Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Artemis II is not safe to fly

idlewords.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 667 posts

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#141

Post by cubefox »

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…

> It's hard for me to reconcile "It is likely that Artemis II will land safely" with "Artemis II is Not Safe to Fly", unless maybe getting clicks is involved.

Look up the term "expected value". If pressing a button has a 10% chance of destroying Earth, it is both 1) likely that pressing it will do nothing AND 2) the case that pressing it is extremely unsafe.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#143

Post by sheiyei »

kakacik wrote: post #122
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?

Do you think sociopaths like current 'leader' would change significantly upon such experience? I unfortunately don't share such optimism.

The point with the last bit was that they should be put in an unsafe craft.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#144

Post by XorNot »

wiseowise wrote: post #81
idlewords wrote: post #76

Earlier 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.

Labor intensive methods aren't automatically better: you have more manual steps which must be done perfectly and validated etc.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#145

Post by XorNot »

ponector wrote: post #132
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

At its peak the Apollo program was about 6% of US GDP.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#146

Post by gorgoiler »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #80
eru wrote: post #66

Earlier 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?

Is there any research on the effect of apparent gravitational field strength on sports? I’d be willing to bet that rocketry and artillery takes account of 50mm/s2 difference at the equator. While the difference is obviously tiny, the margins in modern sports are also miniscule.

Do Fijian rugby games see a 0.5% increase in longest drop goal distance?

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#147

Post by plaguuuuuu »

idlewords wrote: post #76
turtletontine wrote: post #74

Someone please answer my obvious question. We sent successful missions to the moon sixty years ago. What heat shield material was used for the Apollo capsules, and why would we need something different now? Are the Artemis mission parameters totally different in a way that requires a new design? Or was Apollo incredibly dangerous and we got lucky they didn’t all fail catastrophically? The article mentions Orion is mu…

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…

too labor intensive - each launch already costs like $1bn, how bad can it be

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#148

Post by cubefox »

akamaka wrote: post #32
CoastalCoder wrote: post #14

The article seems compelling, but experience tells me to get both sides of a story before judging. Anyone know if there's a detailed response from NASA to the article?

There’s been plenty of coverage of this issue, and this article discusses some of the changed they made: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/artemis/the-artemis-... The only thing the author of this blog piece has to offer that’s new is his very strong personal intuition that the new design hasn’t been properly validated, without any engineering explanation about why the testing the performed won’t adequately sim…

Their testing procedures failed to predict the char loss before the flight, so they don't seem very reliable.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#149

Post by nickvec »

vsgherzi wrote: post #44

Definitely concerned to hear but I’m hopeful that the core of nasa is intact. They’re some of the kindest and smartest people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. They don’t joke around with lives on the line. I hope the best for everyone involved. I’ll be watching the launch of Artemis 2 and 3 with excitement and hope.

NASA’s track record says otherwise, no? Challenger and Columbia come to mind.
Post reply on HN