Artemis I Rollout Pushed Back to March
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. (NASA PR) — NASA has updated the schedule to move the combined Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft out of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to Launch Pad 39B at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for testing to no earlier than March 2022.
NASA has added additional time to complete closeout activities inside the VAB prior to rolling the integrated rocket and spacecraft out for the first time. While the teams are not working any major issues, engineers continue work associated with final closeout tasks and flight termination system testing ahead of the wet dress rehearsal.
Teams are taking operations a step at a time to ensure the integrated system is ready to safely launch the Artemis I mission. NASA is reviewing launch opportunities in April and May.
16 responses to “Artemis I Rollout Pushed Back to March”
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its not like there is a rush. there is really no lunar program so the time dont matter
the next year is going to be interesting in terms of seeing how the lunar program such as it is evolves. at some point people are going to realize it is going to be extroadinarily expensive
Say SLS/Orion is 3 billion (I bet its four but)…if its a dime I bet Musk’s lander is 1-2 billion and that doesnt include launch cost…not sure how many tanker flights its going to need, but assume building the tankers is paid for by “someone else” then the launch cost are likely 100 million a piece if they are a dime. what? 14? thats 1.4 billion so figure 2.4 billion a flight for the lander..
call it 4-5 billion a pop?
NASA pork at its finest.
Price will depend on the launch rate, so if they launch once per year, and adding inflation, it will be more like $4 billion to $5 billion an SLS flight since they will have to pay the annual salaries of the standing army to build, test and fly the SLS and Orion, plus the new starting army to build the engines when they run out of the old SME left over from the STS. So if the HLS is around a $2 billion, that is $7 billion a mission
If they replace the SLS/Orion with the FH/Dragon and build a smaller lander 2 person LEM sized lander that could be launched on a second FH they could reduce it around $1 billion a mission.
well …SLS production really cannot be increased.
as for the option. its really to small. its simply Apollo redux.
That is basically what the SLS/Orion already are.
They can replace the whole thing by simply flying the crew to low Earth orbit in a commercial crew vehicle, docking with Starship HLS and then doing lunar direct.
I dont think it would have the fuel to return after landing
It wouldn’t. But, as the HLS landers won’t be coming back to Earth or vicinity anyway, that isn’t important.
Commercial Crew vehicles would introduce a pointless and expensive bottleneck for lunar crew landing missions. Crews will soon go direct from Earth to lunar orbit in Dear Moon-class Starships and return the same way. HLS landers will make one Earth-to-Moon transit and, thereafter, just shuttle from lunar orbit to the surface and back again.
The last word was 4 tankers for Starship HLS, those filling a Depot ship which then fills the HLS. Cost per lunch with reusability will be pretty much props & payload.
There will be an official Starship update on February 10th at 2100 eastern
I wonder if Elon Musk will say anything about all the land they are clearing next to the building where the F9R boosters are processed. It looks like the ares is big enough to build a new Starship factory on.
LS. Cost per lunch with reusability will be pretty much props & payload.
there is no data to support that none
That’s okay. Even after there is such data, you won’t acknowledge it anyway.
The only way HLS Starship will cost $1 – 2 billion apiece is to split the $2.9 billion SpaceX is getting to develop it down the middle for the two exemplars called for in the contract – one to land unmanned as a demo and the other to land crew as part of Artemis 3. But then any
succeeding HLSes will cost only the variable cost of construction. That, in turn, will depend on how many units are built. And, as the HLS Starship will be fully reusable, the cost of individual landing missions will depend upon how many uses one can get out of an HLS. That’s likely to be a pretty large number.
Tankers won’t cost much as they will be mostly engines and tanks. And they will also be reusable. So, again, the cost of a mission will be a lot less than the cost of all the hardware used to accomplish it.
Getting large quantities of people and stuff to the Moon will be quite cheap a few short years hence.
So does this mean they are going to lean on Musk to delay his orbital test of Starship so they can still launch first?
The stainless steel might rust down first if they wait that long.
Heh.