THE “SENATE LAUNCH SYSTEM” MYTH

 

By Wes Oleszewski- Aero News Network spaceflight analyst

NASA has launched astronauts aboard the Artemis II mission to the moon in 2026 as planned. The Artemin II mission was boosted by the Space Launch System, also known by the acronym the “SLS.” Interestingly this shuttle-derived launch vehicle has gone through a rough political history in order to get to this point.

The date was January 14, 2004, when President George W. Bush announced his, “Vision for Space Exploration.” This was just 11 months and two weeks after the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia. His directive called for the retirement of the Space Shuttle as soon as the International Space Station was completed. Thereafter, NASA was to press on to the Moon and Mars. Considering that the Shuttle would be retired, in order to achieve the President’s vision, NASA needed a booster that could loft more than the Shuttle’s 65,000 pounds of payload. Yet, NASA was also constrained to a very limited budget. So, building a whole new heavy lift booster from scratch was out of the question. Instead, it was decided to create a heavy lift booster using hardware adapted from the Shuttle Program.

Very shortly a new program was devised by NASA to meet the goals of President Bush’s “vision.” The program was called “Constellation” and a part of it was a heavy lift booster whose first stage was comprised of Shuttle hardware. Early on it was called the “Ares IV” and consisted of an extended Shuttle external tank with five RS-25 Shuttle main engines clustered on the bottom and two up-graded Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB) on each side. All of which made up the first stage. The second stage was a very vaporous concept which normally showed something between one and four Apollo-era style J-2 engines. Over time that second stage never managed to jell while other elements of Constellation constantly evolved. By about 2007 the heavy lift booster’s first stage settled in with two enlarged SRBs just four RS-25 engines and was renamed “Ares V.”

The Bush administration expired with the first month of 2009 and the Obama administration took power. Obama had started his bid to become president telling voters that if elected he would cancel all of NASA and “…give all of that money to education.” When it was discovered that he could not be elected without winning Florida, which had several thousand voters employed in the spaceflight business- he promptly switched his banter to saying that he now supported NASA. In his first budget, however, Obama simply provided no funds for NASA’s Constellation, or any other human spaceflight. Thus, all the nation’s plans for human space exploration would be deleted. Yet, the program still enjoyed wide support (about a 2 to 1 ratio) in both houses of Congress. Plus, considering that the nation had already spent more than eleven billion dollars on Constellation, the members of Congress were not going to let the nation’s spaceflight heritage simply be red-penned away.

Although the Obama administration continued to attempt to cancel NASA’s human spaceflight efforts, a series of Congressional bills were passed which blocked his administration’s efforts. Foremost in those Congressional orders was fulfillment of the need for a national heavy lift launch vehicle. From that effort NASA created the Space Launch System, or SLS. Nasa engineers then revived the basic form of the Ares V and turned it into a launch vehicle that could send astronauts to the Moon. The Trump administration revived the program and re-named it “Artemis.” That program sent a test version of the crew vehicle, known as Orion, to the Moon on November 26, 2022 and saw it return safely. On April 1, 2026, that same launch vehicle sent the first crew of astronauts since December of 1972, to the Moon.

Notice that nowhere in this history did the Senate design anything. There were no engineers sitting at design desks working with spaceflight or rocketry software and there never has been. That is NOT the job of the Congress. SLS was designed by NASA’s spaceflight contractors such as Boeing, Northrop Grumman, ULA and countless sub-contractors. To slur the vehicle by saying that SLS stands for “Senate Launch System” is not only a childish vilification but especially is a slap in the face to the honest engineers, managers and technicians who have struggled so long to bridge the eight-year long void created by the Obama administration. The Senate had nothing more to do with this vehicle other than approving and insuring funding- exactly as they do with every other major government program plus specifying that it must be a shuttle-derived vehicle. Thus, when term “Senate Launch System” is used anywhere, it is nothing more than a myth.

