NASA smacks an Orion into the water with a successful Ascent Abort-2 Test NASA completed the Ascent Abort-2 test of its Orion spacecraft today, deliberately crashing a test version of the capsule into the ocean after successfully demonstrating the Launch Abort System (LAS) would do its thing. The launch, at 0700 EDT (1100 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 46 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in …
See Boilerplate (spaceflight). If you are testing whether you can make that brick 'fly', do you really care that much about the brick?
I'm somewhat surprised too, as they will need to do the whole thing again with parachutes at some point (no point in an abort unless it can land safely afterwards) so surely it's cheaper to do both tests on a boilerplate at the same time?
I'm assuming they expected success as you don't do these kinds of tests unless you're reasonably confident it works.
Unless they have no idea where to put the parachutes yet?
Apparently not:
“It’s a three-minute flight test, but it’s really the only full-scale system test that we have before we put crew on the vehicle, so it’s definitely critical for making sure that we can get the crew safely away in an emergency,” said Jenny Devolites, the Orion AA-2 test director from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
How about we just launch the entire federal govt into space, then follow up with every other countries political leaders and then work down to county councils etc.....world would be a better place without someone constantly dreaming up some hairbrained scheme to meld the world into their image....
SLS is doing its job fine. Its purpose is to move federal tax revenues to the preferred contractors in the right states. It will continue to drag on in its current form until it is required to fund different states. At that point it will get a new name, a different goal that requires a complete redesign and a bigger budget. Spacex and Blue Origin will have manned bases on Mars and the Moon before SLS can be cancelled.
It doesn't look "right" because it's more or less just the top of the final launch stack, equivalent to the 2nd stage, a dummy crew module, and the Launch Abort System. (LAS - the little tower on the top, which is what they were primarily testing today)
This is what the completed launch vehicle will look like during the first stage of the launch:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Orange_tank_SLS_launch_through_clouds_-_Post_CDR.jpg
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