Source: NASA gives priority to Artemis ground test over commercial astronaut launch – Spaceflight Now NASA officials gave the green light Friday for the first all-commercial astronaut launch to the International Space Station on a SpaceX rocket as soon as April 3. But the astronaut launch could be delayed a day, or longer, to give priority to a countdown test for NASA’s Space Launch System moon rocket on a neighboring launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center. At the end of a flight readiness review Friday, officials from NASA, SpaceX, and Axiom Space — the company managing the commercial astronaut flight to the space station — formally signed off on proceeding with the launch of four private citizens aboard a Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spaceship. The launch is set for next Sunday, April 3, at 1:13 p.m. EDT (1713 GMT) from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, the same day NASA plans to load super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants into the Space Launch System rocket for a countdown dress rehearsal on pad 39B. The dress rehearsal will allow NASA’s SLS launch team to run a mock countdown to the T-minus 10 second mark, just prior to the moment when the rocket’s four core stage engine would ignite during a real launch. The rocket is scheduled to launch on NASA’s Artemis 1 mission in June, according to Kathy Lueders, head of NASA’s space operations mission directorate. . . . I am not sympathetic to a decade late, well over budget, scrapheap wonder delaying a SpaceX mission. NASA should push the SLS practice off a couple of days and not stand in the way. Bob Wilson
once their super cooled hydrogen is loaded on board - the venting begins. Wonder how long it would take before there wouldn't be enough hydrogen to get to their destination. .
Why in the world would we abandon the most advance spaceship ever built that continues to be fully functional and would take 30 years to fully replace? Just because you destroy perfectly good cookies and enjoy how mad everyone gets, doesn't mean we're gonna let you destroy our one and only big spaceship too.
I don't see NASA "blocking" SpaceX... In fact SpaceX won the bid for a moon landing from them. And yes, SLS is a total joke with no reusability and an eventual launch cost as high as $4 Billion making the entire program destined to get killed next time it needs congressional funding. Only reason the program still even exists is because it's been around for so long and the pigs at the trough who build it spend alot of money on lobbyists who spread campaign donations around.
I don't think of NASA as 'by design' blocking it any more or less than a decade of poor decisions. Bob Wilson
Yea... Single use vs. reusable rockets kinda reminds me of the Automakers telling Tesla they'll fail because gas engines aren't going anywhere suddenly realizing that they are going to lose almost all of their marketshare in a few years if they don't do a decade of electric car advancement in a few years. As in it's a lot more than a chip shortage that's making new cars so hard to find...
... a 21st century freak show, America won't need Einstein or Oppenheimer to deduce, not since its days when its space shuttles went KA-BLAM, has NASA been America's A-team, on aerospace. Gee whiz, what do they think gave it away? Could it be, whacked-out astronaut Lisa Nowak, who can drive, nonstop, Houston to Orando with just two "Maximum Absorbency Undergarments," for which to rub out a sexual rival, U.S. Air Force Captain, Colleen Shipman? Say it ain't so, America's best days, indeed, well behind her, if we still do have an A-Team on aerospace, it ain't NASA - Samuel, '04 Ruthiemobile
"But the astronaut launch could be delayed a day" or maybe more. Since when is it considered a big deal to delay a launch for normal reasons? The launch complex was not originally designed to launch multiple rockets per day. See below from the rest of the article linked in the original post.
ISS technology may have reached the end of its design life. If modules had been replaced or refurbished in orbit, well that didn’t happen. Bob Wilson
I’m not aware of the cost/benefit numbers for ISS, but my Spidey senses are leaning “abandon-in-place” and start to think about what comes next. Maybe throw a few bucks into keeping the platform in a stable orbit…. Again…AGNOSTIC numbers will tell. We kept five Space Shuttles flying probably 10 years (and 7 humans) longer than we needed to because we didn’t have a follow-on programme. THAT is the mistake we should not repeat.
