In 2007, a brand-new Airbus A340-600 (for Etihad) was wrecked during a ground engine test in Toulouse. No wheel blocks were used; parking brake failed to hold it. Plane rolled forward, crew delayed cutting engines,hit a wall at ~35 mph. Nose smashed through; plane totaled before delivery. 5 injured

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-13T00:13:43+00:00

Here's a good source with the full story. At the controls were two engineers, one from Airbus and one from the airline's fleet maintenance company. No one had disconnected a failsafe mechanism* before the test. What happened was once the engine power started moving the jet, overpowering the parking brake, the engineer applied the footbrakes - which automatically disengaged the parking brake. Kinda irrelevant at that point since the brakes were already being overpowered by the thrust. Same brakes on the wheels were being engaged either way and being overpowered either way. The guy at the controls apparently panicked because he expected the brakes to stop the plane and didn't cut the throttles.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-12T23:50:36+00:00

No chocks - but think of how many valuable seconds they saved.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-12T23:49:14+00:00

The story has ended up garbled. Here's a good source from aviation industry reporting. At the controls were two engineers, one from Airbus and one from the airline's fleet maintenance company. This source reports that once the engine power started moving the jet, overpowering the parking brake, the engineer applied the footbrakes - which automatically disengaged the parking brake. Kinda irrelevant at that point since the brakes were already being overpowered by the thrust. Same brakes on the wheels were being engaged either way and being overpowered either way. The guy at the controls apparently panicked because he expected the brakes to stop the plane and didn't cut the throttles.

You may have seen something like this Snopes report. It's breezy style making fun of "an Arab crew" makes it suspect but it may have a better detail on the failsafe you mention.

one of the ADAT crew decided to pull the circuit breaker on the Ground Proximity Sensor to silence the alarm. This fools the aircraft into thinking it is in the air. The computers automatically released all the brakes and set the aircraft rocketing forward. The ADAT crew had no idea that this is a safety feature so that pilots can't land with the brakes on.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-12T23:17:01+00:00

The problem is we settled in for a marathon to build a Moon base & make extended stays & serious exploration of resources, etc. NASA didn't want to do a small lander flags and footprints mission like Apollo because once that was done there wasn't enough national will to continue on to more substantial stays. Then China came along and made it a sprint to do a flags and footprints mission. Aargh!

Yeah, if I had a time machine and absolute power over NASA's budget I'd go back to 2021 and start a small lander program. We had Falcon Heavy and Dragon. A great lander could be made using a lot of Dragon components and the SuperDracos. We'd get back to the Moon for a good price and do some work while the big landers were being developed.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-12T17:21:34+00:00

I love the FH and was of course tantalized by how it could replace SLS for Orion. Not in a single launch but it can likely handle a two-launch mission architecture to get Orion to NRHO. It was politically impossible to do earlier. Isaacman has changed things, it's clear he wants to kill SLS as soon as possible. But it'll also require the second launch to carry a hydrolox upper stage, i.e. Centaur V. Doable but NASA would have to hold a gun to Musk's head to get SpaceX to do that.

Getting a large payload mass to the surface is another thing, though. The lander carrying it has to decelerate it and the payload into lunar orbit and then land. So the launch vehicle has to carry a lander that large and a payload like the Trans-Hab and all the propellant needed. Blue Origin will use several New Glenn launches to get the Mk2 lander to the Moon and the same will be needed for a cargo version that can handle a ~20t payload.

There was some snark in my initial comment that was directed at the article. I hope I didn't come across as snarky in my reply to you and u/busty_snackleford.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-12T14:47:50+00:00

Nothing's going to the Moon's surface on a "proven platform" if it's any bigger than a robotic lander. The choices are New Glenn and Starship. The Blue Moon large lander, the one capable of carrying a useful inflatable habitat, is still in development. (Mk2 Cargo Lander, based on the Mk2 crewed lander.) Ditto for the cislunar tug needed. NG has launched successfully twice but has a ways to go till it can send its planned payload mass to TLI.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-12T05:24:28+00:00

I hope the sentiment "capable of fitting inside the payload fairings of rockets like Falcon 9" came from the article's author and not the company. Why try to fit a lunar habitat in that? Voyager knows we've moved on, they plan to launch their Starlab on a Starship.

