NASA Test Fires Solid Rocket Booster for Megarocket

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Why couldn't NASA wait another six days to test fire this bad boy? Think of all the money they could have saved on fireworks in that town by cranking the angle up a bit and letting it rip at sundown. ;) Also, those of you not interested in really long countdowns should skip to the one minute mark or so.
 
Strap one of these on a tank and use it as a flame incinerator. That will clear out those trenches and rabbit holes.
 
Anyone know what the sign post looking thing directly behind the booster that is visible before the test starts and is completely blown away after is about?
 
UnrealCpu said:
about 72 years later since WWII and we are still using rockets for propulsion when we have alien anti gravity technology
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We haven't been able to source the material for the on the fly magnetic field distortion drives yet.
 
Some gratuitous action shots!

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And the comparison we all want.....to a Saturn 5

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Now for my commentary.

Little dissapointed that it is less then the Saturn 5. The Saturn 5 represents such a beautiful moment in mankinds history, but it shouldn't remain the peak.

Also SLS is a terrible name. Saturn 5.....that sounds authoritative. You know it means business. If you are going to take man to the heavens, give it name for history books.

And finally, SRB's (Solid Rocket Boosters) are long known to be more powerful by size then liquid fuel rockets. The HUGE downside to SRB's though is that they do not shutoff.....they only burn out. So once you start it, that's it, your in it for the long haul. The Saturn 5 though was completely liquid fuel, so it did put out a little less thrust overall, but it was controllable (if needed).

SRB's famously proved their point when the Challenger exploded, those 2 curly smoke trails are the SRB's going on about their business because they couldn't be turned off.

challenger-explosion.jpg


That being said, I am very excited and I will probably go see this one launch as I missed out on the Space Shuttle and wasn't alive for the Saturn 5. I would like to witness something of that power from a controlled environment at least once.
 
AaronGant said:
Anyone know what the sign post looking thing directly behind the booster that is visible before the test starts and is completely blown away after is about?
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The arstechnia article says it was a mirror placed directly behind the SRB. I bet NASA had a camera pointed at the mirror so they could video tape the ignition without vaporizing a camera.
 
That right there would give me a nice boost through some heavy traffic, fortunately there is no traffic ever back here in the mountains. Yeah that was awesome and I also would love to just close my eyes and lay on the ground and feel that tremendous power.
 
westrock2000 said:
Now for my commentary.

And finally, SRB's (Solid Rocket Boosters) are long known to be more powerful by size then liquid fuel rockets. The HUGE downside to SRB's though is that they do not shutoff.....they only burn out. So once you start it, that's it, your in it for the long haul. The Saturn 5 though was completely liquid fuel, so it did put out a little less thrust overall, but it was controllable (if needed).

That being said, I am very excited and I will probably go see this one launch as I missed out on the Space Shuttle and wasn't alive for the Saturn 5. I would like to witness something of that power from a controlled environment at least once.
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I wouldn't say SIZE to thrust ratio. It's more of a weight to thrust ratio. SRB's allow you to lower your launch weight or size or increase your launch payload. They also appear to be more effective in gimbaling because they are mounted radially. I don't think it's a downside that SRBs cannot be shut off or modulated. The downside, IMHO, is that SRB's are horribly inefficient (Isp) at converting fuel to thrust. They are a great tool for getting very heavy payloads to space without exponentially increasing the launch weight. You can then design the liquid rocket engine that prioritizes Isp over thrust, reducing the amount of liquid fuel you have to bring into space.
 
westrock2000 said:
And the comparison we all want.....to a Saturn 5

hnbW0z9.jpg


Now for my commentary.

t

challenger-explosion.jpg


That being said, I am very excited and I will probably go see this one launch as I missed out on the Space Shuttle and wasn't alive for the Saturn 5. I would like to witness something of that power from a controlled environment at least once.
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If KSB has tough me anything, it's that this system would benefit hugely from no less than 6 more SRBs.
 
It is impressive and all, but I can't help but see the huge cost of this thing. The smoke and fuel resources (and the costs to get them out of the ground) make me cringe. While we are all being told to care about this that and the other thing - turn off the lights, buy electric cars, even buying more efficient computer parts, the big consumers and thus big carbon-footprinters, are just asking me to save it all for them.
 
Prisoner849 said:
It is impressive and all, but I can't help but see the huge cost of this thing. The smoke and fuel resources (and the costs to get them out of the ground) make me cringe. While we are all being told to care about this that and the other thing - turn off the lights, buy electric cars, even buying more efficient computer parts, the big consumers and thus big carbon-footprinters, are just asking me to save it all for them.
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This will go up once every year, at best, compared to a hoped for rate of once a month for STS (shuttle) and a more realistic number of 6 times a year. Don't worry about it. Even rockets are getting more frugal. ;P
 
Fairly certain the amount of fuel burned in 1 launch pales in comparison to the amount of cars burning fuel every hour.
 
