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The Lunacy of Artemis

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Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#461

Post by Aeolun »

lupusreal wrote: post #343
PaulHoule wrote: post #265

It's easy to miss how clever the Apollo mission architecture was. The moon is not so far away in terms of distance but it is very far away in terms of Δv because, not least, you have to land propulsively because there is no atmosphere to slow you down. Trips to some near-Earth asteroids are easier than the lunar surface, Mars and Venus aren't that much harder because in any of those cases the Moon's gravity can be he…

> Mars and Venus aren't that much harder Related; a proposal to do a Venus flyby with Apollo hardware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Venus_flyby

There’s so much cool stuff that was rejected before I was even born. It’s kinda bizarre how the space program is so in the dumps now.

The space shuttle, while expensive, was at least an icon. I grew up with it as a symbol of US spaceflight hegemony. Now NASA is just a really expensive organisation achieving very little.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#462

Post by Aeolun »

twh270 wrote: post #399
GMoromisato wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. But it's hard to tell whether nobody died because the system was robust vs. nobody died because we got lucky. For example, there were several cases of burn-through on the O-rings before Challenger. The engineers thought there was enough margin to not worry about it, so they didn't Similarly, when Columbia was hit by foam-ice on ascent no one worried because it had happened before and nobody had died.

Correction -- at least for Challenger, engineers did not think there was margin, and argued against the launch. At the technical level, both tragedies were caused by design flaws. Organizationally and culturally, multiple factors contributed, but an attitude of "nothing has happened yet, so this is fine" (normalizing risk) was a major one.

Normalization of deviance is how my professor described it. At least it’s taught in school now.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#463

Post by jgeada »

leoedin wrote: post #241
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'…

Iterative development is the only way you can do R&D. That truth was clearly known by NASA leadership in the 60s in a way that clearly isn’t today. I think it’s probably a symptom of wider culture. In the 60s every major industry was in the middle of a massive improvement cycle, a lot of the engineers would have learned their skills during the R&D boom of the Second World War, and everything was still manufactured lo…

We used to have leadership by people who knew how to do and make things and we've replace them by people that only know how to "manage" things. MBAs, finance types, lawyers, marketeers and their like make up the bulk of people in the decision making seats. They only know how to extract value from companies, creating said value largely eludes them. And as a side effect, America now can't build things(), or only can build them at ridiculous expense and absurdly long timescales.

() yes, there are exceptions; it is interesting to study how those companies differ in their leadership.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#464

Post by GartzenDeHaes »

twothreeone wrote: post #424
strangattractor wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Congress dictates what executive branch agencies do, not the other way around.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#465

Post by GartzenDeHaes »

Aeolun wrote: post #461
lupusreal wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mars and Venus aren't that much harder Related; a proposal to do a Venus flyby with Apollo hardware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Venus_flyby

There’s so much cool stuff that was rejected before I was even born. It’s kinda bizarre how the space program is so in the dumps now. The space shuttle, while expensive, was at least an icon. I grew up with it as a symbol of US spaceflight hegemony. Now NASA is just a really expensive organisation achieving very little.

It's wild to think the world of 2001 A Space Odyssey seemed very possible to the people of the late 1960's. They went to the moon in only about 10 years, so a Jupiter mission in another 30 years would just be a continuation of current progress. Little did they know that humans would lose the capability to leave orbit just a few short years later.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#466

Post by z0r »

grecy wrote: post #445
z0r wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am an advocate of wildlife conservation efforts, and regularly donate to charities that work to conserve species and their habitats. I am just replying to a single comment, so forgive me for addressing everyone else as well as you here. I think it's very funny that people are making obvious replies to my comment to defend against (the also very obvious) observation that perhaps being born and dying in a tin can on…

Oh, I agree with you 100%, and I'm just pointing out that people probably said exactly the same thing a few hundred years ago about living in 2000 (if they knew what it would be like), and likely will say it again in a few hundred years about living in 3000.

We have already been robbed of so much biodiversity in the last 100 years and it doesn't take much research to realize it. We should do our best to avoid depriving those generations ahead of us even more :(

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#467

Post by watersb »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #447
hifromwork wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The Chang'e 3 lander released a small rover called Yutu, which means "jade rabbit." In Chinese mythology, the moon goddess has a pet rabbit. Westerners think the dark pattern on the moon looks like a face, but Chinese people think it looks like a rabbit.

Always looked like a rabbit to me, too.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#468

Post by shirro »

Artemis does involve a lot of BS unfortunately. The SLS stack is a political bridge to nowhere that was never capable of directly returning people to the moon. When SLS got propagandized into a moon mission the limited delta-v necessitated a lunar halo space station and rendezvous which adds unnecessary cost and complexity. NASA hand balled much of the critical stuff like the lander and spacesuits to industry at the last minute with insufficient funds and time. It isn't all over yet for Artemis but they are in a mess. It is hard not to notice the contrast with China's steady incremental progress.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#469

Post by watersb »

Aeolun wrote: post #461
lupusreal wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mars and Venus aren't that much harder Related; a proposal to do a Venus flyby with Apollo hardware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Venus_flyby

There’s so much cool stuff that was rejected before I was even born. It’s kinda bizarre how the space program is so in the dumps now. The space shuttle, while expensive, was at least an icon. I grew up with it as a symbol of US spaceflight hegemony. Now NASA is just a really expensive organisation achieving very little.

> NASA is just a really expensive organization achieving very little.

Granted, human spaceflight is crazy expensive. And yet...

Jet Propulsion Labs, to pick a single NASA site, has never been more busy. I counted 30 spacecraft listed as "active" on their Current Missions page, but I think I missed a couple of them.

https://www.nasa.gov/jet-propulsion-laboratory-current-missi...

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#470

Post by mlyle »

ryandrake wrote: post #329
kqr wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The moon is not so far away in terms of distance but it is very far away in terms of Δv because, not least, you have to land propulsively because there is no atmosphere to slow you down. Not least, but certainly the requirement to brake before you land must be on the small order compared to achieving escape velocity from the much bigger rock I'm on?

Everything is on the small order of magnitude when compared with getting into Earth orbit. As the quote goes, "Once you get to earth orbit, you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system."

> As the quote goes, "Once you get to earth orbit, you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system."

In terms of delta-v, yes. Going to the moon only takes 50% more delta-v than going to LEO. But the rocket equation makes getting that extra 50% a lot harder. Time for more staging and complexity and still having terrible payload fraction.

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