A warning that it could turn into Apollo again. I’d say that’s a best-case scenario.
9 thoughts on “More Artemis Follies”
Let see headline:
“With Artemis, NASA at risk of repeating Apollo mistakes, scientist warns”
Apollo was a great success. And there always mistake made.
And I would say the worst mistakes followed the Apollo wild success.
These mistakes were connected to how Apollo was done.
As analogy, Apollo builds a bridge because it needs a bridge build,
and after Apollo one is focused on building bridges.
The main thing Apollo was doing was fighting the Cold war- and after Apollo, NASA didn’t have that job anymore.
It could have the job of making the world better, which roughly the same as fighting the Cold war. But didn’t have specified mission in terms of crushing the Soviet Union.
Lets go into meat story:
“During this time and under the leadership of administrator Jim Bridenstine, the agency has let contracts for both the elements of the Lunar Gateway, the small space station that will follow a distant orbit around the Moon. NASA has also begun to solicit ideas from industry about their designs for a three-stage lunar lander, upon which construction could begin sometime in 2020. The agency is also soliciting cargo deliveries to the Moon.”
I am not fan of gateway, but that didn’t start 5 months ago.
Generally I am big fan of going to Mars from starting from high earth orbit [and then dropping to low earth perigee trajectory in order to send crew to Mars very quickly- and other ways to go to Mars from high earth orbit}. And going to Mars to High orbit and leaving Mars from high orbit, and returning to Earth high earth orbit. I could have a lot to say this, but in last few months, the main part seems to be all other stuff other than Gateway. And it seems good. Next :
“These are big steps, and getting a large agency like NASA moving quickly is difficult. For all of this, however, there are storm clouds on the horizon. Most obviously, there is the matter of paying for the Artemis Program to put humans on the Moon—the US House did not including funding for this effort in its preliminary fiscal year 2020 budget, and the Senate has yet to draft a budget. If there is not additional funding, NASA cannot give industry funds to go and do the work.”
Well I think what is important first is robotic lunar exploration, and robotic exploration takes a long time to do, and crew part “can be” very fast. NASA should be focus on crewed mission from US rocket launch companies, because this is very connected to crewed lunar missions.
NASA should be focus on crewed mission
Should be:
NASA should be focus on crewed mission to ISS.
I think where Artemis will really improve on Apollo is video quality. The old 70mm stills were great but even the later Apollo J missions suffered from really low quality TV images. The highlight of the early missions was having Surveyor film the Apollo 12 lifting off, which was a big deal because it had a movable camera. But it’s now trivial to shoot in 4K, so we can slap GoPros on helmets and shoot astronauts bounding around for a day or so on their biennial lunar excursions, assuming they can launch a mission every two years.
If NASA has a better reason for the Artemis program, I’m all ears, because their payload and flight rate aren’t going to be useful for all that much else. There’s just no vision, no capability to deliver on time and under budget, and affordability is unobtainable in the current bureaucratic environment. They can get to the moon, but it will be the same as Apollo and the same as a Viking sailing to Newfoundland to win a bar bet.
My money is on lunar development driven by visionaries in the private sector.
More likely when the two women from Artemis 2 get out of their module, they’ll be hounded by a couple of hundred amateur videographers who had the money to pay Musk for a quick trip up.
Artemis IMHO looked good when first announced, until one looked at the details.
Detail#1; the utter lack of some details, and also lack of purpose. Are we building a moon base? Are we prospecting? What are the purposes?
Detail#2; How? NASA needs a lunar lander (amongst other things) to actually land. They don’t even have a design yet. Does anyone seriously think today’s NASA could design and build a lunar lander in 4 years?
Detail #3; Gateway as proof of folly; Orion can’t get to low lunar orbit and back, due to the low delta/v of the service module. So, the answer is Gateway, in a distant lunar orbit? That’s preposterous; any lander that can get from Gateway to the lunar surface could do it with less delta/v needed from a moderate altitude lunar orbit that Orion can reach.
Detail#4; SLS. Any program involving SLS is utterly unsustainable at best (and more likely will never fly). (in fact, it was seeing SLS involved that made up my mind that Artemis is a boondoggle).
There are many ways to do the same thing. What dooms Artemis is a successful SpaceX. Super Heavy and Starship change everything. But if the Trump admin really is backing away from the Moon, maybe it has to do with the realization that SLS can’t do it. That doesn’t mean all the other stuff they want to do on the Moon wont happen, they are two different courses.
