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Artemis II safely splashes down

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Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#441

Post by palata »

sumedh wrote: post #424
palata wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but we really are gearing up for Mars. Which again is cool, but useless. And actually counter-productive, because we risk contaminating Mars with organic stuff coming from the Earth.

> because we risk contaminating Mars with organic stuff coming from the Earth. What is the alternative, not go to Mars?

Do actual science. Send robots there, like Curiosity and Perseverance.

And over all: start recognising that there is no point in sending humans to Mars other than "uh uh it's cool we sent someone there and they came back alive".

I have nothing against the fact that it is cool. And I watched Artemis enthusiastically because it is really, really cool. What I hate is when people seem to be so sure that this is "the new age of space exploration" and we will become a "multiplanetary species".

It's trivial to check how far the next star is (more than 4 light-years) and realise that we would need thousands of years to reach it, and there is no Earth there.

Mars is the last stop, and going there doesn't bring us anything. Instead of that, we can do actual science. Did you follow Rosetta, landing on a comet? Because this is not only super cool, but also real science. But nobody gives a shit about that, because we want humans in space for some reason.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#442

Post by palata »

mvkel wrote: post #418
palata wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but we really are gearing up for Mars. Which again is cool, but useless. And actually counter-productive, because we risk contaminating Mars with organic stuff coming from the Earth.

Landing on Mars is the artifact of all of the innovation required to get to Mars. We benefit from the innovations, not the landing per se. Memory foam, smart phone cameras, tech miniaturization in general, GPS, baby formula, cordless tools... just a tiny sliver of things we use daily that are directly attributable to the pursuit of space travel. It is far from useless

There may have been life on Mars. The day a human lands there, it will contaminate it. If we find traces of life after a human has landed there, we will never know if we brought it there or not.

This is a massive loss for real science.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#443

Post by palata »

testing22321 wrote: post #416
palata wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but we really are gearing up for Mars. Which again is cool, but useless. And actually counter-productive, because we risk contaminating Mars with organic stuff coming from the Earth.

Was the Wright brothers’ first flight useless, or did it teach us lessons that lead to the Concorde and 777? Was the first automobile so slow and clunky it was useless, or did it lead to the F1 cars of today? Was Alan Touring’s computer so slow it was useless, or did it lead to this comment being typed on a device that is many orders of magnitude faster and smaller? Going to Mars will teach us a lot. In the future wh…

> In the future when we go further it will be useful in ways we can’t imagine today.

There. Is. No. Further.

That's my issue with all that. It's pretty basic: check how far the next solar system is (I know you don't: it's 4+ light-years). Check the speeds we get when we send something out of the solar system (e.g. Voyager).

Sending something to the next solar system at speeds orders of magnitudes faster than we reach today (which we can't reach because... orbital mechanics) would take us tens of thousands of years (hundreds of thousands actually, I can't remember and at this point it does not matter).

Unless someone discovers wormholes or a similar revolution in physics, we are not going to another solar system, period. Contaminating Mars is not even helping doing that. It's like hoping that the Wright brothers' work would help discover vaccination.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#444

Post by GMoromisato »

palata wrote: post #440
GMoromisato wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Useless" and "counter-productive" are value judgements, not objective conclusions. My opinion is that landing humans on Mars could be the start of a new age of exploration, which would massively benefit humanity. And the risk of contamination is worth the potential reward. That's just my opinion, of course, but it happens to be NASA's opinion as well.

> but it happens to be NASA's opinion as well. Of course, not only they depend on it, but also they love doing that. And as an engineer of course I find it cool. That's not a reason to say it's useful though. > landing humans on Mars could be the start of a new age of exploration, which would massively benefit humanity. And the risk of contamination is worth the potential reward. How informed is that? Let me say two…

You prefer keeping Mars pristine, in case it has life. I prefer colonizing Mars, even if it risks contamination.

This is not an argument over facts. This is a difference in preferences. I'm not going to convince you to prefer what I prefer. And the reverse is also true.

NASA is currently following my preferences, so I understand your frustration. The only consolation I can offer is that landing humans on Mars does not guarantee contamination (and robots on Mars are a risk too). If there is extant life on Mars, it will be different enough to tell it apart from Earth microbes. And past life (fossils, etc.) cannot be destroyed by Earth contamination.

But as I said, this isn't an argument over facts.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#445

Post by palata »

GMoromisato wrote: post #444
palata wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it happens to be NASA's opinion as well. Of course, not only they depend on it, but also they love doing that. And as an engineer of course I find it cool. That's not a reason to say it's useful though. > landing humans on Mars could be the start of a new age of exploration, which would massively benefit humanity. And the risk of contamination is worth the potential reward. How informed is that? Let me say two…

You prefer keeping Mars pristine, in case it has life. I prefer colonizing Mars, even if it risks contamination. This is not an argument over facts. This is a difference in preferences. I'm not going to convince you to prefer what I prefer. And the reverse is also true. NASA is currently following my preferences, so I understand your frustration. The only consolation I can offer is that landing humans on Mars does no…

I am fine with your preference being "I don't give a shit, I find it cool to send humans there".

But you seem to say "this is just the beginning of space exploration, and it will bring massive benefits to humanity", to which I answer: you should probably read about it first.

> But as I said, this isn't an argument over facts.

