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The Lunacy of Artemis

idlewords.com

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Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#131

Post by hi_hi »

zzzeek wrote: post #97
hi_hi wrote: post #78

Out of interest, what do people think is going to happen once humans can semi-reliably get to the moon? I don't often see this part talked about. I read lots about the astronomical (thank you!) cost and effort of getting there, often framed in a way that makes the whole endeavour appear pointless and dumb. Will they just potter about for a few days, grab a handful of rocks, take some jaunty selfies, have a cup of tea…

hm what IS it worth ? There's some kind of valuable minerals there? Google: "Helium 3". well we do need that

Yes, exactly this. Helium 3 isn't naturally occurring on Earth, and is very expensive.

Nasa are already running challenges for the best way for rovers to process/mine the moons surface. https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/lunabotics-challenge...

And how do we deal with the boundary issues of who gets to mine where. Let alone the political issues I'm sure will arise.

Theres so much fascinating discussion to be had, but I guess rockets win the cool badge.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#132

Post by idlewords »

perilunar wrote: post #129

When was this published? The heading says 1.1.2023 but the article URL says 2024/5 ? Also, in the first sentence "A little over 51 years ago" (referring to Apollo 17 of December 1972) would indicate that that the article was indeed written in early 2023. Yet some of the links in the footnotes seem to postdate this.

It was published today. I've fixed the wrong heading date.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#133

Post by verticalscaler »

LargeTomato wrote: post #26

We are going to The moon for two reasons. First, we want to set up a more permanent base. Nasa refers to this as "we're here to stay" The second reason we are going to the moon so that we can put the first person of color and the first woman on the moon. That is explicitly an Artemis mission purpose. Only time will tell if either of these two missions were actually worth it. One more point > Early on, SLS designers m…

[flagged]

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#134

Post by nine_k »

andbberger wrote: post #46
nine_k wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it would constitute nukes in space in a breach of international treaties! Certainly a NERVA-style rocket engine is not a nuclear bomb, and a few nuclear reactors with known and tightly watched positions won't constitute a threat of a sudden nuclear strike. But the treaties were made at times when the principal parties, the West and the Soviet bloc, did not trust each other one bit, and rightfully expected sabotag…

the treaty prohibits weapons, not reactors...

Also "contamination".

Despite that, NERVA has been proposed for a number of missions, mostly deeper space.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#136

Post by oldkinglog »

> This is a remarkable situation. It’s like if you hired someone to redo your kitchen and they started building a boat in your driveway. Sure, the boat gives the builders a place to relax, lets them practice tricky plumbing and finishing work, and is a safe place to store their tools. But all those arguments will fail to satisfy. You still want to know what building a boat has to do with kitchen repair, and why you’re the one footing the bill.

What is this? The essay is littered with these awkward family guy-esque jokes that do nothing to illustrate any point.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#137

Post by dotnet00 »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #125

Does anyone has a theory why in 60 years no one beats the F-1 engine? How is this possible?

F-1 was a design based around the limits of its time. The engineers were concerned about the challenges of controlling a large number of smaller engines, plus concerns about reliability with large numbers of smaller engines. It also had to be designed 'by hand', computers were not advanced enough to do much of the simulation driven refinement used nowadays. So, they traded off efficiency for large size, potential combustion instability and high thrust.

Now the technology has caught up, we can make small, highly efficient, powerful, reliable and restartable engines, and can control large numbers of them. Raptor being at the very peak of this, mass producible, cheapest in its class, throttleable, electrically restartable, very efficient and the highest thrust-to-weight ratio of any rocket engine.

Put differently, the F-1 has been beat in all measures that matter.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#139

Post by [deleted] »

codewiz wrote: post #42

Unkind quotes, but hilarious and probably well deserved: "SLS looks like someone started building a Space Shuttle and ran out of legos for the orbiter" "But on top of this monster sits a second stage so anemic that even its name (the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage) is a kind of apology." "the minds behind SLS achieved a first in space flight, creating a rocket that is at the same time more powerful and less capab…

[deleted]

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#140

Post by [deleted] »

oldkinglog wrote: post #136

> This is a remarkable situation. It’s like if you hired someone to redo your kitchen and they started building a boat in your driveway. Sure, the boat gives the builders a place to relax, lets them practice tricky plumbing and finishing work, and is a safe place to store their tools. But all those arguments will fail to satisfy. You still want to know what building a boat has to do with kitchen repair, and why you’r…

[deleted]
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