Artemis launch

[Playball40]

AI generates the sum of human stupidity.

Yup. But it does save me time in writing emails.

 

[Politesse]

I have little use for the mentality of "doing stuff is hard/expensive/unpopular, so let's just do nothing". A nation that makes apathy its core philosophy quickly becomes overshadowed by those which encourage research, exploration, social wellbeing, and the arts.

 

[pood]

I have little use for the mentality of "doing stuff is hard/expensive/unpopular, so let's just do nothing". A nation that makes apathy its core philosophy quickly becomes overshadowed by those which encourage research, exploration, social wellbeing, and the arts.

As mentioned, I support space exploration, and am greatly gratified by the success, so far, of Artemis, as well as the often stunning successes of our unmanned solar system explorations. I maintain a healthy skepticism of ideas like building moon bases or sending people to Mars. I am happy to be demonstrated wrong, as noted.

 

[DBT]

Money is far better spent on space exploration, bases on the moon and mars than military equipment and endless war.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What bothers me is that this is a mission that should not be manned.

As noted earlier, they already did an unmanned test. So at some point if they are going to put people up there, they are going to do that. This is that point.

There are severe questions about the heat shield.

Apollo used a very labor-intensive process to put the material in a honeycomb. Artemis has no such honeycomb and there is considerable question about whether it will come apart. The unmanned launch showed serious damage.

NASA claims it has addressed this issue by redesigning the heat shield and readjusting the re-entry trajectory.

You may have a point that they should have done a second unmanned flight to test their adjustments. I have never trusted NASA since the totally avoidable Challenger disaster.

Challenger isn't the one that really bothers me. Rather, Columbia. It came back scoured almost to destruction, they looked at the foam and identified the bit that almost destroyed it. They fixed only that part.

Placing blame, not working towards success.

 

[bilby]

I have little use for the mentality of "doing stuff is hard/expensive/unpopular, so let's just do nothing". A nation that makes apathy its core philosophy quickly becomes overshadowed by those which encourage research, exploration, social wellbeing, and the arts.

I agree. I think we should explore the Moon and Mars.

I don't, however, think that we should kid ourselves that doing so will turn a profit. Or directly help with any of our other problems.

There will probably be some indirect benefits, none of which are likely foreseeable.

But building a Death Star (or a moonbase, or whatever) is probably a good idea.

 

[Politesse]

I have little use for the mentality of "doing stuff is hard/expensive/unpopular, so let's just do nothing". A nation that makes apathy its core philosophy quickly becomes overshadowed by those which encourage research, exploration, social wellbeing, and the arts.

I agree. I think we should explore the Moon and Mars.

I don't, however, think that we should kid ourselves that doing so will turn a profit. Or directly help with any of our other problems.

There will probably be some indirect benefits, none of which are likely foreseeable.

But building a Death Star (or a moonbase, or whatever) is probably a good idea.

How are you measiring economic benefit? You may not get rich selling moon rocks, but that's not the only potential business here. Most of the "spending" NASA engages in goes right back into our economy, and what it funds is generally beneficial. Frankly I think that keeping the science & tech alive is the only thing that has been keeping any American industry afloat through the chaos of the last ten years. Every business not tied to Silicon Valley is sliding into the Valley of Death. And aerospace is good for SV.

 

[Politesse]

I dunno. What "common wisdom" investmemt of a billion dollars do you think is:

1. Likely to happen.
2. A better investment.

?

 

[steve_bank]

You might look at NADA as a form of Keynesian economics. Government stimulus.

AI Overview

Keynesian economics strongly advocates for government stimulus during recessions to manage economic instability. It argues that because private sector demand drops during downturns, government spending (fiscal policy) or tax cuts are needed to boost aggregate demand, create jobs, and stimulate economic activity to close the output gap

NASA puts money into the economy. Businessmen to support NASA down several layers are created. Jobs created, people buy cars and clothes And so on.

The GAO has reported several times in the past the NASA budget is payed back with interest so to speak through increased economic activity. More government revenue.


NASA spawned Space X. Government contracts.Govern meant mail contracts supported early aviation development. Military contracts funded the development of the first commercial semiconductors.

Government grants to colleges and universities. Which us why manor schools in the end capitulated to Trump on his demands.

Some universities have given in to Trump administration demands, while others have resisted. Columbia University and Northwestern University agreed to pay millions and change policies, such as hiring to boost ideological diversity and restricting protests. Others, including MIT, Brown, and UPenn, have rejected a federal "compact" aimed at changing school policies in exchange for funding, according to.

