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Artemis II is not safe to fly

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121–130 of 667 posts

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#121
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’ve killed dozens during the shuttle program , or did you forget ? Also a number during Gemini, Mercury and Appollo. Terrible safety record , and 5x worse than Soyuz . Shuttle fatality rate was 1/10. Approaching Russian roulette odds

135 missions, 2 fatal accidents, that’s not 1/10.

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Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#122
post #100
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About the last point: At this point in time, manned space exploration should come out of our entertainment budget. The same budget we use for football or olympic games.

I've often thought world leaders, upon election/selection, should get a free few orbits of the earth, to give them some perspective on the job they're about to undertake. Maybe offer the first one on Artemis II, a deferred one for the current US administration?

Do you think sociopaths like current 'leader' would change significantly upon such experience? I unfortunately don't share such optimism.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#123
post #100
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About the last point: At this point in time, manned space exploration should come out of our entertainment budget. The same budget we use for football or olympic games.

I've often thought world leaders, upon election/selection, should get a free few orbits of the earth, to give them some perspective on the job they're about to undertake. Maybe offer the first one on Artemis II, a deferred one for the current US administration?

>I've often thought world leaders, upon election/selection, should get a free few orbits of the earth, to give them some perspective on the job they're about to undertake.

Perhaps, but they should also get a few free orbits of the Earth *after* their term ends, on a launch system built by whichever contractor has given the most "campaign donations" to politicians. Surely they'll trust it to be safe, right?

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#126
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never risk free , but Soyuz hardly lost any crew over its 50+ years

2/156 lost for Soyuz in 59 years, 2/135 for Space Shuttle in 30 years. Same rate. People often underestimate how intense STS actually was.

The 2 were early, and fewer lives were lost. The shuttle was unnecessarily risky , and NASA was aware from its inception

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#127
post #100
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About the last point: At this point in time, manned space exploration should come out of our entertainment budget. The same budget we use for football or olympic games.

I've often thought world leaders, upon election/selection, should get a free few orbits of the earth, to give them some perspective on the job they're about to undertake. Maybe offer the first one on Artemis II, a deferred one for the current US administration?

James May of Top Gear has flown with a U2 spy plane once [0][1]. When they reached to the edge of space, May said "If everybody could do that once, it would completely change the face of global politics, religion, education, everything".

I can't agree more.

Another thing I believe needs to be watched periodically is Pale Blue Dot [2].

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-COlil4tos

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtsZaDbxCgM

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NASA tried the honeycomb approach for Orion, but it was too labor-intensive So cost cutting, as always.

You would be the first person to ever accuse the Orion program of cutting costs.

There's different kinds of costs: cost to the government, and cost to actually build the thing.

The contractor has no trouble inflating the first one whenever they can, but they want to strip the second one to the bone to maximize profits.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#129
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've often thought world leaders, upon election/selection, should get a free few orbits of the earth, to give them some perspective on the job they're about to undertake. Maybe offer the first one on Artemis II, a deferred one for the current US administration?

Do you think sociopaths like current 'leader' would change significantly upon such experience? I unfortunately don't share such optimism.

You don't have to be an optimist. You have to try.

Trying and seeing what happens is also science, after all.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#130

This is a more balanced take, in my opinion: https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/01/nasa-chief-reviews-ori... Camarda is an outlier. The engineers at NASA believe it is safe. The astronauts believe it is safe. Former astronaut Danny Olivas was initially skeptical of the heat shield but came around. And note that the OP believes it is likely (maybe very likely) that the heat shield will work fine. It's hard for me to r…

It is easy to reconcile these two statements.

The "likely" in "likely ...to land safely" and "likely to work fine" is not nearly good enough.

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