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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

#361

Post by adamsb6 »

MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #347
CWuestefeld wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

humans are so oblivious to safety It seems that in modern times, humans focus on safety almost to the exclusion of everything else. As much as the more traditional salutations "godspeed" or "have a nice day", we're even more likely to hear "drive safe" or "have a safe trip" or "be safe". We're very nearly paralyzed by insisting that everything must be maximally safe. Surely you've heard the mantra "...if it saves jus…

> We're very nearly paralyzed by insisting that everything must be maximally safe. Are we? People saying "have a safe trip" is pretty weak evidence. The counter evidence is just about everything else going on, at least in the US. Relaxed worker safety standards, weakened environmental protections, and generally moving as fast as possible.

My kids are going to be legally mandated to be in car seats until they’re about 12 years old.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#362

Post by ibejoeb »

antryu wrote: post #250

mechanical engineering background here. the heat shield honeycomb → block change sounds like a classic cost/complexity tradeoff where you lose structural integrity for easier manufacturing. reminds me of automotive safety recalls that trace back to "simplified" component designs. sometimes the old complex way was complex for a reason.

I don't know anything about this program, so here's a basic question: why does manufacturing need to be easier? Are they intending to mass produce these craft?

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#363

Post by jccooper »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #41
idlewords wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Orion heat shield is sixteen feet across. NASA's test facilities can only test small material samples in these facilities, not capture how the entire heat shield will behave.

How does SpaceX test it? Have they needed to solve this problem?

Crew Dragon flew an automated demo flight before flying with crew. It was proceeded by 20 flights of Dragon 1 over 10 years.

Starship's heatshield has already been tested full-up half a dozen times. Many changes have been made as a result.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#364

Post by rbanffy »

randallsquared wrote: post #274
withinboredom wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd prefer if we just wrote off space-x and pretend they don't exist.

SpaceX is the only major operator of spaceflights in the US: more than 95% of all satellites launched are launched by SpaceX, not just in the US, but worldwide .

> more than 95% of all satellites launched are launched by SpaceX

Another way to look at this number is that they are responsible for 95% of the light pollution caused by orbiting objects.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#365

Post by FrustratedMonky »

jessewmc wrote: post #355
chadd wrote: post #292

I'm literally guest lecturing at a Harvard class tomorrow on systemic failures in decision making, using the Columbia and Challenger disasters as case studies, and changed my slides last night to include Artemis II because it could literally happen again. This broken safety culture has been around since the beginning of the Shuttle program. In 1980, Gregg Easterbrook published "Goodbye, Columbia" in The Washington Mo…

As an aside, do you have any suggestions for "state of the art" reading on safety culture?

I just had a conversation about engineers not understanding the need for grounding.

I'm wondering if every generation has to relearn the basics for themselves through experience.

Each generation has to make the same mistakes. Because book learning doesn't seem to do it for some things.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#366

Post by testing22321 »

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…

Related - what does SpaceX Dragon use for heat shield material and can it be used on Orion?

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#367

Post by nickserv »

greedo wrote: post #351
CWuestefeld wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

humans are so oblivious to safety It seems that in modern times, humans focus on safety almost to the exclusion of everything else. As much as the more traditional salutations "godspeed" or "have a nice day", we're even more likely to hear "drive safe" or "have a safe trip" or "be safe". We're very nearly paralyzed by insisting that everything must be maximally safe. Surely you've heard the mantra "...if it saves jus…

Considering that driving (at least in the US) is a relatively unsafe means of travel compared to the alternatives, I can understand imploring someone to drive safe.

Not just the US.

Rather strangely when choosing transportation options, people generally don't say "I'll take the subway it's safer", when it very much is.

On the other hand people accept things like "I have a fear of flying" much more easily than "I have a fear of cars".

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#368

Post by vannevar »

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…

All of the controversy over the heat shield is obscuring the much bigger safety issue: Artemis has had only a single unmanned test flight. By contrast, the Saturn launch system had seven successful unmanned tests before being trusted with a crew, including two unmanned flights of the complete Saturn V stack. And even then, three astronauts were lost during ground testing of the crew capsule due to a critical design flaw. Artemis's closest modern counterpart, the SpaceX Starship, has had 11 test flights, several of which resulted in loss of the vehicle. There is no reason to believe that Artemis has a significantly higher reliability rate than Starship or Saturn V. Even without the heat shield controversy, this is the most dangerous mission NASA has launched since the first flight of the Space Shuttle.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#369

Post by nritchie »

actimod wrote: post #309
chadd wrote: post #292

I'm literally guest lecturing at a Harvard class tomorrow on systemic failures in decision making, using the Columbia and Challenger disasters as case studies, and changed my slides last night to include Artemis II because it could literally happen again. This broken safety culture has been around since the beginning of the Shuttle program. In 1980, Gregg Easterbrook published "Goodbye, Columbia" in The Washington Mo…

It is bound to happen again and again considering humans are so oblivious to safety.

Maybe not so much "oblivious to safety" as "oblivious to probable risk." We worry to much about low risk events (like airline flights) and don't worry enough about higher risk events (like trips-and-falls, driving a car, poor diet...)

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#370

Post by ibejoeb »

waterTanuki wrote: post #112

> That context is a moon program that has spent close to $100 billion and 25 years with nothing to show for itself, at an agency that has just experienced mass firings and been through a near-death experience with its science budget. The charismatic new Administrator has staked his reputation on increasing launch cadence, and set an explicit goal of landing astronauts on the Moon before President Trump’s term expires…

I'm pretty much with you. The fraud and waste is infuriating. But, frankly, what is the point of this program? At the risk of not being skeptical, can't we say that we conquered lunar orbit in the 1960s? I don't understand why this is some enormous scratch R&D project.
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