If at first you don't succeed: Engineers power up the computers of NASA's monster SLS core stage once again

NASA has fired up the avionics of the Artemis I core stage ahead of tomorrow's planned redo of the prematurely terminated hotfire test. The milestone came a fortnight after engineers completed the assembly of the twin solid rocket boosters atop the mobile launcher currently sat inside Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly …

[Chris G]

What could possibly go wrong?

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[eldel]

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

From whose perspective?

Boeing? Hardly - they're (re)using those propellant barges to move their massive cost plus payments so they don't care. It's also the closest to booster reuse they'll ever get.

NASA? Well they care - but they are at the mercy of congress critters who are using public money to fund re-election campaigns in the districts that make the bits.

SpaceX? The company doesn't really GaS although they're largely staffed with space geeks who want all rockets to succeed. They've got boosters almost as powerful that you can order more or less off the shelf (and re-use them) which would easily cope with the early Artemis loads (note - I think they would have issues with the capsule width though) and by the time Boeing et-al get Artemis II payloads ready I strongly suspect the Starship booster will be firing.

Blue Origin? Boeing/ULA MK2 - just funded by Bezos rather than the taxpayer. They'll probably have something in orbit around Earth by the time NASA are around the Moon and SpaceX around Mars.

Anyone living within 20 miles of the test? I suspect that they have ear plugs and strong windows.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

"by the time Boeing et-al get Artemis II payloads ready I strongly suspect the Starship booster will be firing."

According the ticker at this webcam, the first starship booster, BN1 is currently "stacking" and the second, BN2 is under construction.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

Not much it seems. Test fire just finished, ran for 600 seconds.

[Paul Hovnanian]

Tech Support

Try turning it off and on again.

[Anonymous Coward]

2H10?

"We are holding at 30 seconds while Windows downloads and installs the latest update."

Fair warning, I'm one of those "space geeks who want all rockets to succeed" so I wish them luck. They'll need it.

[Tdkuk]

Re: 2H10?

We've noticed you often launch at this time of day so decided to install updates a few hours after boot time This can be adjusted in Settings.

Look out! its Clippy!!!!!!

[Timbo]

Is winter a good time to launch?

The launch of the SLS *might* happen this year, but as time moves on, if NASA do want to launch in 2021, with all the delays, it could be that they might have to launch in the winter...and who knows how the seals on the SRB's will cope with that?

We all know what happened with Challenger, sadly...so my bet is on a Spring 2022 "test" launch and maybe followed up quite quickly with the second launch, which may be crewed?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Is winter a good time to launch?

>and who knows how the seals on the SRB's will cope with that?

> We all know what happened with Challenger,

Nasa have investigated that incident at length and are confident that they have resolved the problem by changing the Powerpoint