Godspeed the crew of Artemis Ii
 

What a day to be alive.

Let us hope for a successful mission, and that when we look upon the images they take of the small blue sphere of a spacecraft that we all share, that we will pause to remember that we're all in this together, and that the Earth is the only home we have.

I feel like we just decommissioned the shuttle with no lift vehicles, and only outsourcing on the horizon…

And then I’ve blinked and here we are again where NASA has a big ass rocket and is back to dominating space.

Maybe the politics and b*llsh** of the last ___ years has been getting to me more than I realized. I used to love space, and NASA, and the boundless optimism of the last frontier and its just been beaten out of me by adulthood, partisanship, and bitterness.

It’s so phenomenal to see NASA lighting off that big*as candle again

The pale blue dot. Probably one of the coolest quotes out there.

I am dissapointed I didn't know this was coming. I would have been ay home watching lift off on my 100" TV! I am a big fan of space travel and exploration and am frusterated we haven’t even landed on the moon in my lifetime ( I am NOT young either). Will get home later and watch some replays.

https://www.youtube.com/live/m3kR2KK...bmoE7UUd8Ydg25

Live stream onboard. They'll apparently be livestreaming the whole time they're up there. Been watching them testing the manual maneuvering and simulated docking.

This is such a historic event that seems to have been missed by many. I've been a space dork my whole life and have been obsessed with early NASA, especially Apollo stuff. I've always wanted to be able to see humans go to the moon, and it was incredible watching the launch on TV (Even though the broadcast direction was awful!).

My 9 yo eyes witnessed Neil & the boys blast off from the banks of the Indian River because I happened to live nearby. There is no life on the moon. The stated goal is to change that on a full time basis. Is such a thing even remotely feasible, dare I ask?

Hard to believe me and Victor (pilot) were on our nugget cruise on the JFK together 24 years ago. (Same airwing, different squadrons)

I admit that I got a little teary eyed during the launch.

Maybe I am the odd one out on this forum, but I thought the launch was rather lackluster. SpaceX has really changed the game for live launches with the video feeds all the way up and into space. There were several points when the cameras couldn't even track it and the launch went off screen. I dont know, just shows how much more can be done with modern tech. Starlink is a game changed in this regard. I couldn't help but chuckle a little when NASA put up their little computer image of what was going on, when in contrast, SpaceX gives you live views of it actually happening.

I am glad NASA is getting back on track, but it shows how bloated, bureaucratic and behind the times it really has been. Blessings to the brave crew and I cant wait to see what's next.

Yes they are a government agency. But I was actually impressed that everything worked fine, it's a very complex system (if not technologically out-of-the-box).

I was just happy to see it go, been a long time.

You're concerned about the video production? We're excited that people are actually going somewhere for a long overdue change! I am a fan of what SpaceX has done as well but when have they sent people on a moon orbit? This feels like a sudden leap forward!

Regarding SpaceX, it appears they have a rolll in the Artimus program so it's not like these are competing interests.

Wasn't just you, the NASA feed was a giant missed opportunity that detracted from what was otherwise a great launch from a technical perspective. There's zero excuse for a jittery ground camera that couldn't track the rocket for even two mins and had to cut away to the crowd instead of actually showing booster separation. They have launches multiple times a week to get those cameras and operators calibrated. No reason they couldn't have had a timeline graphic at the bottom of the screen with milestones and basic telemetry. The commentary was almost worthless and even their computer simulated graphics were so dark that it was difficult to see anything.

While adding a starlink antenna probably would have been a $1B charge and decade delay from these contractors, the vehicle video feeds sent via TDRS showed how outdated that network is.

The successful launch of the Artemis II was definitely inspirational, a treasure to watch, and no matter what your views are, you wanted this to be a perfect launch. These events bring out the kid in all of us, just see below with the BBC clip. I just wish the camera would have kept rolling for a few more seconds, as at the end, you really get to hear the roar of those engines. I still believe that nothing could beat the launch of the Space Shuttle, that was pure magic.

https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c8r4e7jpkz6o

Yes I do care about the production. Our entire world and therefore how we interact with it is a production. How people who are not excited about space flight see it is important. I said I was excited and wishing them the best, however the production value of it took away from the event. Considering we put people into orbit around the moon 60 years ago, while this is cool, it's not a leap forward, more like remembering how we did it. I felt very detached from the event. I dont know, I was just underwhelmed by it and as a fan of space and space exploration, if I am underwhelmed I can only imaging people with a passing interest probably were not blown away either.

For clarity, a leap froward from what we’ve been doing. Certainly not all leap forward from Apollo, which ended before I was born a long time ago.

And I’’m not expecting them to produce the next Star Trek movie. I just want to follow what’s going on.

I’m not trying to take away from it or the crew, honestly. Perhaps I should have led with just how good SpaceX is at producing their launches and the quality of the broadcast.

It really has shown just how far behind, at least in respect to this issue, NASA is from SpaceX.

The project objective is to build a moon base serviced by an orbital station. Dealing with no atmosphere, pegged rad meter, temperature extremes and lack of water or arable dirt, tbd. Although the Chinese have claimed some success with trials indicating freeze dried moo goo Gaian may have a nearly indefinite lunar shelf life and tastes like the real thing once reconstituted with chem scrubbed urine?

The real news in the space world is the IPO of SpaceX in June.

This mission is a test flight, not a leap forward on its own. It is one step in certifying the hardware that will be an integral part of the leap forward which is coming. A leap that Apollo hardware was not capable of achieving.

After watching the Starship test launches, we saw the difference the Starlink downlink can make to launch, orbit, and recovery video coverage. I was surprised by the lack of timeline and informational graphics for the launch. Both SpaceX and Blue Origin do a much better job. That shouldn't have been difficult to do.