APOLLO 8: ALUMINUM FOIL AND A WIRE COAT-HANGER ANTENNA

         How many of you were around on December 23 of 1968 when what is happening today, April 6, 2026, happened for the first time? I was among the millions of people who watched it live. This excerpt is from my book, “Growing up with Spaceflight: Apollo Part One.” Please keep in mind that it was a very different world back then. There was no Internet, no NASA Live, no NASAspaceflight.com, and only three TV networks to follow the mission.

Patch I  bought at KSC Feb. 1973

Note: the price...

Our little house at 3324 Lexington Drive in Sheridan Park was packed full of relatives and neighbors. It was Christmas eve 1968 and my folks were hosting a party for our closest family friends. All of the adults were laughing, talking, eating, drinking and smoking. Mostly smoking.

Being an asthmatic, I always had a very low tolerance for smokers and smoking, but in 1968 most people smoked.

My parents had both just quit that foul habit primarily due to my new doctor, an allergy-specialist, and the first true no-nonsense person that I have ever met. Dr. Goodwin was said to have, “the bedside manner of a bull,” but he got his points across to me and my family. Upon my second visit, where he reviewed my medical tests with my parents and myself, he pointed his pen at me and said, “If you ever smoke you will die.” Then he turned to my Mom and Dad and said, “If you two want him to get any better and to grow up to have a normal life, you both have to quit smoking. Today!” So firm and deadly-serious was his manner that both of my parents gave up cigarettes on the spot— cold turkey. Dad later took up a pipe, but at least he gave up the coffin-nails. So it was that at our household Christmas party seven months later, at least my Mom and Dad were not a part of making the blue haze that hung heavy in our living-room.

Although the TV was on, you really could not hear it and there was no place for a kid to sit and watch it. Besides that the party “atmosphere” was akin to sitting in a smudge pot. In short order I disappeared into my parent’s room where the “old” family TV resided. Every network had the same lead story to broadcast. It was a historic adventure called “Apollo 8.”

Stuffing one of my Dad’s T-shirts under the door to keep out the local pollution, I turned on the old TV and let her tubes warm up. After a few seconds the familiar crackle of static electricity began as the cathode-ray picture tube slowly built up to its 30,000 volt, shadow-mask face potential. Soon the blue tinted black and white image began to fuzz into clarity. With haste I spun the channel selection dial to UHF and channel 25; CBS. That channel was where Walter Cronkite was hosting and it came in the best on the old TV- primarily because channel 25’s broadcast antenna was located about 1,202 feet from my parent’s bedroom. Of course the aluminum foil that my Dad had wrapped around the distorted, wire coat-hanger that served as the TV set’s UHF antenna may have helped too.

Cronkite was saying that they were expecting another live TV broadcast from the moon shortly. There was not a hint that he had been on the air almost continually since about four o’clock in the morning. Just the excitement in his voice told me that something historic was taking place and it had my total attention. I sat, alone, cross-legged, on the foot of my parents bed, in the darkness. The party commotion happening just up the hallway seemed so distant it was as if I was in the studio with Cronkite myself. Perhaps countless other viewers across America felt exactly the same way at that moment. Now, Cronkite told us, the crew was ready to do their final TV broadcast from the Moon. The CBS “simulation” showed a model of an Apollo CSM from the rear with the expanse of the slightly curved lunar surface just below. Soon the voices and cross-talk from Mission Control made it apparent that the TV show from the moon was about to begin.

NASA’s Public Affairs Officer (PAO) announced that we were one minute… and then two minutes into acquisition of signal with Apollo 8, and CAPCOM Ken Mattingly, who had recently changed shifts with Mike Collins, told the crew that all of their systems looked great. Then the PAO announced that they had a TV picture in Mission Control. Quickly the picture shifted from the simulation of the flight to the fuzzy, slow-scan TV images of the lunar surface. It actually looked like a fishbowl with the words “Live Transmission From Apollo 8” superimposed on it. After a few moments, CBS cut back to Cronkite as the crew moved the camera to another window. The picture turned to a view inside Mission Control as the crew started out by saying that this was Apollo 8 live from the Moon, as if we did not already know that. Next they all gave their final descriptions of the moon and their impressions of the place that no human had ever before visited.