The most important thing NASA is going to be doing, hopefully, are all of those other missions on the Moon that need to be done before building a base. That sets the groundwork to take advantage of what SpaceX has to offer.
Weren’t people complaining that Trump was putting the Moon back on the map instead of sticking with the drive toward Mars? Now, they complain he might put less emphasis on the Moon than Mars. But is this even the case?
A President, Trump or anyone else, not giving lots of details about NASA in speeches is nothing new, and shouldn’t be expected or used as some sort of divining rod. Rather than micro-focusing on word choice like Game of Thrones nerds, it would be better to look at actions. But if we do look for a quote of good length rather than snips or characterizations,
But that hasn’t stopped the White House from a march toward Mars. At the end of Tuesday’s meeting, Vice President Pence directed Bridenstine to return with timelines for human landings on the Moon, as well as for human missions to Mars. “We are setting specific timelines for the administrator in the next 60 days… for the submission of a plan for sustainable lunar surface exploration and the development of crewed missions to Mars,” Pence said.
Apparently the White House hasn’t stopped the march toward the Moon either. Is the effort to sow confusion deliberate? It is the same thing lefty journalists are doing on other issues as well. Doesn’t look especially good for journalistic ethics the way the Trump quote about an American flag on Mars was dropped in.
NASA’s plan has long been to do both the Moon and Mars, with NASA more focused on Mars while the Moon is more or a COTS like approach and public/private partnerships. “NASA hasn’t even desinged a lunar lander!” They say. Is NASA going to be the ones designing one or will it be BO or someone else?
“Apparently the White House hasn’t stopped the march toward the Moon either. Is the effort to sow confusion deliberate? ”
To make simple, first explore lunar poles, then explore Mars.
Details, why do you want to explore Mars.
I can think of two resons, one bad and one good.
A bad reason to explore Mars is to look for alien life.
A good reason to Mars is to determine whether Mars could have
human settlements. Viable settlement rather than ghost towns {and dead people}.
What are the elements that make Mars settlements viable.
I what say one would have to be able to grow food which doesn’t cost thousands of times more expensive than Earth food.
What is expensive or necessary part of growing food, water.
A farm doesn’t work if water costs thousands of times the normal cost of water.
And humans [other than astronauts] use a lot water in addition to for farming purposes.
If Moon could have cheap water, you could viable have settlements on the Moon {and forget about Mars}
And talking about the Moon, the Moon needs water at a price of about $500 per kg. Or we measure water on earth, 1/2 million dollar per cubic meter {1 ton} of water. Or roughly a cheap price of water on Moon is about million times more expensive per kg or ton on Earth.
With Mars it has to cheaper water than the Moon.
One also ask what will price of water on the Moon after 100 years of mining lunar water. It seems it would be about $1 per kg or $1000 per ton. Or just about a thousands of dollars more than water on Earth.
And with Mars, what should the price of water [for people being Mars settlers- this has nothing to cost of crew use who exploring Mars} to be viable it seems water has to cost about $10 per kg {or less] and in hundred years, about same price as water on Earth.
One can’t get around fact that water will costly in the beginning, but one should expect the cost to lower over time. And given enough time, water on the Moon could cheaper than water on Earth- because solar system has vast amount of water, and water can be in the future can be imported to the Moon.
But point is Mars has to have a water resource which can be much cheaper than the Moon in terms immediately and in terms the next few decades.
But also, the Moon will always have cheaper rocket fuel than Mars, and Mars cheapness of Mars water is not much of factor. So huge factor in regards to settlements.
Also another aspect of viability of Mars settlement will be the cost, of getting people to Mars. Or if moon is mining lunar water and making rocket fuel, this makes Mars settlements more viable.
But NASA and other space agencies merely having lunar bases, is not significant in this regard.
And goes the other way too, if you have Mars settlements, it makes anything done on the moon, more viable.
Next reason. Can NASA do exploration in successful way. Or does Mars exploration resemble SLS development. Or ISS. Or James Telescope. Etc.
If NASA explores the Moon, could do this at a low cost and be finished quickly. NASA could explore the Moon for about 40 billion dollars. Though if include gateways and lunar bases and decades of time, it’s would be trillion dollars, if the public doesn’t pull the plug on the nonsense.
