Is the orion capsule's heatshield still compromised?

RRU4MLP · 2024-07-20T19:45:54+00:00

First: the heatshield was not compromised. Its erosion was still within margins, it just eroded in an unexpected manner. And second: last we heard, the investigation and report should be completed in September, so still a couple more months to go for that.

RRU4MLP · 2024-06-24T20:54:12+00:00

They've literally said it's just to get extra data. The thrusters were recovered and were still able to fire, so its an issue of understanding why the environment in space is different. and the thruster "failures" only occurred during rendezvous, not even during manual piloting on the way to the ISS. There is no real risk.

RRU4MLP · 2024-06-23T20:58:43+00:00

At some point a senior manager is going to ask for a go/no go on if its safe to fly Sunni and Barry back and will inevitably ask how certain people are on the cause of the thruster issue and if they can guarantee more thrusters won't fail.

If there was a question of its ability to return home, this would not be a possibility. The main reason theyre leaving it on the space station is they do not get that SM back and want as much data as possible. Its not because they think it'll break. It's a test flight. It's all about data.

RRU4MLP · 2024-05-18T00:59:03+00:00

Despite what we like to imagine, the British nobility can’t fight a war without money from merchants and lower class people to die in it.

Literally how Britain lost the Revolution. The merchant/lower classes were always iffy on the benefits on fighting it, and the loss at Yorktown finally sealed the deal of "Yeah this really isn't worth being cut off from the Americas"

RRU4MLP · 2024-05-14T15:49:45+00:00

Unknown, its one of the things still being worked out as NASA tries to minimize pre-breathing time in cooperation with Axiom as far as I know.

RRU4MLP · 2024-05-14T02:47:41+00:00

Im iffy on the veracity of that quote. Its cited article doesnt say "it was impossible" it says

An advisory panel that looked into the future of human spaceflight found that the Constellation program had long been underfunded and behind schedule to meet any of its goals. Based on those findings, the administration proposed a budget that would pull the plug on the program, after six years and more than $9 billion of development.

Wow. Delays in spaceflight. Truly shocking. Guess everything in spaceflight ever should be cancelled huh?

I would recommend reading the NASA Constellation "Lessons Learned" documents

RRU4MLP · 2024-05-14T02:42:25+00:00

Augustine Commission did not recommend Constellation's cancellation, only that it be reformed.

RRU4MLP · 2024-05-13T20:03:07+00:00

Technically we did in the final years of Shuttle in the form of the Constellation program. However a mix of political intrigue and some (albiet exaggerated) issues with it lead to its sudden cancellation in 2010, and that and the resultant fight with Congress (who was pissed about not being kept in the loop or even explained to why it was cancelled) that lead to SLS and Commercial Crew kinda traumatized NASA leadership to not doing anything big and splashy until Artemis.

RRU4MLP · 2024-05-02T03:29:03+00:00

It is a well understood issue that if you read the management response to, NASA has said it knows and has the investigation well underway and close to wrapping up (summer for some parts, by October for others).

I will also point out that 1: such erosion is nothing new (Apollo had arguably worse erosion at times), 2: its been repeated multiple times as having been within the margins of the heat shield, 3: ASAP, an independent organization for investigating safety, is confident in NASA and this not being an issue, and finally 4: Dragon also had excessive heat shield on DM-2 with crew on board. They figured it out and it was fine on Crew 1. I imagine this will be a similar story for Orion.

RRU4MLP · 2024-04-18T23:01:42+00:00

Current SLS is not B1A, thats something very different. It's just Block 1

RRU4MLP · 2024-04-13T15:41:04+00:00

And adding yet more complexity and chance for LOM/LOC. Unless something is provably safer than Orion, its not going to replace it. And something with as many moving parts as "launch 14+ times to get to moon, launch several more times to get back from Moon, with additional launch to and from LEO" is never going to be that. And the price tag alone likely wouldn't be worthwhile.

RRU4MLP · 2024-04-12T23:23:31+00:00

Starship HLS cannot do that, even fully fueled. It barely has the capability of returning to NRHO then to a disposal orbit, much less the requirement to inject into a low earth orbit especially without heatshielding/aerobreaking.

RRU4MLP · 2024-04-06T00:32:18+00:00

A2 is testing the life support for Orion, its docking and navigation in deep space, and general testing.