EODetroit said:
Man, I hope they pointed that to lengthen the day, not shorten it. ;)
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Anybody want to do a calculation of how many you would need and how high they would have to be mounted in order to change the rotational speed and/or direction of Earth?
 
westrock2000 said:
That being said, I am very excited and I will probably go see this one launch as I missed out on the Space Shuttle and wasn't alive for the Saturn 5. I would like to witness something of that power from a controlled environment at least once.
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I was really lucky my parents took me when I was in middle school...it's still one of the most amazing things I've ever seen (more specifically, heard).
 
Think of all the death row inmates that could have been lined up behind that and saved the tax payers all the hassle of finding the just so chemical cocktail, not to mention the funeral cost.
 
Nicklebon said:
Think of all the death row inmates that could have been lined up behind that and saved the tax payers all the hassle of finding the just so chemical cocktail, not to mention the funeral cost.
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That would make NASA no different than ISIS. Yes, all initial stage SRBs could incinerate human beings directly in line (or in the vicinity) or the thrust vector. That does does not give NASA or the US government the ability to use a test SRB as a death sentence.

This is not a political post. It's a post showing that NASA is still trying to get the US (manned or unmanned) into space.

NASA tested an SRB for the SLS to help get the US back into space.

Please take your idea into the soapbox in General Mayhem.
 
The original Saturn V rocket carried enough fuel to have the energy of the first atomic bomb. (God help us if it blew up) In fact the motors were SO powerful, NASA couldn't develop a pump powerful enough or fast enough to pump the fuel needed to generate the required thrust. So how did they solve the problem? By putting two motors in one. They used a smaller rocket motor which they could power to power the pump of the main rocket engine.

This new SLS makes it look almost small by comparison in terms of fuel energy.
 
Prisoner849 said:
It is impressive and all, but I can't help but see the huge cost of this thing. The smoke and fuel resources (and the costs to get them out of the ground) make me cringe. While we are all being told to care about this that and the other thing - turn off the lights, buy electric cars, even buying more efficient computer parts, the big consumers and thus big carbon-footprinters, are just asking me to save it all for them.
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Personal transportation and home lighting is not something that advances humanity / science. A lot of things you take for granted exist because there were people trying to go to space. And if a meteor would hit earth tomorrow you'd be saying why didn't they spend more on space. We have limited time on this earth. And I'd rather save humanity than have a V8.
 
DocSavage said:
If this is true, then why do all the stats say the Saturn V can lift 118 tons compared to the SLS lifting 70?
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70 tons is the first mission launch platform, which will be ready in 2025-ish. The final mission launch platform will be capable of launching 130 tons by 2032.
 
We tested a couple Atlas SRB's a few years ago, I used to think they were huge. These are quite a big larger, you can actually walk around inside of them. Pretty impressive stuff, even though its made by a competitor :)
 
NASA tested one of their SRBs in the South Bay Area just outside San Jose when I was a kid. We lived about 8 miles away from the test site, and holy fuck, was that shit loud! Thought the damn world was ending (this was pre Internet days, so very few people knew they were going to cook that bad boy off). Looks like United Technologies Corporation closed the test site back in 2004. Very cool stuff.
 
That thing needs some Catalytic converters and smog control junk bolted into it to pass California emissions regulations.

I'd like to know how much pollution that rocket burns causes, vs the cars driving around by the millions.
 
Borgschulze said:
That thing needs some Catalytic converters and smog control junk bolted into it to pass California emissions regulations.

I'd like to know how much pollution that rocket burns causes, vs the cars driving around by the millions.
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Heh..the one in the article was fired off in Utah. They probably don't worry too much about it.
 
At least the payload is way above the SRBs. In case of challenger type failure they would still likely survive.
 
ElGuapo242 said:
NASA tested one of their SRBs in the South Bay Area just outside San Jose when I was a kid. We lived about 8 miles away from the test site, and holy fuck, was that shit loud! Thought the damn world was ending (this was pre Internet days, so very few people knew they were going to cook that bad boy off). Looks like United Technologies Corporation closed the test site back in 2004. Very cool stuff.
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That was back when CSD was still around. They killed a couple people and OSHA ended up shutting them down. I work with a lot of the guys that were picked up after that happened, they have some crazy stories.

ElGuapo242 said:
Heh..the one in the article was fired off in Utah. They probably don't worry too much about it.
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Yeah thats ATK's test facility north of Salt Lake, up by Promontory. They should be testing the replacement Atlas SRB's there along with the new Vulcan in a few years time if they an get their act together.

Rustynuts said:
At least the payload is way above the SRBs. In case of challenger type failure they would still likely survive.
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They have a pretty badass jettison system that launches the crew out of harms way in case of any failures. We've done some work on portions of it.
 
sls-rocket-test-blue-glass.jpg

Full Size
The test-firing of a booster for NASA's Space Launch System megarocket in March 2015 turned sand on the ground to glass, as this photo shows.
Credit: NASA
 
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