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The Lunacy of Artemis

idlewords.com

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Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#301

Post by wffurr »

throwawayffffas wrote: post #213

> Conversely, if SpaceX and Blue Origin can’t make cryogenic refueling work, then NASA has no plan B for landing on the moon. If SpaceX and Blue Origin can't. Then Nasa will find someone who can. Cryogenic refueling is the projects real engineering target. Landing on the moon in the twenty twenties just isn't that impressive anymore. The Artemis program is nominally about going to the moon, but it really isn't. It's…

The advanced technologies you're describing are part of Artemis. The other part is a huge pork barrel jobs project for the SLS workforce across the country, in as many states as possible.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#302

Post by iamthirsty »

idlewords wrote: post #105
iamthirsty wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the purpose of the ISS? So that the Space Shuttle would have somewhere to go. I don’t think this is accurate. ISS was conceived almost 10 years after the Shuttle started launching, and the U.S. obviously had space station ambitions even before the Shuttle was on the drawing board (Skylab). Additionally the Soviets did the exact same, with Mir being launched prior to the Buran’s first test flight — heck Salyut 1…

It's true for the post-Challenger Shuttle, which really didn't have a credible job to perform except for ISS assembly.

Again, the Challenger disaster was 12 years prior to the launch of the first ISS module. ISS missions only flew 37 times, out of 135 total missions for the Shuttle.

The Shuttle had many other uses outside the ISS.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#303

Post by pfdietz »

fastball wrote: post #232
Dalewyn wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>SpaceX doesn't really care about the moon. SpaceX is a business, SpaceX doesn't care about the Moon because there are no customers interested in going to the Moon. If market forces shift and companies start wanting to go to the Moon, you bet SpaceX will care about the Moon because there's money to be made.

SpaceX is a business controlled by a single man that is really interested in making humanity multi-planetary by building a self-sustaining base on Mars.

It will stop focusing on Mars after Elon dies. This may take a while, admittedly.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#304

Post by grecy »

z0r wrote: post #278
jwells89 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long-term habitation of surfaces of bodies other than that of Earth is a stepping stone to being able to live in space long term in very large, permanently spaceborne crafts. It’s easier to develop these things on the moon, mars, etc because of immediate access to materials that’d need to be launched into orbit otherwise. In the long term, it may make sense to build shipyards on the moon, on Mars, or somewhere in the…

Imagine being born in a habitat on another planet that is further away from Earth in travel time than one's lifespan, and being robbed of your birthright to experience the natural wonders and beauty of the cradle of humanity.

Imagine being born on an earth where millions of species have gone extinct, where there are hardly any old growth forests left, no bison roaming the central/western US plains and where thousands of water bodies around the world are so toxic they'll kill you if you fall in.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#305

Post by idlewords »

elsonrodriguez wrote: post #299
usrbinbash wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's about building and living in habitats beyond low orbit And what for if I may ask? And please don't say "technological development" or "colonizing space". ad Development): Most of the tech that needs to be developed for this, is what is commonly called space plumbing: Figuring out ways to make human bodily functions not immediately fail in space. Next to none of these technologies benefit humanity at large in a…

We covered more ground in a lunar rover in a week than any of our mars rovers covered in a year.

But that week was fifty-two years ago.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#306

Post by GolfPopper »

kemotep wrote: post #58
dotnet00 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SLS cannot get from the ground to the moon and back with just the one rocket. Orion is too heavy to land and return from the Moon. That's why the plan, even before Starship's involvement, was to transfer from Orion to the lander in lunar orbit, either directly or via the Lunar Gateway spacestation.

I understand it didn’t land on the moon but it flew to the moon and back (which is what my comment was saying) in 2021. The mission wasn’t perfect but their half of Artemis was demonstrated. Starship has not yet shown to be capable of completing its half. Artemis 2 and 3 should be delayed until NASA can fix their shit.

SLS does not fly "to the moon". To put it simply, it flies near the moon and back. Saying it flies "to the moon" it like saying that getting on a plane that flies over Orlando FL, lets you take pictures out the window, and then flies back home to your starting airport is "going to Disney World".

