said:
dark sidius said:
Cancel this waste of money, scandalous that failing launch after the billions of money in it, let Space X doing the job, Since the Space Shuttle stop flying Nasa is unable doing the job. Realy this Moon program is a failing. Invest massively in Starship.
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Snip.
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There's a reason why the SLS is referred to by its critics as the "Senate Launch System".
 
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