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Artemis1 launch

Discussion in 'Environmental Discussion' started by tochatihu, Aug 29, 2022.

  1. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Youse guys are up early Monday morning for the show, right? I know our Bob sees this as the back edge of tech where blood has already clotted. But until Starship ships, this is the big candle.

    A large Asian country plans similar sized 'throwaway' rockets, so sun has not yet set on putting nice big rocket engines on ocean floors. So I say party like it's 1969!
     
  2. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    Huntsville is a two company town:
    • Redstone Arsenal - home to Army middles like Javelin and others in Ukraine.
    • NASA Marshall Space Flight Center - the rocket propulsion systems.
    So I am sympathetic to the importance but detached enough to realize they raided the ‘spare parts’ from the former shuttle program to assemble this future sea floor occupant. The contrast with SpaceX could not be more stark … as well as the risks to future human life.

    I was in Huntsville for both Shuttle failures. The first removed working on a Dept of Defense contract. The second on a NASA contract. The root cause being the inability to bring in and test new technology with unmanned launch vehicles.

    Yes, great show but ‘DANG’.

    Bob Wilson
     
  3. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Scrub for today. Friday maybe.
     
  4. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    The way they've been going with SLS and Orion, today's scrub was not at all surprising. In fact, I'd have been flabbergasted if it had gone off without a hitch. I was driving east on my way to a morning meeting and it would have been cool to see that big plume going up from over here on my side of the state.

    In the shuttle days, we lived about 25 miles east of here and we had a great view of the launches, especially from the roof. And we always heard the double sonic boom when they came in for a landing. That part was pretty cool, too.
     
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  5. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    we were taking our daughter back to the orlando airport some years ago, only to find out there was a launch as we sat in hours of traffic on 528 east
     
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  6. PriusCamper

    PriusCamper Senior Member

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    Yeah, didn't really bother with watching the launch because I was certain it wasn't going to happen... I mean the entire program is so bogged down in delays and cost overruns, I'll be surprised if this test launch isn't a failure in one way or another. And if they really expect taxpayers to cover the $4 billion per launch cost of an antiquated unsustainable design while SpaceX is going to launch starship starting at $250million with projections to reduce launch costs to under $10 million it's just a matter of time before Artemis program is shut down and funds allocated to something that isn't such a huge unsuccessful waste of money:

    That is a concern,” Paul Martin, the NASA inspector general, said in an interview with CBS News. “This is an expendable, single-use system unlike some of the launch systems that are out there in the commercial side of the house, where there are multiple uses. This is a single-use system. And so the $4.1 billion per flight … concerns us enough that in our reports, we said we see that as unsustainable.” NASA's most powerful rocket poised for launch on Artemis 1 moon mission - Spaceflight Now
     
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  7. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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  8. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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  9. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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  10. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Yes and I am putting thrilling new commentary in the FHoP thread. Artemis is 'environmental' mostly if it kabooms. Which nobody wants. Well, practically nobody...
     
  11. PriusCamper

    PriusCamper Senior Member

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    Not gonna lie, I'm way more excited about the upcoming Starship orbital launch, not this one. It's both and embarassing and insulting that they think it's appropriate to spend multiple billions of dollars on a single launch of a rocket that's not reusable.

    Meanwhile SpaceX has already been awarded a moon landing contract and has begun mass production of not just reusable boosters and capsules, but also is mass producing rocket engines that don't need to be serviced before re-use, they just refuel and go again. And with plans to build a thousand starships they think they can reduce the cost of a launch down into the million dollar range.
     
  12. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Sixteen RS-25 engines (very impressive from their era) have been nicely stored and will next send 4 Artemises up. If it has not been appreciated enough, that was the beginning of reusable space hardware. But finally they with become seafloor decorations. Seems wrong, but at least no one will need to expend effort keeping them ship shape. I do not know plans to make new ones for this Artemis program that might persist.

    Musk Starship is a new thing, and after first (or few) shots, Raptor methane/LOx engines will be reused. Undoubtedly this is the correct future path. I am among many who expect Musk can make it work.

    Moving Artemis 1 to October gives Starship a chance to light up first, if it gets whatever govt approval still needed. Maybe?
     
  13. PriusCamper

    PriusCamper Senior Member

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    I'm starting to think that the year+ delay in finally getting approval to launch really slowed down R&D for Starship's rapid development. As of July they got all the permits they needed, but then they had a severe fire when testing the engine start systems and had to redesign a huge amount of their infrastructure... On the bright side they're still only weeks not months away from an orbital launch.
     
  14. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Suborbital, because Hawaii is not all the way around.
     
  15. PriusCamper

    PriusCamper Senior Member

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    Close enough to be considered orbital in terms of testing & refinement of the design of an orbital ship... Of course everyone gets snooty and dismissive about this stuff because Elon Musk is involved.

    I remember the first starship landings where the odds of a successful landing were less than 30% and Twitter was falling all over itself because they thought big explosions finally proved that SpaceX was a failure and no matter how much myself and others explained that it's the nature of the earliest test flights to fail more often than they succeed (unless your as unrealistic as Artemis) and they acted like we didn't know what we were talking about when we tried to reference all the experts on youtube who have channels dedicated to the subject. They're like, yea Youtube, real experts, right?
     
  16. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Starship will have orbital velocity - necessarily - and would complete orbiting were it not slowed down. The important test there is to slow down 'on its side' by atmospheric interaction. Then slow down more with engine burns, and then fall gracefully vertically into the ocean. If those things happened after a full orbit, they would happen over occupied land. Unwise. So doing them sooner over Pacific Ocean is better.

    Its stage one (superheavy booster) will do almost its designed flight profile (with fewer Raptor engines installed). It will slow down and get vertical by burns from engines more on one side than the other. It will fall gracefully vertically into the Gulf of Mexico a few minutes after launch.

    Those together will discard a large number of Raptor engines. I don't know details that show it should go that way, instead of positioning landing barges for recovery. There surely will be barges for later flights.
     
  17. PriusCamper

    PriusCamper Senior Member

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    There's oil drilling platforms SpaceX purchased and stripped down as contingency plans, but no activated plans to build something you could land a starship booster on.

    A standard size barge can't handle a starship booster as it lacks enough ballast to keep something that massive from tipping over. You need oil drilling platform technology to do that. And because Starship program eliminated the landing legs and built a tower with massive house size chopsticks that would sink an oil drilling platform, it's safe to assume no ocean based starship booster landings, at least for the first few years.

    Also, the original plan was to throw away version 1 of raptor engines in the ocean with first orbital test launch but permit delays of over a year already set raptor 1 engines to scrap heap and brand new raptor 2 engines are going to live at the bottom of the ocean instead. I've not yet heard of less raptor engines than normal flight, but that makes sense.

    The most amazing views from top of "mass production-based" starship launch towers in Texas & Florida are truly astonishing. (see video below) Even more weird they're getting launch contracts and they haven't yet proved that they can "catch" a starship as well as its booster with the launch tower. And the only option they've chosen for landing legs for all stages of starship is no landing legs and use astonishingly huge giant chop sticks to "catch" them.

     
  18. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    My understanding is Raptor 2 production is one per day ... one per day!

    Bob Wilson
     
  19. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    In deference to TS. Ian's approach (and it will get stronger), Arty's crawler is taking it back to the barn.
     
  20. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    I know the record number of launch delays is high and maybe out of Arty's reach. However, it may attain the highest number or crawler trips. I think that would make an interesting time-lapse video. Out-in-out-in-out ...

    Not up to Koyaanisqatsi standards, but with a snappy soundtrack?