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NASA/Joel Kowsky SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft preparing for the Artemis I mission. POT On Monday, June 20, at 2:40 p.m. local time in Cape Canaveral, Florida (20:40
On Monday, June 20, at 2:40 p.m. local time in Cape Canaveral, Florida (20:40 p.m. in Spain), the SLS rocket will pass the final fire test if all goes well. It will be on launch pad 39B, where the legendary Saturn V set sail for our natural satellite with Apollo 10 in 1969. Now the Space Launch System takes its place. This experiment wet suit rehearsalIt will be the last before the promising giant takes us to the Moon, where we should never have gone.
this wet suit rehearsal rehearsal of all operations performed prior to launch. The fuel and oxidizer are cryogenic, so they cannot be stored in the rocket and must be filled before they can take off. The upload will be put to the test on June 20, with preprocessing up to T – 10 seconds. If SLS passes them, everything will be ready for the first launch of the Artemis program, NASA’s ambitious goal of getting humans back to the Moon.
In the case of SLS, there are approximately 2.6 million liters of charge between oxygen and liquid hydrogen; The amount of propellant required to orbit the Moon and return (the Artemis I mission will not land). That amount would barely fit in an Olympic-size pool six feet deep.
SLS is a giant. It belongs to the category of super-heavy launchers, which are essential for tackling massive missions like going to the Moon or Mars.
Launchers are typically rated by how many kilograms or tons they can put into low orbit (LEO). low earth orbitup to about 1,500 km) and those that can put more than 50 tons in LEO are considered super heavy launchers.
This is more than the heaviest trailer you’ll ever see on a full road. It accelerated to about 28,000 km/h and was tuned to circumnavigate the Earth.
SLS is even bigger. With a height of nearly 100 meters and a total weight of 2,700 tons, the first version, called Block-1, will have a load capacity of 95t LEO. And there are two more versions to come: Block-1B (105t in LEO) and Block-2 (130t in LEO), because 95t in LEO is not enough to fulfill NASA’s plans to return to the Moon.
Mass that can be sent to the Moon (charge in TLI, Trans Moon Injection), much less than what can be loaded into LEO. In this case, different versions of the SLS have a payload capacity of around 27t, 40t and 45t at TLI, and every kilo will be significant for ambitious plans that previously included establishing an orbital station around the Moon. itself, the Gateway to descend and rise to the surface. If all goes well, this will happen in 2025 as part of the Artemis III mission.
SLS is to the Artemis program what Saturn V is to the Apollo program. And while more than 50 years later Saturn V must have been greatly surpassed, the reality is that it didn’t. Globally, the payloads of both launchers are very similar to both LEO and TLI. This is if we talk about the Block-2 version of the SLS, because the version currently on the launch pad is still quite far away.
It may seem strange, but politics plays a fundamental role in these matters, and the situation is now completely different from the sixties of the last century. After Kennedy’s famous “We Choose to Go to the Moon” speech, America was a country with a shared goal of national pride and capable of devoting itself to war. mad currently travel an amount equivalent to about two-thirds of Spain’s overall annual budget. Today that urge no longer exists. With the relocation of Democratic and Republican governments, the political sign is changed, mutually canceling space programs and launchers, making the total approved investment nearly ten times less. Therefore, the road for SLS has been bumpy so far.
After the Columbia disaster, NASA had to reorganize its entire strategy. He needed an astronaut transport system to the International Space Station (ISS) to replace the shuttle and wanted to support the deep space program. The answer was the Constellation program with Ares I launchers for manned missions to LEO and Ares V for missions to the moon and Mars.
After accumulating many cost overruns and delays, the program was canceled in 2009. But after pressure from the companies involved in making Ares, the Constellation program spawned the Space Launch System.
After the precedents, the SLS needed to be built in a short time and at a reasonable cost, so it was decided to start from existing elements, primarily the Space Shuttle. Shuttle’s extra RS-25 engines and their amplifier (these side rockets accompanying the legendary orange tank) would form the basis of new ones.
The idea was to be operational before 2017, but despite all the “facilities” the program continues to accumulate delays and cost overruns.
The first launch is expected in August 2022, more than five years later than originally planned. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that one of the few factors that may have contributed to this was some kind of contract philosophy from NASA for this project. cost plus contractThis means that NASA allocates a budget to the contractors, but also bears the extra costs that may arise.
In fact, given the cost overruns and delays, the program’s funds being close to depletion, and the high price of each launch (hard to estimate, but estimated at around two billion per launch), especially when compared to other alternatives, SLS could hardly travel outside of Artemis. is seen. Even the Europa Clipper, its iconic mission in the outer solar system, was handed over to SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy. There are currently a few attempts to make it viable beyond the Artemis program, but to do so will need to drastically reduce its per-launch costs.
However, despite all the difficulties, the Artemis program is taking shape through this giant, and if nothing prevents it, from August we will begin to feel the sense of seeing again how it is built, through various missions. The road to the moon.
It is possible to see the rocket live and wet suit rehearsal It is scheduled to take place on 20 June in Spain at 20:40. 
Alejandro Manuel Gómez San Juan, Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering, University of Vigo
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.
Source: El Nacional
Alice Smith is a seasoned journalist and writer for Div Bracket. She has a keen sense of what’s important and is always on top of the latest trends. Alice provides in-depth coverage of the most talked-about news stories, delivering insightful and thought-provoking articles that keep her readers informed and engaged.
