NASA Space Launch System (SLS)

[TomcatViP]

“SLS will go away," he said. "It could go away during a Biden administration or a next Trump administration… because at some point commercial entities are going to catch up. They are really going to build a heavy lift launch vehicle sort of like SLS that they will be able to fly for a much cheaper price than NASA can do SLS. That’s just the way it works.”
Charlie Bolden, a four-time astronaut, served as NASA administrator from mid-2009 through early 2017.

Charlie Bolden says the quiet part out loud: SLS rocket will go away – Ars Technica

 

[merriman]

Catch up with what? The Saturn-5? Another big piece of disposable ammunition that has yet to fly?

NASA: lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.

NASA should do the basic research and development. Let the private sector pick and chose what findings have utility and are worthy of exploitation.

David
uninformed Navy type, and Tax Frig'n Payer!

 

[fredymac]

I wonder if anyone has run an actual CFD like this.

 

[TomcatViP]

If that is a solid booster, that's not how combustion takes place.

A better simulation would be scratching a matches and holding it upside down b/w your fingers...

 

[Byeman]

Has anyone already pointed out that Lockheed's "Orion" capsule is after all the capsule that Boeing proposed for the "Orbital Space Plane" program, which Lockheed won with their innovative hypersonic-lifting body design that required parachutes to land because it became unstable at low speed.

No.
A. Lockheed did not win OSP. Both Boeing and Lockheed were still in competition. Downselect to one contractor hadn't occurred at the time of cancelation.
B. Lockheed's current design at the time of OSP cancellation was a capsule and not a lifting body. The change to capsules occurred early in the OSP project.
c. Starliner is basically Boeing's OSP design at the point of cancelation.

 

[Byeman]

Catch up with what? The Saturn-5? Another big piece of disposable ammunition that has yet to fly?

David
uninformed Navy type, and Tax Frig'n Payer!

Just stop with it. Falcon 9 and New Glenn are still disposable rockets.

 

[Moose]

If that is a solid booster, that's not how combustion takes place.

A better simulation would be scratching a matches and holding it upside down b/w your fingers...

It's a decent enough sim, the big SRBs uses by STS/SLS are ignited from the top and burn down through the hollow core.

 

[TomcatViP]

I do admit that it is confusing but:

The fire 2 commands cause the redundant NSDs to fire through a thin barrier seal down a flame tunnel. This ignites a pyro. booster charge, which is retained in the safe and arm device behind a perforated plate. The booster charge ignites the propellant in the igniter initiator; and combustion products of this propellant ignite the solid rocket motor initiator, which fires down the entire vertical length of the solid rocket motor igniting the solid rocket motor propellant along its entire surface area instantaneously.

Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[RanulfC]

Has anyone already pointed out that Lockheed's "Orion" capsule is after all the capsule that Boeing proposed for the "Orbital Space Plane" program, which Lockheed won with their innovative hypersonic-lifting body design that required parachutes to land because it became unstable at low speed.

No.
A. Lockheed did not win OSP. Both Boeing and Lockheed were still in competition. Downselect to one contractor hadn't occurred at the time of cancelation.

Quite right actually I let my self be draw in by LM's hype near the end.

B. Lockheed's current design at the time of OSP cancellation was a capsule and not a lifting body. The change to capsules occurred early in the OSP project.

Actually near the end of OSP LM had a 'winged' body:

... configuration, (they did in fact state in an official report that a capsule was actually what fit the NASA requirements, better than any lifting or winged body would) that morphed into a hypersonic lifting body design seen here:

At that point Boeing was the only company pushing a capsule and to meet the "Spaceplane" requirement they still offered an "X-37-ish" concept:

that I can't find was every pushed as hard as the capsule design. The LM change to a capsule didn't come till CEV evolved quite a bit.


c. Starliner is basically Boeing's OSP design at the point of cancelation.[/QUOTE]

This being the what essentially both were offering when OSP transitioned into CEV program.