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Artemis II safely splashes down

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Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#401

Post by palata »

atonse wrote: post #376
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…

Judging by the fact that almost nobody in the mainstream talked about this until a week leading up to the mission, and that it’s been 10+ years in the making, I doubt it’s some vanity thing. I don’t see how anything as substantive like this can be seen as “vanity” (unless you mean to count that as a bonus). It’s amazing to see NASA doing newer great things (Webb, Mars probes, all have been incredibly cool too, but ma…

I totally agree on the fact that it is very cool and very impressive. But it doesn't mean that it is useful. It's mostly cool.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#402

Post by palata »

GMoromisato wrote: post #398
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 I…

> but we really are gearing up for Mars.

Which again is cool, but useless. And actually counter-productive, because we risk contaminating Mars with organic stuff coming from the Earth.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#403

Post by palata »

collinmcnulty wrote: post #73

Watching this, I can only describe it as holy. An incredible reminder of what humanity can do, and the beauty of our curiosity and the universe around us. I grew up learning that my great uncle was in Mission Control for Apollo; missions like this are what inspired me to pursue engineering in the first place.

> An incredible reminder of what humanity can do

Yep, while we are measurably destroying the Earth's biodiversity orders of magnitudes faster than the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs. And this is without global warming, which is another great thing we are doing.

Arguably, the biggest thing humanity is doing is killing the Earth. Great that we have some comfort in doing fun things on the side.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#404

Post by palata »

hermannj314 wrote: post #315
small_model wrote: post #281

Impressive mission but I feel it's not capturing the public attention because it's actually a step back from the mission 50 years ago when they actually landed men on the moon with tech that was orders or magnitude simpler and less powerful.

A diverse and inclusive crew, a publically-funded mission, an emphasis on science and discovery, and government investment in a long-term strategy, not a quick politcal win. This current administration has made sure these things never happen again, Artemis is very much the swan song of an America that has died. I am not interested in watching our corpse twitch and calling it life.

> an emphasis on science and discovery

Sorry, what science and discovery is that bringing?

I mean it's technically really cool, but I fail to see the science and discovery there.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#405

Post by palata »

Gagarin1917 wrote: post #47

Watching that capsule fall out of the sky at high speed from the teaching cameras was nerve wracking! Awesome footage, exciting to watch it live in such detail.

Agreed. I have been repeating how much I think this is all useless (sending humans in space, that is), but I will admit: watching the reentry was something.

Because it's useless doesn't mean it is not cool. Sport and art are "useless", too.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#406

Post by pdonis »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #396
pdonis wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'm sorry that you disagree with the correct things I've said. Your "source" is a YouTube video--hardly a rigorous scientific or engineering treatment. And I posted upthread in another response about the limitations of the viewpoint the video takes. Have a nice day.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#407

Post by inglor_cz »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #161
gct wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orbits do not work that way

Hilarious the the intellectual forum downvoted you for being absolutely right. Artemis II never escaped Earth’s pull. That video that NASA put out where the craft did a sling shop around the moon is extremely deceptive. The pull of the moon had very little effect. If they had missed, they would have eventually crashed back to earth in the worst case, and best case just re-adjusted and returned a little bummed.

"Artemis II never escaped Earth’s pull."

Hmm. Maximum speed attained by Artemis II when they left their initial orbit was about 11.1 km/s IIRC. While this is somewhat less than true escape velocity from Earth (11.2 km/s) and you are technically correct, it is also enough of a speed that if you fly away in any random direction (and not a carefully calculated one), perturbances from the Sun and other massive objects will probably prevent you from reaching any sort of stable orbit around the Earth, and you will start bouncing around the inner Solar System in an erratic way.

I certainly wouldn't like to model that trajectory for months or years.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#408

Post by GMoromisato »

palata wrote: post #402
GMoromisato wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 I…

> but we really are gearing up for Mars. Which again is cool, but useless. And actually counter-productive, because we risk contaminating Mars with organic stuff coming from the Earth.

"Useless" and "counter-productive" are value judgements, not objective conclusions.

My opinion is that landing humans on Mars could be the start of a new age of exploration, which would massively benefit humanity. And the risk of contamination is worth the potential reward.

That's just my opinion, of course, but it happens to be NASA's opinion as well.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#409

Post by Shitty-kitty »

api wrote: post #343
Shitty-kitty wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of plate tectonics is a much bigger obstacle on Super-Earths, then g.

Yeah the more I learn the more I buy the rare Earth explanation. Life may not be that unusual but it might be mostly just goo: little extremophile type bacteria and maybe very tiny creepy crawlies living in deep seas, underground, in liquid mantles in ice moons, etc. But to get stuff even as sophisticated as frogs and bunnies, let alone something that can try space flight, requires a place that is all of: big, stable…

Stability is definitely good but excessive stability leads to stagnation. A perfect example of this is what's been coined as the "boring billion"

"In 1995, geologists Roger Buick, Davis Des Marais, and Andrew Knoll reviewed the apparent lack of major biological, geological, and climatic events during the Mesoproterozoic era 1.6 to 1 billion years ago (Ga), and, thus, described it as "the dullest time in Earth's history"

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#410

Post by BuyMyBitcoins »

api wrote: post #343
Shitty-kitty wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of plate tectonics is a much bigger obstacle on Super-Earths, then g.

Yeah the more I learn the more I buy the rare Earth explanation. Life may not be that unusual but it might be mostly just goo: little extremophile type bacteria and maybe very tiny creepy crawlies living in deep seas, underground, in liquid mantles in ice moons, etc. But to get stuff even as sophisticated as frogs and bunnies, let alone something that can try space flight, requires a place that is all of: big, stable…

You might enjoy reading about theorized “Superhabitable” planets. A super earth with about twice the mass of Earth would likely have plate tectonics and even more internal heat. Plus, if it orbits a K-type star that’s about 85% of the mass of the Sun, it could remain habitable for tens of billions of years.

By comparison, Earth may be barely habitable. It is amusing to think that we may be living on the galactic equivalent of Australia.

Perhaps the upside is that our gravity well is low enough to make routine spaceflight possible.

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

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