That physics doesn't allow us to reach a planet outside our solar system is a fact.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#446

Post by api »

card_zero wrote: post #436
api wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a logical extrapolation if you think life is a natural phenomenon. It would be exceedingly weird to see no evidence for it, but of course we have not been looking long or far. And yes, space flight is brutally hard. Look up the history of sailing. Look up the Polynesian indigenous peoples and how long that took, through multiple waves of exploration, or the people who walked across a land bridge to North America…

Natural doesn't mean likely. Say life rarely gets started, because it requires some kind of accidental evolutionary engine involving rivers and clay crystals, some unusual conditions of weather and geology. Then say life rarely gets complex and big, because mats of bacteria can be the dominant species indefinitely. So the universe is mostly dead, and the living parts are mostly slime. Then say actual human-like intel…

Ultimately we don’t know. We have not been looking far or long.

SETI BTW is kind of a joke. The only way we would hear anything is if someone was very close or was intentionally blasting a signal at us at incredible transmit power (like terawatts or more). Radio signals fade pretty quickly.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#447

Post by WalterBright »

Gagarin1917 wrote: post #269
ksymph wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can look at what NASA did after the Columbia disaster; namely, redesign the external tank, employ stricter quality control of the foam across the board, better monitoring of the heat shield integrity, and adding contingencies for being stuck in space with a damaged shuttle. - They replaced the specific foam insulation that struck Columbia with external heaters, and redesigned other areas where foam was necessary t…

>Every mission from then on had a backup plan in case the shuttle wasn't in a state to return to Earth (this wasn't really the case before then, which is kinda wild). Another shuttle was always ready to launch, with a new configuration of seats to allow for sufficient crew space Actually the backup plan almost every time was to just stay on the ISS until another Shuttle could be prepared. They only had another Shuttl…

Was a hole actually punched in the wing, or was it just the tiles that were knocked off (and then the heat melted the leading edge of the wing)?

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#448

Post by NetMageSCW »

areoform wrote: post #76
irjustin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Artemis acceptable crew mortality rate is 1 in 30. This seems insane to me. That X decades later we accept, with all our advancements in tech, a weaker system than ever before. That if we send 30 people we _accept_ that one is possible to die. That's the starting point? That's what we document as acceptable?

Yes, and the memories of Apollo are made rosy by hagiography. I even wrote an entire thing to explain why, https://1517.substack.com/p/1-in-30-artemis-greatness-and-ri... (yeah, shameless plug, sorry - it's more for the citations than not. You can read the standards and reports I've linked to) But if I'm allowed to repeat myself from elsewhere in the thread and the meat of the above thing, It's physically not possibl…

I strongly disagree that Artemis couldn’t be made safer today. If they had delayed Artemis I until the ECLSS was available to run in space for the mission, that would have improved Artemis II’s safety and possibly eliminated the need for the extra Earth orbit. If they had replaced the Artemis II heat shield (or swapped with III’s Orion) they would have reduced the risk of 2 & 3. SLS+Orion is already safer than the Shuttle with improved SRB knowledge and better abort modes on ascent. If Congress and NASA had assured SLS and Orion weren’t so expensive and slow to manufacture, they would have the money and hardware to fly more test flights without risking crew. If Congress hadn’t mandated using left over STS parts, there could have been a cheaper and faster to manufacture clean sheet design that wasn’t so inefficient it can’t deliver Orion to LLO.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#449

Post by brynnbee »

philipallstar wrote: post #415
brianjlogan wrote: post #82

As an American I feel like I've been going through a bit of an identity crisis from what I remember growing up. Probably the rose tinted glasses of being a child but being from Florida I always had a sense of amazement and wonder as I heard the sonic boom of the shuttle returning to earth. Really felt like I was coexisting in this incredible scientific powerhouse of a country full of bright and enabled peoples that k…

> Feeling like a bit of a "vibe" post which is everything wrong lately but I can't help but feel some satisfaction that we're still able to accomplish something like this in our space endeavors. SpaceX catching with chopsticks and doing booster catches has already done that for me. Crazy advances.

I watched a starship launch live, in-person, and had the experience of driving up to the launch complex the night before and car camping right outside of it and looking out my car window in the middle of the night and seeing a massive rocket lit up with spotlights. It was the most "I live in the future" experience of my entire life. I can't wait to go back and see a chopsticks catch live.

Re: Artemis II safely splashes down

#450

Post by NetMageSCW »

Teever wrote: post #349
imtringued wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given current levels of technology, this would require docking with a series of space tugs. Not impossible, but Blue Origin is the only organisation working on this at a meaningful scale. There was also Nautilus-X which never made it beyond the concept stage.

Mir and the ISS were built this way and the Space shuttle, Dragon, and Soyuz have/had no problem docking with the ISS. If you feel constrained by the size of the Falcon Heavy fairing the now defunct Bigelow Aerospace launched several prototype inflatable habitats that apparently tested well in LEO. Combine this with a lunar cycler[0] orbit and you could keep reusing the same craft over and over and expanding to it if…

It is very reasonable to question why SLS was built - during much of its history there was no reason or destination and the destinations that were used changed periodically.

OTOH, Statship has a very good rationale for existing - it is required to be the size it is to support full reuse with reasonable cargo to orbit and lower the cost of launch another ten times.

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