The Lunacy of Artemis

https://youtu.be/daZyPwCQak8?si=n9KXH-LJFBlpKXUp&t=153

You can't compare a modern attempt at a moon landing to the Apollo program. It's straight up invalid. The Apollo program was a national prestige program, so successful we stopped going to the moon for ~49 years and counting. At it's peak it consumed 2.5% of US national GDP. We will never, ever, nor should we run a program like the Apollo program ever again.

The second problem is, it's thoroughly dismissive of the political concerns which are the essence of the entire problem. NASA's budget changes every 4 years. It's priorities in fact change every year because the US has struggled to pass a yearly budget that didn't go to a government shutdown for multiple years at this point.

In that view then, you get weird statements which are essentially arguments from increduality: i.e. the concern over how many launches you'd need to refuel an HLS in orbit. But it straight up doesn't matter how many, what matters is whether you can do it. SpaceX can launch multiple Falcons in a week, is there a reason to think scaling to the required number of launches is prohibitive? - who knows, because no one ever includes a failure expectation or cost expectation, they just throw the number out and gesticulate at it a bit.

And that is the core problem of the arguments about the mission itself, because again, what is the goal? Getting to the moon with an Apollo style fully expendable, enormously expensive rocket is obviously possible because it was done. We absolutely should not do it that way again. If we don't get there with a more sustainable approach, then there's no point going.

The SLS's deficiencies are accurately identified, but the reason for them is pretty obvious - NASA was ordered to build the SLS that way by Congress. NASA would really rather pay SpaceX or Blue Origin to build them the rocket they need instead, but they're not allowed to do that - by Congress.