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Artemis II is not safe to fly

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Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#401

Post by dminik »

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.

Have you bothered to ask the gambler if they want to risk it?

No offense to the astronauts of course, but asking people that have dreamed of this opportunity their whole life doesn't actually tell you all that much about the actual safety of the mission as a whole.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#402

Post by sfn42 »

hluska wrote: post #330
actimod wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I wouldn’t say humans are oblivious to safety. The Apollo program was very successful as long as you’re not related to Gus Grissom, Ed White or Roger Chaffee. But those three (preventable) deaths aside, Apollo was quite successful and figured out some huge problems. If you’re interested in a heck of a good read, the Columbia Accident Investigation Report is a good place to start: https://ehss.energy.gov/deprep/archiv…

I'd say it's more accurate to say the people who are actually smart work as engineers. Leadership is generally engineers who were better at office politics than engineering, or just business majors etc.

So you have a group of really talented people using their talents to do awesome things, and then you have some useless idiots who are good at kissing the right asses, running the show and taking most of the credit. And that's how you end up killing astronauts, because the useless assholes in charge aren't even competent enough to recognize when they should listen to the brains of their operation. All they care about is looking good to their superiors and hitting some arbitrary deadline they've decided to set for no damn reason etc.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#403

Post by newsoftheday »

Why don't they use Starship, seems like Musk's company has a great record overall for designing and operating spacecraft. I asked Gemini, of course Boeing is in the picture: "NASA has contracts with multiple partners (Boeing, Lockheed Martin) for the SLS and Orion, and shifting entirely to Starship would require canceling these expensive, legally binding contracts.".

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#404

Post by monkeywork »

withinboredom wrote: post #393
monkeywork wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why because "elon bad" ?? cut your nose off to spite your face if you want but the rest of us will recognize the importance of space-x and be grateful it is here.

This is about going to the moon. Space-x is over budget and extremely late. It has nothing to do with the management there, only that it is better to come up with a solution without them.

If that was the truth I have a strong feeling your wording would be different.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#405

Post by trogdor »

wongarsu wrote: post #283
shadowofneptune wrote: post #276

A lot of the discussion overlooks or wishes to avoid an uncomfortable problem with the Artemis program: Artemis III's hardware will not be ready for the forseeable future. The program has had multiple shakeups so far. This is a program heading for cancellation. The flight risk is surely acceptable if this is not the first flight of many but the last.

The threat of a Chinese moon landing keeps the Artemis program alive. As long as Artemis is slowly working towards the goal of eventually landing Americans on the surface of the moon and eventually building a habitat they can be injected with money and manpower whenever geopolitical or ideological demands arise. If it was canceled outright it would be much harder to react to any Chinese success

> The threat of a Chinese moon landing

Maybe I’m naive, but what is the threat here?

> If it was canceled outright it would be much harder to react to any Chinese success

I feel like the appropriate reaction would be to congratulate China.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#407

Post by randomNumber7 »

hluska wrote: post #313
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…

The most frustrating part of the whole thing is that when you read Charles Camarda’s thoughts after his meeting with NASA in January, it could have been written in 1986 or in 2003. https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1ddi792xdfNXcBwF8qpDU... It’s pretty clear at this point that the shuttle was already broken at design. But seeing the same powder keg of safety/budget/immovable time constraints applied to a totally…

[flagged]

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#408

Post by randomNumber7 »

thesuitonym wrote: post #339
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 difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.''

Isn't NASA run by the government? Why not pay people to do their job correctly?

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#409

Post by tikhonj »

ekianjo wrote: post #252
tikhonj wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on some rough numbers, NASA's budget (around $24B) would be I also looked up the NSF's 2024 budget, which, at $9B, was much lower than I expected.

> with a pretty great return in research, engineering and education to boot. If a company could spend 24B in research they would probably produce a lot more things than NASA

Google's R&D budget is like $60B. Make of that what you will.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#410

Post by dannyfreeman »

newsoftheday wrote: post #403

Why don't they use Starship, seems like Musk's company has a great record overall for designing and operating spacecraft. I asked Gemini, of course Boeing is in the picture: "NASA has contracts with multiple partners (Boeing, Lockheed Martin) for the SLS and Orion, and shifting entirely to Starship would require canceling these expensive, legally binding contracts.".

Starship explodes
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