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January 16, 2021 Archives
Saturday, January 16, 2021
THE HAPPENING WORLD: NASA Space Launch System Test Firing Aborts after 60 Seconds
The SLS core stage engines shut down a little more than a minute into the planned eight-minute firing. https://t.co/B639YAgQec pic.twitter.com/CxWKqkm3Vf
— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) January 16, 2021
After 13 years of development and 18 billion dollars spent on development, the Space Launch System core stage test firing shut down 60 seconds into a planned 8 minute test firing, just at the point the engine gimbal test was to start.
The NASA TV commentators are still reading from the script for a successful test.
Update: “Major component failure” (2020-01-16 22:47 UTC)
From the NASA TV replay, a controller says they got an MCF on Engine 4. “But we’re still running. We’ve got four good engines, right?” another controller says. The engines continue to run for another 10-15 seconds before shutdown. https://t.co/Ve1TgS6MyX
— Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) January 16, 2021
Posted at
22:35
THE HAPPENING WORLD: NASA Space Launch System (SLS) Core Stage Test Firing
From Apollo to @NASAArtemis 🌙
— NASA_SLS (@NASA_SLS) January 15, 2021
The date is set. @NASA and its partners, @BoeingSpace and @AerojetRdyne, will conduct a “hot fire” of the core stage for NASA’s Space Launch System rocket this Saturday, Jan. 16. DETAILS >> https://t.co/zxjiowj7w7 pic.twitter.com/N5D3VCeDa9
The NASA Space Launch System (SLS) is easily the stupidest orbital launch system ever seriously developed. On each launch, which will cost around a billion US$, not counting the approximately twenty billion in sunk R&D costs before it ever flies, and flying at most once a year, it will discard as junk in the ocean four Space Shuttle Main Engines and two solid rocket boosters, all of which were routinely reused during the thirty years of the Space Shuttle program. Including its predecessor, the Constellation program Ares V, it has been under development for 13 years, whereas the comparable Saturn V took around five years from program start to first flight in the 1960s.
The Space Launch System has been called the “Senate Launch System” because it was largely mandated by politicians to keep NASA centres and contractors busy after the end of the Space Shuttle program. If this and a subsequent unmanned test flight are successful, it is not expected to fly its first crew before the summer of 2023.
The test firing is scheduled for 22:00 UTC on 2021-01-16.
Posted at
14:11
TRACKING WITH CLOSEUPS: I Painted My Entire Room with Musou Black—the World’s Blackest Paint
Posted at
14:04