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The Lunacy of Artemis

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11–20 of 539 posts

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#11

IDK why 81 year old Poli-sci major, attorney, and ultimate NASA executive decision maker Bill Nelson wasn't forced out of office after he incorrectly explained to Congress that the far side of the moon is always dark https://youtu.be/daZyPwCQak8?si=n9KXH-LJFBlpKXUp&t=153

Didn't Asimov write about half the moon being dark? TIL the "far side of the moon" is actually referred to as "the dark side of the moon". But yeah, it's funny/sad that nobody in the room seems to know anything.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#12

IDK why 81 year old Poli-sci major, attorney, and ultimate NASA executive decision maker Bill Nelson wasn't forced out of office after he incorrectly explained to Congress that the far side of the moon is always dark https://youtu.be/daZyPwCQak8?si=n9KXH-LJFBlpKXUp&t=153

Relevant education and experience in aerospace fields is not important in Congress. Neither is factual correctness.

Politics and rules lawyering are what matter in that space.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#13
post #8

Finally someone is saying it like it is. Sadly this someone isn’t a bigwig at NASA. NASA still can’t take humans to/from orbit on its own. To believe that in 18 months we’re going to have a successful lunar landing is batshit grade insanity.

Why not, if NASA outsources 100% of the actual operations? Find reasonable contractors (for certain values of "reasonable" that would match SpaceX), give them attainable goals, provide the money, provide publicity, and otherwise stand back and do not interfere. For extra credit, provide some scientific mission spacecraft and rovers, the things NASA us actually quite good at.

Key bureaucratic feat: keep Boeing away.

18 months is really tight though, realistically it should be twice as much maybe.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#15
I think we all can understand the situation here unless people are really dense.. the Artemis program was setup at a time when the private space companies were still very new. SpaceX will soon be quite close to technically doing the entire mission themselves without Artemis at all. SpaceX took the money from NASA to help fund their Starship development and probably for other reasons as well. Net result is that by the time Starship can land on the Moon, they can basically do the entire mission without Artemis. So Artemis would be pointless.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#16
post #11

IDK why 81 year old Poli-sci major, attorney, and ultimate NASA executive decision maker Bill Nelson wasn't forced out of office after he incorrectly explained to Congress that the far side of the moon is always dark https://youtu.be/daZyPwCQak8?si=n9KXH-LJFBlpKXUp&t=153

Didn't Asimov write about half the moon being dark? TIL the "far side of the moon" is actually referred to as "the dark side of the moon". But yeah, it's funny/sad that nobody in the room seems to know anything.

When we earthlings see a new moon, we see one dark side turned towards us, while another dark side is the far side; Moon is completely in the Earth's shadow.

During a solar eclipse, the far side is brightly lit, while the side turned towards us is dark.

Most of the time the dark side does not match the far or the near side, we see a part of both the dark and lit sides as a crescent.

I don't see how "the far side" and "the dark side" can be used interchangeably in any situation.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#17
post #16
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't Asimov write about half the moon being dark? TIL the "far side of the moon" is actually referred to as "the dark side of the moon". But yeah, it's funny/sad that nobody in the room seems to know anything.

When we earthlings see a new moon, we see one dark side turned towards us, while another dark side is the far side; Moon is completely in the Earth's shadow. During a solar eclipse, the far side is brightly lit, while the side turned towards us is dark. Most of the time the dark side does not match the far or the near side, we see a part of both the dark and lit sides as a crescent. I don't see how "the far side" and…

Uh, no. The ONLY time we see a new moon is during an eclipse. Other times the moon is above or below the sun and is too dim to see. A lunar eclipse is when the moon passes into the earth’s shadow and they happens during full moons

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#18
It's not really NASA that's building this, it's Lockheed Martin and other too big to fail defense companies. This is just a little something something to keep them in the game.

As one person in NASA told me, they "fears NASA is becoming just a white collar jobs program"--artemis is clearly on mission.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#19

It's not really NASA that's building this, it's Lockheed Martin and other too big to fail defense companies. This is just a little something something to keep them in the game. As one person in NASA told me, they "fears NASA is becoming just a white collar jobs program"--artemis is clearly on mission.

Any sufficiently large acquisition is indistinguishable from a jobs program.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#20

The real lunacy is using chemical rockets instead of nuclear thermal once the ship is in orbit. That could reduce the fuel requirements for an Earth - Moon transfer by 4x. And this isn't some sci-fi tech. NASA built a working engine in the 70s.

No idea if they did or not, but one immediate issue is that if anything does go wrong, now you have a nuclear incident as well as a tragedy.
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