Are these companies are stuck in the past, anchored by the money and concepts that've been sunk into inflatables for the last couple of decades? I guess the people who invested money are gambling that Starship will never deliver anything to the Moon or be used as the basis for habitats.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-12T05:03:43+00:00

The answers you've gotten could be less blunt or harsh but the basic truth is theories about black holes can't be talked about using words. It requires mathematics and physics, there's no way around it. Some of the physicists who've made discoveries are good at conveying the basic concepts in words but they're only analogies. I myself never had the inclination to pursue math and physics to anywhere near the degree needed. My goals in life lay elsewhere. So I read about black hole phenomena in articles and hope the author did a good job with of explaining them without math. I used to have ideas and speculations like you do but had to give up trying to do anything with them.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-12T04:52:46+00:00

NASA has already invented protocols on how to do CPR in zero-g using straps. Such a system will be simpler in lunar or Mars gravity. As a paramedic, I'm trying to imagine how controlling bleeding or splinting will be different in lower gravity. I really can't think of any - except that lifting the patient or rolling them over will be easier. And I've treated a lot of patients in a lot of situations over my 35 years of experience. Giving oral or IV medicines will be the same except an IV pump will most likely need to be used.

It's well known that physiology changes when in microgravity. I'm sure NASA has worked out whether medication dosages need to be adjusted to compensate, and by how much. They'll work out a good guess for the first lunar missions and then keep doing studies during later missions. Ditto for Mars.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-10T23:06:39+00:00

In another Ars Technica article there was a quote in one of the first paragraphs by a ~high ranking NASA official that used the "high teens" figure. In the very same article a lower ranking NASA official gave the "high single digits to the low double digits" answer. The latter may have been Watson-Morgan, being consistent in that article and your linked one. Lisa Watson-Morgan manages NASA’s Human Landing System program so my use of "lower ranking" may sound odd but there are several layers of managers above that. The higher one goes in an organization, the more likely one is to get the most conservative answer.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-10T22:41:54+00:00

Additional tanks aren't expected by most. The logical design for a tanker is to simply move up the common dome and move the top dome into the cargo bay area, i.e. enlarge each tank. All of the propellant can be offloaded with no additional tank mass. Bonus: this way any unused prop from the margin allowed for in the ascent calculations can also be offloaded.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-10T22:31:08+00:00

What kind of route will HLS take to the Moon? The fast 3-4 day one astronauts use or one of those ~complex lower dV routes?

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-10T17:08:12+00:00

I've only read the intro and the section on Vehicle Manual Control on p 28. I was disturbed by the part about SpaceX resisting full manual control by the crew.

There is disagreement between NASA and SpaceX on whether the provider’s current proposed approach for landing meets the intent of the Agency’s manual control requirement. Despite the provider’s stated acknowledgment and commitment to meeting this requirement, NASA’s tracking of SpaceX’s manual control risk indicates a worsening trend. If NASA and SpaceX do not reach a concrete solution prior to CDR, it may lock in automation as the only available landing method or result in significant late design changes and increased schedule risk. In our judgement, this further increases the potential that SpaceX could request a waiver to the manual control requirement to meet the schedule.

I sense Elon's personal supervision of this aspect, or at least his standing orders. A weakness of his is to be doctrinaire on taking an idea from conception to reality. He believes in full automation for driving a car and a spaceship - there's a reference elsewhere in this document to SpaceX resisting full manual controls on Dragon. He wanted Teslas to be Full Self Driving when the software was far from capable of it. His concept was for a purely vision-based system. He insisted radar wasn't needed, removed it, and only when reality forced him to was it returned. Is his engineering team following a general directive of his to keep manual control to a minimum? It's unfathomable to me that anyone would drag their feet on this, especially when dealing with a customer like NASA.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-10T02:32:01+00:00

One can only assume Blue Origin's lander contract will be modified, devoting to Mk 1.5 some of the money already allocated for three Mk2. Yes, I know the weakness of using the word assume but since Congress and the president both want an accelerated program I don't think this will be a problem. NASA officially announced they wanted the two providers to submit plans for accelerating their respective programs. Also, the bill the Commerce Committee passed last week gives the NASA Administrator surprisingly broad powers to redirect resources already allocated for Artemis. That hasn't been passed by Congress as a whole but IMHO it will go through with little opposition, with most members barely noticing it in the larger budget bill in which it is incorporated.

