arstechnica.com/space/2024/06/nasas-commercial-spacesuit-program-just-hit-a-major-snag/
Collins has dropped out of EVA suit development for Artemis, leaving Axiom Space as the only company making space suits for NASA.
Seriously?! You work for Collin’s Aerospace and found out they were canceling the program you are working on through Reddit!! That’s a low blow.
Not quite.
I work for ILC Dover. We were partnered with them and developing the PGS (pressure garment assembly). So the gloves, boots, helmets, and bearings with the fabrics to hold it together, along with a new LCVG.
If you go on youtube and search for "CNBC space suit," there is a video showing a very early prototype. I forget if it was our "astro" suit that we built on IR&D or truly an xEVAS prototype.
If you don't know, we make the softgoods for the current EMU that everyone here is shitting on. A lot of us saw this as a redemption arc for us. Like we know it is an old design, and we can make something way better, but at the same time, we can just put in a change and have new stuff show up on the ISS.
Edit: Actually, here is a link to the video https://youtu.be/oXAsvg_ZZzk?si=jtRQcjeTMz7fl4B0
Geez, I hope ILC Dover makes a bid to become the prime contractor. Maybe they can work out a deal with NASA to take over the contract and make it clear that, realistically, it'll take more money. This bid-on contracts probably don't work that way but if NASA puts out a new round of bidding I hope your company goes for it but with a realistically high bid.
What if another, new bidder can do it for less? That's the point of rebidding failures.
In contracts like this the lowest bidder doesn't always win. The riders bidders get scored on things like how technically mature their ideas are, do they have any hardware that can be applied, and their program management history. Hopefully a competent company makes a competent bid.
Collins won the bid under these parameters, and as an experienced company still failed. Unfortunately we won't know if the next company is competent or not for a year or two after they win the new bid.
In contracts like this the lowest bidder doesn't always win.
Thanks for explaining the basics of "best value" contracting.
In my experience, there are prime contractors that excel at winning bids and subs that excel at doing the work.
ILC Dover’s site is all about process, quality and expertise in making a product.
Collin’s site has some of the same boilerplate but it also has a lot of signaling around supplier selection, government project management, “customers and partners”, etc.
Collin’s manages the billing, connections, metrics and procurement compliance aspects of the work and if those aren’t right then no one ever sees the product.
A lot of us saw this as a redemption arc for us.
You guys are pioneers of science and are pushing humanity to the next level. Damn heroes in my eyes, and I truly mean that. I'm a space nerrrrrrrd and wish I could do a space related profession! I'm proud of y'all! Nothing to redeem.
My heart dropped when I read the news. The people at ILC Dover are top notch and it is a fantastic place to work. Wishing you folks the best through this development.
🫡 Good luck to you and your colleagues. Besh wishes.
If you are working in the industry, this won't surprise you. Shit is always kept tight and you find out big news via...the news. At best you have rumblings that something is afoot
I've learned two times that the company I was at was getting sold in the press. And once that we were all getting fired.
It's ... Not that surprising.
Shareholders legally get to keep information private from their employees when they are fucking them over.
Worked for them for almost 5 years. This would be one of the least scummy/shitty things they've done to their employees.
Yeah come on Collin! Treat your people better!
I found out about FARA the same way. Go us.
Same here; well found out from my manager via an email that linked an article by a third-party news source prior to my company’s own statement
What's FARA?
Guessing it's the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) project the Army cancelled.
I got lucky I was long gone by the time that one came down. Just incredible.
Maybe don't work for UTC, lol. They bought a start up I was working at for $200M and over the course of two years they ran it into the ground and wrote off the entire acquisition in the Raytheon merger. Fortunately, I'd already left.
Bunch of fucking clowns. The traditional defense companies are going the way of the dodo.
Because they keep prioritizing the word of programs MBAs and cost cutting over their engineers' innovating. Government red tape isn't helping, either, with so much more money spent on metrics and financial analytics than development.
I spend more time managing issue tracking platforms to mark problems to be done later than fixing said problems, because we're only allowed to spend contract money on short bursts for our program increments.
Accountability is cool but we can't actually develop and innovate if so much of the money is spent on accounting the money being spent in such specific ways constantly.