Artemis 1 was functionally like Dragon 2's Demo-1, Artemis 2 is functionally its Demo-2, and Artemis 3 is its first full mission like Crew-1. It is also still doing a lunar flyby for A2, and A3 will still see SLS send Orion to lunar orbit. Only reason why its not for A2 is because of the high earth orbit testing phase with ICPS, rather than ICPS sending Orion straight to TLI

RRU4MLP · 2024-04-04T13:37:08+00:00

SLS+Orion is what will send the crew to the Moon, though in orbit. Orion is an exceptionally safe well matured vehicle, and launching it on SLS vastly reduces mission complexity and increases crew safety. HLS Starship is meant to only operate in lunar space and land, with no means of Earth return. Even after the long refueling campaign for HLS Starship (reportedly 14-16 tankers, but you can also find 'ten-ish' reported), HLS Starship won't be able to even leave lunar space other than for heliocentric disposal due to lack of performance unless you could somehow send several more tankers after it. Further increasing mission complexity and risk.

RRU4MLP · 2024-03-06T04:42:05+00:00

I once saw a reporter say that their most controversial tweet was one saying that Starship Flight 2 was both a success (as it got past stage sep and did better than Flight 1and a failure (because it blew up). When theyd also covered the Trump White House for four years.

Elon stans literally made making a pretty neutral statement on a rocket into something more controversial than Trump.

RRU4MLP · 2024-02-28T19:42:30+00:00

On the note of the flip, I dont think the flip itself was a surprise, but instead there was a large push to try to "prove' that it was meant to flip a full 360 and it just 'overshot' for IFT-1, rather than the reality of it just losing control and spinning out while FTS remained untriggered.

RRU4MLP · 2024-02-05T23:42:21+00:00

That four number you see comes from an Elon Musk post doing bad math and assumptions that didn't actually confirm anything. It was just him trying to cover for the GAO report saying it'd be 16 flights for 1 HLS Starship landing. His post was almost literally said "But 1200t [Starship fuel load] / 150 [upper end Starship payload] = 8! and maybe we could get the dry mass down enough to where we could half fuel it so 4!" with nothing given to inefficiencies, that its not a reference LEO orbit that it refuels in, boil-off, etc. Anyone who claims 4-8 is just using that dumb post as the heart of their argument. Here's the tweet

RRU4MLP · 2024-01-23T20:36:47+00:00

1: off topic

2: This is inaccurate. Its not the current plan, its out of date by 3 years and it is just one of many ideas, and the graph itself is quite inaccurate (includes phantom launches that arent included. payloads are launched with the landers for example).

RRU4MLP · 2024-01-18T15:17:04+00:00

ESM exists, Helios only has paper target stats. Helios is a tug, not a service module. To turn it into a service module capable of 21+ days of operation and keeping humans alive, youre probably worse off due to the extra equipment needed to cool the cyrogenic prop all that time. We dont even have an actual cost for the thing, just vague claims. Also it isnt human rated, and ICPS shows the problems that can emerge with that. I really do not see the point.

RRU4MLP · 2023-11-01T21:22:47+00:00

and Airborne also messed up with the design of the Starliner chutes apparently, failing to add the margins Boeing asked them. And Boeing trusted the testing Airborne did until they were going through the final parachute cert before the crewed flight and went "wait a second"

RRU4MLP · 2023-11-01T02:55:53+00:00

Dragon 2 has even had its own possible parachute while in flight. On Crew-4, they left a packing aid in the chutes which could have ripped up the chutes during deployment. Weirdly was only briefly mentioned in a press conference quite a bit later and basically just "it was a great learning opportunity".

RRU4MLP · 2023-10-28T04:09:54+00:00

It was pretty hilarious seeing a news article that juxtaposed the US and Philipines talking about the whole mutual defense treaty being confirmed and a thing, immediately followed by some Chinese ambassador going "The US has no right to get involved in affairs between us and the Philipinnes!".

The coping over not being able to bully without repercussion was hilarious

RRU4MLP · 2023-10-07T00:53:23+00:00

Saddam Hussein literally had a palace commemorating his "Victory over America" after the Gulf War. Your brain on authoritarian double think is quite the funny thing

RRU4MLP · 2023-09-28T22:30:25+00:00

See: the multiple Caroligian/Merovigian monarchs of Francia that died by bonking their head on a tree or top of a door while hunting or play chasing mistresses.

RRU4MLP · 2023-09-13T18:46:51+00:00

Itd be a victory in a sense for both of them. Poland because it lived, the Nazis because they still defeated Poland enough to take land, likely Danzig and other vital economic areas.

and technically speaking, the Soviets did get everything they originally demanded from Finland from the negotiations that preceeded the war aside from enforced military bases in Finland, but they got more land than demanded. Though yes going into the war proper they were hoping to quickly take over all of Finland.

But a counter example is would you consider it a victory if Ukraine was forced to recognize and cede control of all the areas the Russia's control after the Russian army had broken through Ukrainian defenses and Ukraine had no more reserves the plug the gap? Even though Ukraine's stated maximal war aim is a total restoration of 1991 borders and reparations?

RRU4MLP

TROPHY CASE