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The Lunacy of Artemis

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Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#191

Post by xvilka »

coldtea wrote: post #183
imiric wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From my understanding, nobody is telling that "We should use Apollo as-is", but "why don't we use the same spirit when we were building these back then?". The political climate in the 1960s was far more tense than it is today, which fueled the space race in ways that forced both sides to give their absolute best efforts to move space exploration forward. While arguably today there are comparable tensions, countries…

> The political climate in the 1960s was far more tense than it is today, which fueled the space race in ways that forced both sides to give their absolute best efforts to move space exploration forward. Well, money wise they now spend much more budget (inflation adjusted) it seems. Technology wise, one would expect they have more of it now, than back then. So, what, they lack some mystery motivation factor? I'd say…

>It's like they had the people who designed UNIX back in the 70s, and a room full of JS framework programmers in 2024, plus all kinds of managers "experts" in Agile Development.

Does it mean Artemis is the Electron of space missions?

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#192

Post by 1oooqooq »

kqr wrote: post #180

I didn't live through the early space programmes, but having read about them recently, I'm surprised by how incremental they (and the Soviet Sputnik and Vostok counterparts) were. - The early Mercury flights developed the idea of putting a human in a capsule on top of an ICBM to see what happens at altitude and during re-entry. - Later Mercury flights experimented with de-orbiting techniques. (The early flights didn'…

[flagged]

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#193

Post by p_l »

coldtea wrote: post #183
imiric wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From my understanding, nobody is telling that "We should use Apollo as-is", but "why don't we use the same spirit when we were building these back then?". The political climate in the 1960s was far more tense than it is today, which fueled the space race in ways that forced both sides to give their absolute best efforts to move space exploration forward. While arguably today there are comparable tensions, countries…

> The political climate in the 1960s was far more tense than it is today, which fueled the space race in ways that forced both sides to give their absolute best efforts to move space exploration forward. Well, money wise they now spend much more budget (inflation adjusted) it seems. Technology wise, one would expect they have more of it now, than back then. So, what, they lack some mystery motivation factor? I'd say…

Apollo program got to the point that NASA budget was >4% of total federal budget.

And Apollo program itself was, IIRC, over half of it.

Never since NASA had such funding and political will to just let them try to get a stated goal. History of projects since Apollo is full of every attempt at making things simpler and more reusable either getting canceled, blown with congressional requirements for pork-barrel (SLS), damaged by needing to beg for money from organizations with different goals (Shuttle is a great example), smothered by budget cuts resulting in reuse plans getting canceled skyrocketing per-mission cost (Shuttle, Cassini), and that with NASA being effectively prevented from doing iterative approach and ending having to gold-plate everything to reduce risks on the often "once in a lifetime" launch.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#194

Post by p_l »

gibolt wrote: post #189
philipwhiuk wrote: post #187

People forget that NASA's portion of the federal budget during Apollo was more than an order of magnitude higher than today. NASA does the most ambitious thing it can get funding from Congress for.

NASA does the most ambitious thing modern, bureaucratic NASA can do with the funding, considering that each previously approved project is 4x over budget and 5-10 years late, eating into the feasibility of new projects. Old NASA could do 5-10x as much, with the same amount of inflation-adjusted money and people. The motivation was to fail+learn and achieve a shared goal. SpaceX is the closest analog today, with a lon…

NASA could do the same, but it's tied up by Congress and jockeying for any money, with funds allocated by Congress on a per-project basis.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#195

Post by p_l »

boxed wrote: post #88
SJC_Hacker wrote: post #84

Loss of crew tolerance is not what it used to be. The Apollo astronauts were given about a 10% chance of not coming back. In Apollo 13 they very narrowly avoided. Which was considered acceptable for the time period. I'd argue that mission failure tolerance is also considerably lower, in todays political environment. Again, Armstrong said their chances of actually landing were maybe 50/50. So if they get there and hav…

If you're paying double for it, why are you getting the SLS for that price? Which, as the article painfully shows, INCREASES risk. By a lot.

Because it's not called Senate Launch System without a reason.

