[HN Gopher] NASA's Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 ...
___________________________________________________________________
NASA's Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles above the
surface
Author : mmq
Score : 186 points
Date : 2022-11-21 15:30 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| areoform wrote:
| There are some people saying that the onboard cameras are very
| bad and badly positioned. While the imagery is breathtaking to
| me, it's just a tiny taste of what's yet to come -- most of the
| images/videos haven't been downlinked yet.
|
| Orion is the most media consumption focused craft that NASA has
| ever sent out. There are 16 cameras on the mission, ranging from,
| -- 7 COTS GoPro Hero 4 Black derived cameras that shoot video in,
| 4k/30fps, 1080p/120fps, 720p/240fps. 4 of these are mounted on
| tips of the solar panel. Most of the pictures that you are seeing
| are from these cameras. - Cameras around the service
| module and the Orion capsule that are (mostly, AFAICT) wired
| cameras derived from PixeLINK PL-D725, these shoot in color and
| B&W, and record at 75fps on a single channel. - 3
| internal Cameras that are a part of Callisto a Lockheed Martin
| thing.
|
| On the ground, we've gotten used to fairly high bandwidth
| communications system, but Orion is using NASA's Deep Space
| Network. There just isn't enough bandwidth to downlink the kind
| of pristine imagery that people want.
|
| We'll have to wait until the capsule comes back home to watch all
| of the 4k video that this machine is capturing.
|
| We have come a long way though, when the Apollo missions were
| going on, all they had were grainy TV broadcasts. They had to
| wait for weeks to get those gorgeous images out.
| godelski wrote:
| > On the ground,
|
| On the ground we've also gotten used to soft lighting
| conditions. Light in space works pretty differently from that
| on ground. On Earth we have more diffuse lighting as the light
| of the sun gets spread out from the atmosphere. There are many
| (MANY) surfaces for light to bounce off of and reflect from,
| making a more full looking light. In space, on the other hand,
| light is more often like a point light source. Your background
| is (effectively) the blackest of blacks. Your foreground is
| extremely bright. Cameras have pretty limited dynamic ranges.
| This also contributes to the blurryness you see and why the
| shadows look "off" (there's actually conspiracy theories around
| shadows on the moon because of this misunderstanding).
|
| So even after we get all that 4k video things will still be
| "off" but like areoform is saying, we've come an incredibly
| long ways. I for one am excited for all these images. But also
| don't expect them to look like what you're used to on Earth.
| (and take this message as a warning for incoming conspiracies)
| anikom15 wrote:
| NASA has all that money and they can't even get cameras that
| shoot at 4K@60p?
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| Thanks for the information. Very helpful.
|
| My conspiracy side thinks NASA wants the opportunity to review
| the high resolution photos and video before they are revealed
| to the public.
| WalterBright wrote:
| They have to paint out by hand the wires that enable the
| astronauts to walk like they're in low gravity. This takes
| time.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| Automation is their friend. Just "hot pink" those wires and
| batch the process =P
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Gotta edit out the decepticons.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _Okay, boss, this LTX-71 concealable mike is part of the same
| system that NASA used when they faked the Apollo Moon
| landings. They had the astronauts broadcast around the world
| from a sound stage at Norton Air Force Base in San Bernadino,
| California. So it worked for them, shouldn 't give us too
| many problems._
| runesofdoom wrote:
| That's not true. Everyone knows that Coppola forced them to
| shoot on-site.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Coppola: If I'm going to make a fake moon landing video
| it's going to be the best damn one ever created. We're
| shooting on site, and that's final!
| bombcar wrote:
| I believe someone did the math and supposedly showed that
| it would have been cheaper to actually land on the moon
| than fake it with what they had available at the time.
| themadturk wrote:
| "That's no moon. That's the set Stanley Kubrick built to film
| the fake moon landings."
| anogrebattle wrote:
| To be fair, NASA _is_ probably reviewing the high res imagery
| before releasing it, but for a much more mundane reason than
| any conspiracy theory. A lot of contractors worked on Orion.
| NASA is responsible for not accidentally leaking any trade
| secrets that may be visible in imagery.
| mcculley wrote:
| If the fundamental delay to NASA releasing images is leak
| of proprietary data, that is a pretty good argument against
| the continued existence of NASA as a public agency.
| el_toast wrote:
| No conspiracy or funniness to be had. ITAR is the main
| limiting factor to releasing images/videos at this point.
| Next is the download rate and the high res images are not
| high priority since operations can be run using lower
| resolution. We all need to remember mission success is the
| highest priority. We will get the good stuff we want, just
| not immediately.
| [deleted]
| poutine wrote:
| Wait, a GoPro works in vacuum in space? Even one derived from
| that? That's pretty cool. What did they do to it to make it
| work in such a crazy environment?
| tehf0x wrote:
| The main issue is radiation from the sun and I guess the rest
| of space. This paper will give you a very nice idea of all
| the issues with COTS in space: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu
| /cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2...
| [deleted]
| kmacdough wrote:
| Space is inhospitable for humans, but not so bad for tech.
| With no need for a cushy room-temperature, you mostly need to
| think about increased radiation and temperature swings.