"The moon is a different thing to each one of us." Borman led the narration, "I think that each one of… each one carries his own impressions of what… of what he's seen today. I know my own impression is that it's a vast, lonely, forbidding type of existence or expanse of nothing; it looks rather like clouds and clouds of pumice stone. And it certainly would not appear to be a very… inviting place to live or work. Jim, what have you thought about most?"

"Well, Frank," Lovell picked up the narration, "my thoughts are very similar; the vast loneliness up here of the moon is awe-inspiring, it makes you realize just what you have back there on earth. The earth from here is a grand oasis in the big vastness of space. Bill, what do you think?"

"I think," Anders continued, "the thing that impressed me the most was the lunar sunrises and sunsets. These, in particular, bring out the stark nature of the terrain, the long shadows really bring out the relief that is here (and) hard to see in this very bright surface that we’re going over right now. We are now coming onto Smyth's Sea, a small mare region covered with dark material. There's a fresh bright impact crater on the edge towards us. And mountain range on the other side. These mountains are the Pyrenees.”

About then the signals from the moon were disturbed and the crew’s show became abbreviated.

“Apollo 8,” CAPCOM interrupted quickly, “we’re not receiving picture now, over.”

Anders continued with his description as Houston repeated that they were not getting a picture. Suddenly the crew fixed the problem and I found myself looking through the rendezvous window, over the sill and out toward the Moon. All of my thoughts of presents and Christmas morning were suddenly muted. There were three guys up there circling the Moon, and I felt as if I were right there with them. Of course their view of the Moon was a great deal better than my blurred, washed-out black and white TV view. But still, it was THE Moon, and we were all there— all of us who were growing up with spaceflight.

From the din of the Christmas party voices out in my living room I heard a few quips of “Look at that!” as the same show that I was watching was playing on the TV out there. They, however, could not hear the words of the astronauts who were pointing out craters and evaluating the proposed site for the first lunar landing. Although, from my perspective, I was alone watching the event, it was later calculated that this broadcast was watched by more humans than any other single event in history to that date. Suddenly the crew stopped their lunar observations and said that they had a message to those of us on earth. They read from the Book of Genesis. It was a fantastic moment that added a shade of faith and humanity to the pure technology of the mission. It also got them sued by an atheist.

My parents ended their big Christmas party about an hour later with half-drunken and completely-drunken neighbors and relatives stumbling happily out into the bitter-cold mid-Michigan winter night. Fortunately, most of them lived nearby in our subdivision. The one who was the most intoxicated ended up face down in a snowdrift near our driveway and was able to be poured into the back seat of his car and driven home by his wife. Mom and Dad were left to clean up the house and prepare for Christmas morning. That, of course, meant putting us kids to bed. We all scrambled into our sleeping nests having been told that the sooner we went to sleep, the sooner Santa would come. That worked well on my younger sister and brother, but I found that my thoughts were centered more onto my 1/96 scale model Apollo CSM. I lay there in the dark holding it up as if passing over the lunar surface, or peeking into its small windows and looking at the little crewmen inside. I also studied the big Service Propulsion System engine bell. Cronkite had told us dozens of times that it had to fire in order for the crew to return to the Earth. Oddly, at the ripe old age of 11, unlike some adults, I had no doubt at all that it would work. I fell asleep with that level of innocent confidence.

GEMINI 8: PRE-EMPT ANYTHING, BUT NOT “BATMAN!”

 

Command Pilot Neil Armstrong and Pilot Dave Scott had taken their Gemini 8 spacecraft and accomplished something that had never been done before by the U.S. They had docked with another spacecraft in orbit. The date was March 16^th, 1966, and as their spacecraft flew high over the Tananarive tracking station the crew proudly reported that they were going through the planned yaw maneuver with their Agena target vehicle secured to their spacecraft’s nose.

 While all of this was happening on the other side of the planet, I was just settling in at our warm little house in Sheridan Park in Saginaw, Michigan. It was just a bit after 7:00 in the evening Lexington Drive time and we had just returned from my Cub Scout “Spaghetti Dinner” that had been held in the common-purpose room at St. George’s Church.

