[Space] Space Launch System, SLS - Page 9

At first glance, SLS looks awesome. A core stage flanked by two boosters on top of which sits a small kick stage or a larger second stage that can send cargo or an Orion manned spacecraft to Mars and beyond (pictured top). It’s versatile and more powerful than anything that has preceded it. But it’s expendable and far from completion.

It’s also really expensive. From inception to first unmanned launch currently planned for 2017, it’s expected to cost around $10 billion. Once operational, it will launch once every year with a price tag between $1.3 billion and $2.45 billion every time. That’s not including the money put towards research, development, and building the payload and all the associated systems. And that’s what Chris Kraft has a problem with.

Kraft was NASA’s first flight director. He was the one calling the shots in mission control during the Mercury program in an era when they were writing procedures and handbooks during missions and finding creative solutions to problems as they occurred. He was there when mission control moved to the Johnson Spacecraft Centre (JSC) in 1961 as the Manned Spacecraft Centre. Since then, it’s been the nerve center of mission operations.

Now, says Kraft, SLS is threatening the kill the JSC and destroy the 50 year legacy of innovation that has come out of the center.

In NASA’s current situation of severe fiscal constraints, the $4 billion to $5 billion annual cost for the SLS program isn’t something the agency can afford. Neither is the proposed human exploration program built on the rocket’s capacity. The cost of SLS is crowding out the technology of these long-term missions like lunar landers and deep space capable multi-mission vehicles. At the current rate, manned missions beyond Earth orbit aren’t likely before the 2030s.

WASHINGTON — Managers of three key NASA exploration programs said May 10 that they are making good progress towards a first launch of the Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket as soon as September 2018.

Managers of the SLS, Orion, and Ground Systems Development and Operations (GSDO) programs said at a Space Transportation Association luncheon here that while the programs are working towards a first launch of SLS and Orion, called Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1), in November 2018, they believe that they could launch up to two months earlier.

“The agency’s baseline commitment is November of 2018,” said Mike Bolger, manager of the GSDP program. “The September date we’ve talked internally about, and pressed them to see if we can make it by September. It gives us a little margin at the end.”

His comments came after an earlier presentation by Mark Kirasich, the Orion program manager, who discussed preparations for the EM-1 launch, including photos of the pressure vessel of the spacecraft being assembled at the Kennedy Space Center.

“This is the pressure vessel that, about 28 months from now, will be on its way towards the moon and into a distant retrograde orbit around the moon,” he said, a timeframe that corresponds to a September 2018 launch.

NASA has not provided a firm launch date for the EM-1 mission, which will be the first flight of the SLS and the second for Orion, after a brief December 2014 test flight in Earth orbit. The November 2018 date is tied to a review of the SLS program completed in August 2014, which concluded there was a 70 percent chance SLS would be ready for its first flight by November 2018.

Congress directed NASA to spend at least $85 million on EUS in the fiscal year 2016 omnibus spending bill, and have it ready in time for the second SLS mission, EM-2. NASA, however, did not request enough funding in its fiscal year 2017 budget request to support development of the EUS in time for EM-2, even as it directed agency engineers to stop work on human rating the interim upper stage that will be flown on EM-1.

Of all the Apollo astronauts that walked on the Moon, none has made more of his fame than Buzz Aldrin, who followed Neil Armstrong onto the lunar surface in 1969. But long before he danced with the stars and inspired Buzz Lightyear, and even before he served as the Apollo 11 lunar module pilot, Aldrin was known as an expert in orbital rendezvous.

In recent years, Aldrin has used his astronautics expertise and fame to push a cycler concept that he believes would be the best way to visit and eventually inhabit Mars. In his public lectures, however, Aldrin has largely avoided criticizing the present approach being taken by NASA with the development of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft and its two-decade "Journey to Mars."

That changed at this week's Humans to Mars conference. In his remarks, Aldrin said NASA should change the approach it has had in place since the 1960s, that of designing and managing development of its own rockets. He took direct aim at the SLS vehicle, which he reminded listeners was based on 1970s technology and the space shuttle rather than more modern concepts. "It competes with the private sector," Aldrin said. "I thought most of us were in the process of learning that the government shouldn't do that."

