Originally posted by SOTAR: I am deep into knowing the history of how Artemis came to be. It is a very sad story of government waste and a rocket designed by congress. Knowing what I know I can only cry and smash my head into the keyboard. Artemis is basically an enhanced space shuttle launch system with a bigger fuel tank, and bigger solid rocket boosters, and using Orion to replace the shuttle as the crew vehicle. Unlike the shuttle, the SRB and the main engines will be thrown into the ocean after each use. The main engines are actually ones taken off of the shuttles at retirement plus the remaining inventory which is why there can only be 4 missions. This is such a sad waste of money. No new engines RS-25 (SSME space shuttle main engine) will be built.
Unfortunately, this single mission to send an unmanned Orion capsule around the moon will cost us Americans more than $4.1 Billion, and it is at least 10 years late. There is a plan to do at least 4 of these launches for a total cost of at least $16.4B! and for what?? The net benefit of Artemis will be little more than the Apollo program. We are still not going to the moon to stay.
If and when SpaceX gets the BFR off the pad it will eclipse the capabilities of Artemis at a fraction of the cost per launch.
Well, maybe the UK is splitting the cost with us in order to get their representative (Shaun the sheep) on the mission.
Posts: 7508 | Location: Idaho | Registered: February 12, 2007
while its likely to be a short-lived program that is more than a decade late using scavenged parts and OTS technology, the only consolation is that most of the money was spent here in the US and provided employment - albeit temporary to a group of engineers and staff.
I suspect SpaceX will be walking on the moon long before NASA gets someone out of low earth orbit
Having worked with various NASA people over the last decade and seeing how risk adverse they tend to be, I wonder how many launch scrubs there be before Artemis 1 finally lifts off?
First launch attempt scrubbed, they had an issue with engine 3 so it's been rescheduled, too bad nice and sunny here would have been cool to see, feel for the thousands that went over to watch.
Still, good for the local economy, that area needed a good influx of tourists like in the heady days of the Shuttle!
Word is - Friday - should be a massive crowd for labor day weekend in the area!
I once was fortunate enough to meet Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, the last two men to walk on the moon. They were both extremely generous with their time, both in talking to a room full of young teens and then spending even more time answering questions from an extremely precocious 12 year old.
35 years later, it is still one of the high points of my life. I will never forget watching the video of the crew boarding the rocket. As they are getting onto the gantry, one stumbles and appears to take a step away before being helped by the ground crew. "That was me," drawled Schmitt, "I wasn't playing. I realized they were about to sit me on top of a building full of dynamite, set it on fire, and launch my butt into outer space. At the moment, it didn't seem like such a good idea anymore. Worked out ok in the end though."
Those early astronauts were a different breed all together. I'm extremely excited about Artemis and hope it goes well. It's time to dream great dreams and achieve great things again.
I hope all goes well our country has had to many embarrassments and problems in the last few months so we don't need this to become another we failed again episode.
Posts: 1216 | Location: Pa | Registered: December 16, 2006
Originally posted by SOTAR: I am deep into knowing the history of how Artemis came to be. It is a very sad story of government waste and a rocket designed by congress. Knowing what I know I can only cry and smash my head into the keyboard. Artemis is basically an enhanced space shuttle launch system with a bigger fuel tank, and bigger solid rocket boosters, and using Orion to replace the shuttle as the crew vehicle.
In the 1980's I worked on the Shuttle program. It was a shit-show back then, too, most especially after the Challenger disaster. I was in a meeting with NASA during that launch, when someone came in to tell us what happened and that the meeting was over.
The upgraded Shuttle was terribly micro-managed by NASA. While the people presumably had expertise in the big picture of running such a complex program, they were not experts in things like digital integrated circuits, their application in space, and the manufacturing of the systems they went in. If they were such experts then they wouldn't need however many of us engineers were working on the project!
Costs went up by orders of magnitude, the schedule was delayed by years, and the objective reliability went down.
NASA was far too political even back then. The guys I worked with who'd been on Apollo were dismayed to put it politely.
Posts: 9846 | Location: On the mountain off the grid | Registered: February 25, 2002
SpaceX called off a launch attempt Wednesday night for the second day in a row at Cape Canaveral due to lightning. Teams will prepare for another countdown Thursday at Cape Canaveral for liftoff of a Falcon 9 rocket at 9:27 p.m. EDT (0127 GMT Friday) to continue SpaceX’s push to launch more than 60 missions this year.
The SpaceX launch team called off Tuesday night’s countdown just before starting to load propellants into the Falcon 9 rocket. Lightning flashes lit up the sky over Florida’s Space Coast throughout the evening. Similar weather conditions Wednesday night forced officials to call another scrub.
The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 rocket is now set for launch at 9:27 p.m. EDT Thursday (0127 GMT Friday) from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The flight will mark SpaceX’s 42nd Falcon 9 launch so far in 2022. It will be the 40th space launch attempt overall from Florida’s Space Coast this year, including launches by SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, and Astra.
Raining hard right now, lots of weather in the area,
