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Artemis II is not safe to fly

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Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#131

Post by irjustin »

GMoromisato wrote: post #104
irjustin wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 conditi…

> It's not like the NASA administrator gets a bonus when a rocket launches

It's related to funding. I mean it's always money, right?

But in Challenger's case, there was very heavy pressure to launch because of delays and the rising costs. I remember in a documentary they explicitly mentioned there was a backlog of missions and STS-51 had been delayed multiple times. To rollout/fuel, costs a LOT and challenger had been out on the pad for a while. Rollback was a material risk+cost.

For columbia, yea less about money. They ignored the requests to repoint spy sats and normalized foam strikes.

> I think NASA engineers are well aware of the risks and have done the math to convince themselves that this is safe.

And that's the way it should be. Everything has a risk value regardless if we calculate it or not. It's never 0... (maybe accidentally going faster than light is though?) We just need to agree what it is and is acceptable.

Story time - I was a young engineer at National Instruments and I remember sitting in on a meeting where they were discussing sig figs for their new high precision DMMs. Can we guarantee 6... 7 digits? 7? and they argued that back and forth. No decisions but it really stuck with me. When you're doing bleeding edge work the lines tend to get blurry.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#132

Post by ponector »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #90
wiseowise wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NASA tried the honeycomb approach for Orion, but it was too labor-intensive So cost cutting, as always.

Apollo was ridiculously expensive. it was a proof of concept, but not sustainable for long term exploration

How expensive in comparison to the nuclear submarines or nuclear carriers?

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#133

Post by waterTanuki »

GMoromisato wrote: post #77

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 engineers at NASA believe it is safe. The astronauts believe it is safe.

This take completely ignores Camarda's observations that there is a culture of fear spreading at NASA which punishes whistleblowers. I'm not saying he's 100% correct, but how can you claim such a take is truly balanced if there's a possibility one of the parties is engaging in a cover-up?

The engineers at NASA & astronauts aboard Columbia & Challenger also believed the programs were safe.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#135

Post by kakacik »

cromwellian wrote: post #114
throw-23 wrote: post #48

As someone who is actually (still) a fan of basic research, Artemis looks like a fun time for the 1% with a $100 billion dollar price tag, except that since it's only 4 astronauts and support staff, it's less than 1%. I opposed messing with NASA funding for a long time, but arguments referencing spin-off tech and so on wear thin. Spin-off occurring lately would/could only be captured by existing billionaires anyway,…

NASA's budget is 0.35% of the Federal Budget. The US Government spends the equivalent of 20 years of moon mission spending on ICE. They're spending 2x that on Iran war. They blew $200 billion in PPP Loan fraud in 2020 alone. I'm tired of nickle and diming science funding. You had scientists like Sabine Hossenfelder cheerleading NSF cuts cause of "waste" on string theory and particle accelerators. NSF is 0.1% of the f…

> it provides a beacon for humanity to dream

Not only that, for truly long term perspective its about mankind survival. Even that POS musk realizes that (at least he did, not sure where his psychosis got him now and don't care much TBH).

If we stay around just Earth, we will be eventually wiped out. Maybe not in next million years (or maybe yes), but but given enough time one of many ways that would happen will happen, from the sky or from processes happening purely down here, manmade or not.

Its not rocket science, its not some magical theoretical what-if, just hard facts when digging around a bit and looking at history. Anybody who has power to change things and decides not to should be treated accordingly.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#136

Post by fastball »

eru wrote: post #106
cultofmetatron wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What opportunity is being lost out on because of space exploration?

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#137

Post by voidUpdate »

I wonder what the heat shield engineers actually think of this. It's my understanding that in the Challenger disaster, the engineers were aware of the problem and tried to do something about it, but management weren't having it

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#138

Post by antonvs »

bayindirh wrote: post #127
kitd wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've often thought world leaders, upon election/selection, should get a free few orbits of the earth, to give them some perspective on the job they're about to undertake. Maybe offer the first one on Artemis II, a deferred one for the current US administration?

James May of Top Gear has flown with a U2 spy plane once [0][1]. When they reached to the edge of space, May said "If everybody could do that once, it would completely change the face of global politics, religion, education, everything". I can't agree more. Another thing I believe needs to be watched periodically is Pale Blue Dot [2]. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-COlil4tos [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch…

I think you overestimate the effect that would have on the kind of people that most need that sort of humility.

Look at what happened with William Shatner and Jeff Bezos when they came back from space. Shatner started to say something about what an impactful experience it was, but Bezos cut him off and was like “Woo! Partay!” and switched his attention to a magnum of champagne.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#139

Post by orbital-decay »

voidUpdate wrote: post #137

I wonder what the heat shield engineers actually think of this. It's my understanding that in the Challenger disaster, the engineers were aware of the problem and tried to do something about it, but management weren't having it

> The most energetic voice of public dissent has been heat shield expert and Shuttle astronaut Charles Camarda, the former Director of Engineering at Johnson Space Center. [...] he ended up publishing a cri de coeur that I encourage everyone to read in full.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ddi792xdfNXcBwF8qpDUxmZz...

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#140

Post by bayindirh »

necovek wrote: post #116
eru wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe you are making the same argument: the GP prefers space race over war for large technological development at less or no human suffering.

I have a hunch that space race is not for "peaceful technological progress of human race at large", or "let's see how this behaves in 0G, it might be useful for some global problems" anymore.
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