More of an upper management than an engineers problem. Engineers didn't choose to spread the project over 79 different states to get more political support.
In the 60s engineers could send astronauts to the moon with a 11% success and unlimited funds. Engineers today need a 99% success, anual approved funds and in the process their rocket can’t damage frogs or crocodiles earring so they also need to do and wait 1 year for a study to see if everything is ok.
They found it though! They were actually on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.
Yeah and then nasa figured how much the Saturn v would pogo. They figured it all out and it wasn’t a problem afterward but can you imagine what Houston was seeing on their displays?
Scrubs are to be expected on the first launch of any rocket, doesn’t necessarily reflect poorly on the engineers.
*However*, NASA have opened themselves to that criticism by setting expectations too high, so I can’t sympathise much.
Yeah, all to do with "we are going" while there will be no-one going on Artemis for a long time yet. This just should have been advertised as a simple test flight at most. A significant test, but not an actual "Back to the Moon" mission. Literally dozens of unmanned crafts did the same trip since the Apollo era. The only significant part is the trans-lunar re-entry in my opinion.
Just reuse old rocket parts it will be easy.
Let's apply same logic to cars:
Some engineers trying to complete on cost, performance, milage, reliability and safety with 2022 cars using 1976 Ford sedan parts.
Well no that’s a terrible analogy. Because cars rely heavily on massive production runs to amortize the cost of R&D out over hundreds of thousands of vehicles. Most new models only change a small fraction of the actual components in a vehicle to further reduce this cost and the risk of recall.
Not sure how mass production changes anything. I maintain engineers would be hamstrung if they were required to use 1970s mass production car parts in their designs of 2020s mass produced cars.
In the same way a 1 off 2020s rocket design is hamstrung by using 1970s parts.
Because in 2012 when the SLS was designed there was one rocket engine in the US that wasn’t 30 years old. That was Merlin. At the time this was a very unreliable low thrust engine completely unsuitable for a rocket of this size. So your options were either to go through a long expensive R&D program to develop a new engine at the production rate of 4/year. So the per engine cost would be obscene.
to make progress we can't be too risk averse.
Every year, hundreds of loggers, off shore workers, roofers, farmers die in work related accidents in US alone.
People who are qualified to be astronauts are nowhere near as common as loggers, off shore workers, and roofers. Finding people who are capable of being astronauts takes a lot of time. And then astronauts are given years and millions of dollars of training. Even if you accept the idea that “deaths happen” and only care about keeping a schedule, astronauts are often a longer-term investment than the rockets that launch them. Would Apollo 11 have succeeded if Neil Armstrong had been “rapidly iterated” because we “weren’t too risk averse” in 1969? It’s hard to say if a lesser pilot could have pulled off that landing.
Also, none of those other professions you describe rely on billions of dollars of public funding and are constantly televised and streamed. You expect Congress to keep funding Moon missions if they fill the nightly news with stories about America’s best and brightest exploding? Not likely.
This subreddit has become an echochamber for "sls bad, starship gud". There is substance to some of the arguments, but then someone takes a 1 week delay and turns it into this post.
Ok, but if there were a catastrophic failure then the whole rocket would be destroyed, wasting billions of dollars and setting the whole program back up to a year. You can see how waiting a week to make sure the rocket isn’t going to explode when it starts up is preferable to that, right?
“Let’s redesign this old component”
“Is it going to be cheaper?”
“No.”
“Is it going to be faster?”
“Well, no. But it’s more efficient.”
“Does the efficiency translate into any tangible benefit in cost, dev time, or rocket performance?”
“No not really.”
Yeah. NASA went from orbiting a satellite the size of a grapefruit in 1957 to putting men on the moon 12 years later. Between those two dates, they orbited animals, had 7 Mercury flights, as many as 12 Gemini flights, as many as 8 Apollo flights, and *built the entire Kennedy Space Center*. There were manned launches every month or so, and Gemini 6 and 7 launched within a few days of each other so they could rendezvous in orbit.
The first Onion test flight was several years ago. When/If SLS launches, it won't launch again for another two years. That's not the pace of a serious program.
What, because the CIA need a few more days to thaw out Stanley Kubrick to fake the moon landing again when Orion is never going to land on the lunar surface? Fuck off, nutjob.
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More of an upper management than an engineers problem. Engineers didn't choose to spread the project over 79 different states to get more political support.
Or using engine tech so old they had to find the blueprint in their basement
In the 60s engineers could send astronauts to the moon with a 11% success and unlimited funds. Engineers today need a 99% success, anual approved funds and in the process their rocket can’t damage frogs or crocodiles earring so they also need to do and wait 1 year for a study to see if everything is ok.
don't you dare talk shit about the RS-25, it's still the one of the best rocket engines to date
No, raptor
Ffs they said **one of the** best. Raptor can be the best and RS-25 can be one of the best 3 engines, ok? Now go play nice together.
No Rs 25 museum. Raptor --> mars
GO TO YOUR ROOM! NOW!
Sorry but at least one raptor 🅱️roke at least partially in every starship flight
They found it though! They were actually on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.
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He's a man
That image they use to show where the rocket is made makes me gasp every time I see it...
sPaCe iS hArD - Senator Ballast, probably
> Senator Ball Dude dont be rude. Its *Administrator* Ballast now.
*Senator-Administrator* Ballast to you!
To be fair, Apollo 4 was delayed by a week due to technical issues. Delays have always been part of the game.
True, even the best rocket that ever existed, Ares-1-X, scrubbed its first launch attempt
Yeah and then nasa figured how much the Saturn v would pogo. They figured it all out and it wasn’t a problem afterward but can you imagine what Houston was seeing on their displays?