Exactly. Everything you are saying is how I have felt for….at least a decade. Ugh.
That's how it goes. Our publicly traded company will send out company wide news emails after the news was announced publicly. Employees are always the last to know.
Oof. Can you tell us a little about the program?
Not sure how you could have just found out since support from ILC and Collins stopped months ago.....coming from someone working on the program lol
If the company is billing you to the fed, you won’t know until they have to stop billing you most times
Boeing has been over budget and behind on the Starliner for how many years? Yet that pile of crap will remain. Sorry if you lost your job.
I used to work there as the government rep for NASA. It was neat but you knew things were ending when they started repurposing the labs that were used for space stuff.
Defense buisness is always good when the Pentagon is ordering lots of pizza.
Im no Clarance Thomas. I can't eat the company pizza that the government was buying. Too gifty.
The EVA suits are what make me most nervous about the Artemis program. I know Collins was more focused on in-space EVA suits but still...
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11d
Yeah it's still the suits.
In space refueling is a big one for sure, but I'm confident Blue Origin and SpaceX can figure it out.
The scenarios where a failed lander could be rescued by an Orion spacecraft in LLO but not one in a NRHO seem pretty limited.
SpaceX has been landing boosters taller than that on Earth, arguably a bigger challenge, pretty much flawlessly for years now. They've got an outstanding trackrecord with Falcon 9 and Dragon that certainly lends a fair bit of credibility to their ambitious ideas.
Meanwhile the EVA suits are being built by a contractor with basically no history, and the one with "legacy" cred just dropped out because they're unable to manage the task. And without EVA suits Artemis is just a manned lunar orbit.
I’m not worried about them LANDING it’s taking back off.
The first super heavy launch highlights this. No deluge system etc caused the engines to FOD out and a significant number didn’t light. That was on an elevated pad with engineered concrete to be as tough as possible.
They land on clean pads now.
What happens when you land that or take off from the lunar surface. What’s the chance of FODIng out and engine.
Apollo had a lander with the decent engine and ascent engine separate. The ascent engine was shrouded when it landed and it was a simple as possible for a reason. Granted, extra weight for a decent and ascent engine. But I’d really like to see them plop a starship in the middle of a gravely part of the desert, takeoff a few hundred feet, land, turn of the engines and repeat.
Starship HLS is planned to have a ring of smaller thrusters mounted high on the vehicle that will be used for landing/takeoff to mitigate the effect on the regolith
From their winning proposal to the most recent render SpaceX has shown the HLS will have auxiliary landing and liftoff engines. They're mounted at the level where the tank section meets the payload section. Descent will be done using one Rvac and one center engine (for gimbaling). Close to the surface the Raptors will cut off and the auxiliary engines will take over.
HLS has auxiliary engines for that purpose. Moreover, while superheavy thrust was enough to liquify the soil under the pad (causing a cave in), the starship landing tests were done on clear concrete and on one engine, which did not result in damage. Landing on the moon is indeed tricky, but it is why the HLS is using specialized landing hardware.
Also, remember, starship will at least have hundreds of tons worth of payload mass, and it is unlikely all of it will be used by the requirements of the Artemis mission. They have the mass budget to invest into anything extra necessary to make it work. HLS can afford to have fat landing legs and propelant margins. After all that is weight already shaved from the heat shield and flaps.
I'm personally hoping they take full advantage of that payload and make HLS a bona fide space station, settling the question of "lunar outpost when".
Well the thing is spaceX kind of has to stick to the mission parameters of HLS contract unless the gov lets them alter it. RN HLS will need to go back up to orbit every time and as far as I know there is no plan for any of them to settle permanently.
It makes a fuckton of sense to pack a starship for a one-way trip and just leave it there as a base module, or at least carry a base module. In fact, starship moon cargo renders have been made and so it'd definitely be on the cards.
It also enables us to do some stuff that make such a permanent base possible. Shipping full size building vehicles to construct the regolith bunkers, to create the hardened landing pads, to start IRSO, and other things.
