Americans attempted a space launch today

[Zargon]

We could have but that decision was made years ago.

You have to remember with the Space Shuttle Billions was needed every year to just find the infranstructure. So even if you kept the Shuttle and still flew 2-3 missions a year you would still have to pay Billions to maintain all that equipment. The actual missions wouldn't have large incremental costs. You also have to remember the Shuttle was still dangerous and had issues. Congress wasn't willing to continue funding the Shuttle and give NASA more money to develop a new launch vehicle/spacecraft. The biggest problem is that you have members in Congress making engineering decisions for NASA that are not the best technical decisions.

I understand, but its why I said unwilling more than unable

 

[Brovane]

I understand, but its why I said unwilling more than unable

As long as we agree that NASA isn't unwilling, Congress is. They control what gets paid for.

 

[Paratus]

As long as we agree that NASA isn't unwilling, Congress is. They control what gets paid for.

The good news is we may actually have 3 manned launch vehicles by 2020.
(I figure you know this but I'll link pictures for those who don't. )
2 commercial crew:
SpaceX Dragon v2

Boeing CST-100

And 1 NASA owned:

Orion

Oops. Meant this one (damn it)

 

[MongGrel]

Saw the SciFi battleship/Niven & Pournelle things there for a second and was like wtf.

 

[Brovane]

The good news is we may actually have 3 manned launch vehicles by 2020.

What SpaceShip two and Virgin Galactic doesn't county? Just kidding I know you meant orbital spacecraft. :whiste:

Things should be interesting. My concern is that Congress funded SLS but hasn't funded any missions. Any BEO missions like Lunar landing, asteroid capture, Mars require the funding of the hardware to complete the mission to be started now. It is like the SLS and Orion are being built but nobody knows it's destination. It could very well be that SpaceX could be taking it's Dragon capsule on manned BEO missions before NASA at this rate. SpaceX is a huge wild card because of the way the company is structured and the companies goals.

 

[Paratus]

What SpaceShip two and Virgin Galactic doesn't county? Just kidding I know you meant orbital spacecraft. :whiste:

Things should be interesting. My concern is that Congress funded SLS but hasn't funded any missions. Any BEO missions like Lunar landing, asteroid capture, Mars require the funding of the hardware to complete the mission to be started now. It is like the SLS and Orion are being built but nobody knows it's destination. It could very well be that SpaceX could be taking it's Dragon capsule on manned BEO missions before NASA at this rate. SpaceX is a huge wild card because of the way the company is structured and the companies goals.

Well SpaceX , (and Boeing), have their work cut out for them. The commercial crew contract schedule looks very tight to me. I'd expect that at best they'll get through the test flight phase and maybe their first crew rotation missions by the time Orion is ready to go due to schedule slips.

So it maybe a little while before Musk can set his sites on BEO. But we'll see.

Edit: also havimg worked Constellation just because you have funding and a destination doesn't mean you will in 4 years. It maybe we get our destination with the next administration.

 

[OverVolt]

First rule of launching rockets is to assume it will always explode. People have taken this type of expertise forgranted when they scrapped the shuttle program. Guess what, no rockets then no satellites. No satellites, then no GPS. No GPS then no GPS guided bombs. Whoops guess it was kinda fuckin important not to lay off all the rocket scientists.

 

[MongGrel]

Mars still seems pretty unrealistic for manned to me in anywhere the near future, for various reasons.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Better video of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ0SgAU9LXI

 

[Paratus]

First rule of launching rockets is to assume it will always explode. People have taken this type of expertise forgranted when they scrapped the shuttle program. Guess what, no rockets then no satellites. No satellites, then no GPS. No GPS then no GPS guided bombs. Whoops guess it was kinda fuckin important not to lay off all the rocket scientists.

What the fuck are you babling about?

This was a private company launching a rocket of their own design on contract to a customer, NASA in this case. Whether NASA has a enough rocket scientists has no bearing on how Orbitals rocket performed.

I guess when UPS crashes on the way to your house that makes you a shitty driver.......