 

My entire after-school time that day had been taken up preparing for the dinner. Since my Dad was the troop leader, not only did I have to attend, but I had to set-up, serve and then clean up! Gee, I’d always thought that Cub Scouting was about camping and junk… but fund raising? Ugh. Still, I returned home with a belly full of pasta and a face full of tomato sauce.

 

Now it was time to settle in by our black and white living room TV and watch my then most favorite show in the whole world- “Batman.” The show had only been running since January, but it hooked me like a drug. Everything I played somehow turned into Batman and so did everything I drew or talked about. Thus, no one else on Earth, or off of the earth existed from 7:30 until 8:00 on Wednesday and Thursday evenings- there was just me and the TV.

 

The Wednesday episode was presented with its cliff-hanger, then there was the following Thursday at school when we all discussed how Batman and Robin were going to escape Thursday evening in the conclusion. There followed six days of waiting for the following Wednesday to come and another “Batman” episode. If my third-grade teacher thought I was distracted before the “Batman” series came along, she was now without hope that I would ever recover.

 

“Batman” had just gotten started, the episode was called “The Purr-fect Crime” and Cat Woman looked quite fiendish tonight. Then, suddenly, just when things were getting good the ABC TV Network’s “SPECIAL REPORT” screen popped up!

 

What?! Not now! Not during “Batman!” What could this be? An atomic strike by the Soviets? Perhaps, but at least wait until after the cliff-hanger to tell us about it. Maybe it was just a short report and then we’ll be back to the caped crusader. Nope- there was Jules Bergman breathlessly announcing that something had gone terribly wrong on Gemini 8. Worst of all, the report eventually totally pre-empted the entire episode of “Batman.” No cliff-hanger, no Cat Woman, no Commissioner Gordon, no Bat-poles, no Bat-Cave… whatever had gone wrong with Gemini 8 could have at least waited until 8:00 when that stinking “Patty Duke Show” came on.

 

Additionally, the news people did not know much at all about what had happened, yet they talked on and on. I was beyond totally ticked off- I mean, pre-empt anything, but not “Batman.”

 

Launch time for Gemini 8 was 11:41:02 Nelle Haley Elementary School time on Wednesday morning. The whole event took place while I was sloshing my way home for lunch through the half-melted winter snow. Temperatures were hovering just above freezing and a gray overcast sky showed that winter was not yet willing to release its grip on the Great Lakes area. The whole launch was over by the time I came through the front door and the news folks on our living room TV were talking about the rendezvous and illustrating it with all sorts of gadgets.

 

NBC channel 5 had a model train set with a Gemini and Agena on rail cars going in circles. CBS had an actual computer with an animated set of orbits all of which could have held my attention all afternoon when I was back in school… except for the fact that Annex 3 where my classroom resided did not have a TV.

 

Later that day Gemini 8 went ahead with their mission and acquired Agena 5003. Once in the sunlight, Gemini 8 was also passing into range of the tracking ship ROSE KNOT VICTOR (RKV) at 06:32:17 mission elapsed time.

 

“We’re sitting about two feet out,” Armstrong reported as soon as communications were established.

 

“Go ahead…” the RKV controller, Keith Kundel, began.

 

“We’ll go ahead and dock.” Armstrong replied.

 

“Roger,” Kundel replied and then thought better of what he had just said, “Stand by for a couple of minutes here.”

 

It took 18 seconds for the RKV controllers to verify that they had good telemetry from both spacecraft in order to give the final permission to actually dock.

 

“Okay Gemini 8,” Kundel came back on the radio with confidence, “You’ve got T/M solid. You’re looking good on the ground. Go ahead and dock.”

 

Once cleared, Armstrong thrusted ahead and gently eased the nose of the Gemini 8 spacecraft into the docking cone of the Agena; it was 06:33:52 mission elapsed time. Everything looked fine for nearly a half hour- then Scott glanced at his attitude indicator.

 

“Neil,” he said casually, “we’re in a bank.”