What is the payback for a government t grant o dig up ancient bones and artifacts?


NACA did a lot of the early work om wing design.

Before NASA was established on October 1, 1958, the primary U.S. agency responsible for aeronautical research was the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Founded in 1915, NACA focused on flight research, and its personnel, laboratories, and expertise were absorbed into NASA to jump start America’s space program in response to the Soviet Union's Sputnik launch.

NACA wind tunnels were pioneering aeronautical research facilities operated by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (1915–1958), crucial for developing high-performance aircraft through innovations like the NACA cowling, low-drag airfoils, and high-speed research. Key facilities at Langley included the Variable Density Tunnel, Propeller Research Tunnel, and the 30x60 Full-Scale Tunnel.

When you get on a jet the roots are in NACA and government investment. Conservatives seem to ignore that .We have free market economics but government investment has always made it go.

 

[pood]

I recall reading Ayn Rand’s massive potboiler novel Atlas Shrugged which was really terrible (her first novel The Fountainhead was good). One of the protagonists was an extremely competent woman (this part is good, a woman, yay!) who ran a railroad empire. Her brother was a timid, gibbering little simp. The point is, however, that this woman inherited the railroad empire from a 19th-century ancestor. How did the ancestor go about building this railroad empire?

With his own two bare hands!

Yessiree, the novel tells us he was a penniless drifter who climbed out of some swamp somewhere and with his own two hands erected a railroad empire, with no help from anyone or anything! (The reader is never informed HOW he accomplished this miracle.) At one point in the novel he even throws some nosy government agent down a flight of stairs. Throwing someone down a flight of stairs also occurs in The Fountainhead. I guess we can be grateful at least that Rand was not into depicting defenestration, though maybe stair-throwing was one of her sexual kinks, like, as I have read, wearing a mink coat and smoking a cigarette while getting screwed.

This was all in keeping with Rand’s bizarre idea that government is always the enemy and the only productive people in life are, I guess, those who climb penniless out of swamps to erect with their own two bare hands by themselves railroad empires and throw people down the stairs who annoy them. This notion did not stop her, however, from praising the Apollo moon landings. Guess she didn’t notice that these landings were not private enterprises.

I might add she was also a heavy smoker who smoked because held the ideological belief (!) that smoking represented man’s triumph over fire (!). Unfortunately she got diagnosed with lung cancer and croaked, though not before availing herself of the Social Security and Medicare benefits she allegedly despised and constantly railed against.

In reality, of course, the 19th-century railroads were erected with enormous government subsidies including loans and land grants. This was Keynesianism before Keynes. No penniless drifter ever crawled out of a swamp to build any of them.

But these subsidies were productive investments. They knit the country together and produced an enormous post-war economic boom.

Would the same be true for government subsidies to build moon bases? The western U.S., which the transcontinental railroads opened, were enormously profitable which is why the subsidies were wise. The moon is barren and dead. How would bases support themselves? How would they grow food? Mining might turn a profit long-term but not short-term. It seems that for a period of many years, such bases would have to be subsidized by enormous government investments without any promise of a decent return. Then, of course, there is the issue of enormous human risk.

I also admit to having some qualms about despoiling a largely pristine environment that carries the marks, like fossils, of billions of years of history. Perhaps the moon should be treated like a national park (even though it belongs to no nation by treaty, a treaty which alas will likely eventually be violated by either China or the U.S. or both).

As it happens I fear that what will really transpire, if we do get moon bases, is that both China and the U.S. will use them for military purposes. Let’s bring war to outer space!

 

[pood]

According to the UK’s The Telegraph, while the Artemis heat shield was redesigned, the redesign was NOT fitted for this mission.

 

[Shadowy Man]

According to the UK’s The Telegraph, while the Artemis heat shield was redesigned, the redesign was NOT fitted for this mission.

My understanding is that they are looking to mitigate via entry trajectory. But I admittedly don’t know the details.

 

[pood]

According to the UK’s The Telegraph, while the Artemis heat shield was redesigned, the redesign was NOT fitted for this mission.

My understanding is that they are looking to mitigate via entry trajectory. But I admittedly don’t know the details.

This is correct, they are changing the trajectory. But since they redesigned the heat shield I was under the impression that they had implemented the new design for this mission, but apparently not.