|
| I can't find details on NASA's designs, but I suspect you'd
| mostly need a new casing. Something radiation-tolerant (most
| plastic degrades quickly) and maybe radiation-shielding if it
| messes with the electronics too much. For temperature you
| could just run it through a few cycles on Earth and see what
| breaks. Probably nothing, given the GoPro's lack of moving
| parts and general ruggedness.
|
| The rugged, icy, salt-water environments the GoPro is
| designed for are, in many ways, a lot more demanding than
| space.
| justinator wrote:
| My GoPro won't work if it's too cold (lithium battery).
|
| They're using GoPro 4's, which is somewhat interesting, as
| the 11 just came out. So, old tech (8 years old or so)
| that's been heavily modified to work in space. I'm reminded
| some janky PowerPC powers the FORTRAN code that runs the
| Hubble.
|
| It is romantic to think that the Earthrise photo was taken
| with a Hasselblad medium format camera.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kovAmQ0jz4
| xenospn wrote:
| All space hardware is old since it has to be radiation-
| proof and proven reliable above all else.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| To add to that - vacuum can also mess up sealed components
| that were manufactured at 1ATM. This is mostly a problem
| with electrolytic batteries and capacitors which puff up
| when the atmospheric pressure is removed. For batteries
| mitigations include manufacturing at low pressures or
| constraining the expansion mechanically.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| It seems likely that a lot of industrial grade hardware would
| work just fine in space, needing at most minor tweaks,
| especially for operating periods of weeks/months at most.
| Government contracting is just too used to the old model of
| burning billions on redesigning everything (because, of
| course, jobs). They've only barely gotten over that model for
| rocketry in general.
|
| For instance, the footage on Perseverance's landing was also
| all from off-the-shelf hardware. The Ingenuity helicopter is
| also largely off-the-shelf gear, it uses a plain old
| Snapdragon 801 as its main processor running Linux.
| Perseverance also uses an Intel Atom processor (although it
| carries 2) to receive footage from all the cameras and
| compress them, compared to the main processor, which is an
| ancient PowerPC chip. IIRC there was also a cubesat which
| used a smartphone as its processor and several others which
| have used Raspberry Pis. A GoPro has also been to space
| earlier this year.
| [deleted]
| Symmetry wrote:
| SpaceX actually has used them on a bunch of Falcon 9
| launches. But I'd worry about how well a GoPro would survive
| in the long run in the harsh radiation environment outside
| the Van Allen belts.
| pkaye wrote:
| NASA has plenty of vacuum chambers that they can control the
| pressure and temperature. They even tested the entire JWST
| hardware in a massive vacuum chamber.
| harywilke wrote:
| Here is the entire Orion spacecraft being put in one NASA's
| vacuum chambers.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G99L5RRjEKA
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| heck I have a vacuum chamber on my desk at home, though not
| one as good as the NASA ones
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| https://archive.ph/99rIO
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Why has no human stepped foot on the moon for 50+ years? This
| never made sense to me.
| kristianp wrote:
| The Space Shuttle and the International Space Station were
| hugely expensive. They became the focus, despite not providing
| much bang for buck.
| q1w2 wrote:
| There also wasn't sufficient scientific justification.
|
| The focus (pun intended) has been space based telescopes and
| study of more distant planets and objects.
| adventured wrote:
| We have been busy doing other things more interesting
| (subjective) and useful toward improving human quality of life
| than walking on the moon again.
|
| The moon is a bit of a luxury. We're going back because it has
| gotten a lot cheaper to do so (and China is going for it soon,
| which spurred the US to go back before China gets there). The
| sole reason the US is more recently in such a hurry to go back
| is because of China's progress.
|
| There is very little value in merely going back and walking
| around again. The only good reason to go back is to begin
| building a long-term settlement/base of some manner, and we
| couldn't afford to hope to attempt it until recently. Starship
| is the only thing that can make that economically viable this
| decade.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| As soon as the initial mandate was met, politicians did their
| thing and corrupted the space program to prioritize jobs (and
| thus votes) over space exploration.
| [deleted]
| csours wrote:
| There's no oil on the moon (yet).
|
| ===
|
| Actual serious answer: It takes a lot of energy to get to the
| moon. Even more to land safely. Even more to take off again.
| Even more get back to Earth.
|
| That energy costs a lot of money. It costs a lot more money to
| test all the things that use that energy. We are at the bottom
| of an energy and money hole, the moon is at the top.
| MystK wrote:
| Its very expensive.
| Maursault wrote:
| And very dangerous.
| oliwary wrote:
| And incredibly far, much further than I used to think - you
| can fit all planets in the solar system in the average
| distance between the earth and the moon!
|
| https://www.universetoday.com/115672/you-could-fit-all-
| the-p...
| troutwine wrote:
| For a little more context, there were Apollo flights
| planned out to 20, Nixon cut those. The Apollo Applications
| Program aimed at building a lunar base and observatories up
| through '76 but the Johnson administration declined to fund
| it partially to fund of Great Society programs but also
| partially because no one could adequately explain what a
| lunar base would be worth. We did get Skylab and the
| Apollo-Soyuz project, so it's not like project ground
| entirely down to a halt but what we did eventually get was
| a far cry from the heady dreams of the mid-60s, that's for
| sure. And, as cool a vehicle as the Shuttle was the STS did
| not at all deliver on its promises, further sapping
| resources.
