Artemis II safely splashes down • Hacker News Board

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#391

Post by tedd4u » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 6:49 PM UTC

Brybry wrote: post #168

stackghost wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why not just use the speedboats to take them back? They actually covered this in the broadcast: Helicopters are faster to get the astronauts to medical, smoother in rough seas, and there's less risk of being swamped by a rogue wave. Plus, since the astronauts might have fatigue/muscle atrophy/whatever, it complicates potential boat transfers.

The public information sheet implies that in poor weather/rough seas they would do crew recovery in the well deck, sort of like how Dragon works. [1] From the broadcast, they made it sound like a big factor is the 2 hour program requirement to get the crew out of the capsule. Maybe they can't reliably hit that mark with a well deck recovery? [1] https://www3.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/orion-recove...

The other reason is that the capsule can splashdown far away from the ship. In this case it was close (3km or so). It can possibly fall much farther away. In which case boats would be much slower. Add in the possibility of rough seas & bad weather the helos make sense. And just to keep things simple I think they just use them no matter what. Prevent errors. Also gives a chance to rehearse and debug the full recovery process in case it’s actually really needed the next time.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#392

Post by jjk166 » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 6:56 PM UTC

pibaker wrote: post #236

irjustin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

It honestly says something about how absurdly risk averse our society has become that an 1/30 chance of death is considered too high for a literal moonshot. You can advertise a 1/3 rate of slowly choking in vacuum and I bet you will still get a five mile long queue of people signing up for the mission. If you want a historical comparison, over 200 men left with Magellan on his voyage around the globe and only 40 retu…

It's worth noting that Magellan lived in a time of extremely high infant and childhood mortality. Approximately 30% of newborns would die in infancy, and the odds of reaching 16 were only about 50%. This wasn't just skewed by people in poor circumstances, even the wealthy elite in society with the best access to resources and medicine of the time faced grim odds. Everyone went through their formative years with the understanding that their survival was unlikely, they watched their siblings and friends of the same age die, they were raised by parents who knew damn well that half their children likely wouldn't make it,and their society was structured around the assumption of an heir and a spare. Under such circumstances, the value of human life, and thus the reward necessary to justify risk, would logically have been much lower.

Indeed, it's rather amazing to think about just how recently things changed. The generation that first went to the moon had a much lower infant mortality rate than in the 1500s, but it was still about 20 times higher than today, and critically they were all raised by parents and lead by people who had grown up around normalized high infant mortality rates. Boomers are the first generation where infant mortality was continually below 5%, and millennials are the first generation to be raised by parents who considered their children's survival to adulthood a given. And of course that's for the developed world; global infant mortality only fell below 5% in 2010. Right now is the first time in human history that you can say with 95% confidence that a random human newborn will survive to adulthood. We should be much more risk averse than our ancestors, we are on average anteing up many more happy, healthy years than they were.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#393

Post by anon291 » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 7:40 PM UTC

BitsAndObjects wrote: post #369

anon291 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been to many of them and, unlike most Americans, when I say I've traveled the world, that also includes countries that are not in the American sphere of influence. The difference in how that plays out is obvious. I would recommend you travel more. Ideally to a country where if anything happens, uncle sams pressure won't do anything. In countries like China, Russia, or even India, you won't find as many American…

Yep, you responded exactly as expected. Well done. Enjoy your bubble.

I'm not the one living in the bubble where 'the world' means America , Europe, Japan, and the anglosphere.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#394

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 8:05 PM UTC

brewdad wrote: post #382

fnord77 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're a very primitive species, compared to what? We're the most advanced species we know of. It might even hold true over the entire universe. All species might top out at where we are. We don't know.

What a sad view of the universe. To hold that humanity in the year 2026 is the best the universe can do.

[deleted]

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#395

Post by SV_BubbleTime » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 8:09 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #117

llbbdd wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Objectively never a better point in history, subjectively never more people miserable and misled.