Just like with Shuttle, which was seriously technically compromised due to issues with budgeting, NASA can not operate according to their best knowledge as if they just had that money. The money has strings, many of them.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#196

Post by p_l »

divbzero wrote: post #120
bryananderson wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like it or not, the job of the NASA administrator is not to actually do science or engineering, it is to fight for the agency’s budget with the President and Congress—a job for which political schmoozer extraordinaire Bill Nelson is eminently qualified, much more so than “real astronaut” Charlie Bolden, who struggled in this role despite being the epitome of the hypercompetent NASA pilot. I know which one I want at t…

Sounds like he’s so good at fighting for budget that he gets it in spite of questionable spending decisions.

A lot of the questionable spending decisions are part of the strings he has to accept to get the budget.

Remember, it's Senate Launch System.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#197

Post by lupusreal »

fastball wrote: post #154
zefhous wrote: post #45

Destin from Smarter Every Day gave a talk that addresses a lot of these issues that I found pretty interesting too. https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU

My problem with his criticism (and to some extent echoed by Maciej in this article) is that the main takeaway seems to be "we did it once, we can do it again, let's revisit the past instead of re-inventing the wheel". But I don't think anyone actively involved wants to revisit the past. Who wants to go back to the moon just because we can? Nobody. Assuming best intentions: - People at NASA want to go to the moon to b…

Frankly I do think the whole point from the government's perspective is to beat China back to the Moon. And "Apollo style" short moon visit should be enough to give America a propaganda victory. SpaceX like Lockheed just wants to get paid (albeit so they can put that money into R&D instead of their shareholders.) The rank and file at NASA probably have some romantic notions of a Moon base but there are always a few dreamers to get disappointed by reality (Congress pulling funding once the propaganda victory is secured.)

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#198

Post by dotancohen »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #128
dotancohen wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the title is a creative jest, as Lunacy literally means "Looking at the moon" (via "Lunatic" which is someone who looks at the moon - Luna).

> as Lunacy literally means "Looking at the moon" (via "Lunatic" which is someone who looks at the moon Literally? There is no "looking" element in the word. You'd need something like "lunavident". In the most literal terms, lunacy is the noun form of "lunate", which is a shape. ("C" is the "lunate sigma", the sigma in the shape of a moon.) Outside of the shape meaning, "lunacy" is just a relationship to the moon; th…

At the time that the word was coined, there was nothing that one could do with the moon other than observe it.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#199

Post by Perseids »

Given that the Artemis program is motivated by space settlement, I'm surprised nobody has referenced "A City On Mars" by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith (of https://www.smbc-comics.com/ acclaim) yet. I went into the book with lots excitement for extraterrestrial colonies, and finished it being convinced to better wait.

They argue that if you actually look into the details, especially into the "dry" political, legal and social ones, trying to settle mars or the moon likely actually increases our risk of existential crises (at the current point in time at least). Think conflicts between nuclear powers over the (surprisingly few) good spots on the moon, or rocks (=asteroids) flung to earth by space settlers (there is a lot of deadly potential energy floating above all our heads).

Furthermore, there are loads of open space biology questions that quickly become ethical questions when permanent settlements are considered. Can you have babies in low/micro gravity? How can you do it without too much harm to your child? The responsible approach is to do a few more decades of targeted research first.

Regardless of the downers it delivers, it's actually a fun read and I can recommend it wholeheartedly.

[1] http://www.acityonmars.com/

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#200

Post by golol »

bayindirh wrote: post #158
fastball wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with his criticism (and to some extent echoed by Maciej in this article) is that the main takeaway seems to be "we did it once, we can do it again, let's revisit the past instead of re-inventing the wheel". But I don't think anyone actively involved wants to revisit the past. Who wants to go back to the moon just because we can? Nobody. Assuming best intentions: - People at NASA want to go to the moon to b…

From my understanding, nobody is telling that "We should use Apollo as-is", but "why don't we use the same spirit when we were building these back then?". Everything made/designed in Apollo are no short of marvels. Today we can do much better with lighter, smaller electronics, and should be able to do weight savings or at least cost savings where it matters. Instead Artemis feels like "let's dig the parts pile and pu…

Because the spirit of Apollo - unsustainable one off dlag planting missions - lead to human spaceflight stagnating for the subsequent half century.
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