|
| Why haven't we gone back to the moon? Funding dried up real
| quick once it was clear the Space Race could be won with
| the existing amount of money spent, new projects had to
| answer "why" in a concrete way to compete for limited
| resources and it was not at all clear what we'd go to the
| moon for compared to, say, building the ISS.
|
| Space theorists in the 30s - 50s assumed that you would
| have to build up on-orbit Earth infrastructure before the
| moon could be sustainably reached, meaning you could go
| back whenever just because. That is, you need stable
| communication, transit hubs, refueling, space-based
| construction went the thinking. Both the US and the Soviets
| took big, expensive shortcuts in the Space Race but I find
| it hard to believe that the original analysis -- space is
| only as reachable as its infrastructure allows -- hasn't
| been showed true in the last 50 years.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| And there's not much there aside from rocks
| avz wrote:
| > Why has no human stepped foot on the moon for 50+ years?
|
| Technically, this is not true. Unfortunately, it will be true
| in a few weeks.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_17
| fouronnes3 wrote:
| And you can watch live as it happened exactly 50 years ago!
|
| https://twitter.com/apollo_50th?lang=en
|
| https://apolloinrealtime.org/17/
| mikro2nd wrote:
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > real units instead of frankenunits
|
| Imagine commenting on an _American_ media piece targeting an
| _American_ audience about an _American_ space agency launching
| an _American_ spacecraft and complaining that the article uses
| _American_ units. Wild.
| coliveira wrote:
| The American public doesn't understand the metric system.
| That's why they publish information in strange units like
| Miles.
| rhino369 wrote:
| I love this argument. Americans are dumb because they can't
| understand metric!
|
| Why is metric better?
|
| It's easier to understand, of course!
|
| American's don't have a very intuitive understanding of
| metric because we don't use it. But every numerical literate
| American understands how to apply the metric system since
| that is all that is taught in schools (so much so engineer
| school grads are often unfamiliar with units actually used in
| US engineering).
|
| We all know 130 KM is 130,000 meters, but we don't think in
| KM or M.
| edgyquant wrote:
| That's a blatant lie with an air of European "superiority."
| Yea we do, every one of us learned it in our school math and
| science classes.
|
| It's arbitrary to convert between any two mathematical units
| in general (it's one of the main exercises in junior high
| math.) Any discussion of Americans "just not getting it" or
| "doing it wrong" is a cope from societies who have done far
| less in the past century in terms of scientific and
| technological progress.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| You realize that a large proportion of Americans are
| effectively innumerate. Unit conversions are beyond their
| ken.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Again, every American does this in 6th grade. It's
| required to pass high school which a majority of
| Americans do. This is a cope from less economically and
| technologically sophisticated societies who can't compete
| with us.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| I learned it in school, as did my class mates. I held
| onto it as I am technically minded and I appreciate the
| simplicity of metric. My class mates do not all agree
| that remembering metric conversions is useful.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > It's required to pass high school which a majority of
| Americans do.
|
| Many schools lie about the scholastic ability of their
| graduates.
| FredPret wrote:
| Getting your ass handed to you economically, culturally,
| etc by the "innumerate" must really hurt. I guess I can
| see the reason for the sour grapes
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Many if not most Americans have some concept of kilometers
| and meters, especially anyone who runs, or is involved in
| sports outside of the big 3 American sports. We just tend to
| prefer the imperial, as we grow up using and interacting with
| it. Inches and feet are just easy to reason about in physical
| space on a human scale, they're great when you aren't trying
| to do more complicated math.
| coliveira wrote:
| > Inches and feet are just easy to reason about in physical
| space on a human scale
|
| Nah, everyone else in the world measures physical space in
| metric units without any problem.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Thank you, I really appreciate this constructive
| feedback.
|
| I obviously get the metric system, and most Americans are
| pretty familiar. But inches and feet are rooted in
| physicality. An inch is roughly a finger width, four
| inches make the (now rarely used measure) hand, and 3
| hands is a foot. You can step off roughly accurate feet.
| I long stride is about 6 feet, or 2 yards. All of these
| measures divide neatly by 2, 3, and 4. It makes most
| fractional measures, especially things like 1/16th of an
| inch easy to work with. I wouldn't use it for science,
| but for building a table or measuring a rough distance
| imperial units are super intuitive.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| You actually want them to use metric? Okay, comrade. /s
|
| Edit: I'm being sarcastic and mocking anti-metrication...
| adql wrote:
| Just be fucking happy they are not using football fields or
| multiples of some tall building length as unit.
|
| The worst I saw was some cook telling the amount of pepper in
| recipe in _cranks of pepper grinder_.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| To play devils advocate, most cooking does not require the
| kind of precision that warrants getting out a small scale to
| measure the weight of crushed peppercorns. Not just because
| these things are season-to-taste, but also, because the
| average person cooking a meal can instantly translate cranks
| of pepper compared to a small unit of weight. Most home
| recipes also measure ingredients by volume rather than
| weight, so I can understand this.
