91–100 of 667 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they were saying they would sign up just for the experience, even if it's unnecessary to the program.
But that was exactly the point I was responding to, no? If NASA was fine with skipping the astronauts, then they would just send it unmanned, not find a random volunteer.
What I don't get is why the heck are the astronauts willing to risk their lives on something they must know by now is so dangerous? Is it really better to risk death than to risk getting fired?
This degree of lifespan-maximization is something you might have but others don’t necessarily share. E.g. old people went to Fukushima to sort it out. “Was it really better to risk death than to risk getting fired?” Neither of these are major risks compared to never being what you want to be.
I want you to repeat those words as you melt away re-entering the atmosphere.
This is a more balanced take, in my opinion: https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/01/nasa-chief-reviews-ori... Camarda is an outlier. The engineers at NASA believe it is safe. The astronauts believe it is safe. Former astronaut Danny Olivas was initially skeptical of the heat shield but came around. And note that the OP believes it is likely (maybe very likely) that the heat shield will work fine. It's hard for me to r…
Being pedantic, NASA management "ignored" engineers - because money.
That said, I 100% agree with you assuming:
> “We have full confidence in the Orion spacecraft and its heat shield, grounded in rigorous analysis and the work of exceptional engineers who followed the data throughout the process,” Isaacman said Thursday.
I only say assuming not that I don't believe Isaacman, but historically NASA managers have said publicly everything's fine when it wasn't and tried to throw the blame onto engineers.
With Challenger, engineers said no-go.
With Columbia, engineers had to explicitly state/sign "this is unsafe", which pushes the incentivisation the wrong direction.
So, I want to believe him, but historically it hasn't been so great to do so.
The author seems to have a pretty extensive history of… strong disdain for Artemis II. While has mentioned concerns about the heat shield before it was in the context of a laundry list of complaints, and it was nowhere close to the top. I’m not a rocket scientist, but then neither is the author.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does SpaceX test it? Have they needed to solve this problem?
There were 19 successful unmanned Dragon 1 missions before Crew Dragon, and an unmanned Crew Dragon mission before the first crewed one (actually two missions, but one didn't reenter from orbit). The heat shield material and design was essentially the same and so there was a great deal of flight heritage.
This is a more balanced take, in my opinion: https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/01/nasa-chief-reviews-ori... Camarda is an outlier. The engineers at NASA believe it is safe. The astronauts believe it is safe. Former astronaut Danny Olivas was initially skeptical of the heat shield but came around. And note that the OP believes it is likely (maybe very likely) that the heat shield will work fine. It's hard for me to r…
for human spaceflight we want a lot more than "likely" (>50%). The standard is usually "extremely likely" (~1/100 to 1/1000 chance of failure)
[edit]
For comparison, commercial aviation has something like 1 in 5.8m or 6x 9's of reliability.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depending on one's age, maybe not honestly? (Not the OP)
In your opinion: at what age does someone become unworthy of life?
This is a more balanced take, in my opinion: https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/01/nasa-chief-reviews-ori... Camarda is an outlier. The engineers at NASA believe it is safe. The astronauts believe it is safe. Former astronaut Danny Olivas was initially skeptical of the heat shield but came around. And note that the OP believes it is likely (maybe very likely) that the heat shield will work fine. It's hard for me to r…
The foam shedding/impact problem was heavily analyzed throughout the Shuttle program, and recognized as a significant risk. Read the CAIB report for a good history.
That report also describes the groupthink dynamic at NASA that made skeptical engineers "come around" for the good of the program in the past. Calling Camarda an outlier is just a different way of stating this problem.
This is a more balanced take, in my opinion: https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/01/nasa-chief-reviews-ori... Camarda is an outlier. The engineers at NASA believe it is safe. The astronauts believe it is safe. Former astronaut Danny Olivas was initially skeptical of the heat shield but came around. And note that the OP believes it is likely (maybe very likely) that the heat shield will work fine. It's hard for me to r…
it doesn't matter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_II
"It will be the second flight of the Space Launch System (SLS), the first crewed mission of the Orion spacecraft, and the first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972."
such "second/first" were ok 60 years ago. Today the only reason for that is that the SLS isn't reusable while the cost is hyper-astronomical.
Today's tech complexity, engineering culture and overall managerial processes don't allow the first/second to succeed as a rule. Even the best - Space X - has got several failed launches back then for Falcon and now for Starship.
Of course we wish success, and it will probably succeed - just like the Russian roulette so aptly mentioned in the sibling comment.
I haven't kept up with Artemis development but I've read extensively about Challenger and Columbia. These two parts of the article stood out to me: > Moon-to-Mars Deputy Administrator Amit Kshatriya said: “it was very small localized areas. Interestingly, it would be much easier for us to analyze if we had larger chunks and it was more defined”. A Lockheed Martin representative on the same call added that "there was…
About the last point: At this point in time, manned space exploration should come out of our entertainment budget. The same budget we use for football or olympic games.