Surprise Surprise. Another SLS Launch Delay
NASA’s big rocket misses another deadline, now won’t fly until 2022, Ars Technica
“Publicly, NASA is still holding on to the possibility of a 2021 launch date for the debut flight of its Space Launch System rocket. This week, an agency spokesperson told Ars that “NASA is working toward a launch for the Artemis I mission by the end of this year.” However, a source said the best-case scenario for launching the Artemis 1 mission is spring of next year, with summer being the more realistic target for a test flight of the heavy lift rocket and Orion spacecraft. The space agency is already running about two months behind internal targets for testing and integrating the rocket at Kennedy Space Center, and the critical pre-flight tests remain ahead.”
– SLS Just Lost One Of Its Big Selling Points, earlier post
– Surprise: SLS Will Cost 30% More Than The Last Big Cost Increase, earlier post
– Congress Uses Legal Snark To Ask NASA About SLS And Europa, earlier post
– Babin Requests Information on Europa Clipper Mission and SLS Use, earlier post
– NASA OIG Follow-up to May 2019 Audit of Europa Mission: Congressional Launch Vehicle Mandate, earlier post
– Europa Clipper Mission Confirmed, earlier post
– GAO Report On NASA: Things Cost More And Take Longer, earlier post
– Moon 2024 Goal Delays SLS Availability For Europa Clipper, earlier post
Now the reason for the FAA delay of approving Starship and its tower becomes known! It is to delay the Starship launch until after SLS launches.
Given the history of the SLS and in the absence of any explanation by the FAA, I suggest that is a legitimate possibility.
I doubt that even FAA paperwork is a match for cost-plus contracting. The odds SLS/Orion launching before StarShip is now roughly equal to that of me walking away from a freshly-dropped M&M on the sidewalk.
All that extra money that Congress took from little baby Commercial Crew to feed that SLS dodo-bird and now SLS not only wasn’t ready before THAT generation of spacecraft, but now it’s fallen behind the next one…the one that is an actual threat to it’s existence.
There is no FAA delay, SpaceX needs a new NEPA report for its launch site
The applicant (spaceX)must provide the FAA enough information for the FAA to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and other applicable environmental laws, regulations, and Executive Orders (14 CFR § 450.47). SpaceX keeps building new stuff at the site, This is the delay, Federal Law. SpaceX/FAA must comply with NEPA laws. The current reports are years old and covered starship hops. The FAA is a rule making body. The FAA cannot approve the NEPA report when the tower is still being built.
This isn’t the first Starship EA; the KSC LC-39A Starship draft EA stated,
Pad 39A is about twelve miles away from residential areas. Starship will be launching only about five miles away from waterfront houses in Port Isabel. Or for another perspective, just over six miles from the local Walmart. It will be interesting to find out what the noise impact will be on those areas when the full Starship stack with 29 Raptor engines launches. I’m sure they have done some calculations with predictions, but still it will be interesting to find out what residents will actually experience. I’m also wondering how loud of a sonic boom residents will experience when the booster comes in.
Hopefully it won’t be too bad and there won’t be too many complaints, but if there is SpaceX will just have to move faster on getting offshore launches going.
If you think that the same rules apply to Space X as to Legacy Space then you just have not been paying attention.
The tower isn’t the issue. It’s simply that the current environmental impact statement (predating Starship) only covers Falcon 9 and Heavy orbital launches and suborbital test flights of an unspecified nature. For Starship flights, SpaceX needs to get an environmental assessment through the FAA, showing that the environmental impact is still within the parameters of the original EIS. That requires a 30-day period for public comment, and then more paperwork. The paperwork might take a while. As I understand it Virgin Orbit just got a similar assessment allowing them to operate out of Guam, but that took nine months after the end of the public comment period.
