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ns but pratt whitney rocketdyne will redesign the nozzle and other components to make the engines cheaper to produce and throw away on future flights and for initial flights the rocket will use 5 segment srb s developed for the original ares program a significant part of the space launch system announcement is that it s a declaration of victory for the direct team since the end of 2006 direct has been agitating for a return to a shuttle based system as the ares rockets underwent a death spiral of requirements creep and weight growth it was the first proposal i m aware of that used a flexible system to mount engines to the core stage using an appropriate number of engines for the mission they popularized the concept of using the heavy lifter sans upper stage to launch a manned capsule by the time of direct 3 0 in may 2009 the team had embraced the use of expendable ssme s to get maximum performance out of the propellants stored in the core stage aside from one aspect the rocket proposed for sls is direct the biggest difference is in the solid rocket boosters back in 2006 the direct team wanted to use the stock 4 segment srb s from the shuttle the idea made sense back then when nasa had barely begun their development but the 5 segment stretched srb got a significant portion of nasa spending during project constellation to the point where it wouldn t be much more expensive to make the switch now that most of the development costs have been sunk so sls is using the 5 segment solids on initial missions with rocket vendors free to develop alternative boosters for future variants of the rocket the shuttle tankage at the core of sls has been stretched to accommodate the attach points for the longer boosters will sls be built i d give that prospect a 50 50 shot the program will receive a development budget of 3 billion per year for the next several years fitting into the budget wedge once occupied by the space shuttle program in earlier times that would not have been a problem for the federal government but these are now times of austerity and if spacex will have their 53 ton launcher flying by 2014 5 it will be hard for nasa to justify their 74 ton launcher by 2017 if congress does keep sls alive the ulterior motive will be providing a stimulus to the tech industry to keep good jobs in florida alabama and other states that figured heavily into the space shuttle program the tragedy of project constellation is that sls is virtually the same as the original ares v rocket specified by the esas report in summer and fall 2005 great sums of money have been spent and little real progress was made in developing the rocket s core or its ground facilities the death spiral started in early 2006 when nasa adopted rs 68 engines for the core of ares v rs 68 was cheaper to produce and throw away than ssme but it burned fuel less efficiently unwilling to sacrifice the monster rocket s performance nasa widened the tank to 10 meters diameter this meant a major redesign of the mobile launch pad the need for new crawler transporters and possibly even changes to the crawlerway and hardstand at the launch site to shore it up the entire rocket was so heavy that nasa needed a sixth rs 68 under the core and nestled between the plumes of two srb s the rs 68 s were being exposed to far greater temperatures than their ablative cooled nozzles could handle ares could either switch back to ssme or pay for a new regeneratively cooled nozzle on the rs 68 such was the state of the program before it was euthanized in february 2010 did the direct guys do any breakthrough original engineering analysis to show why their idea was better no they simply kept in touch with the engineers within nasa who knew that ares v was doomed to fail as long as the program continued marching towards unachievable payload masses and without regard for development budgets and schedules the final sls design probably owes much more to nasa engineers saying you know what our original ares v design wasn t so bad and it could have worked if management didn t start messing with it but in the spirit of maintaining an independent sanity check the direct team should be proud of keeping a viable idea alive and within the view of policymakers while nasa kept chasing an ever growing ares v down a rabbit hole posted by mr x at 8 14 am wednesday august 24 2011 pace launch ystem the ares family of nasa rockets isn t dead it lives to fight another day under new names ares i has already been reborn as liberty a private atk astrium joint venture the ares v heavy lifter on the other hand is now the space launch system as currently envisioned space launch system resembles the original ares v design from the esas report in summer and fall of 2005 the core rocket is the same diameter as the shuttle s external tank and the core engines are based on the space shuttle main engines obviously nasa s design engineers must have revisited the assumptions that were made when they switched ares v to a new wider diameter core and less efficient but cheaper rs 68 engines the advantages of reusing shuttle heritage boosters core engines and propellant tanks aren t as obvious as one might expect most of the components are being placed under very different aerodynamic and mechanical loads compared to what they saw under the shuttle program so the testing will need to be repeated reusing shuttle manufacturing tools and launch facilities will result in some cost savings but the development costs will be similar to what should be expected for an all new heavy lift rocket in fact a recent report by booz allen hamilton hat tip hobbyspace questions nasa s accounting for what sls is really going to cost it cites nasa s optimistic estimates for future cost savings without seeing this report i can speculate that it s referring to the costs associated with using expendable versions of the shuttle main engine on every flight besides the costs it s foolishly optimistic to beleive nasa s estimate of an sls test launch by 2016 consider that the saturn v was approved in january 1962 but didn t make a test flight until november 1967 so a well funded heavy lift program should expect to take at least 5 1 2 years from the moment it receives authority to proceed but we shouldn t expect development to proceed at such a breakneck pace as project apollo during an era when nasa registered at over 1 of the federal budget unless congress shovels large sums of development test money at sls the schedule will likely slip by several years complicating the situation is the wrangling over side mount boosters for sls the baseline calls for the five segment srb s that have been largely developed by atk nasa administrator charlie bolden wants to open up a competition to build new boosters for sls such a competition would likely produce a better performing better value booster for the taxpayers or at least serve as a check against cost growth on the atk boosters but opening up the booster trade space adds to the sls schedule the sls budget and schedule will be an important issue for nasa over the next few years but it will likely be overcome by events spacex will fly its falcon heavy by 2014 perhaps 2015 given the inevitable schedule slips in complex development programs while falcon heavy does not have the heavy lift capabilities of sls 50 metric tonnes versus 130 mt it doesn t need them if on orbit assembly and propellant transfer become accepted means of sending humans