Aldrin was referring to efforts by SpaceX to develop the Falcon Heavy rocket, which has a launch capacity of 54 metric tons to low-Earth orbit (the SLS will have an initial capacity of 70 metric tons). Independent estimates suggest the SLS will cost more than the Falcon Heavy for each launch by at least a factor of 10.
During his remarks Aldrin also suggested NASA's Orion spacecraft didn't serve much of a purpose, in his view, for a Mars exploration program. "It's rather marginal for its use at Mars," Aldrin said, adding that he viewed commercial spacecraft as better options for transporting astronauts into low-Earth orbit and onto the Moon as staging locations for Mars missions. "I'm not sure I see where Orion fits in there," he said.

Aldrin, who came to NASA in 1963 as a member of the space agency's third astronaut class, also reflected on what NASA's purpose should be in the 21st century. Before NASA existed there was NACA, the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics. This government agency had responsibility for testing aircraft developed by the US and for promoting the aviation industry through applied research.

"We were NACA before we were NASA," Aldrin said. "I think we should slowly revert back to the NACA advisory model, and perhaps a NASA center that's competing with the private sector would do much better in the very exciting area of space propulsion and spacecraft, including how we get from one place to another."

Further, Aldrin advised, NASA would perhaps do better to focus on game-changing technologies such as how to land on Mars, how to refuel in space and on the surface of the Moon and Mars, how to harvest water ice on those worlds, and how to develop nuclear reactors for use in space.

At the request of Congress, the nonpartisan US Government Accountability Office reviews the finances and management of federal programs, and this week it released a study critical of NASA’s crew capsule, Orion. Most worryingly, the 56-page report (PDF) regularly draws parallels between the Orion program and another large NASA project, the James Webb Space Telescope. The successor to the Hubble Space Telescope is notorious for ballooning from a 10-year, $500 million project to a 20-year, $8.8 billion (£6.7 billion) instrument that may finally launch in 2018.

Although Orion has not yet experienced such dramatic increases in costs, the spacecraft is now into its second decade of development. NASA estimates that it will spend a total of $16 billion (£12 billion) to ready Orion for its first crewed flight in April 2023. However, the GAO review, signed by Director of Acquisition and Sourcing Management Cristina T. Chaplain, did not find these numbers to be reliable.

The federal auditing agency based this conclusion on the fact that only a handful of NASA’s methods for estimating costs and schedule were consistent with “best practices.” Moreover, the GAO found, in making a number of its estimates, NASA appears to be relying too heavily on data analysis from the primary contractor for Orion, Lockheed Martin. In regard to Orion’s cost and schedule estimates, then, the GAO report concludes, “They do not fully reflect the characteristics of quality cost or schedule estimates and neither estimate can be considered reliable.”

Some of the major Orion concerns cited by the GAO study are well-known, such as delays by NASA’s partner, the European Space Agency, in building the service module that will help power Orion in space. Less widely known, however, are significant cost overruns with Orion’s primary contractor, Lockheed Martin. The GAO’s analysis of contractor data found that the Orion program faces potential cost overruns of up to $707 million by 2020.

The report comes at an important time for Orion, which will likely face questions about its viability during the next 18 months as a new president comes into office and reviews NASA’s programs. Congress supports NASA’s development of the vehicle, but there is considerable back-channel discussion in the aerospace community about the time and expense that has gone into developing what is a capable but relatively straightforward spacecraft.

WASHINGTON — A report from NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) April 13 concluded that the first two missions of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft will likely slip from their currently scheduled dates.

The report on NASA’s human exploration programs, the outcome of a nine-month audit by OIG, also recommended that NASA provide more details about its long-term plans to send humans to Mars, citing constrained budgets and the need to develop a number of key technologies to enable such missions.

NASA’s current schedule calls for the launch of the first SLS/Orion mission, Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1), no later than November 2018 without a crew. That would be followed by EM-2, the first SLS/Orion mission to carry astronauts, as soon as August 2021.

The OIG report, though, was skeptical NASA could maintain that schedule. “NASA’s first exploration missions – EM-1 and EM-2 – face multiple technical challenges that will likely delay their launch,” the report stated.

The report outlines a number of technical challenges that SLS, Orion and associated ground systems are facing that makes it unlikely NASA can maintain its current schedule for those missions. Work on SLS, it said, has consumed nearly all of the 11 months of schedule reserve it originally had. “With only 30 days of schedule reserves available, the SLS Program may be hard pressed to meet a November 2018 launch date,” OIG concluded.