FAA warns SpaceX that massive Starship launch tower in Texas is unapproved
PUBLISHED WED, JUL 14 20215:26 PM EDTUPDATED THU, JUL 15 20214:47 PM EDT
Michael Sheetz
@THESHEETZTWEETZ
The Federal Aviation Administration has warned Elon Musk’s SpaceX that work on a massive launch tower will be included in the agency’s ongoing environmental review of the Starship facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
“The company is building the tower at its own risk,” an FAA spokesperson told CNBC on Wednesday, noting that the environmental review could recommend taking down the launch tower.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/0…
EIS FAQ SpaceX starship
https://www.faa.gov/space/s…
here is the FAA final rule;
https://www.faa.gov/documen…
SUBJ: Environmental Impacts: Policies and Procedures
You originally wrote, “The FAA cannot approve the NEPA report when the tower is still being built.” That is incorrect. Even the FAA statement you quote contradicts this. The environmental review is in progress. The fact that they said the report, when issued, might recommend taking the tower down, pretty much proves that the report isn’t on hold until the tower is built. The FAA is fine with SpaceX building the tower. They just warned SpaceX that doing so was proceeding at their own risk.
Elon Musk is not Richard Branson.
Musk is now, finally, grown-up enough not to actually fly Starship without FAA approval…probably. He will build the launch tower, build several Starships and boosters, put one on the pad and test it, repeatedly, schedule a launch date and time, and then hound the FAA every minute, checking his watch and his email while standing next to the pad Tweeting insults and paying lobbiests and then the ink will not have time to dry on the launch license before he starts trying to fly.
“The FAA cannot approve the NEPA report when the tower is still being built.”
Not true .. they said SpaceX started building it before their report was completed and was building it at their own risk. The report was not about the launch tower .. it was about noise levels and potential damages for an explosion or the rocket blowing up during flight.
Keith, I love the photo of the empty crawler to illustrate that SLS is still a paper rocket.
Why do you say SLS is a paper rocket?
Hardware exists that’s been tested and is currently being stacked. That’s far from being a paper rocket. A white elephant and obsolete? Yes. But a paper rocket? No.
Now New Glenn is a paper rocket.
Only by a bait and switch maneuver. The Block 1 configuration that just throws a modified Delta IV second stage on top of the core is a configuration that was supposed to be used for exactly one demo launch, a one-time stunt to get “the SLS” flying a few years earlier. What was promised for actual operational flights is in fact still a paper rocket.
If it never flies, then it was always a paper rocket. What is sitting in the VAB right now is a test article, not an operational rocket, and might move from there straight into a museum. That isn’t likely (remember Ares 1?) but it is possible at this point if Starship flies more than once before SLS flies.
When we are talking about rockets, we are not talking only about the part that flies. There is a plan, on paper, to ignite a repeating industrial pattern…an Operations phase. The SLS program does not exist as anything substantive until it begins launch operations and that comes after a successful test flight. It has now dallied for so long that the possibility of it never flying could now be on the table, if the added operational cost of fueling and flying one launch becomes significantly higher than just buying a Starship launch. I predict that if Starship becomes operational before the SLS test flight, SLS might never fly.
SLS must fly soon to assure it’s survival. It has taken SpaceX a fist full of MONTHS to bring Starship to the edge of launch. Their pattern suggests that they will put it into operation immediately after one successful orbital flight, and they don’t have to wait for a customer if the second launch is used for Starlink.
Its certainly not a paper rocket when you go to the VAB
Well as far as I’m concerned they all are until they actually get off the launch pad.
Cheers
Neil
It is still not an operational flight program, it is just a test prototype. If it never becomes an operational program, then it will always be a test prototype. NASA warehouses many unflown test prototypes.
Or it’ll be a one-off like Ares I, drown in the ocean, and then exist only on paper from that time forth.
It needs to fly while it still has a mission and right now that looks increasingly unlikely.
SLS – using old parts, and a very experienced company.
Massively slower and massively more expensive.
SpaceX – using new parts, new engines, new ship, and massively less money. Massively faster.
obvisley clueless about SLS, the only old parts on SLS is 16 RS25 engines which have been upgraded and instead of all the American tax payers money wasted left siting in Museum are now going to get used and the RS25 is now being brought back into production . There is nothing else old in SLS and Starship is years behind SLS
Years? Can you justify that statement given that prototypes of Starship have already flown several times and given that the full stack, Starship and Starship Booster, is going to fly in the very near term, very likely before SLS?
Note that just because it’s taken SLS years to get to where it is now–unproven in flight and well behind schedule–doesn’t mean that Starship is “years” behind SLS.