 

Thinking Scott’s attitude indicator may have tumbled, Armstrong looked at his own and saw that the spacecraft was indeed in slight roll. He corrected with his hand controller, but as soon as he let go of the handle Gemini 8 snapped back into a bank and continued diverging. Thinking the trouble was in the Agena, which had caused trouble on its previous flight, Scott shut down the target vehicle. The roll, however, continued to increase. Now Armstrong became concerned that the tumbling may stress the nose of Gemini, which was rigid in the docking adapter. So, he decided to undock and thrust away. But with Agena’s mass gone the Gemini went completely out of control.

 Neither Armstrong nor Scott had recorded the exact moment that the two spacecraft began their un-commanded roll, and they were out of ground contact as it rapidly went out of control. Estimates are that about 20 minutes of normal flight went by before all hell broke loose. Gemini 8 soon came into acquisition range of the tracking ship Coastal Sentry Quebec (CSQ). James R. Fucci, CapCom aboard the ship, was concerned and perplexed. He could not get a solid electronic lock-on the spacecraft, and a blinking light signal indicated that the craft had undocked. Unaware that the spacecraft was rolling, so the antennas could not remain in position, he put in a call to the crew to try to find out about these strange signs he saw on his console.

 

Fucci: “Gemini 8, CSQ Cap Com. Com check. How do you read?”

 

Scott: “We have serious problems here . . . we're tumbling end over end up here. We're disengaged from the Agena.”

 

Fucci: “Okay. We got your SPACECRAFT FREE indication here. What seems to be the problem?”

 

Armstrong: “We're rolling up and we can't turn anything off.

Continuously increasing in a left roll.”

 

Fucci: [37 seconds later] “Roger, Gemini 8. CSQ.”

 

Armstrong: “Stand by.”

 

Scott: “We have a violent left roll here at the present time and we can't turn the RCS's off, and we can't fire it, and we certainly have a roll… stuck hand control.”

 

Once the crew realized that it was their own thruster and not those of the Agena that was acting upon them, they tried to quickly troubleshoot the problem. For a moment it seemed like a stuck hand-controller. Finally, Armstrong decided that he needed to shut down the OAMS thrusters completely and work with the RCS thrusters. That simple act under the current conditions was almost super-human. With his vision blurred and tunneling and the sun flashing into the spacecraft through the windows like a high intensity strobe light plus every loose object pinned to the walls, Armstrong had to reach into a panel of 64 switches and flip the correct one.

 

Upon accomplishing that task Armstrong activated both RCS rings and immediately went to work with the hand controller. Indeed, it was not stuck and was working just fine. In short order he had the slowed the rate of tumble and was regaining control of Gemini 8.

 

Once it was clear that he had control, Armstrong shut down one RCS ring in order to save fuel. Those thrusters, located in the nose of the Gemini spacecraft, were intended for reentry use only and were also the only form of attitude control the spacecraft had once the adapter section was jettisoned. If they were to begin to leak or fail in some other way, the crew would be doomed to stay in orbit. Armstrong then carefully reactivated the maneuver thrusters until he was able to tell that No. 8 was the culprit. It had failed in the “on” mode- meaning it had stuck open!

 

So… why had thruster No. 8 failed in the open position? After splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, the spacecraft had been hauled back to its place of birth-the McDonnell plant in St. Louis- so the engineers could analyze its problems. Set up in a controlled laboratory where the investigations could proceed unmolested, the spacecraft was checked over completely for more than a month. Since the adapter section containing those thrusters had been jettisoned before reentry, only the most probable cause of the trouble could be identified. The evaluation team decided that the valves on thruster 8 opening unintentionally was probably caused by an electrical short. There were, however, several locations in the spacecraft at which such a fault could have occurred. To prevent a recurrence of the thruster problem, McDonnell changed the attitude control circuit switch so that when it was in the "off mode” no power could go to the thrusters. Formerly, turning off power to the electronics packages did not stop power going to the thrusters. Thus, they could still fire.