Orion also faces issues. “NASA considers Orion to be one of the biggest challenges to meeting the EM-1 flight date of no later than November 2018,” the report stated. Delays in the development of the Orion service module, provided by the European Space Agency are the leading factor in the overall Orion delay, as well as technical risks involved with changes in the design of Orion’s heat shield.

In addition to SLS and Orion issues, the OIG report stated that work on ground systems at the Kennedy Space Center has only one month of schedule reserve remaining. Development of software needed for SLS, Orion and ground systems have also suffered delays that could delay the first SLS/Orion launch. “We are concerned NASA will not be able to resolve all necessary [exploration systems] software validation and verification efforts in time to meet a November 2018 launch date for EM-1,” OIG said in the report.

Recent events could exacerbate those delays. The report briefly mentions damage from a Feb. 7 tornado that hit the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. It estimated repairs to Michoud buildings could result in a two-month delay in work on the SLS, whose core stage is built there.

NASA officials have provided similar estimates on the potential delays caused by the tornado. “The tornado probably cost us two to three months,” said Bill Hill, deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development, in a March 29 presentation to the NASA Advisory Council’s Human Exploration and Operations Committee. “We’re still evaluating that and seeing what the options are.”

Another wild card that could delay EM-1 is a decision to put a crew on that first flight. NASA is currently examining such a move, which would delay the mission regardless of other technical issues. The target date for a crewed EM-1 mission is mid-2019, according to ground rules for that study cited in the OIG report.

The report said that, as of early April, the study about putting a crew on EM-1 was still in progress. “To achieve a crewed EM-1 flight, in our judgment NASA must address not only the additional risks associated with human travel but also a host of existing risks to planned missions,” OIG said in the report, citing work needed on Orion’s life support systems and a decision to either human-rate the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage that will be used on EM-1 or accelerate work on the Exploration Upper Stage.

WASHINGTON — NASA and Boeing are investigating a recent mishap at the Michoud Assembly Facility that damaged a portion of a liquid oxygen tank being developed for the Space Launch System.

Kim Henry, a spokesperson for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, said May 10 that NASA and Boeing, the prime contractor for the SLS core stage, have established independent investigation teams to review an incident at Michoud one week earlier involving the rear dome of a liquid oxygen qualification tank. The mishap was first reported by NASA Watch.

The agency didn’t provide additional details about the incident, which took place in the Vertical Assembly Center at Michoud, used to weld large components of the SLS. The Vertical Assembly Center was shut down when the incident took place, Henry said. “NASA is evaluating next steps to safely resume operations.”

The damage was limited to the one dome section of the tank, which was not yet welded to the rest of the tank. “Assessments are ongoing to determine the extent of the damage,” she said.

Henry said that the incident was classified as a “Type B” mishap. Such a mishap, according to NASA documents, covers incidents that cause between $500,000 and $2 million in damage. No one was injured, she said.

The liquid oxygen tank involved in the incident was a qualification model, intended for testing, and not flight hardware. Henry said it wasn’t immediately clear how long the investigation would take.

During the teleconference, Ars asked Gerstenmaier to step back and take a big-picture look at the SLS rocket. Even with all of the funding—about $10 billion through next year—how was the agency likely to miss the original deadline by as much as three years, if not more?

"I don’t know," Gerstenmaier replied. "I don’t know—I would just say it’s really kind of the complexity of what we’re trying to go do, and to build these systems. We weren’t pushing state-of-the-art technology, like main engines sitting underneath the rocket or new solid rocket boosters. But we were pushing a lot of new manufacturing, and I think that new manufacturing has caused some of the delays we’ve seen. No one welds the way that we’re welding material at the thicknesses we’re welding."

On May 14 2017 01:33 pmh wrote:
What nasa is trying to do with the SLS is way and way bigger then the rockets of origin and space x.

Twice the payload at minimum,the SLS is the only rocket system currently in development that has a chance to bring people to mars.

With current rocket technology there is only one way to go if you want to go somewhere far and with a lot of stuff and that is to go big. Nasa is taking the right and only path I think,and it just shows what a long way the private companys still have to go.

As part of rocket development, aerospace engineers extensively test booster components before they are assembled into a larger launch vehicle. To that end, NASA has built two big test stands at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama to test its large liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen fuel tanks. These tanks are part of the core stage of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

However, a new report from NASA's inspector general, Paul Martin, raises serious questions about the cost of these test stands and the decision to build them in Alabama rather than in Mississippi, where NASA has an existing facility that already tests rocket engines. Additionally, the Mississippi-based Stennis Space Center is also much closer to the Louisiana factory where the SLS hydrogen and oxygen tanks are being assembled.