| skykooler wrote:
| I agree. And it's far faster to measure something by
| scooping it via measure spoons than to try and match a
| desired weight on a scale.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| Or Smoots.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot
|
| You have: 81 miles You want: smoots * 76599.403 /
| 1.3054932e-05
| mradek wrote:
| Because it's NASA and the primary audience is American tax
| payers who funded this.
| thebigman433 wrote:
| > Why won't the press report in real units instead of
| frankenunits
|
| Probably because its an American focused news site, reporting
| to American people, who use and will understand miles as a
| measurement. It really isnt hard to understand.
| widowlark wrote:
| Not to mention it's an American space program and an American
| mission. It should probably be understandable to Americans.
| PointyFluff wrote:
| We use metric in the "American Space Program".
|
| I cannot think of an engineering or scientific endeavor in
| the US that DOESN'T use the metric system.
|
| The US is officially, metric; ansi converts back for the
| uneducated.
|
| Here's a colorful video: https://youtu.be/SmSJXC6_qQ8?t=63
|
| Here's boring government text:
| https://www.nist.gov/pml/owm/si-units-mass
| rsj_hn wrote:
| > The US is officially, metric; ansi converts back for
| the uneducated.
|
| This is the type of flamebait we don't need.
| widowlark wrote:
| The American Public doesnt use metric. Thats why the
| article is written with miles.
| geuis wrote:
| One issue that I really don't understand is why the onboard
| cameras are so bad and are badly positioned.
|
| A huge part of this program is to generate buzz and interest in
| the public about the human space program. A large part of that is
| pretty pictures, to be honest.
|
| The onboard video quality looks like 720p at best and the
| exposure is for the Orion vehicle, not Earth or the moon. And the
| video seems horizontally distorted.
|
| I'd have to look, but I'm guessing this is an engineering camera
| meant to primarily view the physical state of the craft.
|
| That being said, after billions of dollars to get this thing into
| space, they should have accounted for the need and benefits of
| better footage.
| witx wrote:
| Never worked on this domain, so I might be wrong, but what I've
| heard is that usually for space stuff the hardware is chosen
| well in advance and "locked". So even if a new shinny thing is
| out probably it won't make it into the project
| nradov wrote:
| We had high-quality cameras used on the Space Shuttle and
| International Space Station for years before the Orion design
| was locked.
| lokimedes wrote:
| They were both basically still within Earth's biosphere
| when it comes to camera destroying ionization.
|
| The Van Alan Belts are the first problem:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt
| and from there it gets pretty bad on out.
|
| Space is hard, in the learning-loop sense. 99.999% of all
| in-space experience has taken place less than 5000km from
| Earth.
| tintor wrote:
| Quality digital cameras existed for more than 10 years.
| Fatnino wrote:
| https://twitter.com/DJSnM/status/1594719135249973249
|
| Actual gopros
| thesausageking wrote:
| While the mission is going on, they first send down low-res
| versions that are optimized for mission operations. That's why
| the exposure is for the vehicle and not the moon.
|
| Higher res ones that are focused on the moon will come later.
| geuis wrote:
| Thanks, that's an excellent point I forgot to consider.
| peawee wrote:
| Probably because they want cameras they know will work and
| survive in a deep-space environment. Space is _hard_. Once you
| get out of the atmosphere and magnetosphere, it 's an unkind
| environment for electronics. They're probably going to spend
| the money, effort, and mass on some nice cameras for manned
| missions, but these are little cameras that mount to the ends
| of the solar arrays.
| cuSetanta wrote:
| It is also probably a data rate issue. They will have higher
| priority data coming back from the spacecraft, especially for
| a first iteration, and in the early stages of the mission.
|
| It is quite possible that once things have stabilised that
| the video and pictures being sent back will improve. For the
| ispace lander we take much lower resolution images throughout
| the mission until we have landed and have the high gain
| antenna in a stable connection.
| runarberg wrote:
| > A huge part of this program is to generate buzz and interest
| in the public about the human space program.
|
| Perhaps this is an impossible task. Humans don't care about
| space explorers. We continue to have fun with sci-fi, but when
| we actual humans going to space in real life, it turns out they
| are just rich ass-holes that we all commonly hate.
|
| Compare this with actual useful robotic missions like the James
| Webb Space telescope, which sparked huge interests and a ton of
| excitement.
|
| I think the era of human space exploration died in the 1970s,
| and any effort to try to revive it are futile.
| trap_goes_hot wrote:
| As per the below poll, some people do care, but yes not the
| overwhelming majority.
|
| https://morningconsult.com/2021/02/25/space-force-travel-
| exp...
| runarberg wrote:
| Weird interpretations from these results to say the least.
| "Space Dominance" is nowhere mentioned except in the
| headline, yet the headline claims that's what people want
| (!)
|
| Seeing the results though I see that human space
| exploration is in the lower tier, just like my previous
| post was suggesting. More people would rather prioritize
| normal robotic missions as it seems. More people seem to
| put some importance to _Conducting research to understand
| space_ then don't. This is reverse (i.e. more people don't
| think it important to) _Research space travels health
| effect_.
| counttheforks wrote:
| > when we actual humans going to space in real life, it turns
| out they are just rich ass-holes that we all commonly hate.
|
| Like who? Don't think I've met anyone who hates astronauts
| nearly as much as you seem to?