What I find disappointing about SLS is that it is 100% expendable hardware which dramatically increases cost. At the moment, SLS is the only launch system that can launch very large, very heavy payloads on high-energy deep-space trajectories, in a single shot, with the biggest fairing class available so it is what meets the mission requirements today. Starship has the potential to replace SLS, at far lower cost, in the future.

100in TV. You really had to mention the size?

Since public perception and enthusiasm is pretty important for manned space programs, it might make sense for them to spend a little more on quality video.


Politics, and the speed of government.

To get SLS approved initially (it has evolved over the years) NASA had to keep some legacy shuttle hardware to preserve shuttle-associated government jobs in key districts. That precluded the clean-sheet design that probably would have been needed to fly the booster back.

Also when it started development, Space X had not demonstrated re-usability on the Falcon 9, and the only commercial launch vehicle remotely in the SLS lift capacity ballpark (Starship) was conceptual.

Today Starship can obviously be reused, but is still in development and not yet man-rated. Falcon 9 has obviously demonstrated re-usability many hundreds of times.

But when SLS kicked off, the established launch industry (NASA, commercial, and DoD) simply did not believe that re-usability was going to practical (it was a very big paradigm shift, visionary in fact).

Europe and China also came up short, and are now scrambling for re-usability as well to avoid getting caught with space economics an order of magnitude behind the US.

Assuming Starship succeeds (probably will, they've demonstrated most of the really hard stuff in flight), I'd imagine most manned exploration missions will shift to that over time. Even if Starship isn't perfectly optimized for a given mission, the fact that you get to use it again in many cases makes it an obvious economic winner.

Worth noting there are some missions where Starship itself would not be recovered to earth (ex modified versions to land on other planets). The first stage booster should be recovered in most cases, although I guess if you needed every last drop of performance, you could use what would normally be the return fuel and just let it splash in the ocean.

After watching some of the live feed of the crew in the module, I'll never complain about the size of a 737 cockpit again.

(It took NASA $4 billion to produce this video, so I'm glad it has some personal value to myself, the joe-blow taxpayer.)

4b to eject doo doo on the far side of the moon. Is there no simpler solution?

if you want to deposit fecal matter on the far side of the moon, I’d say no, there isn’t a more simple solution. There’s a wealth of other benefits to the mission too, besides the scatological, but I won’t denigrate your interests

Sure about that? At 4 billion, record setting lav service bill. Not to mention the yet to be flown LEM. Wars, hazmat, epidemics and grief. Outer space is uninhabitable for a reason. Besides, the final frontier ends same place for everyone. No matter how far we push an alloy cork. Raymond Chandler coined it, the big sleep.

I am, yes. Are you?

“The Apollo program has been described as the greatest technological achievement in human history.[154] Apollo stimulated many areas of technology, leading to over 1,800 spinoff products as of 2015, including advances in the development of cordless power tools, fireproof materials, heart monitors, solar panels, digital imaging, and the use of liquid methane as fuel.[155][156][157] The flight computer design used in both the lunar and command modules was, along with the Polaris and Minuteman missile systems, the driving force behind early research into integrated circuits (ICs). By 1963, Apollo was using 60 percent of the United States' production of ICs.”
Wikipedia

https://apollo11space.com/42-inventi...pollo-program/

It will be interesting to see how Artemis advances the course of human history. Maybe you should take up reading books

Do checkbooks count?

The plan is to establish a permanent base and human habitation on the moon. That would be historically noteworthy at least, if not as dramatic an event as Apollo 11.

Yet after years of development they had a capsule in which the FO was able to stow his overnight bag!

It feels like with space X this is nasa trying to stay relevant. Didn’t we basically already do this same mission like half a century ago?

would probably be better and cost less to just pay space X to do it

That's an aspect of it.

But the business model has evolved to prioritize commercial for routine ops (hence ISS shuttle van), while leaving NASA to do the cutting-edge exploration.

Bearing in mind that when NASA does it, they still contract out most of the hardware, they're just more involved in development.

It is possible that commercial operators will ultimately play a leading roll in even cutting edge exploration.

Political realities, lot of associated jobs (both .gov and private sector) in various states. Writing one big check to one big company would probably not spread the bacon well enough.

It's always been that way. Go pick up a copy of Lost Moon (Lovell) or Never Panic Early (Haise) and you'll see all sorts of aerospace companies (many names now history due to mergers and acquisitions over the years) that were central in producing the machinery used in the space programs.

and the FO still has to do the walk-around

Yup. As a kid I had a collection of Grumman model aircraft, and one of them was the lunar lander.

That old saying about “never meet your heroes” rings true.

Great book I stumbled on about the space race in the 1960’s:

“Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest” - Gerard J. Degroot.

I still love the space race and the accomplishments, but this book does a great job popping some of the myths and sheds light on the enormous amounts of waste that went down.

“There are no bucks without Buck Rogers” - a common phrase at the time that cynically acknowledged the whole space race was enthusiastically embraced by the public because they were sold impossible narratives (space colonies, alien life, et al).

It was embraced by corporations and politicians because it increased opportunities for power and profits.

Artemis doesn’t benefit from this narrative, which is why so few care about it. Manned space exploration is insanely expensive and stupendously impractical.

Very cool though. I’d like to see a launch before it gets shut down when the national credit card gets taken away.

Well part 3 happens in one year. Moon Base in progress.

Mr. President, we cannot allow a moon base gap!

There are benefits to establishing humanity off this planet.

It's also worth a shot to see what kind of economy can be established on other planets and/or in deep space... if it takes off, there are vast resources to be had.

I'd rather spend my taxes on that than on most of the other things they blow it on.