NASA & World Space Exploration...News, Views, Photos & videos

Dante80 said:

They are

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at this point...it's just that NASA cannot get right out and call it so, for obvious reasons.

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Thrusters and doors. Thrusters and doors. That's how they get you.

- Offed Boeing Inspector Belta Lowda Miller.

More seriously, I expect Boeing's contract is going to get cancelled. Given what happened with Kistler back in the day, I expect Sierra Nevada to get the reallocated contract if the DreamChaser successfully flies.

Do not worry too much about the two astronauts. They can go back with either a SpaceX Crew Dragon or Russian Soyuz capsule in case they decide not to use the Boeing Starliner capsule.

Still, the lack of reliability of the engines in the Boeing Starliner was a known issue, and they still went ahead with the manned flight anyway. Simply idiotic.

A bit of ESA news:

About the revival of the exomars mission:


Launch of the Ariane-6 may be on the 9th:



The Ariane-6 also had a wet dress rehearsal:


And not quite ESA, two german spysats seem to have failed in orbit:

The first Ariane 6 vehicle, Ariane L6001, was launched on mission VA262 on Jul 9. The rocket is an Ariane 62 variant with two solid boosters. It placed a 1600 kg dummy payload in a 580 km orbit together with 8 cubesats. The dummy payload remained attached to the upper stage, which was to be deorbited 2h40m into flight. However, the auxiliary power unit fail to restart after the cubesat deployments, and the stage was passivated in orbit without performing a deorbit burn. As a result, two reentry capsules remain attached to the stage and will not be able to perform their missions.

NASA Gateway news:
The earliest they can launch PPE and HALO modules is sometime in 2026, and NASA's commitment date is December 2027. Then add around 12 months for the spacecraft to spiral out to the Moon. SpaceX Falcon Heavy's mass limitations (<20t!) is forcing NASA to redesign the modules to be lighter.

Less than 20t payload to what? TLI? They could vastly increase payload to TLI (Trans-Lunar-Injection) by using a LOX/LH2 upper stage.

TLI but it basically doesn't matter since the structural limit to orbit is somewhere in the 20t range (per NASA/GAO report).
It's not even launching to TLI but an elliptical orbit from where the module will engage and spend nearly a year to reach NRHO, a bit like the CE-5 orbiter. FH should be more than capable of doing that, but it's structural weight limited apparently.

gelgoog said:

using a LOX/LH2 upper stage.

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FH+ICPS was studied by NASA LSP and it didn't have enough performance to send the Artemis 1 Orion to TLI, was falling short by several hundred m/s but that's not all. Part of the problem of designing the rocket 'thin and tall' and already stretching the F9 booster substantially from v1.1 -> Block 5 is that it can't add an upper stage without affecting overall vehicle dynamics. Hell, even flying an odd shape like PPE+HALO can potentially make it 'top-heavy'.

That sounds like BS. Even the expendable Falcon 9 alone can do 20 tons to LEO. Unless they just designed the Heavy simply so that you would get the max payload even with the reusable. But I find this difficult to believe when you had things like the DoD financing the design of a Raptor based upper stage engine.

Ariane-6 launched:


But she had a problem with the upper stage:

They took so fricking long to develop Ariane 6 and it was still a partial failure.
And then people joke with the Russian space program. Like when the Persei i.e. Block DM-03 upper stage on Angara failed.

It still uses the same Vulcain first stage engine. It is just they changed the nozzle for a 3d printed one and did other minor modifications. The solids are basically the same as on the Vega rocket. The real new thing was the upper stage with the Vinci engine. And so much for that.

Hopefully the fix will be something minor. Because right now Europe does not have independent access to space.

gelgoog said:

Less than 20t payload to what? TLI? They could vastly increase payload to TLI (Trans-Lunar-Injection) by using a LOX/LH2 upper stage.

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Even without reading the official study we can do some guestimation. If you compare SLS block 1 with falcon heavy, 20t limit is belivable even without considering structural limit. SLS block 1 can put 95t in LEO out of which 27t to TLI. Falcon heavy has LEO 68.5t payload (would include 3rd stage) in theory, so 20t (same LEO/TLI ratio) seems to be the reasonable upper limit. The reason that I use same LEO/TLI ratio is because solid+LH2 is the best combination for high orbit launch (in dv) while falcon heavy enjoys high payload ratio in lower orbit, adding a LH2 3rd stage isn't enough to compensate what it has lost before LEO. In short, for pure performance measurement SLS type is the upper limit anyone can reach for orbit beyond GTO.

That sounds like BS. Even the expendable Falcon 9 alone can do 20 tons to LEO. Unless they just designed the Heavy simply so that you would get the max payload even with the reusable. But I find this difficult to believe when you had things like the DoD financing the design of a Raptor based upper stage engine.

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Best design for LEO is not the best for higher orbit. I think this has been touched upon before (between Falcon and Delta heavy).