NASA Is Really Desperate To Show SLS Improvement
The "new tool" is a platform for people to stand on. You have to wonder why @BoeingSpace and the @NASA_SLS team took years to think up something as simple as this. #moon2024 https://t.co/OBp6laJh9z
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) April 29, 2019
And it only cost $150 million.
/sarc
Of course they are. Have you heard what’s happening in a sleepy, little backwater town called Boca Chica, Texas?
Ignore it, that is not reality, its just science fiction… No one outside a Robert Heinlein novel would build a rocket that way. 🙂
“The tool, seen here in the blue frame around the bottom of the engine section, allows more people to work on engine section tasks at the same time”
Ah, so that’s how they are going to land on the Moon by 2024. I was wondering how they were going to do it.
Keith, you nailed that one. It is amazing that this platform was not foreseen in the early stages and pre-visualizations of the SLS workflow, assembly and associated human factors. Bet you a company like Newport News/Huntington Ingalls or Electric Boat wouldn’t have missed something so obviously helpful for large-scale structural assembly/integration.
If they weren’t building the ‘full power’ version with the advanced boosters and big upper stage from Day 1: then this continuing money pit makes even less sense 🙁
We might never actually get to see the full power version under the current timeline.
They’re not even building the new Exploration Upper Stage! The first few flights (which will take several years) are all using a modified Delta IV upper stage (if memory serves).
All of this time, effort, and money has been for a 5 segment SRB (part of the development for that was paid for by Ares I) and a new core stage with four (used) SSMEs on the tail end!
In breaking news, Boeing has also invested in a second screwdriver. No screws, though.
when you have no real successes to acclaim, you celebrate whatever you’ve got.
I’d expect Elon would’ve brought some packing crates (or some such) in to do the same (prior to some permanent solution … ie why wait around ?). And I’d expect Elon would’ve have said (to someone who tried this in SX) “you’re fired”.
It’s just so frustrating. I get this is a very capable rocket. But there are a finite number of screws, IC sockets, wire, pipe- every piece, all known. Accounting for the stunning times involved here, how may times does each item need to be handled?
Of course there is design time, decision-making. All measurable, all finite. Still. How many times is a screw put in place?
A naive question? Of course it is. It’s also the kind of question you’d get from someone expecting some type of cogent response.
More often than you’d like to know. I hope it only applies to the more complex parts, but some screws and bolts could be tightened, removed, retightened, etc. half a dozen or more times. It isn’t uncommon for a test to involve fully assembling an item, testing it, then disassembling it to inspect everything and make sure nothing broke. (Which, by the way, eliminates the test’s ability to verify everything was assembled correctly.) Sometimes parts will be replaced after a test (e.g. a moving part which has to move back and forth 100 times, is tested to 200 cycles, and then replaced with a supposedly identical one, which is then only cycled once.) That’s one way shooting for 99.9% instead of 99.0% reliability really drives up cost and draws out the schedule.
Until Trump lit a fire under their collective ass, I’m sure it never occurred to NASA that doing a task more quickly is better than doing the same task less quickly.
The NASA image caption is idiotic. I imagine there are quite a few platforms to support SLS assembly that have existed for quite some time. The picture is of one of their Self-Propelled Modular Transporters (SPMT) which can carry a section being worked to different areas of the facility. Noting that probably would have been more to the point… although it still shouldn’t have been trumpeted as “one of the biggest stories of the month”. Theres a story on NSF that describes the current status of SLS assembly in some detail.
Did a NASA employee take this picture. I guess Marshall doesn’t have the same policy as KSC. LOL
This reminds me of something from an old (1996) article in The Onion. “New Solar System Discovered Four Feet From Earth.” It was a nice parody on Marcy and Butler’s excuse for not discovering the first extrasolar planet (they weren’t looking for few day orbital periods in the data, and in the Onion story, “”Nobody ever thought to look within the one-to-five-foot range before” a NASA spokesperson said.”)
Anyway, getting back to the idea of scaffolding being a new tool, the Onion story went on to mention:
“efforts are underway to analyze the new planetary system using telescopic spectrographic analysis, as well as shovels”
and
“Future research projects include a NASA mission to lean a ladder against the planet and attempt a manned climb to its surface, a plan tentatively scheduled for November 1997, with a projected cost of approximately 60 bucks. Explaining the high cost of the mission, NASA director Frank Forman said, “We’d like to get a really high-quality ladder, just to be safe.””