So NASA exploring the Moon, should be about providing confidence that NASA *might* be able to explore Mars and it *might* cost less than 1 trillion dollars
Apollo landed on the Moon 6 times. Artemis ain’t going anywhere.
Let see headline:
“With Artemis, NASA at risk of repeating Apollo mistakes, scientist warns”
Apollo was a great success. And there always mistake made.
And I would say the worst mistakes followed the Apollo wild success.
These mistakes were connected to how Apollo was done.
As analogy, Apollo builds a bridge because it needs a bridge build,
and after Apollo one is focused on building bridges.
The main thing Apollo was doing was fighting the Cold war- and after Apollo, NASA didn’t have that job anymore.
It could have the job of making the world better, which roughly the same as fighting the Cold war. But didn’t have specified mission in terms of crushing the Soviet Union.
Lets go into meat story:
“During this time and under the leadership of administrator Jim Bridenstine, the agency has let contracts for both the elements of the Lunar Gateway, the small space station that will follow a distant orbit around the Moon. NASA has also begun to solicit ideas from industry about their designs for a three-stage lunar lander, upon which construction could begin sometime in 2020. The agency is also soliciting cargo deliveries to the Moon.”
I am not fan of gateway, but that didn’t start 5 months ago.
Generally I am big fan of going to Mars from starting from high earth orbit [and then dropping to low earth perigee trajectory in order to send crew to Mars very quickly- and other ways to go to Mars from high earth orbit}. And going to Mars to High orbit and leaving Mars from high orbit, and returning to Earth high earth orbit. I could have a lot to say this, but in last few months, the main part seems to be all other stuff other than Gateway. And it seems good. Next :
“These are big steps, and getting a large agency like NASA moving quickly is difficult. For all of this, however, there are storm clouds on the horizon. Most obviously, there is the matter of paying for the Artemis Program to put humans on the Moon—the US House did not including funding for this effort in its preliminary fiscal year 2020 budget, and the Senate has yet to draft a budget. If there is not additional funding, NASA cannot give industry funds to go and do the work.”
Well I think what is important first is robotic lunar exploration, and robotic exploration takes a long time to do, and crew part “can be” very fast. NASA should be focus on crewed mission from US rocket launch companies, because this is very connected to crewed lunar missions.
NASA should be focus on crewed mission
Should be:
NASA should be focus on crewed mission to ISS.
I think where Artemis will really improve on Apollo is video quality. The old 70mm stills were great but even the later Apollo J missions suffered from really low quality TV images. The highlight of the early missions was having Surveyor film the Apollo 12 lifting off, which was a big deal because it had a movable camera. But it’s now trivial to shoot in 4K, so we can slap GoPros on helmets and shoot astronauts bounding around for a day or so on their biennial lunar excursions, assuming they can launch a mission every two years.
If NASA has a better reason for the Artemis program, I’m all ears, because their payload and flight rate aren’t going to be useful for all that much else. There’s just no vision, no capability to deliver on time and under budget, and affordability is unobtainable in the current bureaucratic environment. They can get to the moon, but it will be the same as Apollo and the same as a Viking sailing to Newfoundland to win a bar bet.
My money is on lunar development driven by visionaries in the private sector.
More likely when the two women from Artemis 2 get out of their module, they’ll be hounded by a couple of hundred amateur videographers who had the money to pay Musk for a quick trip up.
Artemis IMHO looked good when first announced, until one looked at the details.
Detail#1; the utter lack of some details, and also lack of purpose. Are we building a moon base? Are we prospecting? What are the purposes?
Detail#2; How? NASA needs a lunar lander (amongst other things) to actually land. They don’t even have a design yet. Does anyone seriously think today’s NASA could design and build a lunar lander in 4 years?
Detail #3; Gateway as proof of folly; Orion can’t get to low lunar orbit and back, due to the low delta/v of the service module. So, the answer is Gateway, in a distant lunar orbit? That’s preposterous; any lander that can get from Gateway to the lunar surface could do it with less delta/v needed from a moderate altitude lunar orbit that Orion can reach.
Detail#4; SLS. Any program involving SLS is utterly unsustainable at best (and more likely will never fly). (in fact, it was seeing SLS involved that made up my mind that Artemis is a boondoggle).