| runarberg wrote:
| Search for Jeff Bezos space flight, look at news
| discussions and social media posts, and you will find more
| haters.
| pc86 wrote:
| Billionaires flying into space is the minority compared
| to scientists and astronauts.
| dvzk wrote:
| Astronauts have spent >736,000 hours in spaceflight,
| risking their lives for humanity, but the parent believes
| a 10-minute stunt flight carrying an irrelevant passenger
| is all that matters. I suppose they also dislike the
| imaginary adorers, and yet they are no different.
| [deleted]
| gibolt wrote:
| Very few people who have gone to orbit (actual space) were
| anywhere near 'rich'.
|
| The reason rich people are the ones _funding_ current space
| companies is because they are literally the only ones that
| can do it, other than the largest governments.
|
| SpaceX has generated more buzz than recent NASA work (except
| maybe Webb) and that will continue once Starship begins
| ferrying passengers into space.
| runarberg wrote:
| The high profile cases of recent human space travel is the
| Blue Horizon which generated a ton of buzz, mostly from
| people complaining (justly) about how out of touch these
| people are. I think the sentiment of human space travel
| extends from there. People cringe from seeing Jeff Bezos
| spill his champagne after landing and then if they hear
| about some people going to the ISS they ask: "whats the
| point?" I think this is a just question and a logical
| extensions.
|
| Now for the excitement around SpaceX. There was also a ton
| of buzz around Perseverance. And think people were also
| quite excited--though not as much--about the Parker solar
| probe. For future missions I think more people are excited
| about getting back mars samples from Percy the rover, and
| about a hypothetical mission to use gravitational lensing
| from the Sun to photograph surfaces of exo-planets. The
| hype around Starship seems to me to be inflated by
| marketing, when talking to space nerds around me there
| isn't really that much excitement about what we can achieve
| with a SpaceX Starship that we can't with a regular old
| robotic state funded mission.
| ericd wrote:
| Maybe you're talking to the wrong space nerds? I, for
| one, am extremely excited for Starship being able to lift
| relatively huge amounts of mass to orbit per dollar.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > > _Very few people who have gone to orbit (actual
| space) were anywhere near 'rich'._
|
| > _Blue Horizon[sic] ... Bezos_
|
| Blue _Origin_ has never been to orbit. It 's a glorified
| carnival ride and nobody who knows anything about space
| or rocketry could mistake it for anything else. Among
| rocket fans, these 21st century suborbital launches are a
| laughing stock. Even the 20th century suborbital Mercury-
| Redstone launches were arguably a pathetic response to
| Yuri Gagarin's pioneering orbital flight.
|
| No household-name rich person has ever been to orbit.
| fsagx wrote:
| Lance Bass almost made it!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Bass#:~:text=Bass%20w
| as%....
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| I think you are overusing the term "we."
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| How do you plan on getting higher resolution live video back
| from a moving spacecraft in orbit around the Moon?
| trap_goes_hot wrote:
| Somehow, I don't think pretty pictures are going to sway public
| opinion all that much. Maybe its a generational thing?
|
| From what I found online after a quick search:
|
| https://morningconsult.com/2021/02/25/space-force-travel-exp...
| FredPret wrote:
| 720p pictures aren't swaying public opinion no.
|
| But an 8k multi-cam livestream of the whole thing would have
| had people glued to their screens.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Would it? I don't personally know anyone who has an 8k
| display, and I don't know that many people who knew about
| the SLS launch attempt last week until after it happened
| geuis wrote:
| I'll admit up front it isn't the same thing, but go back
| and watch the video of Musk's car floating in orbit after
| the Falcon Heavy first launch. It's still impressive as
| hell to rewatch because its well lit and high quality
| somenameforme wrote:
| The pink elephant here is that you have to try to be
| impressed by things like this. And try somewhat hard. It's a
| low quality picture of the Moon, the same body we had
| astronauts walking on and live-streaming footage from
| literally more than half a century ago. If we were coming
| from a background of zero, this would be amazing. But as we
| aren't it's really kind of a sad reminder that technological
| progress, or even stability, is not a given.
|
| By contrast when one watches the Falcon Heavy land [1], it's
| enough to give you goosebumps. I've shown that video to quite
| a lot of people outside the space world, and the most common
| response has been "Is that real!?" Even look at the YouTube
| comments and it's suddenly enough to even turn the internet
| into a domain of hope and aspiration. The problem is almost
| nobody knows about that, let alone the major ongoing progress
| since, or the implications of things like Starship.
|
| So I think, without much to be truly inspired by, people are
| (perhaps subconsciously) simply discounting the possibility
| of space going anywhere during their lifetimes. If Starship
| achieves even a fraction of its potential, I would expect
| views to change. Because that genuinely does create the
| possibility of an exciting sci-fi style future, as opposed to
| just trying to recreate the 60s.
