Business, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Business As Usual

51 Comments

Looks like April now (at best). Also looks like Starship 3 before Artemis II.

[Update a few minutes later]

[Afternoon update]

Sorry, second X post fixed now.

[Sunday-morning update]

Mark Whittington (!) says commercial space to the rescue.

51 thoughts on “Business As Usual”

  3. Jealous of all the attention being lavished on Boeing for its hydrogen leaks that could be fixed at the pad, ULA sees Boeing and raises with a helium glitch that requires a trip back to the VAB. Incontinence, thy name is SLS.

  4. How could they not? Are they going to go out to the pad and hose the interstage with flex seal? It’s not the shuttle days when they had a rotating back to allow additional access. Unfortunately for NASA, they don’t have a production line with a new rocket already built and being tested. They have to fix this one.

  5. I suspect the leak happened because NASA is still using the same batch of helium they used for the Boeing Starliner mission. They’re going with the low bid and buying the cheap off-brand helium instead of the premium non-leaky helium.

    1. I know, right?

      Decades ago now, as I was recovering from an ejection from an F4 I was sentenced to Vandenberg AFB, where in part I was responsible for the helium trailers (tube banks) used to support various launch activities….

      That was the cheap stuff, too. Very leaky.

      1. You think they’d add some neon, argon, krypton, and xenon so the gas would have a range of fatter atoms that would wedge into any holes that were slightly larger than a helium atom. But maybe such plugs always pop back out because the plug won’t firmly stick to the walls of the hole.

        Anyway, I do wonder if the ULA ICPS (with Boeing’s involvement) and the Boeing Starliner share some common sources for the helium lines, valves, and other equipment, or the same engineering team for them.

        1. Supposedly director David Lynch had a conversation with actor Dennis Hopper playing a creepy character in a signature creepy David Lynch movie called Blue Velvet. Lynch wanted Hopper’s character from a tank inhale “helium.”

          Hopper, who might be more tuned into such things, suggested, “Why doesn’t my character inhale blasts of nitrous oxide?” Hopper had to explain to Lynch what nitrous oxide is and why the creepy character might choose to inhale it instead of helium.

      3. You’ve had an *interesting* (as in oh god oh god we’re all going to die) aviation career.

  6. Aviation has been very, very good to me. It’s tried to kill me four or five times, but not very hard.

    1. Never had to bail but two near mid airs in gliders and a close call in the BD-4 with another aircraft. The first glider one was a guy pulled up in front without seeing me in the thermal and I got a close view of his aircraft in front of me climbing through the horizon. Maybe 10 to 20 feet in it. The second was conclusion of instrument test when I saw another glider head on. Maybe 2 seconds before collision (gliders are hard to see ). The last was approaching a small airport at the coast north of Brisbane where we could see our shadow. My wife pointed out there were two shadows. Looked around, couldn’t see the other guy so lowered the nose and there he was. We had an overtake so I slid right to go around him. He never saw us.

      1. I almost hit a glider tow on my solo x-country! Because like an idiot I didn’t monitor the right frequency.

        1. I was flying along dead smack on some Victor airway over the Santa Barbara VOR when I almost ran into a hang glider…..

          I don’t know who was more surprised, me or him.

          3. Not a lawn chair, but I was in the front seat of a glider with an instructor in the back and never felt so scared in my life.

            I was also “all over the sky” overcorrecting with the rudder pedals between skids and slips. The PA-28 had “compensated” ailerons so the only times we even touched the pedals was to compensate for “propeller torque” on takeoff rotation or to touch down on one main wheel in a cross-wind landing.

            The glider with its bubble canopy and reclining seating position felt so exposed. In the PA-28, you were pretty much flying an instrument panel and peering over the top to see if anything was in your way.

  7. From the NASA report on the Starliner problems, there is perhaps a possibility that Starliner and the ICPS would share a common issue causing the helium leaks. Though I don’t think they’ve definitively determined the cause of the Starliner’s leak, they’re leaning toward hydrazine softening the Teflon seals in the poppet valves and working its way back to attack the seals on the helium end of the valve, as those seals are not compatible with hypergolics. And the report noted that the seals were being used outside of Parker-Hannifin’s recommended range.

    The Delta upper stage uses hydrazine for its attitude control system and for engine ignition, and the ICPS added more hydrazine bottles to store even more hydrazine to enable extended mission durations. Adding new bottles would mean adding additional control valves, and I would think Boeing would have used the same hydrazine, helium actuated valve team for any project needing helium actuated control valves for hydrazine. The Orion is from Lockheed Martin so it’s probably safe from that defect.