As part of the SLS program, NASA determined that it needed two test stands: one is for the larger hydrogen tank, which is about half the length of a football field, and the second is for the oxygen tank. The agency budgeted $40.5 million for the project but ended up spending $76 million, which is an increase of 88 percent. The stands were completed in November 2016.

The inspector found that most of the cost overruns were due to NASA's acceleration of the test-stand construction, with the space agency requesting the stands' completion by September 2015. This would have allowed the SLS rocket to make its maiden launch by the end of 2017. However, shortly after construction began, NASA delayed the maiden launch of the SLS rocket until 2018. And, recently, the agency delayed it again into 2019.

The initial launch delay came just a few months after construction began. By then, the SLS program, which is based at Marshall in northern Alabama, had already paid a $7.6 million premium to the contractor for a compressed schedule. Moreover, because plans weren't finalized before work began, NASA had to modify the construction plan six times during the course of building the test stands. This added an additional $12.1 million to the cost. Finally, despite the rush job requested, the test stands weren't completed until November 2016.

For the last five years or so, NASA has sold the public on a Journey to Mars, a grand voyage by which the agency will land humans on the red planet during the 2030s. With just budgetary increases for inflation, the agency said, it had the resources for humanity's next great step, to land crews safely on Mars, and to bring them home. The agency's new rocket, the Space Launch System, and spacecraft, Orion, were sold by NASA administrator Charles Bolden as the vehicles that would get the job done.

There were plenty of naysayers. For example, a National Research Council report cautioned that the agency had too much work, and too little funds, to accomplish these goals in the 2030s with the SLS rocket—and that sustaining a "Mars program" into the 2040s would be a tremendous challenge. NASA's remarkable response to this critical report was that it validated the Journey to Mars.

Now, finally, the agency appears to have bended toward reality. During a propulsion meeting of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics on Wednesday, NASA's chief of human spaceflight acknowledged that the agency doesn't really have the funding it needs to reach Mars.

https://livestream.com/AIAAvideo/PropEnergy2017/videos/159704854

"I can't put a date on humans on Mars, and the reason really is the other piece is, at the budget levels we described, this roughly 2 percent increase, we don’t have the surface systems available for Mars," said NASA's William H. Gerstenmaier, responding to a question about when NASA will send humans to the surface of Mars. "And that entry, descent and landing is a huge challenge for us for Mars."

This seems like a fairly common sense statement, but it's something that NASA officials have largely glossed over—at least in public—during the agency's promotion of a Journey to Mars. The reality is that the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft have cost a lot to build, and therefore NASA hasn't been able to begin designing vehicles to land on Mars or ascend from the surface.

Agency officials have also been loath to mention the possibility of NASA astronauts landing on the Moon, because George W. Bush had an initiative to return to the Moon that President Obama canceled. However, Gerstenmaier opened the door to this possibility Wednesday.

"If we find out there’s water on the Moon, and we want to do more extensive operations on the Moon to go explore that, we have the ability with Deep Space Gateway to support an extensive Moon surface program," he said. "If we want to stay focused more toward Mars we can keep that."

It has been a long time since NASA, especially its chief human spaceflight official, talked openly about an "extensive Moon surface program." However after six months of a new presidential administration, the agency realizes that its destination may well change. Therefore its leadership is keeping the decision about destinations open, be it the surface of the Moon or Mars.

The reality is that NASA may not be able to go either place unless something changes. The agency doesn't have the funding to build a large lunar outpost if it must rely on the Space Launch System—which will only fly about once a year, at a cost of more than $1 billion. Mars landings, clearly, would cost even more with the big, expendable rocket approach requiring five or more launches per mission.

Another, less costly option is having the freedom to rely much more heavily on partly or completely reusable launch and in-space transports systems being built by SpaceX, Blue Origin, and United Launch Alliance. Politically, so far any reliance on commercial companies for deep space exploration has been a non-starter in Congress. But that could change, as Vice President Mike Pence has been making some noise about increasing commercial partnerships at NASA. "The truth is that American business is on the cutting edge of space technology," he recently said.

