#1 Artemis 1/SLS launch...
Posted: Wed, 16 Nov 22, 18:23 pm
Welp us working stiffs had to go to bed, but I did watch the live stream on YT this morning of the SLS launch in the wee hours of the morning...
SLS lifted off from Kennedy Space Center overnight and successfully achieved orbit after and 8 minute 3 second burn of the core stage, which was jettisoned along with the boosters to crash back into the ocean in a million pieces. Orion with its European service module, and the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, entered orbit and performed a short burn of the ICPS a half orbit later to raise the perigee, then performed TLI about an hour and 50 minutes after liftoff. After an 18 minute TLI burn, Orion was set on course for the Moon; the ICPS separated and will follow behind the Orion which performed a short separation burn. ICPS will deploy four cubesats destined for the lunar vicinity before performing a "disposal burn" which will cause it to loop around the Moon and be tossed into a heliocentric disposal orbit. Orion will arrive at the Moon in a couple days and, due to its limited propellant and thus propulsion capability, enter a weird looping extended highly elliptical orbit around the Moon, with a planned perilune of about 80 miles and an apolune of about 75,000 miles IIRC, which should take it further from the Earth than any man-rated spacecraft has ever been (though unmanned of course). The mission plan then calls for it to do a Trans-Earth Injection burn to return from the Moon and reenter and land off the Baja California coast IIRC a few days later, if all works well.
SO NASA's $4.1 billion dollar per launch shuttle-derived totally disposable mega-rocket finally lifts off. Middle of the night and couldn't see a d@mn thing other than a few seconds of pad camera footage, and a heck of a fire trail behind it, and SRB sep and plenty of sparkles of spent propellant slag from the spent boosters behind the core stage engine glare... that was about it. With it's 8 minute 3 second burn to orbit, dividing the $4.1 billion dollar (declared, God only KNOWS how much it ACTUALLY cost LOL:) price tag, that works out to $8,488,612.84 PER SECOND of flight time... all to get an Orion into orbit with an ICPS, barely capable of staggering through TLI and then incapable of even getting into a proper low lunar orbit once it gets in the vicinity of the Moon. One h3ll of an expensive fireworks show/stunt IMHO. Orion doesn't even have a lunar lander; NASA has let a contract to SpaceX for a "lunar starship" to act as a lunar lander for future crews... Needless to say, this is predicated ENTIRELY on there BEING a successful, operational Starship capable of launching a "lunar starship" and it being successfully modified to the "lunar starship" spec to enable it to land and take off from the Moon... AND if that actually works as planned, WTF do we need a $4.1 billion dollar per launch totally expendable dinosaur firecracker for?? We could just fly the whole d@mn mission on Starship for a TINY FRACTION of the cost... SO NASA has spent the past 12 years and untold billions developing this monstrosity for basically no purpose... AND if Starship DOESN'T work, or takes a lot longer to work the kinks out of it (as it seems it has been lately), then SLS/Orion exists to no purpose ANYWAY, because Orion in some pathetic highly elliptical lunar orbit by itself is WORTHLESS... Oh, I suppose they COULD go on and fund either a competitor commercial lunar lander (but IF SpaceX were to fail to deliver on lunar starship, I don't see Congress ever agreeing to fund ANOTHER commercial competitor with no guarantee of success), OR NASA could get approval to build their own lunar lander-- which will take most of a decade at least and BILLIONS more in development, and require a SECOND $4.1 billion dollar SLS launch to put in space or send to the Moon... so EVERY lunar mission would require $8.2 billion dollars FOR THE ROCKET LAUNCHES ALONE, excluding ANY and ALL other mission costs, like for Orion and any habs or landers...
SO enjoy the fireworks show... hopefully we'll get some h3llacious HD footage from the cams on Artemis 1, because God knows we've paid enough for them LOL:)
The 5+ hour NASA stream was full of self-serving chest thumping and associated politically correct pablum, so I forwarded through most of it. All glitzy and shiny graphics, but pathetically dumbed down for the dumbed down masses LOL:) The launch wasn't much to see, honestly, as nothing was frigging visible but the fire trail, and it was essentially a king-size bottle rocket-- SpaceX liquid propulsion launches are MUCH more interesting to watch at night, honestly. SO lets hope they do better with the Artemis cameras... there's a YT stream going now I paused to come here to comment...