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#307

Post by pfdietz »

stetrain wrote: post #269
xt00 wrote: post #15

I think we all can understand the situation here unless people are really dense.. the Artemis program was setup at a time when the private space companies were still very new. SpaceX will soon be quite close to technically doing the entire mission themselves without Artemis at all. SpaceX took the money from NASA to help fund their Starship development and probably for other reasons as well. Net result is that by the…

> I think we all can understand the situation here unless people are really dense.. the Artemis program was setup at a time when the private space companies were still very new. SLS's design and shuttle-derived components were basically stipulated by Congress, specifically representatives from states where these shuttle-derived components are built and tested. The goal here is to achieve something, yes, but doing so…

They also suppressed propellant depot work.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#308

Post by stetrain »

pfdietz wrote: post #307
stetrain wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think we all can understand the situation here unless people are really dense.. the Artemis program was setup at a time when the private space companies were still very new. SLS's design and shuttle-derived components were basically stipulated by Congress, specifically representatives from states where these shuttle-derived components are built and tested. The goal here is to achieve something, yes, but doing so…

They also suppressed propellant depot work.

Yep. Even taking SpaceX off the table, we could have built a lunar program based on existing launchers like the Atlas and Delta class of rockets, using smaller modules docked in orbit, and orbital refueling.

Instead we have a giant rocket that costs billions per launch whose only purpose is to launch Orion to the moon in one shot, and it can't even deliver Orion to a conventional lunar orbit.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#309

Post by smallmancontrov »

GMoromisato wrote: post #282
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'…

This is an excellent narrative, but I think it omits the many risks the program took to get to the moon before the Soviets. For example, Apollo 8 was the first time a Saturn V (and command module) was sent all the way to the moon, and it was done with a crew. Because there was no lander, there was no backup in case the command module had a problem. If the explosion on Apollo 13 had happened on Apollo 8, the crew woul…

Yeah, the risk appetite was much higher. Those are good reminders on Apollo 1/6/8, but the problems didn't stop there. The first 5 landing missions all had huge problems that nearly killed everyone, too. Only the last 2 landings were sort of OK.

Apollo 1: burned all astronauts alive

...

Apollo 10: POGO oscillations on launch (Saturn V still trying to tear itself apart), LEM tumbling

Apollo 11: Computer kept crashing all the way down to the moon (it controlled the engines)

Apollo 12: Brownout in the command module during launch, "Set SCE to Aux"

Apollo 13: Oxygen tank fire. So rough they made a movie.

Apollo 14: Shorted abort button almost killed everyone

Apollo 15: Parachute failure

---------

We have no shortage of people who would be willing to put their life on the line, but we do have a shortage of the political urgency/unity to tolerate actual problems. Just look at people dig into Elon Musk every time he explodes a prototype with his own money and nobody on board, and realize that accelerating a human program creates 10x the political sniping opportunity.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#310

Post by pfdietz »

usrbinbash wrote: post #272
thisaccount546 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weird thing about NASA's budget when you look at it[1] is that funding allocation appears to be inversely proportional to the benefit. Human spaceflight is the largest chunk, at 44.9% of the budget. Aeronautics and technology are at the bottom, with technology being allocated 4.9% of the budget, and aeronautics 3.5%. There were good reasons why people were interested in sending people into space in the early days…

> There were good reasons why people were interested in sending people into space in the early days of space exploration. Before automated systems were sufficiently developed, manned programs looked like the best choice. But once automated systems became sufficiently advanced, it was clear that they were the way to go. This, and it never ceases to baffle me that there are people who still believe that there is some s…

To steelman the argument for human spaceflight:

If launch becomes sufficiently cheap, then the cost of supporting humans in space also becomes cheap. The cost of developing space robots doesn't decline nearly as much. At some point, "why not robots in space?" has the answer "because on Earth there are plenty of applications where people are cheaper", and cheap space moves that argument to space as well.

Note that this implies the overriding importance of reducing costs vs. just sending people expensively for symbolic reasons. The latter is as idiotic as it has ever been.

I seriously doubt NASA as it is currently funded and constructed can deliver this.

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