NASA will soon set a new date for the maiden flight of its massive Space Launch System rocket, which will send the Orion spacecraft on a test flight around the Moon. Previously, this flight had been scheduled for 2018, but NASA officials acknowledged earlier this year that the launch date would slip into 2019.

Now, there is the possibility of further delays, although NASA isn't saying this publicly just yet. On Wednesday, at the Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, a key official said that a 2019 date is still on the table because Marshall Space Flight Center expects to deliver the rocket's core stage to the launch site in Florida by the end of 2018.

Noting a recent Agency Program Management Council meeting, during which launch dates are decided, Marshall director Todd May said, "2019 is where we think we can get that done." NASA's acting administrator, Robert Lightfoot, should release an official launch date within the next few weeks, May added.

During a NASA safety meeting earlier this month, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel noted that there are three main items on the "critical path" before the SLS rocket can make its maiden launch. First, Marshall must deliver a fully tested core stage—the main liquid hydrogen and oxygen tanks and RS-25 rocket engines. The European Space Agency must also complete and then test the service module to power the Orion spacecraft in deep space. And much work remains to finalize and test software to manage launch systems at Kennedy Space Center.

"This is a critical point," said a member of the advisory board, engineer Donald McErlean. "The SLS continues to advance, and there are challenges that exist that no one would be surprised about in a program as advanced and complex as this. But the work to overcome those challenges is in progress."

For his part, May said this hard work will be the highlight for many engineers at NASA and its hundreds of contractors and subcontractors working to bring the big SLS rocket to the launch pad. "This is the fun part," May said Wednesday. "It's the hard part, but it's also the really fun part for the team."

Recently, the managing editor of the NASASpaceFlight.com, Chris Bergin, suggested that NASA managers are deciding between a "best case" launch date of December 2019 for the SLS rocket and a "risk informed" date in the second quarter of 2020. Bergin is a reliable source of inside information about NASA, and sources subsequently confirmed this information to Ars.

It is physically possible for NASA to make a launch date in 2019, but historically, things can (and often do) go wrong in the assembly and testing of major launch systems. While it is possible to beat the odds or resolve problems quickly, there is no guarantee that will happen between now and a 2019 launch date.

The issue now confronting NASA's acting administrator, Robert Lightfoot, is whether to set a more politically palatable launch date in 2019 knowing that it could easily slip into 2020. Moreover, should Lightfoot issue a public launch date of 2020, it would release the pressure now on NASA and its contractors, allowing managers to relax and guaranteeing an earlier date is not reached. Therefore, the smart money is on a launch date in 2019, with an eventual slip into 2020.

It was about a year ago that Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg first began saying his company would beat SpaceX to Mars. "I'm convinced that the first person to step foot on Mars will arrive there riding on a Boeing rocket," he said during a Boeing-sponsored tech summit in Chicago in October 2016.

On Thursday, Muilenburg repeated that claim on CNBC. Moreover, he added this tidbit about the Space Launch System rocket—for which Boeing is the prime contractor of the core stage—"We’re going to take a first test flight in 2019 and we’re going to do a slingshot mission around the Moon."

Unlike last year, Muilenburg drew a response from SpaceX this time. The company's founder, Elon Musk, offered a pithy response on Twitter: "Do it."

The truth is that Boeing's rocket isn't going anywhere particularly fast. Although Muilenburg says it will launch in 2019, NASA has all but admitted that will not happen. The rocket's maiden launch has already slipped from late 2017 into "no earlier than" December 2019. However, NASA officials have said a 2019 launch is a "best case" scenario, and a slip to June 2020 is more likely.

The truth is that Boeing's rocket isn't going anywhere particularly fast. Although Muilenburg says it will launch in 2019, NASA has all but admitted that will not happen. The rocket's maiden launch has already slipped from late 2017 into "no earlier than" December 2019. However, NASA officials have said a 2019 launch is a "best case" scenario, and a slip to June 2020 is more likely.

Boeing also isn't going to land a rocket on Mars without near total funding from NASA, which has already paid more than $10 billion for development of the SLS and has no actual funding to implement a humans-to-Mars exploration plan. SpaceX will also need some government funding if it is to develop its "Big Falcon Rocket" to reach Mars, but Musk has laid out plans for commercial applications of his launch system that could offset some of its cost. (The SLS rocket has no known customers aside from NASA).