    If that’s what happened, the fix might involve replacing all the hydrazine valves on the ICPS and verifying them, which might fold in with the investigations into Starliner’s issues and verification of both the problem and the fix, so the rollback to the VAB might be a long one.

    1. Hey, the longer the better so far as I’m concerned. I’d be delighted if Artemis 2 remains a hangar queen until Elon has a Dear Moon-class Starship developed and proven out. Then neither it nor the SLS for Artemis 3 will ever have to fly at all.

    2. All very interesting. A casual Grok search on ICPS RCS turns up even less than what is available on Starliner. But with Boeing being the sub, it makes sense.

      However, in my reading of the Starliner issues the seal swelling problem is with the Teflon materials interaction with the NTO oxidizer in a bi-propellant system. As I understand it, the ICPS RCS rockets use a mono-propellant using only Hydrazine and a catalyst. So George (anyone) enlighten me. Are you saying Hydrazine is as bad as NTO when it comes to Teflon seals.? The back leakage to the Helium seals is also very interesting. Would this be transient? Wouldn’t the pressure in the Helium lines force the Hydrazine to stay closer to its valve? Or is it a mixed gas density issue that would allow the Hydrazine to migrate towards the Helium valves?

      I will note months ago, M. Kelly pointed out that Kel-F was used as a replacement for Teflon in bi-propellant rockets where the propellants are extreme reactants to the Teflon material. Particularly when the Teflon used in the seals is under thermal stress as well. The Teflon swelling isn’t helping the mechanical sealing either.

      According to Grok, Kel-F, originally produced by 3M is now going under the trade name Neoflon (aka a PCTFE, which is a chemical nomenclature mouthful) after Daikan bought out this business from 3M which bought it from K.M. Kellog). aka Aclar (if bought from Honywell).

      1. Oops unfortunate typo that slipped through. Honeywell.

        Also want to mention this excellent analysis from Scott Manley that pretty much echos what has been already pointed out / discussed here (some time ago).

        Kudos to Scott for going through the process I wanted to but didn’t have the time for. Particularly the photos of the ‘doghouse’ interior, which I independently uncovered via Grok several days ago, but Scott has now re-published for all to see on YouTube. Not that this wasn’t already common knowledge via Reddit. I don’t have original source credits for this photo. Otherwise Grok wouldn’t have known about it either.

        Very much helps explain the Starliner’s RCS nomenclature featured in the report.

      2. Another piece of useless, inapplicable info: You can buy poppet valves directly from Boeing commercial avaition. Don’t have the part # to give you but it is avaliable on-line (I found it, so can you). Can’t tell you it’s the same poppet valve used in Starliner (unlikely IMHO) but it’s a Mercedes-Benz OEM part being resold by Boeing…

        3. Why is it that the pricey luxury-SUV-market-segment spacecraft have such short service intervals, “over-engineered” systems, crazy-expensive parts and eye-watering technician labor charges?

          Or is this only a problem with German makes of luxury SUV spacecraft where the ones from Japan are rock solid?

      3. You’re right on the hydrazine versus N2O4 issue on Starliner. So the ICPS helium leak wouldn’t be caused by the same issues.

  8. Rand, I seem to remember you and Whittington having some serious dust-ups back in ye olde sci.space days. I remember him being seriously anti-commercial. Do I remember correctly?

      1. Yeah, there’s no one quite so zealous as a convert. Still, the important thing is that Mark W. has seen the light, not how long it took him to do so. He’s one of ours now and welcome aboard.

      2. Some day I will reveal what happened on the road to Damascus, as it will

        Hint, Elon Musk had a lot to do with it.

        2. Ha! I’ve come to believe that Musk is a walking talking human IQ test. Glad I seem to have passed. 🙂

          1. I think in “What Can You Say About Chocolate-covered Manhole Covers”, Niven had a walking talking non-human IQ test

        3. Let me guess.

          You crashed your car. Stunned by the impact, you had a vision of Elon Musk calling out to you, “Mark, Mark, why are you giving my followers a hard time?”

          Or something like that?

  9. Mark did say a long time ago that China was the competition to the US for a return to the Moon. Seems to be the case now.

    1. Is the race for second footprints on the moon that important?

      Rather it seems to me that the first long-term …. not colony, but more than a 3-day stay? Is important.

      Unfortunately the CCP seems to be leading that race

  11. It probably made a lot of sense to adapt a commercial off-the-shelf upper stage, but SLS gestation and reflight timescales have been so silly long that that COTS upper stage has passed into the status of museum hardware before the second flight, even.

    Just one more absurdity in a program that’s basically made of them.

Comments are closed.