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbSwFU6tY1c
| trap_goes_hot wrote:
| You're describing marketing, and marketing of an idea is
| important - I agree.
|
| However, you also need to have a population that cares
| about science, engineering, exploration, etc. I don't
| believe what gets people into engineering and science is
| because of how engineering and science are marketed. It
| certainly doesn't harm anything by marketing it, my opinion
| is that it is a small component of the overall picture.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >I don't think pretty pictures are going to sway public
| opinion all that much.
|
| James Webb Space Telescope?
|
| Personally, I'm not impressed by SLS or Orion, but that's
| because the whole project is pork and bull and not worth the
| money, time, and other irreplacable resources spent.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Is it just me who can't muster any enthusiasm over it because the
| rocket is so wasteful? Not very Tintin to trash the entire
| booster and everything for every launch.
| 0xf00ff00f wrote:
| The rocket equation is unforgiving.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| In fact, it's less wasteful in terms of absolute mass to
| trash the rocket.
|
| Carrying fuel, parachutes, etc. to booster separation that
| you don't use to boost the rocket, or worse, carrying fuel,
| heat shields, aerodynamic surfaces, etc. to LEO for re-entry
| in addition to your payload, are wasteful. Non-critical mass
| to lunar orbit is even more extravagant.
|
| When your rocket engine is constructed by the the best TIG
| welders you can find carefully fitting Inconel parts
| together, or your tanks made by composite experts hand-laying
| carbon fiber in cleanrooms, yeah, it feels a waste to see
| that work crash and burn (or, I suppose, the other way around
| - first the burn, then the crash).
|
| If your booster is as disposable as a paper cup, with new
| ones flying off the assembly line faster than you could hope
| to rework anything, perhaps either the materials or the fuel
| are wasted but not so much work is wasted.
| chriswarbo wrote:
| > When your rocket engine is constructed by the the best
| TIG welders you can find carefully fitting Inconel parts
| together... it feels a waste to see that work crash and
| burn
|
| Note that the rocket engines used by SLS (RS-25, and to a
| lesser extent the solid rocket boosters) were explicitly
| designed for reuse, as part of the Space Shuttle program;
| all the way back in the 1970s.
|
| The four RS-25 engines that Artemis 1 dumped in the ocean
| had previously flown on Space Shuttles. IIRC they first
| flew in 1999 (although Shuttles only used 3 engines).
|
| > If your booster is as disposable as a paper cup, with new
| ones flying off the assembly line faster than you could
| hope to rework anything, perhaps either the materials or
| the fuel are wasted but not so much work is wasted.
|
| Also note that the _marginal cost_ of an SLS launch is 4.5
| billion dollars. That doesn 't include all the one-off
| costs, like R&D; certification; restarting production
| lines; etc. Famously, it cost over a billion dollars to
| restart the RS-25 production line (so they can replace
| those engines being dumped in the ocean); despite claiming
| that the use of existing tech would save money!
|
| In fact, refurbishing & upgrading those existing Shuttle
| engines cost _more_ than producing brand-new RS-25s. Again,
| it was claimed that reusing the existing Shuttle engines
| would save money...
|
| Despite the cost of these assembly lines, SLS rockets
| aren't "flying off" them. The (few) scheduled Artemis
| launches are separated by _years_.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > Also note that the marginal cost of an SLS launch is
| 4.5 billion dollars.
|
| Citation desperately needed.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| When what you're really selling is a jobs program for
| your constituents, perhaps consuming these rocket engines
| for each launch is not wasteful but good business!
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The rocket equation is far more forgiving to big rockets than
| small ones, and this is the biggest one yet.
| PointyFluff wrote:
| Honestly, I think it's just silly that we are still trying
| to make these things on the ground.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Yeah why don't we just place an order at the first
| available orbital facto...oh no such thing exists. Well
| we can order some aluminum from an asteroid mining
| smelt...oh that doesn't exist. Well I'm sure the useful
| payload entirely built in orbit is...oh.
|
| There's no infrastructure in space to do anything. Even
| if you built a rocket in orbit that doesn't do you any
| good if the payload in sitting on a pad on the ground.
| Vecr wrote:
| In my opinion the ground is the best place to make them.
| It's much harder to do independent inspections of the
| work when you have to fly the expert who wants to look at
| the assembly into space and train them how to do EVAs.
| cpcallen wrote:
| You are getting a lot of downvotes, but I agree with you. It's
| true that the rocket equation is unforgiving, and it's not
| surprising that our early ventures into space all involved a
| lot of disposable hardware. But SpaceX has definitively
| demonstrated that reusable first stage boosters are viable from
| both a physics and economics point of view, and there is little
| that they will soon succeed in demonstrating the same for a
| fully-reusable orbital launch system.
|
| In contrast, SLS is predicated on taking actual engines (and
| boosters) from the Space Shuttle program--ones which were once
| at the very forefront of reusable spacecraft technology--and
| trashing them. Sure: reusing the Shuttle and its boosters
| turned out to be much (much) less economically advantageous
| than hoped, and it is great that NASA eventually retired it.
| But the remaining Shuttle hardware is a monument to the
| engineering talent and production effort that produced the most
| sophisticated spacecraft ever flown, and to take the surviving
| engines, each of which has flown on multiple shuttle flights
| and _intentionally_ send them to a watery grave in the Pacific
| (Atlantic, for the booster segments) is a total travesty, and a
| shameful destruction of historic artefacts.
