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Artemis II safely splashes down

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Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#111

Post by dingaling »

qrush wrote: post #22

Apparently there's more work than just clicking "Recover Vessel" after splashdown!

1 hour 29 minutes seems excessive to extract the astronauts; if any of them _did_ have a medical issue they'd be in for a long wait.

The commentary said that the initial problems with the boats approaching Integrity was due to an unexpected swell. Unexpected, in the Pacific?

Edit: all of the Apollo missions, except 8, had their stabilization collars inflated in under 20 minutes. With Integrity today it took nearly an hour more.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#113

Post by bombcar »

irjustin wrote: post #51
areoform wrote: post #11

Glad that they're safe and sound. It's worth pointing out that this is the first extremely public, widely acknowledged high risk mission NASA has done in over 50 years. The Shuttle was risky, but it wasn't thought of or acknowledged by NASA as being risky until very late in its lifecycle. According to NASA's OIG, Artemis acceptable crew mortality rate is 1 in 30. Roughly 3x riskier than the shuttle. There genuinely i…

> Artemis acceptable crew mortality rate is 1 in 30. This seems insane to me. That X decades later we accept, with all our advancements in tech, a weaker system than ever before. That if we send 30 people we _accept_ that one is possible to die. That's the starting point? That's what we document as acceptable?

I suspect that it is NOT a weaker system than before, it is more accurate about the mortality rate. In other words, there are fewer "unknown unknowns" than there were in the 60s and 80s, partially because of explosions that took out previous astronauts.

(Some would snidely say as long as they don't put seven people on the rocket they'll be fine.)

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#114

Post by throwanem »

areoform wrote: post #104
trothamel wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a great article. Adding to it - Apollo 13 was a mission where 3 men should have died, but somehow didn't. If it had happened while the LM was on the moon, you would have had the CSM lose power, and then two men on the moon would have had no way to return home. (And for the shuttle design mission - my understanding is it was likely the ability to do a HEXAGON-style film return mission in a single orbit, befor…

Thanks! note - I can't verify any of the following, it's more - for lack of a better term - aerospace nerd fan theory at this point. Post-collapse, people think that the Buran justification was paranoia. But based on what I've read / seen (though this is getting hard to source, so I might be just good ol' hallucinating here), they weren't entirely wrong. The subtext around that large payload bay had to do with the So…

The only people who took seriously the idea of a Shuttle FOBS were the Soviets, and frankly not even all of them; as far as I've ever seen credible evidence to substantiate, it never went much past a single position paper from the early 80s. The idea that Buran was meant as a MAD-restoring FOBS has, so far as I know, not even that much support. (If you know of primary sources, in translation or otherwise, please link them.)

Read Payne Harrison's 1989 novel Storming Intrepid, followed by NASA publication SP-4221, "The Space Shuttle Decision," from 1999. [1] The first is a pretty good depiction of what you're imagining, and the second explains why the imagination of a technothriller author is where that idea went to die. Then maybe give your head a shake. If Reagan had violated the Outer Space Treaty - via NASA of all agencies! - how do you imagine it'd have stayed secret over these forty years just past?

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20241229052235/https://ntrs.nasa...

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#115

Post by bombcar »

dingaling wrote: post #106
philistine wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d bet a million dollars that Orion will win every safety metric compared to the shuttle once it is retired. NASA deluded itself in thinking the Shuttle was safe. The reality is that the Shuttle was the most dangerous spaceship anyone ever built.

Artemis rides on extended versions of the same SRBs that made the Shuttle ascent so dangerous.

Was any shuttle lost to the SRBs?

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#116

Post by Culonavirus »

llbbdd wrote: post #52
philistine wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll note, since it is supremely interesting to me, that Starship is able to communicate with the ground during its whole reentry due to its sheer size and ability to connect with Starlink satellites. I assumed loss of signal due to reentry was a given for any spaceship!

Would this capsule had been been able to communicate if it was integrated with starlink or is the size more important? I'd imagine if they could have achieved communication via Starlink they would have done it, but just curious.

It's the shape and size.

Also Orion and other capsules fall like a rock (steep reentry profile ) compared to shuttle/starship, which intentionally slow down the reentry and kinda glide (ballpark 10min with capsules compared to 30min with shuttle/starship).

tl;dr: capsules get fully enveloped in plasma due to their shape, size and reentry profile

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#117

Post by bombcar »

llbbdd wrote: post #85
brianjlogan wrote: post #82

As an American I feel like I've been going through a bit of an identity crisis from what I remember growing up. Probably the rose tinted glasses of being a child but being from Florida I always had a sense of amazement and wonder as I heard the sonic boom of the shuttle returning to earth. Really felt like I was coexisting in this incredible scientific powerhouse of a country full of bright and enabled peoples that k…

I think especially online there's a lot of emphasis on "everything is wrong". A mission like this is hard to ignore and highlights the bias. On the whole, despite setbacks, we continue.

There's a lot of money/hay/political power/etc to be made from "everything is wrong" - it's hard for "good news" to really get into your bones.

Not to say it's the best of times, nor to say it's the worst of times, mind you. Just that it's really hard to objectively compare.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#118

Post by simplyluke »

llbbdd wrote: post #85
brianjlogan wrote: post #82

As an American I feel like I've been going through a bit of an identity crisis from what I remember growing up. Probably the rose tinted glasses of being a child but being from Florida I always had a sense of amazement and wonder as I heard the sonic boom of the shuttle returning to earth. Really felt like I was coexisting in this incredible scientific powerhouse of a country full of bright and enabled peoples that k…

I think especially online there's a lot of emphasis on "everything is wrong". A mission like this is hard to ignore and highlights the bias. On the whole, despite setbacks, we continue.

If you want to dispel a bit more of the ever-pervasive online pessimism bias, read up on global rates of hunger the last time we flew to the moon (1972) vs now. The reality is, for all the problems we face today, there's no sane answer other than today to the question "when would you prefer to be born as a random person on earth"

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#120

Post by stackghost »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #99
Ifkaluva wrote: post #98

Can somebody help me understand why this does a water landing, like the old Apollo missions, instead of like the space shuttle that lands like a plane?

Buoyancy is an easier equation to solve than lift.

>Buoyancy is an easier equation to solve than lift.

That's a snappy one-liner but it doesn't address the real concerns.

First of all, subsonic lift is well understood and has been for decades. The answer is much more mundane: The Artemis mission profile does not require payload doors that open, no Canadarm, no requirement to service, launch, and/or capture satellites in orbit, and so like good engineers they designed the minimum vehicle that satisfies the requirements.

Also, the Shuttle was actually much more expensive to reuse than originally predicted.

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