Sure gotta wonder what these people are thinking now, how they come up with this stuff and justify it... as Spock would say, "Highly Illogical!"
Later! OL J R
SLS lifted off from Kennedy Space Center overnight and successfully achieved orbit after and 8 minute 3 second burn of the core stage, which was jettisoned along with the boosters to crash back into the ocean in a million pieces. Orion with its European service module, and the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, entered orbit and performed a short burn of the ICPS a half orbit later to raise the perigee, then performed TLI about an hour and 50 minutes after liftoff. After an 18 minute TLI burn, Orion was set on course for the Moon; the ICPS separated and will follow behind the Orion which performed a short separation burn. ICPS will deploy four cubesats destined for the lunar vicinity before performing a "disposal burn" which will cause it to loop around the Moon and be tossed into a heliocentric disposal orbit. Orion will arrive at the Moon in a couple days and, due to its limited propellant and thus propulsion capability, enter a weird looping extended highly elliptical orbit around the Moon, with a planned perilune of about 80 miles and an apolune of about 75,000 miles IIRC, which should take it further from the Earth than any man-rated spacecraft has ever been (though unmanned of course). The mission plan then calls for it to do a Trans-Earth Injection burn to return from the Moon and reenter and land off the Baja California coast IIRC a few days later, if all works well.
SO NASA's $4.1 billion dollar per launch shuttle-derived totally disposable mega-rocket finally lifts off. Middle of the night and couldn't see a d@mn thing other than a few seconds of pad camera footage, and a heck of a fire trail behind it, and SRB sep and plenty of sparkles of spent propellant slag from the spent boosters behind the core stage engine glare... that was about it. With it's 8 minute 3 second burn to orbit, dividing the $4.1 billion dollar (declared, God only KNOWS how much it ACTUALLY cost LOL:) price tag, that works out to $8,488,612.84 PER SECOND of flight time... all to get an Orion into orbit with an ICPS, barely capable of staggering through TLI and then incapable of even getting into a proper low lunar orbit once it gets in the vicinity of the Moon. One h3ll of an expensive fireworks show/stunt IMHO. Orion doesn't even have a lunar lander; NASA has let a contract to SpaceX for a "lunar starship" to act as a lunar lander for future crews... Needless to say, this is predicated ENTIRELY on there BEING a successful, operational Starship capable of launching a "lunar starship" and it being successfully modified to the "lunar starship" spec to enable it to land and take off from the Moon... AND if that actually works as planned, WTF do we need a $4.1 billion dollar per launch totally expendable dinosaur firecracker for?? We could just fly the whole d@mn mission on Starship for a TINY FRACTION of the cost... SO NASA has spent the past 12 years and untold billions developing this monstrosity for basically no purpose... AND if Starship DOESN'T work, or takes a lot longer to work the kinks out of it (as it seems it has been lately), then SLS/Orion exists to no purpose ANYWAY, because Orion in some pathetic highly elliptical lunar orbit by itself is WORTHLESS... Oh, I suppose they COULD go on and fund either a competitor commercial lunar lander (but IF SpaceX were to fail to deliver on lunar starship, I don't see Congress ever agreeing to fund ANOTHER commercial competitor with no guarantee of success), OR NASA could get approval to build their own lunar lander-- which will take most of a decade at least and BILLIONS more in development, and require a SECOND $4.1 billion dollar SLS launch to put in space or send to the Moon... so EVERY lunar mission would require $8.2 billion dollars FOR THE ROCKET LAUNCHES ALONE, excluding ANY and ALL other mission costs, like for Orion and any habs or landers...
SO enjoy the fireworks show... hopefully we'll get some h3llacious HD footage from the cams on Artemis 1, because God knows we've paid enough for them LOL:)
The 5+ hour NASA stream was full of self-serving chest thumping and associated politically correct pablum, so I forwarded through most of it. All glitzy and shiny graphics, but pathetically dumbed down for the dumbed down masses LOL:) The launch wasn't much to see, honestly, as nothing was frigging visible but the fire trail, and it was essentially a king-size bottle rocket-- SpaceX liquid propulsion launches are MUCH more interesting to watch at night, honestly. SO lets hope they do better with the Artemis cameras... there's a YT stream going now I paused to come here to comment...
Sure gotta wonder what these people are thinking now, how they come up with this stuff and justify it... as Spock would say, "Highly Illogical!"
Later! OL J R