on deep space missions in 2015 or 2016 falcon heavy will be flying while sls will still be a year or more from its first test for a budget conscious congress sls will make a ripe target for cancellation and cost savings posted by mr x at 5 16 pm saturday august 13 2011 air force research linux one of the best selling points for the linux operating system is its small footprint in your computer s ram hard drive and overall system requirements linux distros like puppy linux and damn small linux the latter no longer updated have been tailored to run on very old pc s pentium 3 for the former pentium 1 for the latter and capable of residing entirely in ram running a lightweight linux can keep older pc s relevant for most people s internet needs but a new and surprising player is jumping into the lightweight linux game the us department of defense developed by air force research laboratory lightweight portable security lps is a linux distro that resides completely in ram with no option of mounting the hard drive or writing to it the logic behind lps is that malware cannot be written to dod computer systems since the hard drive cannot be engaged the lightweight part of the name is a bit of a misnomer lps requires 512 megs of ram for the basic os and 1 gig of ram for the deluxe version which includes the openoffice org productivity suite and the deluxe version did seem a bit slower than puppy linux when it booted but in spite of being not so lightweight lps does have a great feature going for it lps can auto detect a broad range of hardware and automatically load the appropriate drivers i would even say that lps is better than the heavyweight linux distros in this regard of all the distros i ve tried only lps instantly recognized my laptop s internal wireless adapter then again not all the drivers are very well written my laptop s touchpad acts very flaky in firefox with the key features and drawbacks to lps in mind who is the target user the lps website mentions booting it from a flash memory device even though that storage method is banned on all dod network computers it would instead seem that lps is a means for dod personnel to check e mail and do limited work from home or while on business travel overall using lps has been a fun experience if i ever needed to check my business webmail from the computer in the hotel lobby lps would be the way to do it for people who want a real lightweight linux i would recommend downloading puppy linux installing it to the hard drive of their aging pc and downloading the extra goodies that lps deluxe boasts like openoffice org all flaws aside lps is definitely worth a download all it takes is a few minutes to download and a single recordable cd to surf the web lps style posted by mr x at 10 56 pm friday august 12 2011 death of the world s fastest airplane the defense advanced projects research agency darpa launched the second and last of its htv 2 hypersonic test vehicles yesterday in what some media outlets have labeled the world s fastest airplane it s true that the htv 2 skirted the atmosphere at mach 20 once separated from its minotaur iv booster rocket so it might be the world s fastest unpowered glider but the same could be said about the space shuttle like the shuttle htv 2 maneuvered while in a hypersonic glide partly to bleed off excess airspeed disappointingly htv 2 s flight ended about 10 minutes short of what was expected after 20 minutes darpa reported that they had lost telemetry the most likely scenario somewhere during gliding flight the vehicle disintegrated even after 30 years of shuttle flights and countless other rocket plane programs before that controlled hypersonic flight is still difficult unlike a ballistic vehicle like a space capsule a winged vehicle has to maintain active control during flight the aerodynamic stresses at such extreme speeds are high and the unbelievable heating of the aircraft s structure causes it to lose much of its inherent strength even a small deviation from a safe flight attitude can destroy the aircraft this is what happened as space shuttle columbia began to encounter increased drag on its damaged left wing with the orbiter s thrusters trying in vain to correct the unexpected yaw until they could no longer prevent the shuttle from breaking apart darpa will probably reach a similar albeit more detailed conclusion after analyzing all of their telemetry from the mission several years ago htv 2 was supposed to be a stepping stone to what the defense department called falcon or force application launch from continental us the idea was to strike a time sensitive target so rapidly that there would be no way to avoid the attack but existing ballistic missiles weren t acceptable because they would startle russia or china into thinking we were launching the nuclear icbm s falcon aimed to create hypersonic gliders and eventually a hypersonic bomber to meet the goals of rapid global strike apparently a straight up launch of the glider on a converted icbm like minotaur iv would not give the other nuclear powers a false alarm but now the idea appears to be dead for lack of results and funding the basic idea of a hypersonic glider has been studied exhaustively since the 1950 s as the whims of the military and political leadership change the falcon concept may get a fresh look posted by mr x at 3 26 pm friday august 05 2011 an atlas kinda day for the atlas v launch vehicle program today was a big day the first major development was the successful launch of the juno space probe which will study the planet jupiter when i heard that juno was being launched into space i first had to wonder whether michael cera would be lonely back on earth but all kidding aside juno will study our solar system s largest planet in the 2016 17 time frame and hopefully tell us more about the formation of a planet that we ve come to think of as a failed star in some ways the probe is a consolation prize for the failed jupiter icy moons orbiter which would have used a nuclear reactor to power its ion engines the science mission is very different though and the moons of jupiter will sadly need to wait before their secrets open up to us the other exciting atlas related development was boeing s decision to fly its cst 100 manned spacecraft on atlas v rockets it s interesting to note that they will be using an atlas v 412 four meter diameter fairing one solid rocket booster and two engines on the upper stage this configuration increases the thrust margins for manned spaceflight which is especially important when the rocket is flying the shallower trajectories which allow for successful crew escape having one srb does create a small increase in the probability of first stage failure but that s mitigated by the crew escape system that will be present while the srb is burning also interesting is the two engine upper stage as far as i know this is the first atlas v payload to request two upper stage engines the addend engine does give the astronauts some extra redundancy if one fails although the rl 10 eries engines on the centaur upper stages have been pretty reliable dating all the way back to 1962 when manned flights of cst 100 and atlas v start in 2015 it will be interesting to see how boeing selects its crew of two astronauts or test pilots as boeing calls them they will likely choose from former astronauts who have gone to work for the boeing company and there s at least one cosmonaut who works for boeing iirc i m certain that astronaut would...