Hell, just send an entire nuclear reactor up there while you are at it. No more worrying about lunar nights and battery capacity, energy rationing, or whatnot. Just a whole ass reactor. Have it land a bit away from the rest and enjoy having more energy than you could ever want. Ultimately once the core issues of actually making the trip work are resolved, it's a lot easier to take the plunge from "a temporary trip" to "cowabunga it is" assuming the USG is willing to follow through with it on the long term.
Because otherwise, spaceX will just start looking at Mars since that is their mission statement.
RN HLS will need to go back up to orbit every time and as far as I know there is no plan for any of them to settle permanently.
Yes, granted. I think the point I'm trying to make here is that public awareness of Artemis will reach its peak when Starship lands on the moon. Its peak. This is an opportunity I do not see SpaceX or NASA squandering. I expect them to have Starship fully outfitted, and to take advantage of said by staying for a good chunk of time, at least by Artemis IV.
And that's when you start to ask the question: If they can stay for a week or two, at what point does it effectively count as a base? It becomes like the argument of whether Starship's IFT2/3/4 counts as orbit when all SpaceX needed to do was thrust for a handful more seconds and they absolutely could have.
SpaceX has said that they found no evidence that the debris caused any significant damage to the engines. Ignition wasn’t attempted with 3 engines, and the remaining engines were disturbed by fuel leaks and engine fires/explosions during ascent.
In addition, SpaceX may opt for thrusters for the final stages of descent and the beginning of ascent.
Also like...you can run this entire mission unmanned before you do it for real. And that would pretty much be the expected process anyway.
I seriously seriously doubt that Artemis moon-landing will be the first time a Starship lands and takes off from the moon.
Only a landing is required for certification of the vehicle. They don’t have to demonstrate a re/light and liftoff from the moon to get the green light.
Technically, the Artemis mission is exactly when it will be tested for the first time unless something changes.
Apparently the contract was modified to require an ascent, but perhaps not fully into orbit. If you look at r/ArtemisProgram you can see people complaining about it.
I take that with a huge grain of salt. Either there were significant improvements from the first launch or they’re hand waving FOD claiming there “is no evidence”. That can be a true statement AND FOD could have caused failures. They just don’t have evidence that clearly points FOD, it was just those pesky fuel leaks and explosions that stopped when we had appropriate measures to attenuate the acoustics that caused the pad ripping apart causing….FOD.
We don’t have concrete evidence pointing to foreign object debris either. The first flight had engines blow up on ascent, which visibly caused leakage around the engine bay area. During the suborbital campaign period (SN5-15), multiple engines were leaking during ascent with no obvious debris damage. On later integrated flights, engines blew up and prop leaked on relight. On IFT-4, with the water cooled plate in action, an engine shut off just after throttle up. The evidence goes both ways.
Exactly. My point stands. Put one in the middle of nowhere in a rocky dusty dessert and test it.
You can’t prove it wasn’t FOD? You don’t have rock solid proof what it was? FOD isn’t ruled out. That’s space flight. You get one chance.
“We’re pretty sure it’s not FOD” is not significant evidence to prove it wasn’t.
It is highly unlikely that it was FOD given my points and the investigation by SpaceX themselves. Due to the fact that no evidence was found from the debris, it follows that the root cause would be from the vehicle. Their investigation would have looked at possible debris damage as well, yet they found no sign of damage and were able to identify and fix the issues with the booster itself for the next flight. The issues were not solely ground side. They had to make extensive changes to flight hardware as well. There are numerous under the hood upgrades that weren’t the deluge system which were implemented which changed the booster’s resiliency to the issues in IFT-1 as well. In addition, IFT-1 was also the first time a Raptor 2 had flown so there were bound to be issues, just like the suborbital hop period.
Does that completely rule out debris damage? No. I agree with you on that. But I disagree with your overly pessimistic take. Highly unlikely is highly unlikely. If they say they found no evidence, then I would be inclined to believe them due to the fact that they have access to a lot more data than meets the eye and the fact that the fixes worked for the next flight.
I’d say SpaceX would know more and be able to make more accurate statements than armchair engineers like you and me. They have proven speculation wrong numerous times.