 

[Shadowy Man]

According to the UK’s The Telegraph, while the Artemis heat shield was redesigned, the redesign was NOT fitted for this mission.

My understanding is that they are looking to mitigate via entry trajectory. But I admittedly don’t know the details.

This is correct, they are changing the trajectory. But since they redesigned the heat shield I was under the impression that they had implemented the new design for this mission, but apparently not.

This capsule was probably already being constructed. They would then have to choose between delay to implement a new design or find other ways to mitigate, as they did.

 

[pood]

According to the UK’s The Telegraph, while the Artemis heat shield was redesigned, the redesign was NOT fitted for this mission.

My understanding is that they are looking to mitigate via entry trajectory. But I admittedly don’t know the details.

This is correct, they are changing the trajectory. But since they redesigned the heat shield I was under the impression that they had implemented the new design for this mission, but apparently not.

This capsule was probably already being constructed. They would then have to choose between delay to implement a new design or find other ways to mitigate, as they did.

Well, fingers crossed. Not trusting NASA.

 

[bilby]

I recall reading Ayn Rand’s massive potboiler novel Atlas Shrugged which was really terrible (her first novel The Fountainhead was good). One of the protagonists was an extremely competent woman (this part is good, a woman, yay!) who ran a railroad empire. Her brother was a timid, gibbering little simp. The point is, however, that this woman inherited the railroad empire from a 19th-century ancestor. How did the ancestor go about building this railroad empire?

With his own two bare hands!

Yessiree, the novel tells us he was a penniless drifter who climbed out of some swamp somewhere and with his own two hands erected a railroad empire, with no help from anyone or anything! (The reader is never informed HOW he accomplished this miracle.) At one point in the novel he even throws some nosy government agent down a flight of stairs. Throwing someone down a flight of stairs also occurs in The Fountainhead. I guess we can be grateful at least that Rand was not into depicting defenestration, though maybe stair-throwing was one of her sexual kinks, like, as I have read, wearing a mink coat and smoking a cigarette while getting screwed.

This was all in keeping with Rand’s bizarre idea that government is always the enemy and the only productive people in life are, I guess, those who climb penniless out of swamps to erect with their own two bare hands by themselves railroad empires and throw people down the stairs who annoy them. This notion did not stop her, however, from praising the Apollo moon landings. Guess she didn’t notice that these landings were not private enterprises.

I might add she was also a heavy smoker who smoked because held the ideological belief (!) that smoking represented man’s triumph over fire (!). Unfortunately she got diagnosed with lung cancer and croaked, though not before availing herself of the Social Security and Medicare benefits she allegedly despised and constantly railed against.

In reality, of course, the 19th-century railroads were erected with enormous government subsidies including loans and land grants. This was Keynesianism before Keynes. No penniless drifter ever crawled out of a swamp to build any of them.

But these subsidies were productive investments. They knit the country together and produced an enormous post-war economic boom.

Would the same be true for government subsidies to build moon bases? The western U.S., which the transcontinental railroads opened, were enormously profitable which is why the subsidies were wise. The moon is barren and dead. How would bases support themselves? How would they grow food? Mining might turn a profit long-term but not short-term. It seems that for a period of many years, such bases would have to be subsidized by enormous government investments without any promise of a decent return. Then, of course, there is the issue of enormous human risk.

I also admit to having some qualms about despoiling a largely pristine environment that carries the marks, like fossils, of billions of years of history. Perhaps the moon should be treated like a national park (even though it belongs to no nation by treaty, a treaty which alas will likely eventually be violated by either China or the U.S. or both).

As it happens I fear that what will really transpire, if we do get moon bases, is that both China and the U.S. will use them for military purposes. Let’s bring war to outer space!

The thing that made mining and farming in the West into a profitable enterprise was transportation. The railways enabled these businesses.

The Moon doubtless has vast mineral wealth. But to profit from it requires transportation infrastructure.

A moon base could be a part of that, if it can make rocket fuel locally, but the lunar gravity well is frankly trivial; What we need to make space even vaguely profitable is to build infrastructure to get out of Earth's gravity well cheaply. We need a space elevator.

Which project is not helped at all by a moon base.

Of course, your last point is a major concern. Space is the ultimate high ground, and any system to get mineral wealth from the Moon or asteroids to Earth could be repurposed to plant an asteroid in Central Park at high velocity, destroying the five boroughs without any need to fart about trying to separate uranium isotopes, or build ultra-high-precision implosion devices to kick-off plutonium fission.