 

[Zargon]

Better video of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ0SgAU9LXI

that's a good video!

 

[Brovane]

Well SpaceX , (and Boeing), have their work cut out for them. The commercial crew contract schedule looks very tight to me. I'd expect that at best they'll get through the test flight phase and maybe their first crew rotation missions by the time Orion is ready to go due to schedule slips..

I show the first crewed Orion flight scheduled for 2021. Is that accurate? Do you think the Commercial Crew contract flight schedule will slip that much?

So it maybe a little while before Musk can set his sites on BEO. But we'll see.

Musk had his eyes set on BEO when he founded SpaceX.

Edit: also havimg worked Constellation just because you have funding and a destination doesn't mean you will in 4 years. It maybe we get our destination with the next administration.

I was reading that NASA had internal studies showing that BEO missions could be conducted without a HLV using propellant depots and it would be cheaper than going the SLS route. However those studies where ignored in favor of a new HLV vehicle. I would like to get your thoughts on Propellant depots since you work in the Industry. I was just wondering if their was any truth in it.

 

[CaptnKirk]

Orion isn't a rocket, it's a deep space capsule. It is suposed to fly unmanned this coming Dec. 4th.
It's mounted on Delta V Heavy.

Orbital is using some old Soviet N1 engines that Russia scrapped
from back in the Moon Race era.
The engines were junked after 4 straight flight failures.
Orbital bought them at a salvage sale. One of them blew up last month or so, on a test stand at
Stennis Engine Test Facility.




Posted from Anandtech.com App for Android

 

[Brovane]

Orbital is using some old Soviet N1 engines that Russia scrapped
from back in the Moon Race era.
The engines were junked after 4 straight flight failures.
Orbital bought them at a salvage sale. One of them blew up last month or so, on a test stand at
Stennis Engine Test Facility.




Posted from Anandtech.com App for Android

The NK-33 engine never flew on the N1 rocket. The NK-33 was a improved version of the NK-15 engine that flew on the N1 rocket. The NK-33 was planned to be used on N-1F rocket but this rocket was never flown. The NK-33 engines where hidden in a warehouse for several decades. After the fall of the Soviet Union, AeroJet General purchased 36 of the engines in the mid 90's for 1.1 Million each. It wasn't a salvage sale.

 

[zanejohnson]

all the rocket scientists were probably in jail for life for pot brownies..

 

[Paratus]

I show the first crewed Orion flight scheduled for 2021. Is that accurate? Do you think the Commercial Crew contract flight schedule will slip that much?




Musk had his eyes set on BEO when he founded SpaceX.



I was reading that NASA had internal studies showing that BEO missions could be conducted without a HLV using propellant depots and it would be cheaper than going the SLS route. However those studies where ignored in favor of a new HLV vehicle. I would like to get your thoughts on Propellant depots since you work in the Industry. I was just wondering if their was any truth in it.

I'll start with the caveat that these are my own thoughts on the subject and definitely nothing official.

I agree that Musk has his eyes on BEO, but for the time being my opinion is they are going to have their heads down making LEO work. Commercial crew is to important to have a failure and SpaceX seems understand that. Orbital is helping drive that home.

Projects like these also tend to slip. With these being manned crews on newly certified launchers that's not the worst thing in the world. My guess is they'll be in full swing and have handle on ISS taxi flights by 2019-2020.

Orion is a manned launch in 2020-2021. I guess with schedule slips either Orion or SpaceX could go BEO. SpaceXs capsule redesign for BEO would have to rapidly catch Orion as there's no contract to provide BEO services and they would be doing it just to do it. SpaceX would also have to expand somewhat to accomplish BEO flight since they would still be on contract providing LEO flights. So they would definitely have a lot of work ahead of them.

As for fuel depots vs. a big dumb booster? I actually prefer the big dumb booster. Mostly because it can do everything a smaller launcher can do in fewer flights and can launch larger masses and possibly more important larger volumes. Part of it is I'm stupidly hopeful congress will let us go to Mars on a fast nuclear electric vehicle as opposed to 9 month chemical rocket once Orion is operational. Also just think about the size space probe or telescope you could fit on an SLS.