What is particularly puzzling to us is why Boeing and SpaceX are arguing about Mars. These two companies, who compete directly for NASA and other government contracts, are in a far more immediate and real race to reach the launch pad in the commercial crew competition. NASA has had to rely on Russia to get its astronauts to the International Space Station since the space shuttle's retirement in 2011. Both Boeing and SpaceX are building capsules that will launch crews from Florida.

The companies have both seen slips in their schedules for the first crewed flights. They have launch dates now set for 2018, but there is a general expectation that further delays are likely—both due to development problems and changing requirements from NASA. Regardless, the company that eventually breaks NASA's Russian dependence will win a public relations boon beyond compare for an aerospace company.

"Do it," we say to Dennis and Elon.

The RS-25 test team is ready for their first hot-fire test of the year in the A-1 test stand at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. Scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, the test will continue development work started with Development Engine 0528 (E0528) in last month’s hot-fire. The six-minute long firing will put the new, “3D printed” pogo accumulator assembly through a second test case and will acceptance test another engine controller for use on one of the early Space Launch System (SLS) launches.

The test team of personnel from NASA, RS-25 prime contractor Aerojet Rocketdyne, and Stennis facilities contractor Syncom Space Services (S3) will start another event-driven countdown on Tuesday morning, aiming for ignition in the afternoon. Rather than targeting a specific time of ignition, the test will start when all of the prerequisite steps prior to ignition are complete and the hardware and the people are ready. Ignition typically occurs in the mid-afternoon Central time.

In an email, Philip Benefield, Systems and Requirements Team Lead for the SLS Liquid Engines Office, told NASASpaceflight.com that the primary objectives for this test are to demonstrate the new “production restart” pogo accumulator in “high flow conditions” and to acceptance test or “green run” engine controller unit (ECU), FM10. “‘High flow conditions’ for the POGO is simply high oxidizer flow to the engine,” he explained. “We’re achieving high oxidizer flow by running the engine at high power level and at high mixture ratio.”

NASA will run out of existing RS-25 engines inherited from the Space Shuttle Program after four SLS launches and awarded a contract to Aerojet Rocketdyne to restart production of new engines for subsequent flights.

The first production restart hardware to go into hot-fire testing, the beachball-sized pogo accumulator assembly was manufactured using additive manufacturing (AM) processes (also known as “3D printing”) that are hoped will help with the cost reduction goals of the RS-25 “production restart” program. This assembly, a development test unit, was built at Aerojet Rocketdyne’s facility in Canoga Park, outside of Los Angeles, using an AM process called selective laser melting (SLM).

Although using new manufacturing methods, the pogo assembly retains the same form, fit, and function, which is to help to absorb and dampen the magnitude of oscillations that can start within the engine during mainstage operation. The accumulator is connected in the engine’s oxidizer system between the low and high pressure liquid oxygen (LOX) turbopumps.

Benefield said that Tuesday’s test is planned to have a duration of 365 seconds. During the firing, he also noted that the engine will be throttled primarily at the high and low end of the production restart range of 111 percent and 80 percent of rated power level (RPL), respectively.

E0528 will be throttled at 111 percent RPL for 177 seconds, and at 80 percent RPL for 148 seconds. The production restart engines will be certified to fly at 111 percent, with future plans to ground test up to 113 percent RPL.

The new pogo accumulator was first hot-fired with E0528 during the last test in the A-1 stand on December 13. That test was planned to last for 470 seconds, but the engine was shut down 70 seconds early due to a facility issue. “A LOX propellant transfer pump cut-off during the test,” Benefield explained. “This pump transfers LOX from a propellant storage barge to the A1 LOX run tank. As a result, an adequate level of LOX in the A1 LOX run tank could not be maintained leading to the early test cut-off.”

During a test, the engine in the A-1 test stand draws its propellants from “run tanks” built into the test stand, but the stand is also equipped with interconnected piping and other infrastructure like pumps that allow the run tanks to be backfilled with additional propellant from barge tankers that are docked there for tests.

Although the test ran short, all of the objectives of the test were completed prior to the early cutoff. What was missed in the last approximately minute of firing was the normal, “stair step” throttle down to the minimum power level before shutdown. “We did not complete the typical power level ramp-down to 80% RPL for the planned cut-off; instead the engine was cut-off at [approximately] 108% RPL,” Benefield noted.