 

When I woke up the next morning the whole Gemini 8 business was over.  Armstrong and Scott were safely aboard the destroyer MASON and all was well. It all happened in the middle of the night while most of America, including myself, was asleep. Even my morning cartoons were not interrupted. So, I busied myself at the task of flunking the third grade. You may scoff, but it was not easy. Mrs. Bechtol was constantly on my case. One day she even had me up in front of the entire class so that she could ridicule my new Batman T-shirt and compare me to the class smart kid in order to set an example of what a failure looks like. I was often scolded for always looking out the window and she loudly chided me saying that no one would ever give me a job where I looked out the window all the time. Three decades later, while flying as an commercial pilot I sat there looking out the window of a Falcon Jet- and getting paid to do it. I always snickered thinking about that.

Me in the summer of 1966 wearing

the Batman shirt that so annoyed

my 3rd grade teacher.

ARTEMIS; NOW GOING TO DO IT RIGHT

 

By Wes Oleszewski- Aero-News Network Spaceflight Analyst

My model LEM with Rusty on the porch

On Friday, February 27, NASA announced a fundamental change in the plan for the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Artemis Program. Beginning immediately the cadence of SLS launches will be changed from the previous one launch every two or three years. Instead, the flight rate and profile will be closer to that of the Apollo missions in the late 1960s. This change injects a great deal of positive energy into the Artemis Program.

Artemis II’s mission will remain as a deep space lunar fly-by to check out a crewed Orion spacecraft at lunar distance. Artemis III, however, will not be a lunar landing mission. Rather, Artemis III will be an Earth Orbital mission to test the Orion along with the lunar landing vehicles as well at the new lunar EVA spacesuit. This is similar to the Apollo 9 mission where a Saturn V launched a crew of three astronauts, Commander (CDR) Jim McDivitt, Lunar Module Pilot (LMP) Rusty Schweickart and Command Module Pilot (CMP) Dave Scott, into Earth orbit where they exercised the Lunar Module (LM). Prior to the undocking and flight of both the Command Module (CM,) and the LM, the LMP suited up in the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) and exited the LM. He stood on the front porch testing the EMU before astronauts attempted to do so on the lunar surface. Later he and the CDR undocked and flew the LM out away from the CM, tested the LM decent engine, staged and tested its ascent engine. They then used the rendezvous system to rejoin the CM. The Artemis III crew will do the same and conduct similar testing. If all goes well, thereafter, Artemis IV will likely be the lunar landing mission.

The critical difference here is that the long-held cadence of one SLS mission every two to three years no longer exists. The flights will be spaced much closer together and if there is a problem on one flight it will no longer cause great delays in upcoming missions. This rapid cadence has a number of advantages. The primary being what Administrator Jared Isaacman termed “muscle memory.” That is, the human factor of  ground crews doing the job often in a short time, leads to instinctive responses and correct procedures. A symptom of this could be seen in the Artemis II close-out crew taking more time than expected during the first wet dress rehearsal. It had been more than three years between their doing that activity on a live SLS.

During the press conference on February 27, NASA officials said several times,

“We brought our history books with us.”

They also directly referenced Apollo and showed how the cadence of that program in the late 1960s and early 1970s had led to achieving what was once thought to be impossible. There is no reason to think that such cannot be done again in this era. NASA has the hardware in the works to make it happen. The Trump administration has provided the funding to make it happen. All that is lacking is the people-power, and NASA will now be hiring many more men and women to do the job. NASA will also be going far beyond these first four Artemis missions with launches taking place on a regular basis. The SLS is about to become a space work-horse.

For the aerospace industry and the peaceful advancement of human civilization, this is a very good thing.

ARTEMIS II; ROLL BACK

 By Wes Oleszewski- Aero-News Network Spaceflight Analyst

America’s new Moon rocket will be headed “back to the barn” for some unscheduled maintenance. Following its second “Wet Dress Rehearsal” (WDR) on Thursday, February 19, during which all the launch vehicle’s tanks were filled and pressurized. Everything seemed to go well and the WDR was completed. The tanks were then drained, but when technicians attempted to cycle helium in the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) they were unable to do so. Trouble shooting and recycling did not clear the problem. The only way for them to access that part of the launch vehicle is to roll the entire stack back into the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). So, it was decided on Saturday, February 21, to delay the Moon launch, scheduled for early March, and roll the Space Launch System (SLS) vehicle from Launch Complex 39B back into the VAB. That process took place on Wednesday, February 25.