There are many ways to do the same thing. What dooms Artemis is a successful SpaceX. Super Heavy and Starship change everything. But if the Trump admin really is backing away from the Moon, maybe it has to do with the realization that SLS can’t do it. That doesn’t mean all the other stuff they want to do on the Moon wont happen, they are two different courses.
The most important thing NASA is going to be doing, hopefully, are all of those other missions on the Moon that need to be done before building a base. That sets the groundwork to take advantage of what SpaceX has to offer.
Weren’t people complaining that Trump was putting the Moon back on the map instead of sticking with the drive toward Mars? Now, they complain he might put less emphasis on the Moon than Mars. But is this even the case?
A President, Trump or anyone else, not giving lots of details about NASA in speeches is nothing new, and shouldn’t be expected or used as some sort of divining rod. Rather than micro-focusing on word choice like Game of Thrones nerds, it would be better to look at actions. But if we do look for a quote of good length rather than snips or characterizations,
Apparently the White House hasn’t stopped the march toward the Moon either. Is the effort to sow confusion deliberate? It is the same thing lefty journalists are doing on other issues as well. Doesn’t look especially good for journalistic ethics the way the Trump quote about an American flag on Mars was dropped in.
NASA’s plan has long been to do both the Moon and Mars, with NASA more focused on Mars while the Moon is more or a COTS like approach and public/private partnerships. “NASA hasn’t even desinged a lunar lander!” They say. Is NASA going to be the ones designing one or will it be BO or someone else?
“Apparently the White House hasn’t stopped the march toward the Moon either. Is the effort to sow confusion deliberate? ”
To make simple, first explore lunar poles, then explore Mars.
Details, why do you want to explore Mars.
I can think of two resons, one bad and one good.
A bad reason to explore Mars is to look for alien life.
A good reason to Mars is to determine whether Mars could have
human settlements. Viable settlement rather than ghost towns {and dead people}.
What are the elements that make Mars settlements viable.
I what say one would have to be able to grow food which doesn’t cost thousands of times more expensive than Earth food.
What is expensive or necessary part of growing food, water.
A farm doesn’t work if water costs thousands of times the normal cost of water.
And humans [other than astronauts] use a lot water in addition to for farming purposes.
If Moon could have cheap water, you could viable have settlements on the Moon {and forget about Mars}
And talking about the Moon, the Moon needs water at a price of about $500 per kg. Or we measure water on earth, 1/2 million dollar per cubic meter {1 ton} of water. Or roughly a cheap price of water on Moon is about million times more expensive per kg or ton on Earth.
With Mars it has to cheaper water than the Moon.
One also ask what will price of water on the Moon after 100 years of mining lunar water. It seems it would be about $1 per kg or $1000 per ton. Or just about a thousands of dollars more than water on Earth.
And with Mars, what should the price of water [for people being Mars settlers- this has nothing to cost of crew use who exploring Mars} to be viable it seems water has to cost about $10 per kg {or less] and in hundred years, about same price as water on Earth.
One can’t get around fact that water will costly in the beginning, but one should expect the cost to lower over time. And given enough time, water on the Moon could cheaper than water on Earth- because solar system has vast amount of water, and water can be in the future can be imported to the Moon.
But point is Mars has to have a water resource which can be much cheaper than the Moon in terms immediately and in terms the next few decades.
But also, the Moon will always have cheaper rocket fuel than Mars, and Mars cheapness of Mars water is not much of factor. So huge factor in regards to settlements.
Also another aspect of viability of Mars settlement will be the cost, of getting people to Mars. Or if moon is mining lunar water and making rocket fuel, this makes Mars settlements more viable.
But NASA and other space agencies merely having lunar bases, is not significant in this regard.
And goes the other way too, if you have Mars settlements, it makes anything done on the moon, more viable.
Next reason. Can NASA do exploration in successful way. Or does Mars exploration resemble SLS development. Or ISS. Or James Telescope. Etc.
If NASA explores the Moon, could do this at a low cost and be finished quickly. NASA could explore the Moon for about 40 billion dollars. Though if include gateways and lunar bases and decades of time, it’s would be trillion dollars, if the public doesn’t pull the plug on the nonsense.
So NASA exploring the Moon, should be about providing confidence that NASA *might* be able to explore Mars and it *might* cost less than 1 trillion dollars
Apollo landed on the Moon 6 times. Artemis ain’t going anywhere.