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#501 2025-01-20 14:16:58

tahanson43206
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Registered: 2018-04-27
Posts: 20,307

Re: GW Johnson Postings and @Exrocketman1 YouTube videos

Preview of Coming Updates....

GW Johnson has updated the spreadsheet and user documentation.

The original version(s) will remain in place for comparison if anyone is interested.

The new version replaces one of the sheets with a new one designed to concentrate on the g force and to provide heat/toe gradient.

The question is to what extend a difference of G force at the head vs feet will result in mental issues for crew and passengers.

The Baton style ship design is looking ** really ** good as each day passes, and the advantages of the design become more clear.

Here is the updated spreadsheet:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/q6itfabc … rbppk&dl=0

And here is the updated User Manual:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/pk2px3z4 … z76y3&dl=0

(th)

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#502 2025-01-22 12:18:29

tahanson43206
Moderator
Registered: 2018-04-27
Posts: 20,307

Re: GW Johnson Postings and @Exrocketman1 YouTube videos

This post offers Version 3 of the Spin spreadsheet and User Manual.

This one has an improved general solution sheet.

Spreadsheet:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/03vk5b97 … 34szm&dl=0

User Manual:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5zyueuhi … 112kv&dl=0

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#503 2025-02-10 13:31:17

GW Johnson
Member
From: McGregor, Texas USA
Registered: 2011-12-04
Posts: 5,869
Website

Re: GW Johnson Postings and @Exrocketman1 YouTube videos

Major news from AIAA’s “Daily Launch” email newsletter for Monday 2-10-2025, with link to a longer Ars Technica article that reproduced here.  The 1st 3 paragraphs were in the “Daily Launch”.
---   
Boeing has informed its employees of uncertainty in future SLS contracts

The White House has not made a final decision yet on the large rocket

By Eric Berger, senior space editor at Ars Technica, 7 Feb 2025 

The primary contractor for the Space Launch System rocket, Boeing, is preparing for the possibility that NASA cancels the long-running program.

On Friday, with less than an hour's notice, David Dutcher, Boeing's vice president and program manager for the SLS rocket, scheduled an all-hands meeting for the approximately 800 employees working on the program. The apparently scripted meeting lasted just six minutes, and Dutcher didn't take questions.

During his remarks, Dutcher said Boeing's contracts for the rocket could end in March and that the company was preparing for layoffs in case the contracts with the space agency were not renewed. "Cold and scripted" is how one person described Dutcher's demeanor.

Giving a 60-day notice

The aerospace company, which is the primary contractor for the rocket's large core stage, issued the notifications as part of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (or WARN) Act, which requires US employers with 100 or more full-time employees to provide a 60-day notice in advance of mass layoffs or plant closings.

"To align with revisions to the Artemis program and cost expectations, today we informed our Space Launch Systems team of the potential for approximately 400 fewer positions by April 2025," a Boeing spokesperson told Ars. "This will require 60-day notices of involuntary layoff be issued to impacted employees in coming weeks, in accordance with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. We are working with our customer and seeking opportunities to redeploy employees across our company to minimize job losses and retain our talented teammates."

The timing of Friday's hastily called meeting aligns with the anticipated release of President Trump's budget proposal for fiscal-year 2026. This may not be an entire plan but rather a "skinny" budget that lays out a wish list of spending requests for Congress and some basic economic projections. Congress does not have to act on Trump's budget priorities.

Multiple sources said there has been a healthy debate within the White House and senior leadership at NASA, including acting administrator Janet Petro, about the future of the SLS rocket and the Artemis Moon program. Some commercial space advocates have been pressing hard to cancel the rocket outright. Petro has been urging the White House to allow NASA to fly the Artemis II and Artemis III missions using the initial version of the SLS rocket before the program is canceled.

Critics of the large and expensive rocket—a single launch costs in excess of $2 billion, exclusive of any payloads or the cost of ground systems—say NASA should cut its losses. Keeping the SLS rocket program around for the first lunar landing would actually bog down progress, these critics say, because large contractors such as Boeing would be incentivized to slow down work and drag out funding with their cost-plus contracts for as long as possible.

On Saturday, a day after this story was published, NASA released a statement saying the SLS rocket remains an "essential component" of the Artemis campaign. "NASA and its industry partners continuously work together to evaluate and align budget, resources, contractor performance, and schedules to execute mission requirements efficiently, safely, and successfully in support of NASA’s Moon to Mars goals and objectives," a spokesperson said. "NASA defers to its industry contractors for more information regarding their workforces."

Long-delayed and expensive

Friday's all-hands meeting indicates that Boeing executives believe there is at least the possibility that the Trump White House will propose ending the SLS rocket as part of its budget proposal in March.

The US Congress, in concert with senior leaders at NASA, directed the space agency to develop the SLS rocket in 2011. Built to a significant degree from components of the space shuttle, including its main engines and side-mounted boosters, the SLS rocket was initially supposed to launch by the end of 2016. It did not make its debut flight until the end of 2022.

NASA has spent approximately $3 billion a year developing the rocket and its ground systems over the program's lifetime. While handing out guaranteed contracts to Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Aerojet, and other contractors, the government's rocket-building enterprise has been superseded by the private industry. SpaceX has developed two heavy-lift rockets in the last decade, and Blue Origin just launched its own, with the New Glenn booster. Each of these rockets is at least partially reusable and flies at less than one-tenth the cost of the SLS rocket.

---   

My take:

I was expecting to see Starliner cancelled before SLS,  but it may work out to be SLS first.  We will see if Trump’s sowing chaos can overcome the entrenched pork-barrel politics of powerful Senators.  Meanwhile,  even the Artemis moon program itself could possibly be on the chopping block.  That was definitely hinted in the Ars Technica article,  in the 7th of 12 paragraphs.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2025-02-10 13:33:15)


GW Johnson
McGregor,  Texas

"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew,  especially one dead from a bad management decision"

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