DaveL59

not seen that Mark but I can't recall seeing a deselect option either. In some ways its a shame they didn't fit the cradle with fine-tune adjustments like we have with RDF/finders so we can get it truly zero'd in to target but then I guess they figure it should be close enough on-screen.

yeah probably, such is life huh

according to the beeb, Should Launch Someday will be going up Saturday in a 2-hour windows from 19:17 BST Artemis: Nasa will try to launch Moon rocket on Saturday - BBC News Wonder if with the sky getting darker we'll see it pass over us at all?

ahh ok, so the arm has snapped, not as easy a fix but can be done if you've a mind to do it:

I'd worry tho about deep freezing, organics decay even when frozen, albeit a lot slower, but 1000 years, who knows what we'd be defrosting at the end...

so listening to that session it makes me wonder, they only have single sensors per engine to verify this chill-down phase. Also tricky to try replace them on the pad so they're gonna work the data to determine if they're ok or not. Were Boing building these, sounds like a common theme here, no? Lets hope they've at least a backup sensor in critical systems - this part is considered test rather than flight so corners cut I guess. Can't imagine tho that 4 extra sensors would cost more than aborting a launch.

Scrub was in part the chill-down and also a vent valve issue so the view seems to be to sort the valve issue, start the chill-down of engines earlier in the session and push launch out to saturday 3rd. Also questioning the fidelity of the sensors monitoring the chill-down, esp re engine 3 that has a longer pipe run in the manifold than the other 3 engines

do you mean the eyepiece arm? Should just be a case of refit and tighten up the large central screw or has that gone AWOL?

oops seems its 23:00 BST, countdown says 51 mins, assuming of course it doesn't go to hold at 40 😉

so I guess your "seeing" got a bit out of focus by the end too then 😉

defo a step up, the moons look much better focused in this one 🙂

Sounds like there might be an update later today: (22:00 UK BST) NASA to Provide Update on Artemis I Moon Mission Status - SpaceRef and the blog from yesterday Artemis (nasa.gov)

SkEye does work reasonably well, but it needs a phone with good sensors, low interference of the sensors which can be problematic with a steel tube scope, electrical equipment etc. Often you can improve its effectiveness by doing the "swing the phone about in a figure-8" before using it. You can set it up to have the phone vertical to the OTA or laying parallel like the starsense (indirect mode) and I was playing with this before Starsense came along. You do of course need a suitable holder and mounting for it. Found the thread on it:

Hi Peter, if you take a stroll thru this thread it covers what John and I had done when adapting ours and then building our own mounts I blacked the prism sides as well as created and extended hood similar to the OEM mount to reduce any stray reflections and it works fine. Used a prism from a very old japanese 10x50 as its larger, the smaller porro prisms in something like an 8x30 were too narrow, tho perhaps from an old Zeiss pair that may work. Since the phone camera is only a couple mm from the prism edge, vignetting wasn't much of an issue, what there was didn't affect the ability to analyse the sky. John used a cheap mirror diagonal (poor memory as I thought it was a prism) on his.

Well is disappointing when they hit the same issue before and then again on the big launch-1 day but yeah is an iterative process, should be flying by take-6 or so 🙂

Thing too is that since they're going to need to build a new SLS for each trip are they going to be going thru all this failure/delay again and again? Can't say that SpaceX's starship impresses either, they may get it to land occasionally but that shape ain't exactly stable in flight so what's the odds going to look like if they do go forward with it. A good landing 7/10 times?

if it does get away, the interesting bit will be the reentry: wonder if they'll play that classic line by Kenneth Williams in the carry-on flick for the over-temp alarm: "frying tonight!" 😉

wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot less of a crowd next time, a long return trip to make for a no fly disappointment...

next window is friday 02-Sept if they can figure out which bit they'd fitted upside down

Pretty much all we know is engine 3 had an issue during conditioning, flow rates? They did say the earlier crack in the SLS was in the foam and not the main casing. Could be other issues that we've not heard of course. Kinda waiting for the secret whispers that China are imminent to launch their crewed mission to the moon's south pole. That'd maybe light a fire and up-speed getting the SLS off the ground leak or no 😉

ahh you mean this friday? 02-Sept was just muted so I'll be able to watch that for fail installment-2 as I don't start till the following week 🙂

they need that russian astronaut off the movie Armageddon, he knew how to fix US space tech IIRC

ack, I'll be in the new job then, tho might be better to check if it went and get it on catch-up rather than the long wait to see what goes wrong next time...

like I said earlier, FBH, sharp rap on the valve and off ya go... Oh well I guess HSE and such won't allow that these days tho 😉 Tho another commentary says one tank wasn't all the way full, so a leak, sensor failure, who knows.

so, scrubbed for today, oh well 😞