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Artemis II safely splashes down
411–420 of 475 posts
Re: Artemis II safely splashes down
#412Watching 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.
My encouragement would be to take this and point to it to make those problems seem tractable, which they are with political will. “We went to the moon! Surely we can …”
Hope is powerful, cynicism is an opiate.
Re: Artemis II safely splashes down
#413Wild that they manage to fly to the moon but still seem to be having those comms problems. Asking the astronauts if they’re really pressing the PTT button is wild.
...and informing them which button was the PTT button. She had to say it, but it'd be hard not to react to that.
It’s to the right of SCE to AUX…
Re: Artemis II safely splashes down
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
What would prevent them from entering into an orbit around Earth for a day or so and use that to slow down? Is that possible and would that make the reentry less risky?
Possible, but far too expensive due to the all of the fuel that would have to be carried the entire way and back. Expensive in a monetary sense, absolutely, but also in the sense that much less mass would be available for every other component of the mission.
Re: Artemis II safely splashes down
#415As 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…
> Feeling like a bit of a "vibe" post which is everything wrong lately but I can't help but feel some satisfaction that we're still able to accomplish something like this in our space endeavors.
SpaceX catching with chopsticks and doing booster catches has already done that for me. Crazy advances.
Re: Artemis II safely splashes down
#416Earlier 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.
Was the Wright brothers’ first flight useless, or did it teach us lessons that lead to the Concorde and 777?
Was the first automobile so slow and clunky it was useless, or did it lead to the F1 cars of today?
Was Alan Touring’s computer so slow it was useless, or did it lead to this comment being typed on a device that is many orders of magnitude faster and smaller?
Going to Mars will teach us a lot. In the future when we go further it will be useful in ways we can’t imagine today.
Re: Artemis II safely splashes down
#417Glad 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…
Huh, COMPLETELY off-topic and bordering on weird, but I saw something on your profile that was eerily reminding to an idiosyncrasy I've personally possessed. I clicked your profile and saw the first line in your bio was a hexcode for salmon/persimmon color; my favorite color as well, and I used to religiously use it in much of my projects as #FF7256 - it's even my HN banner color. I was curious on what the color or its application means to you?
Re: Artemis II safely splashes down
#418Earlier 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.
Landing on Mars is the artifact of all of the innovation required to get to Mars. We benefit from the innovations, not the landing per se.
Memory foam, smart phone cameras, tech miniaturization in general, GPS, baby formula, cordless tools... just a tiny sliver of things we use daily that are directly attributable to the pursuit of space travel.
It is far from useless
Re: Artemis II safely splashes down
#419I wish these were more peaceful times so these brave people could get the glories they deserve
Re: Artemis II safely splashes down
#420Glad 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?
Is this better odds than sailing across the Atlantic in the 1400-1500s?