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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Based on some rough numbers, NASA's budget (around $24B) would be I also looked up the NSF's 2024 budget, which, at $9B, was much lower than I expected.
NASA does both manned and unmanned stuff. Don't conflate those when you are looking at returns. Look at this joke of a list https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/20-breakthroughs-from-... for an illustration. And those were the 20 best things they could come up with.
I am very not brave but I'd volunteer. The trip is far more awesome than anything I have planned for the rest of my life. And if the shield fails on reentry it would only hurt for a few seconds. So if the crew and the backups and their backups read this and have second thoughts, ping me.
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
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.
Hard disagree. some of our best technologies came about to solve problems related to space travel which we later found useful for mundane problems at home. gps, digital cameras immediately come to mind. The only other phenomena I can think of with similar effects on human progress is war... I'll take a space race thanks
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Apollo command module used Avcoat, the same material as Orion. But there are two key differences: 1. The application method is different. Apollo applied it to a metal honeycomb structure with very small cells, while Orion uses blocks of the material. (NASA tried the honeycomb approach for Orion, but it was too labor-intensive). 2. Orion is much bigger and heavier than the Apollo command module. The informal conse…
too labor intensive - each launch already costs like $1bn, how bad can it be
I haven't kept up with Artemis development but I've read extensively about Challenger and Columbia. These two parts of the article stood out to me: > Moon-to-Mars Deputy Administrator Amit Kshatriya said: “it was very small localized areas. Interestingly, it would be much easier for us to analyze if we had larger chunks and it was more defined”. A Lockheed Martin representative on the same call added that "there was…
> but when it became clear that gasses were escaping and the o-rings were being
> damaged, there was a push to suggest that it's an acceptable level.
Interestingly, the articlehttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1ddi792xdfNXcBwF8qpDUxmZz...> by heat shield expert and Shuttle astronaut Charles Camarda, the former Director of Engineering at Johnson Space Center, asserts that it was *not* the O-rings:
"The Challenger accident was not caused by O-rings or temperature on the day of launch; it was caused by a deviant joint design which opened instead of closed when loaded. It was caused by mistaking analytical adequacy of a simplified test for physical understanding of the system. The solution, post Challenger, was the structural redesign of the SRB field joint and the use of the exact same O-rings."
I find that highly surprising, because "it was the O-rings" explanation seems universally believed and sanctified by no lesser authority than the Nobel prize laureate Richard Feynman.
This is a concerning read, I'm not quite sure what the driving motivation is for Artemis, but the following answered at least part of my question - > That context is a moon program that has spent close to $100 billion and 25 years with nothing to show for itself, at an agency that has just experienced mass firings and been through a near-death experience with its science budget
I understand why NASA might be a little antsy but 100B over 25 years doesn't seem like a lot for America for a long horizon project.
And there are options now.
For me, so long as the information is transparently discussed with the astronauts they can agree or disagree. But the task is intrinsically extremely risky.
It makes it very challenging for anyone to really know how to balance those risks.
The peak outcome (modal, mean at least) is a good outcome. But the tail is very very long with all the little ways a catastrophe can occur. I think the median outcome is also deeply in the "good" category.
And we sample this curve a few times a decade!
I haven't kept up with Artemis development but I've read extensively about Challenger and Columbia. These two parts of the article stood out to me: > Moon-to-Mars Deputy Administrator Amit Kshatriya said: “it was very small localized areas. Interestingly, it would be much easier for us to analyze if we had larger chunks and it was more defined”. A Lockheed Martin representative on the same call added that "there was…
> Challenger: no gasses were supposed to make it past the o-rings no matter what, > but when it became clear that gasses were escaping and the o-rings were being > damaged, there was a push to suggest that it's an acceptable level. Interestingly, the article https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ddi792xdfNXcBwF8qpDUxmZz... > by heat shield expert and Shuttle astronaut Charles Camarda, the former Director of Engineering…
Also I'm not sure the assertion is correct. If the sealant and O-Rings were adequate, the joint would not have failed. It was suboptimal, and increased risk, sure, but it in itself wasn't the reason for the accident. It was the joint and the o-rings in combination. The holes in the swiss cheese model lined up that day, and a lot of small problems combined into one big problem