Helium, although thought of as the lighter than air gas that makes kid’s balloons fly, is critical for starting and restarting liquid fueled rocket engines in space. It has been used in that function since the early 1960s and was used on ever Apollo lunar mission. Because it is inert, it is used for purging tanks and lines as well as pressurizing propellant tanks. Being inert, it will not react with any residual propellants. In the case of the SLS vehicle’s ICPS, the helium is stored in a series of small round tanks at the base of the stage. Since the ICPS is mostly enclosed within the upper fairings of the booster, once the SLS was rolled out of the VAB there was no way for technicians to physically reach the stage’s plumbing when the fault showed up.

Rollbacks of launch vehicles to the VAB for issues have taken place before. In the first week of January 1972, a helium pressure test ruptured a Teflon bladder in one of the Apollo 16 command module’s reaction control system fuel tanks. On January 7th NASA announced that the problem would require a rollback to the VAB which would delay the launch for at least a month. Exactly 20 days after that announcement a fully flight-rated Saturn V was rolled back to the VAB for the first time.

Repair of the fuel tank required that the command module had to be trucked to the MSO building, de-mated from the stack, and opened to separate the heat shield from the upper command module and permit access to the fuel tank. 

Decades later the Space Shuttle was rolled back to the VAB 19 times in that program’s history. Weather caused five roll-backs and twice roll-backs were due to hail damage. There were also two roll-backs due to hydrogen leaks. The rest were caused by assorted issues with the orbiter, payloads and external tank problems. Also, Artemis I was rolled back to the VAB on April 26, 2022, for an ICPS helium check valve issue. After repairs the vehicle was returned to LC-39B. However, on July 2, the Artemis I vehicle was rolled back to the VAB once again to fix a hydrogen leak on the SLS quick disconnect. Following that the Artemis I was successfully launched on November 16, 2022 having rolled back twice.

Currently there is a lot of social media finger pointing and mis-information directed toward the Artemis II because of recent delays and this roll-back. First there was the delay of the first WDR. It’s been said that it was due to the cold conditions and then implied a similarity to the Challenger accident. In fact, the cold had nothing at all to do with that delay. NASA had placed a forecast wind limitation of 37.5 knots on the WDR due to safety concerns for the closeout crew. The forecast was for winds over 40 knots, yet it actually went higher than 50 knots. Later the hydrogen leak caused the WDR to be scrubbed. This was not an issue with the launch vehicle. Rather it was a ground service equipment issue- and was cured at the pad. Thus, this helium issue is the first and only glitch with the Artemis II, SLS vehicle itself. 

After Artemis I, and a very similar issue, NASA thought they had cured the problem with the helium check valve. Now they will roll-back the SLS and find out if or not that is the case.

HOW I GOT MY ORION

 

On July 8, 2011, I was at the Kennedy Space Center covering the final Space Shuttle launch, STS-135, for the Aero-News Network. By that time, president Obama’s cancellation of all NASA human spaceflight, had been over-ridden by the Congress and spaceflight engineers had begun to develop the Space Launch System, or SLS, in spite of Obama’s poison pen effort. I’d seen that coming and as the owner of a model rocket manufacturing company, Dr. Zooch Rockets, and thus designed a concept version of the SLS. It was slated to go into sales in just a few months. For that reason, I’d already constructed two prototypes and even test-flew one. The second prototype I packed up and took with me to STS-135 for display at my spot in the press building at KSC.

