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Old September 9th, 2022 #19
Ray Allan
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Join Date: May 2014
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Challenger was destroyed 73 seconds after launch at fairly high altitude. Imagine if the SLS rocket explodes immediately after ignition, taking out Pad 39B with it. Imagine what that would do to NASA's image. No astronauts would die since this is an unmanned flight, but a catastrophic failure such as this would cancel the Artemis program in one fell swoop. Something similar happened on July 3, 1969 three weeks before Apollo 11 landed on the Moon when the second unmanned test launch of the Soviet N-1 Moon rocket exploded several seconds after launch, destroying the rocket and severely damaging the launch pad. It took nearly 2 years for another launch attempt, which was also a failure. In fact, all four N-1 rockets tested from 1969 to 1972 blew up before the USSR's manned lunar program was canceled. The failures were all similar to Artemis's scrubs - insufficient testing of the first stage rockets and fueling system. In N-1's case it was the difficulty of trying to get 33 rocket engines on the first stage to fire and function properly, of which insufficient testing was done, such as live fire testing. SpaceX's new booster, called Super Heavy has 30 Raptor engines, and SpaceX is being very cautious test-firing them, so far only a few a time. But they will all have to work flawlessly whenever their first orbital test with Starship will launch.

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Last edited by Ray Allan; September 9th, 2022 at 10:57 PM.