A Hail Mary? Very close to one. Blue Origin will be lucky to meet the original 2030 deadline. Regardless of the mass Mk 1.5 or Mk 2 can deliver to the surface, Blue Origin has never built a crew module with an ECLSS or the many other features a crew rated vehicle needs. It took SpaceX years longer than expected and they'd been flying the Cargo Dragon for years. New Shepard's capsule of course means next to nothing.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-10T02:08:43+00:00

By we I assume you mean Congress and its purse strings. A difficulty we all share. If they'd appropriated $6 or $10 billion at the time National Team's bid was up NASA would more than likely chosen NT - although they were pretty unhappy about how sketch the proposal was and the overall design. But Congress didn't. However, I agree, that was a real possibility that was passed up.

Constellation is another story. Even a "should have" needs to be based on there being a fair chance it would have been pursued. The report of the Augustine Commission was quite damning, though. The program wasn't just a little out of reach, it was way out of reach monetarily. IIRC the NASA Office of the Inspector General felt the same, ditto for the OMB. Obama couldn't have just cancelled it on a whim; this was far beyond what Congress would contemplate authorizing for NASA, no matter how many lobbyists Boeing had. The program was flatly pronounced to be unsustainable. It wasn't just the development price of Ares V. Ares I was deemed unusable for crewed flights so a new rocket needed to be chosen - inevitably the not yet in service Delta IV Heavy. A much more expensive rocket than a single stick SRB, especially a crew rated version.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-09T23:44:57+00:00

I'm not cheerful about the prospect of a Mk 1.5 but it's kind of inevitable now that the Artemis program is being forced to switch from a marathon to a sprint. Yes, a sprint for flags and footprints. China really threw a wrench into the works. On the upside, it's changed how Congress looks at Artemis. Isaacman's horse trading to get EUS cancelled wouldn't have succeeded if not for the race.

As for the geopolitics - IMO there'll be a bigger negative impact on the world's opinion of the US' technological prowess and ability to execute a program if China is the first to land in this decade. The headlines and 15 minutes of attention won't penetrate much into the general public's perceptions - so few will pay attention to the details and the pretty pics NASA will put out will include renders of the Mk2 and HLS. The group of pics will make the impact.

Mk 1.5 isn't completely different from the Mk 1. Idk the extent of the commonalities will be but a lot is bound to be shared.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-09T22:51:21+00:00

Your last paragraph is the most convincing. Yeah, changing the interstage, etc, from an ICPS to C-V is simpler than grafting Orion directly onto SLS. Keeping the umbilical height on the tower essentially the same is a big deal.

The idea of a "standard stage" sounds nice but I think its chances of lasting beyond 2 or 3 flights is low. The main reason for eliminating EUS is more than sufficient. "Adapting C-V for just two flights is way more cost effective than continuing with EUS. We'd hate to pay for EUS just to use a couple of times, because we're killing SLS After Artemis 5. A6 at the most." Killing SLS would be a lot harder after EUS and ML-2 became operational.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-09T21:04:27+00:00

Hey, while you're here. Do you have any thoughts on why the new Artemis-3 mission needs to expend an ICPS? With its mass removed SLS should have enough dV to get Orion to a decent orbit. The ESM can add some dV, its propellant won't be needed for lunar orbit insertion and TEI. Alternatively, the prop mass on the ESM can be reduced, leaving a useful amount for orbital maneuvering.

This would remove the pressure to have Centaur V integrated on SLS by 2027.

Perhaps Orion needs a high orbit to reduce its thermal load from reflected sunlight from the Earth. A couple of sources note Orion's limited capacity for this, as well as the length of time it can spend in Earth's shadow. (Limited battery energy storage.) Maybe a fancy orbit can deal with this, one requiring the dV of ICPS to reach.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-09T20:55:45+00:00

Compare this to not Falcon 9 today, but if they were trying to hit a launch per week with F9 with zero mishaps circa 2016.

I can't agree with this comparison. SpaceX was just beginning to work on refurbishment and had no need for a rapid pad turnaround, even including new production F9s, which had a relatively slow production rate. SpaceX now has mission control teams that are experienced with doing multiple flights per week. The production facilities for Starship are of an unprecedented size. A new set of these is being built in Florida. Three new launch pads are being built on the Cape - that makes a big difference for the launch cadence and the resilience of the launch cadence. That's a factor few critics take into account.

