NASA Announcement for the Moon

[mongo]

NASA delays Moon landings, says Blue Origin legal tactics partly to blame

"Let me just point out right now there's only one rocket that's capable of doing this, and this is SLS and Orion on top," Nelson replied. "And that's stacked we speak, and it's going to launch next February. So we're going with what we got. And if anybody comes up with another alternative, we're glad to look at any other alternative."

https://twitter.com/x/status/1458247964359495681

 

[Cosmacelf]

Surprised this thread has been dormant for almost a year. Ironically, the gap might coincide with the extra months Bill Nelson just added to the first human moon landing attempt for NASA's Artemis program. No surprise, 2024 is now off the table. Poor Jeff Bezos, his wasteful HLS lawsuit against NASA is taking most of the blame. Suppose BO is a convenient scapegoat for a timetable that never appeared to be based in reality. Nelson also remains consistent with his unwavering support of the porky Space Launch System. He's reaffirmed that SLS is the only rocket capable, of course with Orion on top.....So, SpaceX's Starship will be NASA's human lander, but in Ballast Bill's eyes, Super Heavy probably only exists over on Planet B. More details from Eric Berger. NASA delays Moon landings, says Blue Origin legal tactics partly to blame

TBF, Starship and Superheavy are not as far along as SLS, even though Starship has actually flown (Prototype and kinda). When they’ve actually heaved a bunch of Starlinks to orbit, then we’ll find out just how committed Nelson is to SLS.

 

[mongo]

TBF, Starship and Superheavy are not as far along as SLS, even though Starship has actually flown (Prototype and kinda). When they’ve actually heaved a bunch of Starlinks to orbit, then we’ll find out just how committed Nelson is to SLS.

Humm... Doesn't SLS need an entirely new Stage 0 system for future flights?

 

[Cosmacelf]

Humm... Doesn't SLS need an entirely new Stage 0 system for future flights?

Uh … you might be right?

 

[ecarfan]

Reviving this thread because it seems more appropriate than the ‘SLS capitulation” thread for discussing the Artemis missions, as the idea that SLS is going to go away any time soon seems fanciful.

NASA still doesn’t understand root cause of Orion heat shield issue​

the agency is still looking for the root cause of the heat shield issue. Managers want to be sure they understand the cause before proceeding with Artemis II, which will send astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day flight around the far side of the Moon.

NASA says that Artemis II won’t fly until it understands why the Orion heat shield ablated excessively and unevenly during the late 2021 mission, but 2 1/2 years later they still haven’t figured it out.

A comment from the ars technica article comments page:

Why not send it up on a reuseable rocket and launch several variants and do iterative real-world testing until they find a model they’re happy with?

Um.

 

[JB47394]

A comment from the ars technica article comments page:

They don't do it that way because they're not a rocket organization, able to launch stuff when they want to. They're a science and engineering organization, subject to tight budget restrictions. They already have test facilities that allow them to run samples of heat shield material through scale tests. They have computer simulations and engineers who know how to use them. So they use what they have.

It may be that they're simply not as good as the engineers at SpaceX, who constantly look outside the box for solutions. The NASA engineers may be quite myopic in their outlook.

Let's remember too that the NASA engineers may know exactly what's going on with the heat shield, but can't come up with a fix for it. A YouTube commentator observed that this latest approach to the heat shield is just like the 60s approach, but they install the heat shield in prefabricated blocks instead of building the whole thing in place, filling one tiny honeycomb cell at a time with the heat material. He suggests that they just go back to doing it the old way. I assume that they won't do that because of inertia; somebody wants to do the shield in blocks because of the cost savings and the opportunities such an approach offers, and they're going to keep bashing away at it until they figure out how to do it that way. In the end, it'll be a win, but for now it's dragging the timetable out.