Posted on 03/08/2015 8:35:50 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The booster known as qualification motor, QM-1, is the largest solid rocket motor ever built and will be ignited on March 11 for a full duration static fire test by prime contractor Orbital ATK at the newly merged firms test facility in Promontory, Utah.
Ignition of the horizontally mounted motor is planned for 11:30 a.m. EDT (9:30 a.m. MDT) on Wednesday, March 11 on the T-97 test stand.
The test will be broadcast live on NASA TV.
...
The new 5-segment booster is directly derived from the 4-segment booster used during NASA’s three decade long Space Shuttle program. One segment has been added and therefore the new, longer and more powerful booster must be requalified to launch the SLS and humans.
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
I have seen these solid boosters.They will go the distance before detaching.
Would they have the cojones to point it against the rotation of the erf?
Let’s just hope they don,t screw the pooch
Or ignite three or four at the same time?
I was wondering which way it’s gonna be pointed.
Couldn’t they just grab The Messiah, strap the booster on his back and see how far up he goes? After all, his abiding interest has always been reaching higher than anyone before.
Why is NASA doing this? I thought their primary mission was to reach out to Ragheads to help them feel better about themselves.
I would love to post where they should position it, but Zero would probably love the initial thrust!
Once you light them, you can’t turn ‘em down or off.
Two more O-Rings to fail and several tonnes more of ammonium perchlorate combustion products dumped into the upper atmosphere on every flight.
Fitting the shuttle with solid boosters was a bad idea back when Mondale, Proxmire, Javits, Bahy and Kennedy forced NASA into financial constraints that virtually mandated solid boosters as a cost saving measure back in the 1970s. Cost: 7 lives.
It was a bad idea then. Still is. SLS is a better design than the shuttle but at the end of the day it's still brittle technology.
They better not mess up Daylight Savings Time!
The only reason the boosters failed with the Challenger disaster is because NASA management disregarded safety protocols. Otherwise, there’s very little that can go wrong due to the lack of moving parts. As long as it’s reassembled correctly after each refueling...
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