Well, OK, not really. More like build a lot, test a little.
NASA apparently isn’t going to know how serious the vibration problem on the Ares 1 is until they do a flight test.
Words fail.
[Via Shubber Ali, who does have some words]
[Update late afternoon]
No one who know him will be shocked to read that Mark Whittington thinks that this is a great idea.
But of course! How could it not be? NASA is doing it.
NASA apparently isn’t going to know how serious the vibration problem on the Ares 1 is until they do a flight test.
More significantly: NASA apparently isn’t going to know how serious the vibration problem on the Ares 1 is until after the Presidential elections have passed. By March 2009, NASA will likely have a new NASA Administrator so Griffin won’t have to deal with the consequences.
This is Mike Griffin’s way of not dealing with this fatal problem. He already knows the results of the Tiger team and it is not good.
Not without precedent, though. Apollo 6 suffered a partial failure because of POGO problems.
More interestingly, the flight test will be of a 4-stage rocket that boosts a dummy 5th stage on top[1]. Now, I’m not a rocket scientist, but isn’t that somewhat problematic if you want the test to yield meaningful, usable results?
[1] Space News, v19n8, Feb 25, 2008, p6.
Problem with Apollo 6 idea is that they already had a successful Apollo 4 under their belts. They knew it all worked but needed some tweaks. Also the prior AS-201, 202, etc to test the third stage even more.
No one who knows him will be shocked to read that Mark Whittington thinks that this is a great idea.
I notice Mark is now raising money for McCain. Although according to his own counter, he hasn’t actually raised any money — which means Mark hasn’t even donated to his own fundraiser 🙂
Fredrik, you can’t fudge the data if you do a valid test. Even so, the results of the test are highly predictable.
A solid rocket booster acts like a pipe that slowly increases in volume as the propellant burns. With all that hot gas moving through the pipe, it becomes a pipe organ whose natural frequency slowly becomes lower and lower, and at some point that frequency will match the resonant frequency of the Ares-1 stack.
The only reason that the existing SRBs don’t shake the shuttle apart is that they are attached top and bottom to the external tank, which acts as a strongback and dampens the vibrations from the SRBs. On the Ares-1, with the SRB being attached at virtually a single point, and with another ton removed from the Orion in order to make orbit at all, that sucker is going to resonate and bounce hard. You’ll see transient accelerations in excess of 20 gees.
I saw the AW stuff over at RLVnews, got the usual deja vu, and thought about posting a comment on NASA massaging the numbers but it feels like clubbing baby seals (I wrote it up but didn’t post).
Reading about NASA/ESAS/Constellation/Ares I management is like reading Dilbert.