🚀 NASA scrubs Artemis I launch today. Economics will scrub the rocket tomorrow.
Let's wish NASA well before we launch into a New Space Age driven by the private sector
A stressful and ultimately disappointing morning inside the Orion spacecraft for Helga, Zohar, and Commander Moonikin Campos. Minor (maybe) rocket engine issues and approaching bad weather meant NASA ran out of time for this morning’s scheduled Artemis I launch, which would carry those three test mannequins on a journey around the Moon and back. (Artemis II would carry four astronauts around the moon and back to Earth, with Artemis III landing astronauts via a SpaceX lander near the Moon’s south pole.)
Of course, today’s scrub is hardly disappointing for some pro-space Artemis critics who prefer to scrub the project for reasons I’ll highlight in a moment. As for me: “Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”
That pretty much sums up my attitude toward NASA’s Space Launch System. The SLS is the mega-rocket, or “heavy launch vehicle,” that the space agency is currently using to return Americans to the Moon. Sitting atop the SLS is Orion, “the exploration vehicle that will carry the crew to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during the space travel, and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities,” as NASA describes its capabilities. The whole thing stands 322 feet, and during ascent SLS will produce 15 percent more thrust than the Saturn V rocket of the Apollo era.
Pretty cool. Also, space enthusiasts kind of hate it. I mean, this isn’t a good sign: If you search online for “SLS” the first thing — after Google news and Twitter mentions — isn’t NASA’s “Space Launch System” site but “Specialized Loan Servicing,” a New York-based mortgage servicing company. I think this Twitter exchange between one of my wonderful followers and myself is illustrative:
Well, there was no pinwheeling today, but I get the sentiment. With all due respect to the engineers of Boeing/United Launch Alliance and NASA, the SLS is already an obsolete rocket whose roots are in the since-canceled Constellation program. It existed initially to keep funding and jobs flowing to certain districts and states. It actually precedes the Artemis program by six years. Here’s a good summary of that story from Lori Garver — via my podcast chat — previously deputy administrator of NASA during the Obama administration and author of the recently published Escaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age.
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