Boeing and NASA also have this mentality for Starliner. During pre-flight checkouts, they ignored helium leaks and launched anyways. The leak was at the time 100 times smaller than what would’ve been critical for the mission.
The small chance that it did occur/will impact the mission doesn’t mean that it actually occurred or would be critical to the mission.
Edit: grammar and content corrections
There’s no atmosphere on the moon which means SpaceX’s steering flaps won’t help orient the craft on descent, it’s going to have to be done with thrusters.
It also means there's no turbulence - you point a direction, you'll stay pointed that direction. Starship already has gimballed engines, so technically the only thing they need to be able to do it setup the initial gravity descent trajectory - then "just" suicide burn before landing.
Yeah and there's no weather. It's a significantly easier problem to land on the moon than on Earth
SpaceX landing a rocket on the moon seems...very plausible, that's kinda their whole thing. Landing a rocket on the moon is actually way easier than on Earth given the lower gravity and lack of atmospheric effects
You mean like the pie in the sky idea of landing and reusing rockets on earth?
I mean........ Space Shuttle?
Space Shuttle was not a rocket. Being able to land a glider doesn't tell you anything about the feasibility of landing a rocket via vectored thrust.
Space Shuttle was not a rocket.
During landing those were pure cargo. They were not used during landing or for orbital insertion. For landing it was a glider.
Did the space shuttle use those to land? No it did not.
To further your point, it also couldn't take off with them.
I apologize, I just went back and reread what you said. I read it when I first woke up and thought you were the person I was originally replying to so I read your comment as trying to say something it wasn't. I'm editing my previous comment.
Edit: Misunderstood the intent and author of the comment I was replying to. The content is still accurate but ignore the combative tone and accusation of pedantry.
No, that has nothing to do with my point because we are talking about landing. If you want to be pedantic about my comment regarding the Space Shuttle not being a rocket despite it having 3 rocket engines, well look no further than NASA's own comments about Spaceships and Rockets. The Space Shuttles are classified as a Spacecraft and those spacecraft are launched with the aid of dedicated rockets.
The presence of a rocket engine is not sufficient to classify a craft as a rocket.
Only the orbiter was reusable, the SRB and external tank were single use.
And there's a significant asterisk on the orbiter's reusability given how much refurbishment it needed between flights.
I mean only part of the Falcon 9 has been reusable all this time, too.
It's no insult to SpaceX's achievement to note that landing and reusing was not a "never been done before" thing. Relax, guys.
Isn't the whole Falcon 9 reusable? Even the fairing is reused I thought.
The Falcon 9 landing really hits the feeling of landing a rocket. When the first Heavy landed two boosters simultaneously it was pretty damned incredible.
The space shuttle had rocket engines, but I don't think I've ever thought of it as landing a rocket, especially since the part I really think of as the rockets, the Solid Rocket Boosters, were expended.
Also, space x wasn't first to use propulsive landing, there had been test beds and projects dating back to the sixties, like the Apollo LEM with is descent engine. Of course, that was the moon, and Falcon doing it on earth after an orbital launch is pretty special. And technically I think Blue Origin did land a Shepard before space X landed a Falcon.
Doesn't mean I'm right, just my thoughts. I'm relaxed and love talking and learning about space! Hope you have a good night!
Isn't the whole Falcon 9 reusable?
No, its upper stage has been single-use.
They both did the same sort of thing, put a lot of the important bits in the reusable part and have easily-refabricated disposable parts to help.
Seeing as the russians iterated on it and gave up, and only a thimbleful were produced, and there was no appetite to produce replacements no, not really.
I don't see the logic in your response. It's a thing that's been done before, is all.
SpaceX does not expect cryogenic refuelling to be a big issue in the grand scheme of things.
Blue Origin also seems to have no problem with it in their Blue Moon proposal.
collins didn't expect the EVA suit to take so long and cost so much either. with NASA shills its like lucy and the football every week.
Cryo prop transfer was already demonstrated successfully in IFT-3. Cryogenic refilling is slated for early 2025.
I believe Collins was selected for their legacy status, with no real experience or results to show for the current period. I vaguely remember this being classified as a concern in NASA’s selection statement.
