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Artemis II is not safe to fly

idlewords.com

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Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#221

Post by lopis »

bambax wrote: post #170
oritron wrote: post #25

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…

I really don't understand the point of manned space exploration though? Landing on the moon in 1969 was an extraordinary achievement, perhaps the most beautiful thing ever done by mankind. But now? What's the point exactly? We know we can't go much further than the moon anyway (as this very same blog has demonstrated many times); what do we expect to achieve with astronauts that robots can't do?

I think it's still very important for adaptability. yes, a land rover can run for years and run thousands of experiments, but it's limited to whatever scientific probes it was equipped with. Humans are right now more flexible and could adapt experiments to findings, which would then inform the next rovers. And when the time comes that we start mining and building on the moon, a few humans will probably need to live there. So any data on human survival outside the Earth is useful data. https://humanresearchroadmap.nasa.gov/

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#222

Post by Findecanor »

euroderf wrote: post #142
Findecanor wrote: post #124

I have a bad feeling about this project. It reminds me of both the movies Capricorn 1 and Iron Sky ... and not in any good way.

But this mission does not have O.J. Simpson. Does it ?

I was thinking of the risk of the crew capsule burning up on reentry, due to a possibly faulty heat shield — and people in charge knowing about the risk beforehand but going on with it anyway.

I had forgotten that O.J Simpson had been in the movie, to be honest.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#223

Post by rob74 »

Mikhail_K wrote: post #205
oritron wrote: post #25

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…

> Challenger: no gasses were supposed to make it past the o-rings no matter what, > but when it became clear that gasses were escaping and the o-rings were being > damaged, there was a push to suggest that it's an acceptable level. Interestingly, the article https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ddi792xdfNXcBwF8qpDUxmZz... > by heat shield expert and Shuttle astronaut Charles Camarda, the former Director of Engineering…

Without being too familiar with the subject - another commenter referred to the "swiss cheese model": the O-ring design, the temperature etc. weren't the single cause, they were contributing factors, and the more contributing factors you eliminate, the more certain you can be that you won't have a repeat accident. AFAIK there weren't any more Shuttle launches at such low temperatures after that anymore either?

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#224

Post by ACCount37 »

wolvoleo wrote: post #151
oritron wrote: post #25

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…

Yes and the reversal of safety calculations really surprised me. "The orbiter has a total fail rate of one in 1000 so this individual part is higher than 1 in 10000", something like that. Where neither premise was actually tested or verified. Just specified on paper as a requirement and then used for actual safety calculations. I don't know how a big organisation can think like that. But I guess these calculations we…

The bigger an organization gets, the more internal overhead it has. At some point, it would take divine intervention for important things not to get overlooked or lost at some junctions in the org chart.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#225

Post by mikkupikku »

I wouldn't be nearly so concerned if not for the blatant coverup and downplaying from NASA. This makes the whole situation easily pattern match to Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia, where political pressure to ignore problems and drive forward anyway got people needlessly killed.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#226

Post by renewiltord »

wiseowise wrote: post #185
renewiltord wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not my purpose so dying that way doesn’t seem that appealing.

Replace it with whatever you consider “worth dying for”.

In that case it seems all right. Certainly if I died in Apollo 1 and I cared about spaceflight and making it to the Moon before the Russians I wouldn’t see it as unworthy.

The Shuttle deaths no problem.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#227

Post by tclancy »

Grimburger wrote: post #182
idlewords wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you play a single round of Russian roulette with a revolver, it is likely you will not die, but it is also not safe to do that. The same idea applies here. 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 ar…

Have you bothered to ask the astronauts on board if they want to risk it? You're getting clicks, they're going to the moon and there's a lot of people on Earth who would happily take any tradeoff for that.

Hang on, without a dog in this fight, have I asked the people who trained their whole lives to drive cool cars if this particular cool car, which they were not involved in designing or building, is safe to drive? Is that what you are asking?

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#228

Post by Mikhail_K »

voidUpdate wrote: post #220
Mikhail_K wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the sealant and O-Rings were adequate, the joint would not have failed. That assertion requires some reasoning and evidence to back it.

The sealant and O-rings were meant to keep the hot gasses inside. Simply making a joint slightly wiggly will not keep hot gasses inside. The hot gasses did not stay inside. The sealant and O-rings did not succeed in keeping the hot gasses inside (evidence: Challenger). They were not adequate

> The sealant and O-rings did not succeed in keeping the hot gasses inside (evidence: Challenger). They were not adequate

No. The whole assembly --joint, sealant and O-rings, -- failed.

"They were not adequate" - yet, after the redesign, they kept those same O-rings and declared that boosters are safe to fly, in manifest contradiction to your assertion. So your reasoning is clearly flawed.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#229

Post by tclancy »

IshKebab wrote: post #190
idlewords wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you play a single round of Russian roulette with a revolver, it is likely you will not die, but it is also not safe to do that. The same idea applies here. 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 ar…

But then no spacecraft is safe to fly. We're obviously willing to accept a much higher level of risk sending humans to the moon than in other situations. I think I read somewhere at a 1 in 30 chance of them all dying was acceptable. Not too far off from Russian roulette!

Pro tip: you’re supposed to use a revolver.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#230

Post by HPsquared »

oritron wrote: post #25

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…

Normalization of deviance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance

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