 

[OverVolt]

What the fuck are you babling about?

This was a private company launching a rocket of their own design on contract to a customer, NASA in this case. Whether NASA has a enough rocket scientists has no bearing on how Orbitals rocket performed.

I guess when UPS crashes on the way to your house that makes you a shitty driver.......

So you get too caught up in the details. NASA would have just done it itself if it wasn't trying to save money by pawning off the dirty work to a contractor. They really did scrap the shuttle program and with it all their decades of expertise. They are paying out to nose to regain what they literally just a couple years ago threw away. As I imagine this screw-up seen here wasn't cheap.

 

[Paratus]

So you get too caught up in the details. NASA would have just done it itself if it wasn't trying to save money by pawning off the dirty work to a contractor. They really did scrap the shuttle program and with it all their decades of expertise. They are paying out to nose to regain what they literally just a couple years ago threw away. As I imagine this screw-up seen here wasn't cheap.

Wow the shuttle was scrapped?!!!! I hadn't heard.
Go ahead Overvolt please continue to enlighten me more about "what NASA has scrapped" and how expensive this loss was.

I'm just dying to hear your opinion.

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

Faux News coverage:

Link

If everything goes well: Private business is good!

If it blows up: Big government is bad!

 

[OverVolt]

Wow the shuttle was scrapped?!!!! I hadn't heard.
Go ahead Overvolt please continue to enlighten me more about "what NASA has scrapped" and how expensive this loss was.

I'm just dying to hear your opinion.

NASA is massively underfunded so I don't believe any of their timetables.

 

[Paratus]

NASA is massively underfunded so I don't believe any of their timetables.

While I agree we are underfunded I was hoping for more than, "I don't believe their timetables."

Which programs are underfunded and which timetable are untrustworthy?

Commercial cargo? Are SpaceX and Orbital going to slip their next cargo flights? I'm sure orbital will.

Commercial Crew? Do you not trust NASA to do their part to get the ISS ready for Dragonv2 or CST-100? Or do you not trust Boeing and SpaceX to hit their timelines?

ISS program maybe?

How about the James Webb space telescope? Their way behind and over budget
No?

What about planetary sciences or aerospace? Maybe the deep space network?

And how does funding and timetables mean we've lost institutional knowledge that would have effected Orbital?

I mean if you want to talk institutional knowledge lost due to the shuttle program ending we could have talked about the 8-10k employees laid off by Unites Space Alliance at KSC who used to service the shuttle. Or we could talk about how Mission Operations still has a core of former shuttle flight controllers around working on Orion like Apollo controllers stuck around for shuttle.

But maybe all of this is just me being too much of a detail guy. 15 years in manned space flight tends to make one details oriented. Maybe I should try and be a little more fact free like you?

Happy Halloween:whiste:

 

[OverVolt]

..

 

[Brovane]

Layoffs negatively affect the remaining workers because of stress. You could practically hear the guys jaw drop on the video during the ~15 solid seconds of shock/silence. If that were 1999 he would have been cool as a cucumber and not exasperated like he was trying to hide.

Science types don't work well under stress like that. Cortisol and $100 million dollar rocket projects with 0.1% margin of error what could go wrong, what me worry?

You're like the stress-case poster child for what I'm referring to. Good luck you need it!

Way to dodge 99% of what Paratus said in response.

Science types don't work well under stress like that. Cortisol and $100 million dollar rocket projects with 0.1% margin of error what could go wrong, what me worry?

Do you really want to get into a discussion of Cost-plus versus fixed cost procurement and how FAR can escalate NASA procurement costs?

Do you want to have a adult discussion? If not you can just continue spewing out BS.

 

[OverVolt]

..

I'm being nice not that its really warranted

 

[MongGrel]

The private sector is having a pretty rough week.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/vi...spaceshiptwo-crashes-1-dead-1-injured-n238376