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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.
>> Artemis II could fly just as easily without astronauts on board
The article seems compelling, but experience tells me to get both sides of a story before judging. Anyone know if there's a detailed response from NASA to the article?
The only thing the author of this blog piece has to offer that’s new is his very strong personal intuition that the new design hasn’t been properly validated, without any engineering explanation about why the testing the performed won’t adequately simulate real world performance.
> if a commercial crew capsule (SpaceX Dragon or Boeing Starliner) returned to Earth with the kind of damage seen on Orion, NASA would insist on a redesign and an unmanned test flight to validate it. Are you sure about that? https://spaceflightnow.com/2022/05/24/spacex-swapping-heat-s...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And Columbia, too, when they made the decision to reenter without inspection, and reenter instead of waiting for rescue.
A rescue was impractical and potentially riskier no?
Great read and interesting article. Hard to believe that NASA would risk astronauts lives simply to save face, but that appears to be what's going to happen.
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
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.
> I am very not brave but I'd volunteer. >> Artemis II could fly just as easily without astronauts on board
What I don't get is why the heck are the astronauts willing to risk their lives on something they must know by now is so dangerous? Is it really better to risk death than to risk getting fired?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A rescue was impractical and potentially riskier no?
Riskier? Didn't they all die. Maybe if you ended up with 2 stranded shuttle crews, but correct me if I'm wrong, and I probably am, but couldn't the shuttle fly without any crew?
There are rumors (that I've never been able to run down) that the astronaut corps insisted on this so the Shuttle could not be flown unmanned.
The author seems to have a pretty extensive history of… strong disdain for Artemis II. While has mentioned concerns about the heat shield before it was in the context of a laundry list of complaints, and it was nowhere close to the top. I’m not a rocket scientist, but then neither is the author.