There is a bit of a gap between pumping propellant from one tank to another and autonomous docking with cryo prop transfer between two spacecraft with a rapid turnaround.
We don't even know how the vehicles are going to dock. The configuration of Starship/HLS keeps changing, and there are tons of engineering iterations to figure out before we get to a stage where it's reliable and mature enough for manned flight.
The Tim Dodd interview actually tackles this topic in brief. What he said, to paraphrase, was, "We already know how to dock with the ISS, and docking with ourselves is much easier."
Sure, we know how planes work. But it still took 15 years to design the F-35. We know how to build rockets, but Starship has been in development for 8 years and don't even talk about SLS.
Theory is one thing, iterative engineering is another. Maturing a design to get from a functional prototype (which we don't have yet) to a reliable rapid-turnaround operational vehicle is something else entirely.
Will SpaceX get there eventually? Sure.
Will they be able to put humans on a rapidly-reusable spacecraft that can confidently land on the moon and take off again in the next 5 years? I really doubt it.
I'm not disagreeing with the last sentence, but only the "rapidly reusable" part of it. SpaceX will absolutely be landing on the moon by five years from now. I just don't personally think they'll be turning launches around in under 24 hours by then.
Of course, they don't really need to for HLS. It's only an end goal. They can send up expendable Starship tankers to refuel HLS or Polaris or whatever other moon missions they'll be doing, until it makes better sense (and they have enough towers) to actually capture all those flights.
I do reckon that they'll be comfortably capturing Boosters by then, at least.
They need to be turning around launches to refuel in orbit. What was the latest estimate? 6 or 7 launches to refuel HLS? The longer the delay between flights, the more flights you need.
Rapid turnaround is vital for cryo refueling to be practical, otherwise you end up in a race to catch up with boiloff.
There is indeed a big gap. I never said that they were the same thing. SpaceX anticipates that the quick disconnect port will be used to transfer prop, and the docking wouldn’t be as hard or complex as docking to the ISS.
The hardware is in active development. A test refill is slated to happen in early 2025, per my earlier comment.
Edit: they also already have an action plan, in which they anticipate to use a pressure differential to transfer prop without the need for pumps.
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11d
https://www.spacex.com/updates/
“The vehicle also successfully completed a propellant transfer demonstration, moving liquid oxygen from a header tank into the main tank.”
There is a difference between cryogenic transfer and cryogenic refilling.
Both NASA and SpaceX have said the propellant transfer was a complete success.
No it was not. The fuel transfer test has to be between different spacecraft. And the “test” they did was after the spacecraft had run out of fuel anyway.
Having to do 20 orbital fuel transfers after 20 rocket launches for one moon mission is a clown show.
Yes it was. I clearly say the difference between a transfer and a refill later in the thread. You are arbitrarily defining your own version of a transfer. SpaceX and NASA don’t see it that way.
Starship transferred fuel from its header tanks to its main tanks. The header tanks are not used at all during ascent.
Having to do 20 (more likely to be 10-16) doesn’t matter if the tech is good enough at the time of the moon mission, though it still is a big if.
Blue Origin’s proposal also requires cryogenic refilling (5-8), so there is no way around the tech, whether you like it or not.
I don't expect FSD to be an issue, it will be done this time next year
SpaceX specializes in turning the impossible to late.
Cryogenic transfer was already demonstrated (read other comment chain for context).
The only alternative (Blue Origin) also has this tech in their plans and are not as deep as SpaceX into development + and are fine with using the tech itself.
There is also the difference between Musk philosophy and expectations. He is consistently over-optimistic, sometimes to the point of being non-sensical, about his vision (Starship final architecture - Mars, Reusability, Point to point, etc.,Tesla FSD, Boring Company, etc.), but is very pessimistic about the nitty-gritty details when he actually thinks about them (FH first launch 50% failure chance, Starship heat shield and production issues, etc.)
Edit: grammar
gosh I forgot this was the slobbering sub
I dunno man, separating the man from the company would be ideal. Bringing up FSD is irrelevant to this conversation.
If anything, SpaceX is one of the better things that came out of him.
Edit: Accidentally deleted.
Slobbering over Blue Origin and their claims that cryogenic refueling isn't going to be a major issue?
