Scrubs and disappointments notwithstanding, there is no overstating the scale and ambition of NASA's Space Launch System
ince Aug. 17, NASA’s massive Space Launch System moon rocket has stood silent on pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center, towering over the Florida swamps. By any measure it’s a beautiful machine; by any measure it’s a promising machine; and by any measure it’s been a troubled machine—especially over the past two weeks. On Aug. 29 and again on Sept. 3, the rocket’s six engines were supposed to light, generating a record 8.8 million lbs.
Scrubs and disappointments notwithstanding, there is no overstating the scale and ambition of the SLS. Until now, the Apollo program’s Saturn 5 held the record for the most powerful rocket ever launched. When its five engines first lit on Nov. 9, 1967, they produced 7.5 million lb. of thrust, rattling the windows in the TV press booths and causing plaster dust to flutter down from the ceiling of the nearby launch control center.
“The architecture we’ve chosen doesn’t allow for reusability,” says Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems. “Disposing of it is the best way to go, and that’s what we’ve chosen.” But things didn’t work out that way. By the time the Bush Administration left office in 2009, the Constellation program was grossly over budget and behind schedule—with athat year revealing that a return to the moon, and a follow-on mission to Mars, would, by NASA’s own estimates, cost $230 billion by 2025. Incoming President Barack Obama summarily canceled Constellation.
That required a major redesign of the SLS. First, the new second stage would be done away with. In its place would go a proven—and existing—upper stage already used by the Delta IV, to be purchased from private manufacturer United Launch Alliance. The six main engines on the core stage would also be scrapped. Instead, NASA would go with engines it already had: the same main engines that the space shuttle used. With the shuttles scuttled, the in-stock engines were merely gathering dust.
“Look at the success of SpaceX,” Nelson says. “[The company] is on track for all of what NASA calls milestones. … They’ve had phenomenal success.”
Belgique Dernières Nouvelles, Belgique Actualités
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