My dad is operating one of the flight consoles. He says it's either going to work perfect or make a really really big boom. Either way it should be entertaining!
Scrubbed for fuel leaks in the same spot where it leaked in the wet dress rehearsal. Apparently rolling it back to the VAB multiple times wasn't enough to fix it. They might have to de-stack to fix this.
More concerning was the loss of coolant on one of the 4 main engines. That's really bad because the steering on those is hydrazine now, and if that gets hot, well... BOOM
Weather has been quite bad down here this morning. I was wondering if it would get pushed due to it. I guess it doesn't matter anymore.
Scrub a Dub Dub, This Launch Was a Flub!
The next window is Friday 9-11 PDT (so a much later launch)
For those in the LA area, there is a Falcon 9 launch from Vandenburg scheduled for 10:30 Tuesday night, launching 49 Starlinks in highly inclined orbits. It looks like it will probably be clear at the coast, and should be pretty visible as it passes south. The booster will land on a barge, so it's not return to launch. I am not sure where the barge sits, but I would guess somewhere south of San Diego. Last time I could see it (though just barely since it was a bit hazy) to staging.
A good site to see what is launching where is: https://www.spacelaunchschedule.com/
aircooled said:The next window is Friday 9-11 PDT (so a much later launch)
Yeah, but they can only do that if they don't have to fix the engine. If they have to roll it back to the VAB it won't happen til October.
In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :
And for all of September the rocket will be going to the pad cuz that crawlers slower than a Sinclair c5
Of note is that all of the main engines on that rocket are used and have flown a number of times. They are old Shuttle main engines.
Not that that is related since I don't remember many issues with those engines on the shuttle. They have been modified a bit of course.
All will be tossed away after launch (I suspect we know where they will land... unlike SOME country, who can't seem to care less where they land!). Parts of the booster are also made of part of parts of old booster, which will also be tossed away.
aircooled said:Of note is that all of the main engines on that rocket are used and have flown a number of times. They are old Shuttle main engines.
Not that that is related since I don't remember many issues with those engines on the shuttle. They have been modified a bit of course.
All will be tossed away after launch (I suspect we know where they will land... unlike SOME country, who can't seem to care less where they land!). Parts of the booster are also made of part of parts of old booster, which will also be tossed away.
Like Alan Shepard said. "I'm sitting on top of a government low bid contract." (Or something like that).
The whole center stack, including the engines, is used up except the actual capsule.
Fueling was fixed, it was the engine coolant that scrubbed the launch. If they can fix it on the pad, they will try to launch Friday.
The issue is access to the engines is way worse in this rocket than on the shuttle.
jharry3 said:Like Alan Shepard said. "I'm sitting on top of a government low bid contract." (Or something like that).
I thought that was RockHound said that... 
Javelin said:The whole center stack, including the engines, is used up except the actual capsule.
Well, the engines are but not the controllers - right? IIRC that was one of the problems in the green run testing. I don't think anything else in the center stack is actually pre-flown. The tank isn't. The APUs might be but they've been modified to run a different fuel.
The booster casings are made of parts that have flown before but they're pretty heavily refurbished.
Keith Tanner said:Well, the engines are but not the controllers - right? IIRC that was one of the problems in the green run testing. I don't think anything else in the center stack is actually pre-flown. The tank isn't. The APUs might be but they've been modified to run a different fuel.
The booster casings are made of parts that have flown before but they're pretty heavily refurbished.
I read somewhere that the problem with the valves for cooling down the engines (in which they run liquid hydrogen through them, so the coolant *IS* fuel!) is one of the valves that wasn't working right the wet dress rehearsal, so they couldn't actually test that part before.
And yeah, AIUI the reuse of the SRBs on the shuttle was more of a PR thing than actually useful/cost effective. They did reuse them, but it was probably more expensive to refurbish them after a dunk in salt water than it would have been to just make new ones.
The GSE leak they had during the WDR is similar to a GSE leak they had this time. More importantly, the leak in the WDR prevented them from testing all the way to engine chill so these valves weren't tested then. They took a calculated risk that everything would work on the day and unfortunately it did not.
Green run was the engine static fire that took place at Stennis in 2021.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Yeah I can almost guarantee that this thing is going back into the VAB until October
Now scheduled for Saturday (11-1 PDT).
Don't know if it's realistic or not.
In reply to aircooled :
They are going to try, but an actual launch is a long shot. They are going to start cooling engine #3 earlier so it has time to get to temp, and mess with the fueling timing and flow rates to deal with the valve issues. They are both long shot workarounds.
I have a buddy from ATL who drove down last weekend, and is planning to come back for Friday's attempt. He made sure his accommodations this time was not Motel 6 in Titusville again. Apparently it was not impressive.
Surprisingly, he said his purchased NASA Launch Package is good for this second attempt, but will not be honored afterwards. That doesn't sound very fair.
There must be a lot of disappointed people who traveled to see it, even though they surely knew there were no guarantees for when it would shoot off.
The Shuttle had trouble launching on the first try as well - it took an average of 1.9 attempts per flight, which means that there was nearly a 50% chance that a given attempt would not result in a launch. And it didn't really get more reliable with time as NASA learned how to deal with the finicky beast. Now they have a new finicky beast with brand new GSE and plumbing and 33% more main engines, so it's going to be even harder to get it off the ground. To add to the difficulty, there's very little service that can be done on the pad, unlike the Shuttle.
SpaceX has made launches look so routine that we forget how hard it can be.
Now it's looking like the #3 engine did actual get cold enough and it was a sensor issue. I'd hate to have to be the person to make the call on chilling earlier or not.
Javelin said:In reply to Keith Tanner :
Yeah I can almost guarantee that this thing is going back into the VAB until October
As he predicted , delayed until October now.
Same hydrogen fueling issue that's been kicking their butts this whole time. Now there's a possibility of having to partially de-stack to replace batteries in the Orion capsule.
They've never managed to get the tanks remotely close to full yet. This is what happens when you legislate a rocket using 40 year old technology and then over stress it to literally shoot for the moon.
Oof, hadn't heard anything about Orion batteries, just the FTS ones. The ticking clock is getting pretty loud on those SRBs too.
The saddest part of this is that when it does launch, they'll basically have to start all over again in two years but with people on top. One launch every couple of years does not mean you can work out good procedures. Launching every week is what leads to reliability, as has been clearly demonstrated. Heck, we haven't even managed to get to the part where we stress the rocket.
SLS will be quite a spectacle but it doesn't really contribute anything.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
It's way, way, way worse than that. This is a "Block 1" SLS, which doesn't have enough thrust to actually put a load where NASA wants it. They have enough leftover parts from the STS to build 3 Block 1's. All of the "stuff" SLS was built for (Mars, Lunar Outpost) requires the Block 2, which uses "upgraded" RS-25's (that aren't built yet), "Evolved Boosters" (that don't exist yet), an Interstage (that isn't built yet), and an entirely different upper "Exploration Stage" that also doesn't exist. Basically this all a dog and pony show to make sure the "Core Stage" actually works to justify building out all of these other things.
I laugh at all of the media attention calling the current SLS the "largest" or the "most powerful" rocket, because it is neither. The single assembled SLSB1 that exists is shorter (322 ft vrs 363 ft) and has less thrust (210K lbs vrs 260k lbs) than a Saturn V.
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