Thunderfoot does this too. Pivots to something unrelated when things are going just a little too well at SpaceX for his liking.
ok, let's talk something related: the mars colony is already getting set up by now, his words
And that's the best argument y'all have. "It's late." SpaceX doesn't care whether you've recognized that overambitious timelines deliver faster than modest ones. "Making impossible into late." They'll keep on keeping on.
The only rocket of this entire millennium that has been even slightly on time was the Falcon 9. So when you make fun of Starship for a phenomenon that's bog standard in space, you're also making fun of H3, New Glenn, Vulcan Centaur, Terran-1, SSLV, Angara, Long March 5, Long March 7, Long March 8, SLS... and yet you are laser-focusing on only one of these projects. Don't you think that's a bit... conspicuous and telling?
Or do you have something legitimately juicy to make fun of?
The SpaceX elements of Artemis are honestly the less concerning. They continue to deliver like no one else can. I agree that the suits are the biggest concern.
No, none of those things concern me, least of all SpaceX. They're like the only surefire bet in the whole program.
So, the only company who was given tons of money already through different programs and had a prototype.....
Possible ploy to get more money out of NASA? Was it a fixed price contract?
The article has a source that says that Collins submitted "a request to be taken off the contract or renegotiate the scope and their budget."
Fixed price with two contractors, one legacy and one new space. Axiom is hitting milestones while Collins is behind schedule and overbudget. Pretty similar to how Boeing vs SpaceX played out in Commercial Crew
It's two different contracts. Collins were working on EVA suits for space station work, Axiom suits for lunar surface use.. Potentially the Artemis astronauts need three or four suits for a flight, Orion launch and landing suit, SpaceX HLS landing and launch suit, Axiom Lunar surface EVA suit, plus a Collins-or-whoever EVA suit for outside work on Gateway.
Axiom is hitting some milestones, but the big ones are up ahead.
Also might it just be....... ..... ..... companies were given too little money for the task. Might it be, that space suits are just hard and expensive. Since EVA suit is a minituarized spacecraft.
The point of the contracts was "the internal NASA program is getting expensive, let's give couple contractors less money to do the same job". Invicible hand of the markets will provide the savings.
Might it have been, that the amount of money predicted for NASA to do it was a realistic amount this hard task takes. Nasa pays billions for spacecraft. Space suit is spacecraft, a very special space craft. Maybe it just realistically takes say 10 billion to develop, make and deploy fleet of independent, minituarized, articulating and pressurised spacecraft.
There is no guarantee Axiom will succeed. The haven't done yet the major engineering and design review stages as said by the article.
It might be both Axiom and Collins throw the towel and the conclusion shall be "too ambitious task asked to be succeeded for too little financing. It wasn't NASA and government being inefficient. This stuff is just expensive and hard to do. People aren't willing to face the truth of thinking wrong on: surely that small piece of equipment can't be that expensive. It's just the suit, we aren't talking rockets here"
companies were given too little money for the task.
The companies themselves specified the amount of money.
If that's the case, then SpaceX will do it. They already developed their own suit for dragon. Keep your Old Space mentality to yourself.
SpaceX has a flight suit, which is little more than a glorified F1 racing suit at the end of the day. It is nowhere near the level of engineering, testing, and expertise required for a full EVA suit. Let alone one that needs to withstand lunar regolith.
Maybe you are behind on the news... https://spacenews.com/spacex-reveals-eva-suit-design-as-polaris-dawn-mission-approaches/
Throwing money at poorly managed companies is not the answer.
"Umbilicals provide life support for the suits."
Did you read your own article?
Yes. Yes, I did. Somehow SpaceX used their own money to create two separate suits with no whining or accusations of mismanagement.