Originally developed in the 1970s for the Space Shuttle Program when it was known as the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME), RS-25 hot-fire testing began at Stennis in January 2015, to demonstrate and certify engine operation at the higher performance levels for SLS. SLS is both physically longer and at times will accelerate faster during launch than Shuttle did, requiring different starting and running inlet conditions for the engines through powered flight.

Four engines will fly in the SLS Core Stage, burning cryogenic liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LOX) fed to them from the stage’s propellant tanks. The engines will run at higher pressures and higher thrust than on Shuttle, and the propellant is also fed to them at colder temperatures.

Although largely the same engine design and hardware, the RS-25 “adaptation” engines integrated a new control system for use on SLS, which includes new engine controller hardware and software. Hardware for sixteen SSME flight units remained after the Shuttle program ended in 2011, and those will fly in the Core Stage on the first four SLS launches.

In addition to restarting supply chains, manufacturing, and production, a primary goal for the production restart program is a reduction in the cost to produce new units.

Aerojet Rocketdyne is working with NASA to make further changes to RS-25 production restart units when they begin flying on SLS launches. Although the changes are primarily aimed at cost reduction, the production restart design will also incorporate operational requirements changes such as increasing the nominal throttle setting from 109 to 111 percent RPL, which will benefit SLS performance.

In addition to the primary test objective for the production restart program, the green run of the FM10 engine controller will also help to continue acceptance testing of the remaining component hardware needed for the sixteen adaptation engines that Aerojet Rocketdyne has in its facility at Stennis.

Honeywell is continuing to build and assemble engine controller units and as they become available those flight ECUs will continue to be green run in the A-1 stand at Stennis. Ultimately, they will be installed on the existing, Shuttle-era adaptation engines to fly on the second, third and fourth planned SLS launches.

The next hot-fire test is planned for early February.

The successful launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket is a game-changer that could actually save NASA and the future of space exploration.

The much delayed, much maligned rocket is just what the space agency needs to escape from the governmental bureaucracy that has bound her to Low Earth Orbit for the past 45 years.

Unfortunately, the traditionalists at NASA — and their beltway bandit allies — don't share this view and have feared this moment since the day the Falcon Heavy program was announced seven years ago.

The question to be answered in Washington now is why would Congress continue to spend billions of taxpayer dollars a year on a government-made rocket that is unnecessary and obsolete now that the private sector has shown they can do it for a fraction of the cost?


If lawmakers continue on this path, it will siphon-off even more funds that NASA could otherwise use for science missions, transfer vehicles or landers that will further advance our understanding of the universe — and actually get us somewhere.

NASA has spent more than $15 billion to try and develop their own heavy lift rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), with a first flight planned in roughly two years — assuming all goes according to plan.

Once operational, SLS will cost NASA over $1 billion per launch. The Falcon Heavy, developed at zero cost to the taxpayer, would charge NASA approximately $100M per launch. In other words, NASA could buy 10 Falcon Heavy launches for the coat of one SLS launch — and invest the remainder in truly revolutionary and meaningful missions that advance science and exploration.

It is understandable that government employees, contractors and their elected officials want to keep this expensive rocket development program going. A large share of NASA’s roughly $19billion budget has been spent on this constituency, and in turn is protected by them. We have come to accept this “tax” on the agency, but It is time for the nation to decide if we want a space program — or a jobs program.

NASA's marketing of how many elephants, locomotives and airplanes could be launched by various versions of SLS is a perfect example of the frivolity of developing, building and operating their own rocket. NASA advertises that it will be able to launch 12.5 elephants to LEO on Block I SLS, or 2.8 more elephants than the Falcon Heavy could launch. But if we are counting elephants — the planned Block II version of SLS could launch 30 elephants, while SpaceX's BFR could launch 34. Talk about significant.

The government should be focusing on their unique, longer-term goals and partnering with the private sector to help incentivize the success of this commercial U.S. enterprise.

SpaceX offered NASA the opportunity to get a free ride on this first launch. But the space agency viewed commercial development of this rocket as "competition" and refused their offer. Instead, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk put his own Tesla Roadster onboard, turning the event into a brilliant cross-marketing event.

Both SpaceX and NASA have missions to Mars as their goals, but only one can actually get there at a sustainable cost.

The wise investments made in commercial space by both the Bush and Obama administrations helped lead to SpaceX’s history making moment today. The plan worked: provide early government seed money into the private space market, let companies compete, lower costs and allow the government to develop new technologies that will expand our reach — and save taxpayer money.