The most powerful rocket NASA has ever created will launch an unmanned Orion spacecraft to the moon as part of the Artemis 1 mission. When ready for launch, it weighs 5.75 million pounds yet climbs roughly 500 feet straight up in only seven seconds.
An depiction of the Space Launch System, NASA’s most powerful rocket to date, in preparation for launch. NASA
Before the launch of its much-anticipated maiden rocket, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told CBS News, “I’m worried that people believe it’s ordinary.” “However, when those candles go out, the situation is anything from regular. It is a high-wire act from beginning to end. This is significant. And it is lovely. It’s a monster, too! Simply said, the magnitude overwhelms you.”
The start of a two-hour window for blastoff from pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center is now set for 8:33 a.m. EDT on Monday.
Here are some astounding details regarding NASA’s powerful rocket:
Shrinkage and Fuel loadThe enormous fuel tank in the SLS core stage will contract by nearly 6 inches in length and 1 inch in diameter when filled with 537,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen at minus 423 degrees Fahrenheit. The liquid oxygen tank for the rocket will become an inch and a half shorter and roughly 1.3 inches wider.Everything that attaches to the tanks, including ducts and vent lines, brackets, etc., must do so with flexible bellows like an accordion because of this shrinking.
Vintage processorIt employs the same kind of Power PC CPU as a long-out-of-date G3 Macintosh Powerbook to regulate every part of the rocket’s ascent to space. But the customized operating system is a lot more effective.
Huge aircraftEight 747 jumbo planes might remain in the air thanks to the core stage’s four RS-25 engines’ 2 million pounds of power. 14 four-engine jumbo planes may be propelled by the 3.6 million pounds of thrust produced by each of the two solid-fuel boosters.
Turning onIf the RS-25 engines’ energy production were turned into electricity, it could power almost 850,000 miles of lighting, enough to go 15 times around the Earth and back.
The four engines provide double the power required to carry ten ships of the Nimitz class at 30 knots.consume propellant
An ordinary 20,000-gallon swimming pool may be drained in 13 seconds because to the 1,500 gallons of fuel that each of the four core stage engines uses per second.
The two solid-fuel boosters for the SLS rocket need 5.5 tons of propellant per second. The heat produced by the boosters during their two minutes of operation could power 92,000 households for a whole day if it were turned into energy.
Intense heatWhile conducting test firings at Northrop Grumman’s facility in Utah, the exhaust from rocket boosters is hot enough to melt desert sand into glass.shotgun blasting
Eight hefty bolts, four at the base of each solid rocket booster, hold the 5.75-million-pound SLS rocket to the launch pad. Bolts are broken by explosive charges during booster ignition, and the SLS lifts off.
Acceleration
The SLS rocket’s twin solid rocket boosters provide 75% of its total thrust during the first two minutes of flight, propulsion that propels the spacecraft to an altitude of 27 miles and speeds of almost 4,000 mph.
The rocket will be travelling at almost 18,000 mph when its main engines cut out eight minutes after takeoff. That would allow you to cross 88 end-to-end football fields in a single second. In order to escape Earth orbit and launch the Orion spacecraft to the moon, the rocket’s upper stage will boost the speed to 22,600 mph, or 110 football fields per second.
Since 1984, Bill Harwood has been a full-time reporter for United Press International, first as the bureau head at Cape Canaveral, and now as a consultant for CBS News.
He covered several commercial and military launches in addition to 129 space shuttle flights and every interplanetary trip since Voyager 2’s encounter of Neptune. Harwood, a dedicated amateur astronomer who is based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is a co-author of “Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia.”
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