|
| Indeed, the whole program is a boondoggle. SLS is based on the
| Shuttle hardware not for compelling engineering reasons so much
| as because it keeps the contractors that built the shuttle in
| business, and that keeps money flowing into the campaign funds
| of the politicians in Washington. Its exploration goals are
| laudable, but the approach taken has been fundamentally an
| exercise in job creation and military R&D subsidy before all
| else.
| jcims wrote:
| Think of what it represents in the long term vs what it
| represents in the instance. The Saturn V operated the same way.
| RetpolineDrama wrote:
| >long term vs what it represents in the instance.
|
| I did, and that's why I couldn't care less. SLS is
| abandonware. Starship makes it completely irrelevant
| jcims wrote:
| SLS created a mission context in which Starship could
| become economically viable much sooner than it would have
| on its own.
| jeffdn wrote:
| SLS has just put a capsule into orbit around the moon,
| however, while Starship has yet to embark on its first
| orbit of the Earth, with no date in sight. Additionally,
| pinning the entirety of the American space program on a
| single private company seems like a recipe for disaster.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| SLS put a capsule into orbit for an absolutely princely
| sum of $4.1 billion _per launch_. That 's after the over
| $20 billion program cost. All using technology largely
| designed in the 70's. But at least those the designs of
| the 70's were meant for reuse were as SLS is completely
| disposable. The entire program makes the space shuttle
| seem like a bargain. Now that's an accomplishment.
|
| > Additionally, pinning the entirety of the American
| space program on a single private company seems like a
| recipe for disaster.
|
| That's exactly what happened here. America pinned the
| entire project on Boeing Space. With disastrous results.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| There is no reusable rocket available with 8.8 million pounds
| of thrust. And there certainly wasn't anything available when
| SLS was started. Falcon Heavy is about half the thrust of SLS.
| I agree that reusable would be much better, but reusability is
| a relatively recent innovation by SpaceX. SLS will get there.
| SpaceX is forcing everyone to up their game. In the meantime,
| no need to condemn them for not getting there yet during these
| transition years.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Is it just me who can't muster any enthusiasm over it because
| the rocket is so wasteful? Not very Tintin to trash the entire
| booster and everything for every launch.
|
| If your instincts come from how SpaceX have done it, then I can
| imagine it feels extremely wasteful. But SpaceX needs to try
| and turn a profit, so they have a different set of incentives
| to NASA.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| The space shuttle was too costly of a program to continue. So
| in it's place a disposable rocket was developed that costed
| some $20 billion to develop in spite of largely reusing
| technology from the space shuttle while costing $4 Billion
| per launch, twice the launch cost of the space shuttle. All
| while being extremely late. It is by every sense of the word
| wasteful and dissapointing.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > SpaceX needs to try and turn a profit, so they have a
| different set of incentives to NASA.
|
| How so? Surely if NASA can do something cheaper it should
| have more money to do other things or find it easier to get
| money for more things?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It doesn't _necessarily_ work like that. SLS is expensive
| in part because it scatters jobs around to various
| important Senators and Representatives ' districts. It's in
| part a jobs program.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| More importantly it's a capability program. People and
| organizations who can build rockets, execute space
| missions, and have regular work doing so is necessary if
| you want to maintain the institutional knowledge and
| manufacturing capacity to do so.
| kube-system wrote:
| And high-end manufacturing capability is very important
| to have domestically from a defense perspective.
|
| I recall some NPR story recently about war games the US
| runs about a hypothetical war with China -- it was said
| that the US loses most of the time in these simulations.
| Why? A lack of industrial capability.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| That was a good argument in 2009 but it's a bad argument
| now. There are currently over 100 rocket companies in the
| US. Having those people work on dead end technologies
| like SLS rather than forward looking technologies like
| Starship or RocketLab Neutron or Relativity Terran R or
| Blue Origin New Glenn etc hurts rather than helps.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > There are currently over 100 rocket companies in the
| US.
|
| Zero of which are currently capable of putting a human
| around the Moon.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Many of which would be capable of doing so if they got a
| fraction of the $40B that SLS got.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| SLS is incapable of doing so too.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Sorry, meant to say Moon.
| bumby wrote:
| Jobs, I think, is part of it but not the whole story.
|
| Imagine if NASA was solely located in Alabama where von
| Braun set up shop. I think it would have been defunded in
| short order and there would be no NASA and, by extension,
| no SpaceX (since they are so reliant on govt contracts)
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's the same story, isn't it? You'd only have two
| senators and a handful of reps really caring about
| maintaining NASA jobs.
|
| Put JPL in California, mission control in Texas, launches
| in Florida, and a bunch of manufacturing at Boeing and
| you've got a much, much wider Congressional support base.
|
| Look at https://www.nasa.gov/specials/ESDSuppliersMap/ -
| they've even managed to spread suppliers around to
| Alaska, Montana, and Hawaii. Every single state has at
| least some jobs that depend on SLS.
| bumby wrote:
| Yes, I just think calling it a "jobs program" misses some
| of the nuance. You could ostensibly have the same number
| of jobs but much more political risk by concentrating
| them in one geographic area.
