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Alex Appolonia: That's close to half a million gallons of water projected a hundred feet in the air.
The most impressive part? Everything was done in 60 seconds only.
NASA has created the massive fountain as part of a test of its space launch system, whose launch is scheduled for the first time in 2020.
It will be the largest and most powerful rocket ever built by NASA. Standing, the SLS will reach 322 feet tall, 17 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty, and will weigh nearly 6 million pounds.
His first planned mission? A 25-day trip around the moon.
When it takes off, its engines will generate a force of 8.4 million pounds and sound waves so powerful that they could easily destroy the rocket from the ground up.
It is there that the NASA system of suppression of pressure and sound suppression intervenes. NASA projects water on and over the launch pad during ignition and take-off. This not only protects the ground from the rocket motors, but also prevents sound waves from bouncing off the ground and straightening, which could cause catastrophic engine damage. The system also prevents giant flames generated by the engines from catching fire.
At a real launch, some of the water will evaporate due to extreme heat, while the rest comes out through nozzles. This test is only one of many other tests that NASA will perform over the next few months for the first launch of the rocket.
The SLS is designed for deeper space missions capable of exploring well beyond the Earth's orbit. It can carry astronauts in an Orion capsule or carry other goods, such as crawlers, into distant worlds such as Jupiter and Mars. Pretty impressive, huh?
This last test, carried out at the beginning of October, had to evaluate all the necessary improvements, such as the control of the corrosion, the renovation of the tank of water storage and the verification of the state of the pipes and the valves. Now he will be in top form when the SLS is ready for his first flight in 2020.
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