 Considering that STS-135 was end of the Shuttle program and the beginning of a “gap” between U.S. astronauts being launched aboard U.S. rockets- the event drew plenty of attention. In those days the press was always divided between the “hardcores” who actually know spaceflight and the “meatpuppets” who are simply reporters that some network assigned to cover the event. The meatpuppets normally just stand in front of a camera and read from a piece of paper. Arriving at STS-135 I was only in the press room long enough to say hello to some of the hardcores, plant my model of the SLS at the spot I claimed as mine, and head out to have a look around. Soon the meatpuppet storm began. In short order media from all over the world were squeezing into the press room or setting up shop, some doing so in assorted EZ-up tents outside. One of the hardcores looked around the room and she quietly said,

“I wish they’d all go away and just let us, who cover these things, cover it.”

Then she pointed with her finger toward individuals standing nearby, as if she were able to select people and said,

“You can stay, you can stay, you can stay…”

She pointed at me and paused for a second.

“Hey,” I quipped, “I was at X-Prize with you… I have cred’.”

“Yeah,” she smirked, “you can stay.”

Whew.

There was a carnival atmosphere around the open ground beyond the press building. NASA contractors large and small had set up display tents also large and small. One of the largest belonged to Lockheed Martin which was contracted to build the Orion spacecraft. I went in a chatted briefly about Orion with one of their people. I mentioned my model rocket company, and he said that his son was just getting into model rocketry.

 “I have something you may wanna see,” I said in the hope of perhaps gaining a new model rocket customer.

Dashing back to press building I fetched my SLS model and returned to the LockMart tent. He looked at it,

“I have someone who would be interested in this,” he said as he walked a short distance away and tapped on the shoulder of a man in a gray business suit.

 The two of them returned and I handed the model SLS to the man. He examined it carefully.

 “This is it!” he half whispered never taking his eyes off the model, “This is the SLS, they’ve never given us a model of it.”

 He asked if he could borrow it for a while? He told me that he had several network TV interviews to do and he’s like to use it.

 “Sure!” I replied gleefully.

 With that he and his group of minions left as he carefully carried the model.

 "Who was that?” I asked the guy from LockMart.

 “That,” he replied with a wide smile, “is John Karas, the Vice President and General Manager of Human Space Flight for Lockheed Martin.”

 Holy shit.

 It turned out that STS-135 took place so close to the Obama rift that no one had yet produced a model of the SLS… but me. So, Mr. Karas arrived at KSC nearly empty handed, but really wanting to talk about the SLS.

 “Anyone who makes Mr. Karas smile like that,” the fellow from LockMart said happily, “gets some swag.”

I ended up with a ball cap, some pens and a few trinkets to take home and give to my kids. We stood there for a long time and talked model rockets, and I explained that I’d started my company to keep busy while I raised my two daughters. Although I’m a successful author, it was tough to write books when you cannot sit and focus quietly for hours on end. Because as a parent, you never get to do that. 

After about 40 minutes Mr. Karas and his minions returned.

“Thank you so much,” he said as he extended his arms to return to model to me, “I love this rocket.”

 “Well,” I replied, now knowing who I was actually speaking to, “you can have it.”

 “Really?” he exclaimed.

 “Yeah, it’s one of two identical prototypes. I have another one just like it on my work bench at home.”

 Pulling back the model he admired it again, took a deep breath, turned to his minions and ordered, “Let’s get this man something!”

 Suggestions came popping up- a pass to a test firing- an invitation to a dinner event, and on and on.

 “Let’s give him an Orion model!” someone shouted.

 “That’s it!” Mr. Karas ordered as he pointed to the minions, “Get him one of those Orion models!”

 Less than a minute lapsed before one of the minions showed up carrying a square cardboard box. Packed in custom foam rubber was one of the newest, museum quality, 2011 Orion models. I took it back to the press room and got the attention of the other hardcores.

 “Guess what I just got from John Karas?” I said as I held the box above my head.

 “You dog! You got a model!” several of them guessed before I opened the box and showed it off.

 Indeed. It flew home with me, never out of my reach, destine for display in my office.

 Today, the flight version of the Orion is very different from my model. But I see it in the same light of the early Apollo era photos where NASA people as shown posed with a Lunar Module or Command Service Module that always looks nothing like the final product. I pondered those models when I was a kid. Now those models are worth thousands of dollars. Yet to me, this one not only connects me with my childhood ponderings, but it reminds me of the day I made John Karas very happy.