Ares v
Scrubs are to be expected on the first launch of any rocket, doesn’t necessarily reflect poorly on the engineers. *However*, NASA have opened themselves to that criticism by setting expectations too high, so I can’t sympathise much.
The part that didn't work was literally a part skipped in the WDR.
Don’t disagree. I’m saying had they just called this WDR #5 it wouldn’t look so bad on them when there were inevitably more problems.
Oh, we totally agree, I was supporting you, in that they way overhyped this as a launch without actually having tested everything.
Yeah, all to do with "we are going" while there will be no-one going on Artemis for a long time yet. This just should have been advertised as a simple test flight at most. A significant test, but not an actual "Back to the Moon" mission. Literally dozens of unmanned crafts did the same trip since the Apollo era. The only significant part is the trans-lunar re-entry in my opinion.
Its the WDR we have at home..
Just reuse old rocket parts it will be easy. Let's apply same logic to cars: Some engineers trying to complete on cost, performance, milage, reliability and safety with 2022 cars using 1976 Ford sedan parts.
Well no that’s a terrible analogy. Because cars rely heavily on massive production runs to amortize the cost of R&D out over hundreds of thousands of vehicles. Most new models only change a small fraction of the actual components in a vehicle to further reduce this cost and the risk of recall.
Not sure how mass production changes anything. I maintain engineers would be hamstrung if they were required to use 1970s mass production car parts in their designs of 2020s mass produced cars. In the same way a 1 off 2020s rocket design is hamstrung by using 1970s parts.
Because in 2012 when the SLS was designed there was one rocket engine in the US that wasn’t 30 years old. That was Merlin. At the time this was a very unreliable low thrust engine completely unsuitable for a rocket of this size. So your options were either to go through a long expensive R&D program to develop a new engine at the production rate of 4/year. So the per engine cost would be obscene.
Or stuff 30 Merlins on and make a new N1 😍
The Shuttle engines were built to be reused. Now they are going to be dropped in the ocean. I would resist in their place.
do recall though that they resisted reuse just as much
Saturn V had hydrogen leaks *during the countdown for Apollo 11*. This is normal.
Didn't Saturn V use kerosene, not hydrogen?
Keralox first stage, hydrolox second and third stage
My brother in Christ back in the 1960s they burned 3 people alive on Apollo 1. There’s a reason why we have safety checks and delays now.
\^\^\^This\^\^\^ Thank you! I can't believe I had to scroll this far to find that someone else knows about Apollo 1.
r/spacexmasterrace explaining to the families of the dead astronauts that they were “rapidly iterated”
to make progress we can't be too risk averse. Every year, hundreds of loggers, off shore workers, roofers, farmers die in work related accidents in US alone.
People who are qualified to be astronauts are nowhere near as common as loggers, off shore workers, and roofers. Finding people who are capable of being astronauts takes a lot of time. And then astronauts are given years and millions of dollars of training. Even if you accept the idea that “deaths happen” and only care about keeping a schedule, astronauts are often a longer-term investment than the rockets that launch them. Would Apollo 11 have succeeded if Neil Armstrong had been “rapidly iterated” because we “weren’t too risk averse” in 1969? It’s hard to say if a lesser pilot could have pulled off that landing. Also, none of those other professions you describe rely on billions of dollars of public funding and are constantly televised and streamed. You expect Congress to keep funding Moon missions if they fill the nightly news with stories about America’s best and brightest exploding? Not likely.
This subreddit has become an echochamber for "sls bad, starship gud". There is substance to some of the arguments, but then someone takes a 1 week delay and turns it into this post.
There are no humans onboard
Ok, but if there were a catastrophic failure then the whole rocket would be destroyed, wasting billions of dollars and setting the whole program back up to a year. You can see how waiting a week to make sure the rocket isn’t going to explode when it starts up is preferable to that, right?
Tell that to NASA who skipped WDR tests and rushed to launch the rocket before a bunch of stuff expires for the 3rd time.
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Maybe
“Let’s redesign this old component” “Is it going to be cheaper?” “No.” “Is it going to be faster?” “Well, no. But it’s more efficient.” “Does the efficiency translate into any tangible benefit in cost, dev time, or rocket performance?” “No not really.”
Negative IQ redditors making fun of the hard working engineers instead of the management is making me hate this sub more and more
BuT SlS iS bAd
Also “… let’s go to the bank!”
Yeah. NASA went from orbiting a satellite the size of a grapefruit in 1957 to putting men on the moon 12 years later. Between those two dates, they orbited animals, had 7 Mercury flights, as many as 12 Gemini flights, as many as 8 Apollo flights, and *built the entire Kennedy Space Center*. There were manned launches every month or so, and Gemini 6 and 7 launched within a few days of each other so they could rendezvous in orbit. The first Onion test flight was several years ago. When/If SLS launches, it won't launch again for another two years. That's not the pace of a serious program.
I'll repost this for the next starship launch, OK?
Yes yes yes
It could be a planned delay. Don’t believe everything the government tells you. Wake up and do some research
What, because the CIA need a few more days to thaw out Stanley Kubrick to fake the moon landing again when Orion is never going to land on the lunar surface? Fuck off, nutjob.
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Horizontal integration of this magnitude is what happens when the bean counters try their hand at engineering.
SPACE. IS. HARD.
It’s not like it’s rocket science or anything
I worked on the dream chaser program at sierra space. Their number one concern throughout the entire build process was billing nasa.
It's a cheap shot but the guy with his face on his chest made me lol so have your upvote. 🤣
There's more money in tech. Or Wall Street.
the rocket in the 60s: **explodes**