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The Lunacy of Artemis

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Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#501

Post by pfdietz »

usrbinbash wrote: post #417
pfdietz wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For human spaceflight to be ruled out, automation has to be superior for every worthwhile application of human labor in space, not just some of them. Here on Earth, automation is predicted to increase, but few are predicting it makes human labor useless. I think greatly advanced automation would improve the argument for humans in space, not refute it, by making it easier to support humans in space.

> For human spaceflight to be ruled out, automation has to be superior for every worthwhile application of human labor in space, not just some of them. This is the case right now. There is not a single activity in space exploration right now, that humans can do better than robots. > Here on Earth, automation is predicted to increase, but few are predicting it makes human labor useless. Because here on earth, humans c…

> There is not a single activity in space exploration right now, that humans can do better than robots.

This is clearly false. If you mean "there is no activity for which a robot could be developed at great expense to do that activity", then that's closer to the truth, but that cost is part of the argument why humans might still do the activity if launch costs are much lower.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#502

Post by SCM-Enthusiast »

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…

you should read the book delta v. The only time lunar mining makes sense is when there is a cislunar orbit economy. The delta v required to put things in orbit from the moon is a fraction of that of earth. So, if you have a vibrant manufacturing enviroment in space (Semi conductors, and other deposition methods) which space is more suited for, then the moon becomes a better place to source your materials from.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#503

Post by kqr »

phoe18 wrote: post #442
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'…

Would you recommend any books to read on this history?

I really enjoyed Sunburst and Luminary by Eyles, from the perspective of one of the young students who stumbled into the space programme and ended up writing a lot of the code for the LM.

I also found Go, Flight! enjoyable. It is about the recruitment and culture of the young flight controllers ("ground control") who figured out as they went how to direct and orchestrate missions in space.

Both are from a specific set of people's perspectives rather than an attempt to summarise. With some care on what one accepts as truth I think that's the more intriguing way to follow the program.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#504

Post by twothreeone »

GartzenDeHaes wrote: post #464
twothreeone wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Notice, however that it's not about _what_ to do, but _how_ to do it. And when it comes to to the how of human space flight, NASA has the experts, not Congress. Politicians rely on Engineers and Researchers to make informed decisions, it is therefore only a natural expectation on behalf of Congress that unreasonable, meaningless, or dangerous requests should be denied. If that doesn't happen the Administrator screwed up, it is that simple.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#505

Post by flerchin »

luyu_wu wrote: post #457
flerchin wrote: post #284

IMO the only "lunacy" with the current plan is regarding schedule and budget slip.

Have you read the article? Those are just the outward symptoms of the much greater engineering lunacy within the project.

The engineering challenges are just that. They'll either solve them or change the plan, and there's little reason to think they can't solve them.

No one thought reusing boosters was possible either.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#506

Post by Aloha »

kragen wrote: post #459
fastball wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with his criticism (and to some extent echoed by Maciej in this article) is that the main takeaway seems to be "we did it once, we can do it again, let's revisit the past instead of re-inventing the wheel". But I don't think anyone actively involved wants to revisit the past. Who wants to go back to the moon just because we can? Nobody. Assuming best intentions: - People at NASA want to go to the moon to b…

the people who did it once are almost all dead people in the age range 20–70 in 01970 would be in the age range 74–124 today. different people, who identify with those people, in several different countries, would like to do what those people did. it behooves them to study what those people did and how they did it, not because they can't do anything better , but because it's easy to do worse , and both of these criti…

You raise the point, that particularly when it comes to manufacturing, living knowledge is paramount -

Could we have restarted Saturn V production in 1975? yes, at some vast cost to remake tooling.

What about 1985? oof, that's a little harder, how many of the people alive know how to make a Rocketdyne F-1, but probably still doable, at some yet greater cost.

What about 1995? maybe still possible - lots of the base industries we relied on to make it have ceased to exist, and the production knowledge for base components have changed so much that you're almost gonna start over. Some knowledge on how to build it is still alive, it's only 30 years later.

