Eric Berger is providing more details on Saturday's SLS test-fire flameout. He also weighs in on the shifting political landscape. Now that Republican Shelby is forced out of his Appropriations Committee chair, Berger speculates, "The weakening political clout of the Alabama delegation may mean that the program has less of a firewall in Congress should it continue to face delays and cost overruns." After a decade, NASA’s big rocket fails its first real test
Maybe. But Apollo 13 had second stage 1/5 engine premature meco Apollo 13 - Wikipedia and Space shuttle STS-51 experienced also premature meco STS-51-F - Wikipedia and both those reached orbit (Apollo 13 of course experienced other troubles later..) But maybe 1/4 premature meco would have initiated abort. I’m not familiar with the abort modes of SLS.
I think you're right. As long as the engines running have enough thrust to get the second stage to where it needs to be then Orion would still make it to orbit. It might take a longer burn of the three working engines but I don't think the loss of thrust after a thrusting for a full minute would force a full blown abort. After one minute of full thrust the rocket is a lot lighter. Though at one minute the rocket would be right around Max-Q.
That’s the biggest issue this exercise exposes. We don’t know if the anomaly is actually serious or not, but either way their big picture plan is really just this one big test (more or less—I realize that’s a bit of an exaggeration) and explicitly NOT the incremental fail fast and iterate type of approach that has been proven over the years as a winning strategy...in pretty much any technological field, not just space.
Yup, a Democrat will run that committee now (thank Georgia for that). No clue what that will mean for SLS though.
Some details on what went wrong: SLS Green Run static fire cut short by “intentionally conservative” test limits - SpaceNews
I find the state of affairs and the handwringing ridiculous, on the question of to test again or not. They likely will not do another test because, it risks damaging the engine and that engine is irreplaceable. The first comment on that article captures it very well. If the stage is too valuable to lose during testing, it would certainly be too valuable to lose during flight.
Eric Berger article from earlier this week documenting NASA's decision to redo the SLS core stage hot fire test. Not exactly a confidence builder, Berger states, "there were concerns about putting the core stage, with its four space shuttle main engines and large liquid oxygen and hydrogen fuel tanks, through the stress of repeated tests." It’s official—NASA will subject the SLS rocket to another hot fire test