Wonder if they'll ever get this thing off the ground?

Artemis Moon rocket second launch attempt called off


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The launch of Nasa's new Artemis I Moon rocket is facing a potentially lengthy delay after a second postponement. Controllers tried and failed again on Saturday to get the Space Launch System (SLS) vehicle to lift off. They were thwarted by a fuel leak. Engineers now want to inspect the rocket, and any repairs may need to happen in the workshop rather than on the launch pad. The whole process is certain to lead to a setback of several weeks. It means we may not see a third launch attempt before mid-October at the earliest.

Interesting to note they've gone back to the obviously tried and true (and much safer) idea of the crew capsule being at the top of the booster stack with a launch escape tower fitted to the capsule to fly the capsule and crew up and away from a failed booster then the capsule parachutes safely to the ground.

Like they had for Apollo and the earlier space programs.

The greatest risk with the now retired Space Shuttle was the fact that the orbiter was attached to the side of the solid rocket booster/external tank stack and a launch failure (i.e. an explosion) would cause the loss of the orbiter and the entire crew as we saw with the Challenger disaster in 1986.

3rd time lucky for an Artemis launch? Let's hope so.

I believe a lot of 'left over' hardware from the Space Shuttle program is being used for Artemis - the main liquid fuelled engines are shuttle engines and I also believe the solid rocket boosters are as well (with an extra booster segment added to make them a bit longer).

Hopefully, attempt #3 won't go anything like this:

Mercury-Redstone 1, November 21st 1960


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Mercury-Redstone 1 (MR-1) was the first Mercury-Redstone uncrewed flight test in Project Mercury and the first attempt to launch a Mercury spacecraft with the Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle. Intended to be an uncrewed sub-orbital spaceflight, it was launched on November 21, 1960 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The launch failed in abnormal fashion: immediately after the Mercury-Redstone rocket started to move, it shut itself down and settled back on the pad, after which the capsule jettisoned its escape rocket and deployed its recovery parachutes. The failure has been referred to as the "four-inch flight", for the approximate distance traveled by the launch vehicle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0w_xyePC_0


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In the end, all that had been launched was the escape rocket. However, the fully fueled and powered-up Redstone was now sitting on LC-5 with nothing securing it to the pad. Various other dangers existed as well, such as the capsule's retrorocket package and the range safety destruct charges. Furthermore, the capsule's main and reserve parachutes were hanging down the side of the rocket, threatening to tip it over if they caught enough wind; this did not occur, however, as the weather conditions were favorable. Amid the panicked atmosphere in the control room, the launch team was unable to come up with quick and viable options to rectify the situation. Flight director Chris Kraft rejected several unsafe interventions, including using a rifle to shoot holes in the booster's propellant tanks to depressurize them.

:o

Its a good thing NASA is not as impatient as members of the public. I don't care how many times they abort, if it means getting the mission right. What the rush, anyway. The moon will still be there.

NASA is discussing sending the entire vehicle back to contractors to rebuild. The project was demanded by politicians for local employers to stay in the space business and the mid-term voting is no time to lose jobs.

NASA - THE USELESS ERA.

These days, NASA just shows people stuff that is so far away that it begs to ask 'why f*ucking bother' with all this?

"We've found a world exactly like Earth with resources galore and populated by humans with females outnumbering males 42/1. There is diamonds and gold galore." while being 12 million light years away... and in the past. ::)


Yep - thanks to James Webb. We can now experience a universe out there that no longer really exists anymore, let alone be of any relevant importance beyond taking a few lifespans to reach anything 'remotely' close that is significant.

NASA WANK DISCOVERIES
UFO WANK INCREASE IN SIGHTINGS
THE MEDIA IS HAVING A FIELD DAY WITH THE GULLIBLE NEW RECRUITS.

Yeah!! We finally have liftoff.  8-)

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-16/nasa-space-launch-system-rocket-takes-off/101661222


Quote:

NASA's new Moon rocket has blasted off on its debut flight with three test dummies aboard, bringing the US a big step closer to putting astronauts back on the lunar surface for the first time since the end of the Apollo program 50 years ago.

Hoping everything goes well and according to plan.

Carl D wrote on Nov 16^th, 2022 at 6:35pm:

Yeah!! We finally have liftoff.

It brought back memories of the first one on black and white TV