You know, I don't know why I try to post. In 10 years SpaceX and China are going to be the only ones in space and on the moon. Everyone else will be waiting for cost plus contracts to come back.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| CST | (Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules |
| Central Standard Time (UTC-6) | |
| EMU | Extravehicular Mobility Unit (spacesuit) |
| EVA | Extra-Vehicular Activity |
| FOD | Foreign Object Damage / Debris |
| HLS | Human Landing System (Artemis) |
| ILC | Initial Launch Capability |
| IVA | Intra-Vehicular Activity |
| JSC | Johnson Space Center, Houston |
| LEM | (Apollo) Lunar Excursion Module (also Lunar Module) |
| LLO | Low Lunar Orbit (below 100km) |
| MBA | |
| NRHO | Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit |
| SLS | Space Launch System heavy-lift |
| SRB | Solid Rocket Booster |
| SSME | Space Shuttle Main Engine |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Raptor | Methane-fueled rocket engine under development by SpaceX |
| Starliner | Boeing commercial crew capsule CST-100 |
| cryogenic | Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure |
| (In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox | |
| hydrolox | Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer |
NOTE: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
17 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 30 acronyms.
[Thread #10230 for this sub, first seen 26th Jun 2024, 00:28]
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I've read that astronauts will remove their fingernails before a mission because otherwise the current space suits will pop them off anyway during the missions. 40 years is an embarrassingly long time to be using these awful suits. Surely we can come up with something better.
These articles/headlines are profoundly misleading. I worked at JSC on the EVA contract for 6+ years and never once heard of an astronaut deliberately removing their fingernails before a mission. The science alert article another commentor posted below mentioned that out of over 300 hand injuries, there were only 4 documented instances of fingernail loss due to EVA trauma on orbit. The rest (27) were during ground training. Astronauts start their training with in stock gloves that are adjusted to them based on basic measurements. As training goes on, the fit with those stock gloves improves via feedback/experience. Once selected for an actual mission, astronauts get custom fit gloves made that dramatically improve fit/function. Given that there are 4 incidents of nail loss in the literal hundreds of EVAs that have occurred (270 since 1998, each having at least two participants), it seems like a HUGE stretch to say that nail loss is an expected condition on orbit. We're talking one fingernail per year for ground training, and one or two per decade on orbit.
The MIT professor in the popsci article says "they've heard of astronauts preemptively removing fingernails." Do a little digging and you'll see thats pulled from a paper where a student of theirs cited "at least one instance" where it happened, based on anecdotal evidence. Please. Their credentials are solid and they seem like they're well-intentioned, but the Internet has blown those statements massively out of proportion.
That's quite relieving.
Given how few people have actually done an EVA, 4 out of 270 is still kinda bad.
Regardless, It's not very easy to lose a fingernail, so this brings a new respect for the job. I knew astronauts reported the glove situation sucked, but I didn't realize just how much they sucked.
Read this and follow a link in the article to learn about burps in space. The more I read the less I want to go.
saw unite trees mountainous full middle alleged dam poor snobbish
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
Or maybe the issue has been exaggerated: link
this sub sucks
so many clueless normies believing myths
I will just go out without the gloves on...
The one thing that really annoys me is that Collins has been knowing about "delays" for over a year....yet now that they want to ""de-scope" they are pointing to irrelevant issues such as global supply chain crisis- the people giving these statements are the real reason this program has stopped and the 10 tier manager levels they have.
And people think artemis is actually going to happen.
This entire program needs to be reevaluated from the top down.
Smarter everyday had a great video showing how UNSURE even the people in the program are about the current plans regarding it. Basic shit, like how many starship refueling launches will be needed.
Tha was one of Destin's worst videos. In several places it was clear he didn't know the details or have accurate info. Which is OK in a sense, he covers a multitude of subjects and can't be expected to have a deep knowledge of all of them. But this video was atypical, it was his analysis and critique, not him exploring a particular project on site. Yes, he used sources but a critique like that needed more sources, and for the sources to be dug into more.
I thought that was kind of his point: that there's a big communication problem. He, as a smart not-entirely-layperson, was seeing a bunch of challenges and departures from the plan one might expect from past programs. Not that they were necessarily unsolvable or unjustified, but just that without giving us a clearer picture, it was hard for the outside public to have confidence.
Oh please. It will never be billed as a pleasant experience. Space travel will be dangerous, deadly, and uncomfortable for the foreseeable future. Those who sign up for it will gladly ride if the chance is available. Starship is still in development so saying they don't have an exact number of refuels is a bit odd. Once it's ready and tested they will know. It's a complicated setup, but something that should have been done in the 90s
Ultimately it won't matter that much, everyone understood that there would be a lot of engineering going on at the back end given that none of the vehicles were finished.