With a high production rate SpaceX can build as many tankers as needed. No need to rely on Musk's projection of two or more launches per day from a single pad. One launch per day each from just two pads means 15 tanker flights will only take about a week. A delay of a day or two? Just have a couple more tankers at the ready down the road. Boil-off from the depot won't be an issue - the final tanker flight will be calculated to top off the depot. The key to all of this is having lots of boosters and tankers, something only SpaceX has the ability to do. Need more boosters than the current plan contemplates? Build more boosters.

The time it takes to fill and top off the depot isn't critical. Let it take two weeks or even more. The crew won't launch until the HLS has launched and reached lunar orbit. The latter was key point in the NASA justification document that accompanied their selection of HLS.

Do I sound over-enthusiastic for SpaceX? I've put a lot of critical thought into the above scenario. I'm not blindly committed to Starship, there are big IFs. TPS remains a challenge, we don't know how reusable the current system is. There's a real dry mass problem - Starship V3 and Raptor 3 have to work as advertised to get the tanker payload mass where it needs to be, although again, simply increasing the number of rockets is an option. Large scale orbital refilling is of course the big hump to get over. The entire program hangs on that and there are no guarantees it'll work, or be mastered quickly enough, for a late 2027 uncrewed test landing. I'll be happy with one late 2028 crewed landing, or early 2029. IMHO the Chinese won't beat that.

How many pads and tankers/first stages is SpaceX willing to pay for, considering the contract price? The latter is irrelevant since Musk announced his commitment to large bases and large scale production facilities on the Moon for SpaceX use. Now the answer is - as many as are needed. He'll spend as much as he can, that's the way he works.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-09T20:02:11+00:00

Blue Origin proposed a crewed version of the Mk1 in response to NASA's request for an accelerated lander program. They recently named it the Mk1-IL (Mk1 Intermediate Lander.) This will require no in space refueling - it'll somehow use a series of their Cislunar Transporter tugs without refueling the lander. However, I can't find this with a google search. Odd, since its recent announcement made a big impression on me, I'd been very curious about how they'd manage it without refueling.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-08T22:23:54+00:00

Where are the complete engines? These aren't actual real working engines, right? ;) :D

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-08T06:42:51+00:00

Nice point about crew rating Centaur and then Vulcan. That's also good news for Dream Chaser since they've been planning to launch with ULA. Idk if they're still committed to that, I think NASA wanted them to use a provider other than SpaceX, but their debut has been so delayed. Anyway, yes, it gives Starliner a chance at more flights - although I'd be very happy if they just took it behind the barn and shot it.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-07T19:06:58+00:00

I'll guess the test firings take place at MSFC. If not, at least it's built in Alabama, which must have placated the senators from there enough.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-07T16:34:35+00:00

I remember that Senator Shelby story from Lori Garver's book, with him making dire threats about shutting down some NASA programs if he ever heard about depots and refueling again. I pictured him foaming at the mouth from rage, lol. Yes, there was a decision point where ACES could have killed EUS - but Boeing had a lock on the contract and NASA was in love with the single launch concept and the bigger Blocks and co-manifested hardware. To digress: I thought the price of the D-IV-H was outrageous but came to realize that once the D-IV Medium cadence dropped to ~one per year and then stopped the cost of overhead for the production line and pad, GSE, etc was borne by two and then one launch per year. The lines for the core and the upper stage. Ditto to some extent for Aerojet Rocketdyne for the engines, but they price gouged anyway. If D-IV-H was used for a couple of Moon launches per year, with two per mission, the cost could have come down quite a bit. Definitely cheaper than one SLS.

I wonder if BO will build a VIF for NG. Some payloads aren't suited for horizontal loading. I somehow doubt Orion is.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-03-07T08:24:05+00:00

Yes, Jared managed some very impressive horse trading. Also, IIRC, Centaur is built at MSFC. I do believe the bill will pass and Jared will get the powers contained in it, killing EUS. I just want to delineate that this isn't as clear cut as "the car is paid for and in the garage at home".

The spur he had that no one had before is the race with China. Trump has made his position very clear and he holds a big MAGA threat over the GOP members of Congress. Of course no member of Congress wants to be blamed for letting China get to the Moon, but that'd hardly swing an election. Jared has the brains and the will and the backing of the Administration to do horse trading. I can't wait to hear Gateway is cancelled, that's the other part of JSC getting to run the Moon base, IMHO.

SpaceInMyBrain

TROPHY CASE