"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome to what the future this week I want to talk about what's arguably NASA's biggest project right now you probably know that NASA is shooting to get back to the moon by 2024 and they need a rocket powerful enough to get them there they don't have that right now that's why they're building the Space Launch System or SLS this is already a decade in the making and when it's finished it's gonna be the most powerful rocket in the world and will essentially be the linchpin in NASA's Artemis program that's the follow-up to the Apollo program from the 60s and 70s in Greek mythology Artemis was the goddess of the moon and Apollo's twin sister SLS will be NASA's first deep space rocket built since the saturn v which was used back in those apollo missions it's designed to carry this this is the Orion spacecraft it's what will actually carry astronauts to the moon and hopefully Mars so why does the SLS have to be so powerful at the risk of getting some thanks Captain Obvious jokes the moon is a long way away it's about a thousand times farther than the International Space Station and the Orion needs to hit about 24,000 miles per hour to break out of low Earth orbit and reach the moon to make this happen SLS has to be strong enough to perform a maneuver called a translunar injection so it's essentially going from a circular orbit to an eccentric orbit all time to target the moon while it's orbiting the Earth but what really makes us LS so cool is its modular design that means NASA can essentially mix and match parts depending on the mission goals and replace certain pieces as that tech improves over time the first version of SLS is expected to launch next year as an unmanned mission to test the Orion that's what we'll know as Artemus 1 and the plan is to send the uncrewed Orion on a 25 day journey that will get it within sixty two miles of the moon's surface alright so let's talk core stage that's being built by Boeing and this thing is impressive when it's finished it's gonna stand more than 200 feet tall and have a diameter more than 27 feet inside you're gonna find the seven hundred thirty thousand gallons of supercooled liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen that's gonna fuel those engines now speaking of the engines there's gonna be four of them they're called rs.25 s and they're made by a company in Sacramento called Aerojet Rocketdyne the rs.25 is the same model that powered NASA's old shuttle program though these have been modified for the SLS combined all four engines will produce more than two million pounds of thrust next we've got the two solid rocket boosters these are coming from northrup-grumman and also get an upgrade from the original shuttle design those go from a four segment booster to five for some extra thrust in fact 75% of the thrust at launch will come from these boosters though unlike the shuttle design these boosters are just built for a single use and because of the SLS is modular design these are one of those parts that's expected to be swapped out as booster technology advances all right so what's next for us LS there are obviously a ton of moving parts here right now the core stage is four-fifths of the way done boeing expects to have it complete later this year then it gets shipped to NASA's Stennis Space Flight Center in Mississippi for testing also worth noting in early July NASA plans to launch a test version of the Orion the plan is to send it up six miles to test the launch abort system which of course is there to get the capsule and crew to safety if something happens during an ascent on SLS so really the big question is will the SLS be ready to get us back to the moon by 2024 and honestly no one can really answer that right now nASA has already fallen behind schedule a few times and earlier this year NASA's chief even at one point said using a private company like SpaceX was the best bet to hit that 2024 deadline now he's since backed off that and says SLS is the only system that can really do it but the one thing we do know according to him it's not going to happen if Congress doesn't approve the additional 1.6 billion dollars in funding the Trump administration has requested for Artemis and ironically enough NASA did just get a cash infusion they didn't ask for though it's not for SLS so to see what Congress wants NASA to build with this money click here for last week's episode that's gonna do it for this week I'm Andy Altman thanks for watching I'll see you in the future\n"