Earlier quoted context omitted.
Was there ever a risk-free spaceflight? Pretty sure even with this finding this flight would be safer than any Apollo.
Never risk free , but Soyuz hardly lost any crew over its 50+ years
Yeah, and where is it now?
Artemis II is not safe to fly
101–110 of 667 posts
Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Apollo command module used Avcoat, the same material as Orion. But there are two key differences: 1. The application method is different. Apollo applied it to a metal honeycomb structure with very small cells, while Orion uses blocks of the material. (NASA tried the honeycomb approach for Orion, but it was too labor-intensive). 2. Orion is much bigger and heavier than the Apollo command module. The informal conse…
> NASA tried the honeycomb approach for Orion, but it was too labor-intensive So cost cutting, as always.
You would be the first person to ever accuse the Orion program of cutting costs.
Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly
#103Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly
#104This 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…
> In both Challenger and Columbia, nobody bothered to analyze the problem because they didn't think there was a problem. 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,”…
There were a lot of mistakes with Challenger and Columbia--I totally agree. But I don't think it was money. It's not like the NASA administrator gets a bonus when a rocket launches (unlike some CEOs, maybe).
I think the problem with both Challenger and Columbia was that there were so many possible problems (turbine blade cracks, tiles falling off, etc.) that managers and even engineers got used to off-nominal conditions. This is the "normalization of deviance" that Diane Vaughan talked about.
Is that what's going on with the Orion heat shield? I don't think so. I think NASA engineers are well aware of the risks and have done the math to convince themselves that this is safe.
Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly
#105I 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.
Hard disagree. some of our best technologies came about to solve problems related to space travel which we later found useful for mundane problems at home. gps, digital cameras immediately come to mind. The only other phenomena I can think of with similar effects on human progress is war... I'll take a space race thanks
Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Hard disagree. some of our best technologies came about to solve problems related to space travel which we later found useful for mundane problems at home. gps, digital cameras immediately come to mind. The only other phenomena I can think of with similar effects on human progress is war... I'll take a space race thanks
Have you heard of opportunity costs?
About war: in our universe we got the first digital computers because of military efforts during the second world war. However, without a war IBM and Konrad Zuse and others would have gotten there, too. With much less human suffering.
Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly
#107Related: NASA's Orion Space Capsule Is Flaming Garbage by Casey Handmer https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45794242 Is Orion’s heat shield really safe? New NASA chief conducts final review on eve of flight. https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/01/nasa-chief-reviews-ori...
Looks like they did some reassuring testing for the worst case scenario:
The Avcoat blocks, which are about 1.5 inches thick, are laminated onto a thick composite base of the Orion spacecraft. Inside this is a titanium framework that carries the load of the vehicle. The NASA engineers wanted to understand what would happen if large chunks of the heat shield were stripped away entirely from the composite base of Orion. So they subjected this base material to high energies for periods of 10 seconds up to 10 minutes, which is longer than the period of heating Artemis II will experience during reentry.
What they found is that, in the event of such a failure, the structure of Orion would remain solid, the crew would be safe within, and the vehicle could still land in a water-tight manner in the Pacific Ocean.Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
could the government rent out monopoly grants for televised football on the moon in exchange for sponsoring manned space exploration?
Which government? The moon doesn't belong to any one government.
Though the US could just do it. Who's to stop them from selling these pieces of paper?
Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
could the government rent out monopoly grants for televised football on the moon in exchange for sponsoring manned space exploration?
just wait until influencers start flying there. Not on SLS of course. Flyby on Starship cattle class - say 100 people (500 for LEO and "SFO to Shanghai" while for Moon - several days would require better accommodations, thus 100) - at $5M/launch, 10 launches (9 of them - tankers) - thus $50M 3 day roundtrip for 100 people. Half a mil per person.
Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Apollo command module used Avcoat, the same material as Orion. But there are two key differences: 1. The application method is different. Apollo applied it to a metal honeycomb structure with very small cells, while Orion uses blocks of the material. (NASA tried the honeycomb approach for Orion, but it was too labor-intensive). 2. Orion is much bigger and heavier than the Apollo command module. The informal conse…
> NASA tried the honeycomb approach for Orion, but it was too labor-intensive So cost cutting, as always.
The fix for not doing that by hand is to get a robot to do it, given the applicator is human-held, a human-strength Kuka with enough reach to cover the area it can handle before the applicator needs refurbishment of some sort which would give a good opportunity to move the robot to a new section of the heat shield.