“Starship is years behind SLS”
You have to be extremely dumb or extremely ignorant to believe this. Or perhaps you think we are dumb or ignorant enough to buy this nonsense.
Yes, we spent tens of $millions to turn reusable engines into disposable engines that will fall into the ocean after one flight. Brilliant.
Also the SRBs are derivatives of the shuttle’s.
Also the tank is an evolution of the shuttle’s.
Probably a lot of other minor parts, too.
The RS-25’s are actually being relocated to a new underwater museum.
Remember one of the greatest failures was the stupidity of the NASA managers who shut Shuttle down, shut down the supply lines, closed shops and factories, laid off a generation of workers and then started trying to reopen the suppliers, restart assembly lines, restaff….The shame was that so many of the NASA managers were left in place and the AA moved many to high level contractor positions. Since they’d all come out of ops together, it wasnt their fault they had never designed, developed or manufactured anything and hadn’t a clue of what it required.
stupidity of the Obama Administration of shutting down the follow on program to the Shuttle , President Bush Shut down the shuttle not NASA
Obama kept Orion, funded SLS plus did their best to fund two follow ons to crew transport and cargo transport to ISS.
Congress refused to fund the CONstellation program.
“..Starship is years behind SLS”…
My guess, is you live in an alternate reality, one where commercial space never happened, and NASA still does everything. Times have moved on from Apollo and the Shuttle – SLS hasn’t moved on.. its a dinosaur stuck in the past.
NASA has been working with commercial company’s since 1957
A few things – SLS started development in 2011. SpaceX Started developing Raptor for Starship in 2009. SLS main tank and SRBs are carbon copies of those used on Shuttle, with modifications. That hardly makes them new tech. On RS25, I’m curious to know what there is about taking a refurbishable multi-use engine and turning it from a museum piece into a coral reef constitutes an upgrade. SpaceX has flown multiple prototypes of its spacecraft. NASA fears to run even one additional ground test on its lone test article because they calculate that the rocket may fail during launch if they do. How does any of this add up to Starship being “years behind SLS”? I’m not seeing the math.
Just out of morbid curiosity, why did you write that SLS uses 16 RS-25 engines? A SLS launch vehicle uses four, not sixteen. And the official NASA plan calls for more than four SLS flights. Do you mean 16 refurbished ones for four flights? If so, it would help if you could express yourself more clearly.
reuable engines upgraded into disposable engines… now they will be drowned after they fly them once.. at least you could view them in a museum rather than rusting away at the bottom of the ocean. talk about wasting taxpayers money.
You’re just messing with us, right..?!
You would think the embarassmemt of the NASA leadership would be enough for them to all resign by now.
I remember back to the Norm Augustine hearings of 2009 when the Orion Program and Deputy Program Managers proclaimed they would fly in 2011. Sally Ride responded 2017 was a better bet. They have now missed even that lethargic deadline by half a decade. And we are not there yet. Who were those ‘managers’? They filled the ranks with Flight Directors and Astronauts. I think we have long since forgotten them, as well we should have since they never proved themselves to be tough or competent. Once Houston was named “The Manned Spacecraft Center”. I think we’ve forgotten that too.
This what happens when you get a government which surrendered American leadership in Space to the Peoples Republic of China by cancelling the Constellation program and trying to delay SLS by five years and cancel Orion , its no surprise that SLS is late , not NASA’s fault or Boeing’s fault.
It did not get cancelled. Obama just got lost. Remember no need to go to the Moon, been there, done that. We were going to an asteroid; well Orion really could not go to an asteroid so we would bring the asteroid to Orion; well maybe we’d take a rock off an asteroid and bring it to Orion……so they kept working on it all thru the period; Orion really could not carry out the lunar mission as intended so maybe it did not make much of a difference.
Obama didn’t cancel Constellation, Congress did.
Stop trying to re-write history.
How is China ahead of the U.S. in space flight and other space activities?
Come on. Enough with the bs.
And several members of Congress who vehemently support SLS have publicly stated that SLS is a jobs program. ‘ You keep doing what you’re doing and we’ll keep sending you money’ quote, unquote.
On this front alone SLS has been an outstanding success and missing deadlines is simply the right strategy to apply.
Personally I don’t care if SLS flies or not. SpaceX is now carrying the hopes of those people who want to see the human race expand to the stars and NASA or at least some of NASA is supportive. The old industrial/military complex can never do it and I include BO in that group.