What about 2005? almost impossible, you'd have to recreate whole kinds of technologies from scratch - the tech trees have evolved so much, almost all of the first hand knowledge is dead, or very near to dead. It'd probably be easier to start over, with a clean sheet.

This is why the US Army still buys some number of tanks every year - so the production line stays open and we dont lose the knowledge. We're running into issues restarting some missile production (which is being used in Ukraine because of similar issues).

I do think in the end Artemis will likely be a success, but at a vast cost - but dont forget how expensive Apollo was. It too was vastly expensive.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#507

Post by K0balt »

geertj wrote: post #492
K0balt wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is the “real” engineering target, but it is a foundational capability that underpins the ability for humans to explore beyond the earth-moon system, and it is fraught with difficulty and uncertainty. Fuel transfer and storage in orbit is problematic in many respects.

Very hard and foundational capability need not be correlated though. I think the more likely explanation that orbital refueling hasn't been done yet is not that's it's exceptionally hard, but that there hasn't been a need for it. Orbital refueling needs rapid reuse, and that has only been possible recently (with Falcon 9, and soon Starship).

Good point?

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#508

Post by usrbinbash »

pfdietz wrote: post #402
playingonline wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be that for the sort of work we want to do on the south pole a human in a jacket outperforms our current robots, but for the sort of work we want to do on the moon a robot, or our future robot, will outperform a human in a spacesuit.

Sure, it could be. All sorts of things could be. Making that observation is not an argument that something is .

You mean like it could be that launch costs will become so low the differential will not matter any more?

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#509

Post by usrbinbash »

pfdietz wrote: post #500
thisaccount546 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all of the things we want to do, automation outperforms humans in space. I pointed this out in my earlier post - this wasn’t the case in the 50’s and early 60’s, so these satellites were planned to be manned (and actually were in the USSR’s case). But automation made much more sense, so the plans changed to unmanned satellites. Perhaps this could change in the future. But at least in the present, unmanned makes m…

Really? Automation outperforms astronauts for (say) Hubble Telescope Repair? Or for that matter for doing maintenace on robots? Your assertion only makes sense if the set of activities we do in space is sharply circumscribed. It's a mindset that comes from the "space is extremely expensive" environment.

> Automation outperforms astronauts for (say) Hubble Telescope Repair?

The last hubble repair mission was in 2009. Robotics have come a long way since then. And the Hubble was still pretty close to earth. I can guarantee you that no human hand will ever touch the James Webb telescope ever again. If things go wrong at the 2nd lagrange point, its either robots-to-the-rescue, or bye-bye-telescope.

Comparing a short, limited scope mission, close to earth, to the challenges of doing space things on other planets, is a bit far fetched.

> Your assertion only makes sense if the set of activities we do in space is sharply circumscribed

They are. They have to be, because activities that are not sharply circumscribed, have a very high probability to kill people in space.

> It's a mindset that comes from the "space is extremely expensive" environment

No, it's a mindset that comes from the "space is extremely deadly, and humans are surprisingly fragile outside of the habitat they evolved in" environment.

Re: The Lunacy of Artemis

#510

Post by usrbinbash »

pfdietz wrote: post #501
usrbinbash wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For human spaceflight to be ruled out, automation has to be superior for every worthwhile application of human labor in space, not just some of them. This is the case right now. There is not a single activity in space exploration right now, that humans can do better than robots. > Here on Earth, automation is predicted to increase, but few are predicting it makes human labor useless. Because here on earth, humans c…

> There is not a single activity in space exploration right now, that humans can do better than robots. This is clearly false. If you mean "there is no activity for which a robot could be developed at great expense to do that activity", then that's closer to the truth, but that cost is part of the argument why humans might still do the activity if launch costs are much lower.

> there is no activity for which a robot could be developed at great expense to do that activity

That expense is still orders of magnitude lower than sending humans.

And even IF launch costs go lower (and that's a big if), it wouldn't change the equation: If I can send more into space for my money, then sure, I could launch astronauts and their water supply and space toilets...or I could use that capacity to launch more, bigger, and more capable robots.

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