Wild stuff really. There is a book about it, using an Abe Lincoln quote he said hoping that the civil war wouldn’t happen, “better angels of our nature”.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#396

Post by SV_BubbleTime » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 8:10 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #234

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but no not really. This is incorrect, the “free return” would have happened if they launched entirely in the wrong direction. Like I said, the gif you saw makes it look that way. Here is a link that explains it very well. https://youtu.be/MF8IbYbVIA0?t=269 I’ll agree, it seems crazy that it left earth, made it to the moon, and never really left earth orbit at all. That the furthest we’ve been away is still destin…

> This is incorrect No, it's not. You aren't responding to what I actually said. See below. > the “free return” would have happened if they launched entirely in the wrong direction. But it would not have been a free return that let them see the far side of the moon , which is what I said. The Moon's gravity is what made that possible. And that was very significant.

I’m sorry that you feel so strongly about a position that is incorrect. I provided a source to help explain it to you.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#397

Post by chuckadams » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 8:14 PM UTC

brewdad wrote: post #382

fnord77 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're a very primitive species, compared to what? We're the most advanced species we know of. It might even hold true over the entire universe. All species might top out at where we are. We don't know.

What a sad view of the universe. To hold that humanity in the year 2026 is the best the universe can do.

I don't think it's sad to admit that we may never know the answer. I'd like to be surprised, but the laws of physics make it pretty unlikely. Besides, maybe the other species are worse than us.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#398

Post by GMoromisato » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 8:20 PM UTC

mvkel wrote: post #373

I am trying hard to keep a positive attitude about this mission but I keep feeling like it's vanity marketing for America, more than science, or pushing the frontier. "Hey everyone, remember when we got to the moon FIRST? Good times." Ultimately, we did all of this a half century ago. The lasting impression is a reminder of how underfunded the space program has been all these decades. Why go to the moon again? The an…

The answer in the 60s was "to beat the Soviets". Today, we are partially doing it to beat China, but we really are gearing up for Mars.

You can't just start from zero and fly to Mars. You need to build an entire workforce able to produce and operate fantastically complicated machines. And you need to fly regular missions, each more ambitious than the last, until finally we can land people on the Red Planet.

Artemis II is the beginning.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#399

Post by jasomill » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 8:41 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #338

simplyluke wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

A global view is probably not the right way to look at things, encouraging as it may be. Of course globally hunger rates fell and so did child mortality. If nothing else, by the inexorable progress of science and technology. But what about comparing the same country/region? After all that's a better sense of how things are progressing locally to you , and when people are asked "are things better or worse" they probab…

As an American with severe hemophilia, 2020, without a doubt.

I was born in 1978, and in the early '80s, beat approximately 50/50 odds by not getting infected with HIV from the only available treatments at the time, and as a result of this and other risks including hepatitis, treatments were only used in response to active bleeding episodes throughout my childhood, resulting in arthritis in my ankles and elbows by the time I was around 8.

And I still wound up with hepatitis C from near birth (at which point it was referred to as "non-A, non-B", as the virus would not be identified until the late '80s) until a cure was developed decades later, fortunately never symptomatic.

So, while I beat the odds, my life expectancy from birth until much later would have been considerably longer had I been born in 2020, and my joints would work a lot better.

Oh, and as someone who grew up with the Shuttle and attended both Space Camp and Space Academy in Huntsville, inevitable political nonsense notwithstanding, I'm elated about the successful mission.

As for the odds, given the opportunity, I wouldn't even hesitate unless they were worse than 1 in 10.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#400

Post by bobbean » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 8:46 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #157

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?

A big part of the reason is that Orion (and Apollo) reentry speeds are way higher due to the orbital mechanics involved in going to the moon and back. Today's was actually the fastest manned reentry ever attempted. For reference the shuttle generally reentered at ~17.5K mph, and today's was 24K-25K mph. It's not clear that we could build a craft with wings that could survive that. So then you're looking at adding fue…

Since these speeds are hard to grasp: That's about 416 miles a minute, or 7 miles a second. It traveled a mile in about the time it takes for a person to blink.