Cheers
Neil
The Ares V, according to Griffin would not fly until 2028 under pay as you go .. and the lander would not have been ready before 2033 .. constellation was a pork wagon and nothing more.
I honestly never thought it would be a race to first flight to LEO for the SLS and Starship/Falcon Super-heavy.
Me neither! Or that the biggest factor in slowing Space X down instead of being technological for their many radically new designs would be regulatory.
Strictly speaking, there’s no such thing as a Starship/Falcon Super-heavy. It’s just Starship or Starship/Superheavy. I know SpaceX isn’t always consistent when it comes to names, but they’ve never used that particular one. And Starship has essentially nothing in common with the Falcon launch vehicles.
Meanwhile Falcon Heavy is tragically underutilized, despite being operational for three and a half years.
SLS delenda est
SpaceX really did that to themselves. The initial version of the Falcon 9 could only get a bit over 10 tonnes into low Earth orbit, and there is a sizable market for payloads in the 10-20 tonne range (to LEO, actually comparable numbers to geostationary transfer orbit.) They started work on Falcon Heavy to cover that market. But, before it could fly, they’d ended up making major changes and improvements to Falcon 9, to the point of doubling its payload capability. Which means there isn’t much of a market for Falcon Heavy. The same improvements helped it, and it can now get 60 tonnes to low Earth orbit. But no one builds 60 tonne spacecraft.
But no one builds 60 tonne spacecraft.
33 tonne ICPS + 25 tonne MPCV = 58 tonnes. Gee, funny how that math adds up!
The Falcon Heavy is tragically underutilized.
SLS delenda est
Not increasing the faring when they increased the lift capacity was also a problem
if Spring ’22 is the best case scenario, and summer ’22 is more realistic, does that imply that Fall ’22 is even more likely ?
Spring ’22 is about 6 months away. If you expect me to trust that, then I expect you have it completely planned, and if Spring ’22 has no contingency, then I’d have no confidence in it.
When we are still a year away from that ‘realistic’ time then you might just count on another couple years; it might just never be launched.
At a minimum, I expect to see a single launch, a la Ares I-X. Whether anything more than that ever goes up seems very much an open question.
If the SLS don’t launch by Spring 2022. The segmented solid strapped-on motors might need to be de-stacked and re-stacked with new solid motors segments. There is a time limit of 12 months that the solid motors can be stacked.
So if Artemis-1 fails to launch in spring 2022, it will be at least fall 2022 that they can make a follow-on launch attempt. IMO.
Flight rules can be waived. If Artemis I doesn’t fly before they hit that 12 month limit on the SRBs, someone will write up a document explaining why 12 months was a very conservative limit and 15 months (or whatever) is just fine. Then someone else signs it, and Artemis I can launch in the summer.
Again, that is not correct. It doesn’t even make sense. SpaceX has provided the relevant information and the FAA is working on it. That’s not the FAA dragging their feet, but it’s also completely irrelevant to what SpaceX is building (e.g. the launch tower.) SpaceX provided on what the plan to build and how they plan to use it. That’s what the FAA is working on. There is no requirement for the infrastructure to be completed before the FAA completes their analysis. Quite the opposite. The FAA comment you mentioned implies they think it would be better (or at least potentially less expensive for SpaceX) if the construction hadn’t even started before the FAA report was released.
I find it hard to believe some senate staffer has not bent the ear of a FAA staffer about how advantageous it would be for the FAA budget if SpaceX didn’t start the tower yet…
A key data point missing is a static fire of Super Heavy to get an estimate of the acoustics. That may come within the next few weeks as FAA issues a ~30 day TFR for the site up to 10,000 feet.
From: August 31, 2021
To: September 30, 2021
https://twitter.com/spacex3…
You have that precisely backwards. The tower isn’t approved because they don’t yet have an updated EA or EIS. They are waiting on the FAA to move forward so they can do whatever needs to be done to get those. That’s why their going ahead with construction is “at their own risk”. It’s something they’re doing because they are confident in a favorable outcome on the environmental regulatory side, not because it’s necessary to get that result.
Well, if Congress hadn’t foisted this rocket on NASA…