Future Timeline

NASA's return to the moon, known as the Artemis Program, is powered by its shiny new Space Launch System (SLS). However, not every part of that rocket is new. It relies on RS-25 engines repurposed from the Space Shuttle program, but NASA's supply of old engines is finite. The agency has begun a series of "hot fire" tests to help engineers build a new family of RS-25 boosters that will catapult SLS into space beginning in the late 2020s.

The Space Launch System is currently the world's most powerful operational rocket. That will change as soon as SpaceX gets the kinks in Starship worked out, but the SLS is still an obscenely powerful launch vehicle. When it clears the tower, the SLS is propelled by two enormous solid rocket boosters and four RS-25 engines. The solid boosters account for most of the power, but those RS-25s are essential to keep the rocket flying after the solid boosters are exhausted.

weatheriscool wrote: ↑Mon Oct 23, 2023 7:21 pm NASA Begins Testing New Engines for Space Launch System
It's going to run out of old Space Shuttle boosters eventually.

CNN — After years of delays and a dizzying array of setbacks during test flights, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is finally set to make its inaugural crewed launch.

The mission is on track to take off from Florida as soon as May 6, carrying NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to the International Space Station, marking what could be a historic and long-awaited victory for the beleaguered Starliner program.

“Design and development is hard — particularly with a human space vehicle,” said Mark Nappi, vice president and Starliner program manager at Boeing, during a Thursday news briefing. “There’s a number of things that were surprises along the way that we had to overcome. … It certainly made the team very, very strong. I’m very proud of how they’ve overcome every single issue that we’ve encountered and gotten us to this point.”

Boeing and NASA officials made the decision Thursday to move forward with the launch attempt in less two weeks. However, Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, noted that May 6 is “not a magical date.”

Boeing's ill-fated Starliner spacecraft has suffered another major setback as NASA announced today that its first crewed launch has been postponed indefinitely. This comes after four launch dates were scrubbed in less than three weeks due to technical issues.

With all of Boeing's current troubles, today's announcement is hard to spin as anything other than bad news. Certainly, it's a major embarrassment.

Starliner began life as part of NASA's commercial space program aimed at replacing the Russian Soyuz spacecraft with ones built and operated by US private companies to ferry cargo and crew to and from the International Space Station.

As is the usual American practice, the idea was to not only achieve a particular mission objective, but to spark whole new industries by having two or more companies competing with one another. In this case, it was Boeing and SpaceX, with Boeing being seen as the unbeatable 800-pound gorilla in the room.

Boeing and NASA are moving forward with the launch of the company’s Starliner capsule, set to carry U.S. astronauts for the first time, despite a “stable” leak in the spacecraft’s propulsion system.

“We are comfortable with the causes that we’ve identified for this specific leak,” Mark Nappi, Boeing vice president and manager of the company’s Commercial Crew program, said during a press conference on Friday. “We know we can manage this [leak], so this is really not a safety of flight issue,” Nappi added.

Boeing is now targeting June 1 for the first crewed launch of its spacecraft, with backup opportunities on June 2, June 5 and June 6.

The mission, known as the Starliner Crew Flight Test, is intended to serve as the final major development test of the capsule by delivering a pair of NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station before flying routine missions.