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The Lunacy of Artemis

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Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#421

Post by NikolaNovak »

pookha wrote: post #372
RobotToaster wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems crazy to me they've managed to use shuttle parts to make a design that seems older and worse than the shuttle. People called the shuttle a truck, but they've used parts from it to make something that looks like a Ford model-T in comparison.

The moon has trillions of dollars in water, helium, and metals (rare earth, titanium, etc). It's an f'ing goldmine and controlling said resource will be something hostile authoritarian regimes (China) would seek out. There's simply no excuse that the US should be this bad at making a system to reach the moon. The Chinese have committed insane sins and dropped massive amounts of space hardware on the earth (luckily it…

I have never found any math that made trip to the moon for materials even remotely wortwhile, by like orders of magnitude, not just today with today's technology, but for any foreseeable future we can meaningfully discuss. Water in particular is an unfortunate one to start with, given its abundance and ease of extraction on earth, vs absolutely positively ridiculous efforts to obtain them from the moon. But everything else from metals to obscurely valuable versions of Helium, seems to fall apart as soon as we go from "Look! Up there in the sky! Minerals!!!1", to "let's do a back-of-the-napkin math along any of the materials, science, energy, or money axis"

I enjoy using traditional cold-war bogey-men to scare ignorant politicians into accidentally sponsoring real science as much as any other person, I do, but... as long as we're not actually buying into that sillyness, right?.... right?

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#422

Post by williamDafoe »

dotnet00 wrote: post #359
rst wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is more that compared to prior landers, the Starship version at least has a uniquely high center of gravity over a narrow base, which makes it a whole lot easier to tip, and amplifies the consequences of, say, leg damage.

The center of mass should be pretty low relative to the height of the lander, the engines and propellant are the heaviest parts, the engines are obviously at the bottom. The heaviest component of the propellant is the LOX, which is also at the bottom.

This is false most of the fuel is gone by the time it lands and most of the payload is up high that's why the latest designs for starship have diagonal thrusters 2/3 of the way up the rocket so they can stabilize the top heavy part of the rocket without having to control it from a high moment arm

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#423

Post by jandrese »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #421
pookha wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moon has trillions of dollars in water, helium, and metals (rare earth, titanium, etc). It's an f'ing goldmine and controlling said resource will be something hostile authoritarian regimes (China) would seek out. There's simply no excuse that the US should be this bad at making a system to reach the moon. The Chinese have committed insane sins and dropped massive amounts of space hardware on the earth (luckily it…

I have never found any math that made trip to the moon for materials even remotely wortwhile, by like orders of magnitude, not just today with today's technology, but for any foreseeable future we can meaningfully discuss. Water in particular is an unfortunate one to start with, given its abundance and ease of extraction on earth, vs absolutely positively ridiculous efforts to obtain them from the moon. But everythin…

The only way mining and refining on the moon makes any sense is if you're building stuff to be used on the moon in your lunar colonies, and that's a long way off.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#424

Post by twothreeone »

strangattractor wrote: post #419
twothreeone wrote: post #410

> artisanally hand-crafted by a workforce that likes to get home before traffic gets bad. Ouch, that's gotta hurt.. I'm not saying I disagree, but I do wonder if a project is going "right" only when it starts to hit excruciatingly long shifts and burns workforce like coals - especially if it is expected to safely carry humans to the Moon. I think it's more likely a sign of doing something that wasn't planned and budg…

More likely the problem is DBC (designed by congress). Where are those old Shuttle Boosters made? The Orange tank? There are 535 member of Congress of which 10 are engineers of any kind. Probably even less Scientist.

That's not on congress though. If a budget for the agency only comes with those kinds of political strings attached, the right thing for the agency would be to say "please keep your money, the US won't be going to Moon or Mars".

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#425

Post by [deleted] »

idlewords wrote: post #355
jwells89 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may just be a misunderstanding on my part but aren’t there treaties that make anything bigger than science outposts impractical in Antarctica?

There's a similar treaty that precludes human settlement on Mars (for planetary protection reasons).

[deleted]

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#426

Post by chasd00 »

when the drama of Artemis started unfolding i remember thinking SpaceX ought to just go to the moon themselves. Iirc Falcon Heavy in a full thrust config already has the capability to get there they just need a lander and return. On the other hand, that effort doesn't get SpaceX closer to Mars and would be a pretty big distraction. Also, I imagine they want to play ball for funding purposes.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#427

Post by rurp »

jodrellblank wrote: post #376
usrbinbash wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only time will tell if either of these two missions were actually worth it. No time required, we already know the answer: neither of these two goals is worth the enormeous pile of resources burned to achive it. 1. A permanent human presence on the moon serves what purpose exactly that Robots cannot do? If we want to set up shop there: Why not send robots and an automatic laboratory-repair-bay? It's the moon, we can…

Money isn't burned when spent on space programs. resources, e.g. fuels are, but money is spent, it stays down here on Earth, employing people, boosting corporate profits (and therefore pension funds and other things which invest in them), employing people (who maybe women and people of colour).

You could make the same argument about any government spending program, no matter how wasteful it is. The money always goes into the economy. The question is how to get the most useful output from that spending.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#428

Post by hifromwork »

Animats wrote: post #420

Meanwhile, China's moon program keeps plugging along. There's already been a robotic landing and return with samples. Chang'e 6, the second land and return vehicle, is in lunar orbit now, being prepared for landing.[1] This one has a robotic lunar rover. China plans a manned moon landing around 2030. Then, on to the lunar base. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%27e_6

Interesting name! At first I assumed it's a pun on "Chang" (which looks like a romanized Chinese word) and English "Change". Instead:

>the spacecraft is named after the Chinese Moon goddess Chang'e[1]

What a great name for a Chinese Lunar spacecraft!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%27e

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#429

Post by tekla »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #360
dotnet00 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Starships keep exploding' is kind of like saying 'tests keep failing' in test-driven development. Yeah, the tests for the stuff you're actively writing or haven't written yet are going to fail until you finish working on them and to someone who doesn't have a debugger it's just going to look like a crash... People have forgotten how much destructive testing NASA used to do back in the Apollo era (eg with the Ranger…

> Starships keep exploding' is kind of like saying 'tests keep failing' in test-driven development. Saturn V had zero failed launches

Apollo 6 was a partial failure due to engine failure of the 2nd stage.

Also they blew up tons of F1 engines during testing. They never got the POGO issues fixed.

I really don't understand why people make these arguments. SpaceX is explicitly saying they dont want to spend money proving everything works the first time.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#430

Post by margalabargala »

usrbinbash wrote: post #298
margalabargala wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And what if China gets there first? How exactly would that benefit them, in a geopolitical sense? If China gets there first, the enormous amount of international credibility and resulting soft power that they will gain internationally, at the US's expense, will be immense and will be worth the resources they spend several times over.

> the enormous amount of international credibility and resulting soft power You know what is giving China soft power? Funding projects around all of Africa. You know what is not giving western countries soft power? Burning Billions on Space Programs that serve zero purpose and could achieve more with much less investments, if we just continued sending robots. Again, I know where I would allocate my resources if I had…

> You know what is giving China soft power? Funding projects around all of Africa.

I don't disagree.

Are you suggesting that China will be satisfied with merely the amount of soft power that they are gaining from funding infrastructure projects in Africa and will not seek additional soft power through other routes?

I would assert that between the amount of soft power gained, and more, the amount of soft power lost by their rivals (the US), if China had the capability to create a moon base it would be entirely worthwhile for them to do so.

Thus, if the US wishes to prevent that loss of its own soft power, then it needs to beat China to the moon base.

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