And now they're getting close starship is already looking like it'll leap frog and it's almost certain they'll end up using a lot more spacex than they initially planned.
When NASA finally gets to the moon SpaceX will comp them their first Starbucks. Second one is $1B though.
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11d
I like Destin's normal videos but that video was super weird and felt like he was talking down to the literal experts on the thing... Everyone in that room and the viewers on YouTube would have been better off with a Smarter Everyday-style simple explanation of what the problems are, rather than acting like he knew something they didn't.
Yeah that was an incredible bit Argument from Increduality which he should know better about.
It doesn't matter whether its 1 or 100 launches, what matters is the turn around times, costs and expected failure rates and failure consequences. Now you can argue "why don't we know this", but then you'd also have to get into things like "what is the real goal of Artemis?" and "if you just redid Apollo, is that likely to be cheaper or faster?" (no).
I work for a company that is making a major component for the Artemis missions. That video was passed around the office and it seemed like the majority of our engineers and even many in management really liked what Destin had to say.
Destin isn't just some random youtube celebrity anyways. He worked as an engineer for years and he's currently getting a phd in engineering. He is one of the experts.
I like Destin's normal videos but that video was super weird and felt like he was talking down to the literal experts on the thing...
It comes across that way... because he's stating the obvious to a room full of people who's jobs all depend on not acknowledging the obvious. The point of the video is that those people need to hear the truth, like an intervention of sorts.
Funny how you describe the rocket scientist with relevant field knowledge a drama queen.
Smarter everyday had a great video showing how UNSURE even the people in the program are about the current plans regarding it. Basic shit, like how many starship refueling launches will be needed.
Smarter everyday was an idiot to release that video to the public. It's been used by a lot of people to misinform the general public (like yourself). Not knowing how many starship refueling launches will be needed was EXPECTED and also well known. It's not a problem because the rocket is still in development. We should not be figuring out exact by-the-date flight schedules for things years out.
YEARS OUT?! ARTEMIS 3 was supposed to be 2025.
2025 was a ridiculous date set only for political reasons that was never under any circumstance going to happen. Program slip happens, its expected. Especially when dealing with things as complex and temperamental as rockets.
Those dates aren't put by the people actually in charge of these programs, they are given by clueless politicians.
It likely won't be unless something major happens with government spending. I can't remember if it was Destin, Tim, or Scott that said it, but it's a job program for some politician's constituency first and foremost. The program was always a bit too optimistic at best, and wasteful at its worse.
I refuse to believe space suits are this hard. Decades and billions of dollars have only resulted in a few prototypes. It's maddening.
Well that is the thing, maybe this is also result of "we refuse to believe". We refuse to believe the XEMU was going as fast and as cheaply as this can be done. So contract couple companies and give them less money and tighter schedule.
Well turns out minituarizing lifesupport and articulating pressure vessels is hard and expensive.
It is that hard, it is that expensive and people are fooled by "its just the suit" thinking. Think it as not a suit, but minituarized and on top of that articulating spacecraft. So take whatever it costs to make a space capsule and increase the cost from there. Since between rigid body space capsule and fundamentally articulating pressure envelope spacecraft, the latter is the harder and more expensive problem. Everything needs to be smaller, lighter, more reliable amd so on. In capsule you have IVA spacesuit as back up. Inside EVA suit? The suit is both the main craft and it's back up aka there is no back up. So everything must be even more reliable.
I assure you... they are even harder than this implies. We cowboyed them for Apollo. Now that safety is such a huge factor, main systems, redundancies, OSHA regulations, you name it have all come into play. Now you have size and weight constraints, and it is a hefty hefty task. Giving these massive contracts out when NASA's own next-gen suit was finally wrapping up was a pretty dumb move IMO. But congress wanted what they wanted.
Despite all the negativity here, it was an awesome program....
FFP? Screwing over my space program? Inconceivable!
whats ffp?
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As someone who has been working on this program for 2 years. This is kind of a sucky way to find out. Through reddit...