 

[bilby]

Asking NASA to think about building space elevators is like asking a buggy-whip maker to think about building automobiles. NASA are a bunch of rocket scientists, while a space elevator is a materials science problem.

NASA are inevitably going to be skeptical to the point of derisive about the idea.

But it's the way forward, nonetheless.

 

[pood]

I am familiar with the space elevator concept but not sufficiently knowledgeable to comment about in detail.

That said, it seems it would be very vulnerable to attack or natural disaster.

 

[steve_bank]

I thought the space elevator fell by the wayside. Looks like it is still in business.

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are considered the most promising material for a space elevator tether due to their exceptional theoretical tensile strength and low weight. A 100,000-km-long CNT ribbon could theoretically support its own weight and lift payloads, but challenges include producing defect-free, long-chain nanotubes and preventing them from clumping during production.
Key Aspects of CNT Space Elevators:

Structure: A 100,000-km ribbon or cable, likely made of carbon nanotube composites, would extend from Earth's equator to a counterweight in geostationary orbit, held taut by centrifugal force.
Material Properties: To be viable, the tether needs a tensile strength of over 50-100 GPa. While CNTs have immense potential, current production techniques produce defective, short nanotubes, making them too weak in practice.
Proposed Projects: The Obayashi Corporation in Japan is investigating a 96,000-km nanotube cable to be built by 2050.
Key Challenges: The primary technical hurdle is producing carbon nanotubes in large quantities that maintain their theoretical strength, as currently produced CNTs tend to clump or have atomic defects.
Benefits: A successful space elevator could revolutionize space travel, reducing costs from over $10,000 per kilogram to just hundreds of dollars per kilogram.

Despite their potential, creating the required kilometer-long, defect-free material remains a major hurdle. Other potential materials, such as graphene, are also being studied, but CNTs remain the primary candidate.

Space elevator - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

https://users.wpi.edu/~paravind/Publications/PKASpace%20Elevators.pdf

AI Overview
Space Elevators Are Less Sci-Fi Than You Think | Scientific ...
Yes, a space elevator could work on Mars and is considered much easier to build than on Earth due to lower gravity and a thinner atmosphere. It could be constructed using existing high-strength materials like Kevlar, unlike Earth’s version, which requires advanced carbon nanotubes.

 

[steve_bank]

AI Overview
NASA Hires Lockheed Martin to Build up to 12 Orion ...
The Orion spacecraft, designed for NASA's Artemis program, is built by prime contractor Lockheed Martin. The crew module (capsule) is manufactured by Lockheed Martin, while the European Space Agency (ESA) provides the European Service Module (ESM), which is built by Airbus Defence and Space in Germany.
Key Organizations Involved:

Prime Contractor (Crew Module): Lockheed Martin designed, builds, and tests the crew module, launch abort system, and crew module adapter.
Service Module (ESM): The European Space Agency (ESA) designed the service module, with Airbus as the main contractor.
Overall Management: NASA manages the program and designed the overall mission architecture.

Orion is specifically designed for deep space missions, supporting up to four astronauts on trips to the Moon and beyond. The crew module, or capsule, is designed to survive high-speed reentries from the Moon, with extensive testing carried out at various NASA facilities.

AI Overview
NASA has contracted two main companies to design and build lunar landers for the Artemis program: SpaceX and Blue Origin. SpaceX is developing the Starship HLS for early missions, while Blue Origin leads a "National Team" (including Lockheed Martin, Draper, Astrobotic, Honeybee Robotics, and Boeing) to build the Blue Moon lander for Artemis V.
Key Artemis Lunar Lander Contractors

SpaceX: Developing the Starship HLS (Human Landing System), a fully reusable, single-stage lander designed to launch on their Super Heavy rocket.
Blue Origin: Developing the Blue Moon Mark 2 lander, a three-stage design for crewed missions to the South Pole region.

Blue Origin's "National Team" Partners:

Lockheed Martin: Building the ascent stage (cislunar transporter).
Draper: Providing guidance, navigation, and control systems.
Boeing: Contributing the docking system.
Astrobotic: Handling cargo accommodations.
Honeybee Robotics: Providing cargo offloading technology.

These companies work under NASA's HLS program, which focuses on developing capabilities to land astronauts on the Moon, support surface operations, and return them safely to orbit.