|
| The political risk is the more salient point to me, and
| jobs is just a way to mitigate it. (You could also, for
| example, mitigate it with less productive means like
| lobbying)
|
| (Suppliers is a different story. A lot of time NASA is
| handcuffed by which suppliers actually want work with
| them. There's a lot of hoops to jump through and many
| suppliers just don't find it worth the hassle)
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Thanks for sharing the map, that's pretty interesting. I
| wonder what NASA or their contractors got from Lowe's
| Home Improvement?
|
| Is there any infrastructure there for the mission? My
| cynical side wonders if someone flew to Honolulu, went to
| a hardware store to pick up some JB Weld, and flew it
| back to Florida just so they could check off Hawaii on
| the list of states.
| [deleted]
| bumby wrote:
| It's important to note that being listed as a "supplier"
| doesn't mean NASA has actually purchased anything. A lot
| of times, it's preemptive as a way of ensuring all the
| quality checks have been put in place so an PO can just
| be issued when needed without the delay.*
|
| It also doesn't mean they want spaceflight material. It
| can just be something needed to support the project, like
| shelving to hold extra parts. But it the charge code is
| traceable to the program, it makes the list.
|
| * this is also why SpaceX can do things cheaper. They
| don't have the same quality requirements so they can
| streamline their processes. Sometimes that's good,
| sometimes not: https://parabolicarc.com/2016/06/28/nasa-
| investigation-space...
| giantrobot wrote:
| NASA is optimizing for different capabilities than SpaceX.
| With SpaceX's Starship every launch will require them
| leaving fuel for landing. Every gram of fuel you don't burn
| is less velocity you impart on your vehicle.
|
| To get to the Moon a Starship will require _two_ launches.
| A manned vehicle and a fuel tanker. They have to dock in
| Earth orbit, refuel, then the manned vehicle transfers to a
| Lunar injection orbit. It 's very likely a Starship will
| need a tanker waiting on the Moon to refuel a lander for
| the return trip and landing back on Earth.
|
| Starship hasn't even flown let alone demonstrated in-orbit
| refueling. SpaceX hasn't even demonstrated that in the
| small scale with Dragon capsules. It's a hard problem with
| a lot of unknowns.
|
| SLS can launch the manned element directly into a Lunar
| injection orbit. It doesn't require any refueling to get
| anywhere. It also doesn't need a fuel tank at the
| destination to allow a lander to return home.
|
| In order to do that the launch stages don't save any fuel
| for landing. It's "more expensive" to use expendable stages
| but all of their energy is used for their payload and none
| is saved for landing (and landing safety margin). Overall
| SLS is mass optimized rather than cost optimized.
|
| The NASA way involves a lot fewer moving parts and
| <unproven technology goes here>.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Starship has twice the thrust of SLS. It could do
| everything SLS or Saturn 5 can. It just chooses not to
| because it chooses to be fully reusable. If you stuck a
| third stage, Orion and an Apollo CM style lander on top
| of Starship you could do everything in a single launch
| Saturn 5 style. That's something SLS can't do because
| Orion is much heavier than Apollo was. But Starship
| could. It'd have to run expendable.
|
| The difference is that Starship is getting $3B from NASA
| vs the $40B that SLS got. NASA could get a single launch
| moon mission using Starship, but they'd have to pay
| SpaceX more than $3B to get it.
|
| > SLS can launch the manned element directly into a Lunar
| injection orbit. It doesn't require any refueling to get
| anywhere. It also doesn't need a fuel tank at the
| destination to allow a lander to return home.
|
| SLS doesn't carry the lander nor the fuel for the lander.
| So yes, it does need something else to get the lander's
| fuel to the destination.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > How so?
|
| The profit motive is a powerful and universal incentive.
|
| People are careless when spending Other Peoples' Money.
| bumby wrote:
| NASA is not designed to do it cheaper. It is designed to
| _reduce political risk_ so that programs like CCP can
| continue to be funded by tax dollars.
|
| Look at where the major NASA centers are compared to
| politically important states. That reduces political risk
| but also increases inefficiency.
|
| SpaceX and NASA have different, but symbiotic, goals.
| thebigman433 wrote:
| Reuse isnt always cheaper. If you arent flying a bunch of
| missions, it can actually be more expensive.
|
| SLS could absolutely be cheaper, but reuse isnt really part
| of that equation.
| ProAm wrote:
| Human spaceflight is wasteful, but were still going to spend
| money on it.
| twawaaay wrote:
| I would like to point out that if United States won't do it
| then other countries and large companies will take the lead.
| And in fact they are already doing it. And while it might not
| be bringing a lot of tangible returns for US citizens right
| now, it is projected to overtake practically every single
| other industry including electronics at some point in the
| future.
|
| Even without returns, it is simple matter of security. With
| another country like China taking absolute control over space
| US would be quickly incapable to take care of its interest
| here on Earth. Just imagine China deciding to incapacitate
| all US satellites and US having no way to respond to it.
|
| So it is same old weapons race, it is just trying to score
| some extra side quests a bit outside of the main quest.
| Haven't you ever tried to do side quests to get some extra
| exp to help you with main quest line?
| adql wrote:
| > it is projected to overtake practically every single
| other industry including electronics at some point in the
| future.
|
| projected by who and how many % of his guesses turned out
| to be right ?
| kibwen wrote:
| Presumably because somebody pointed to an asteroid
| somewhere and calculated that it contains a volume of
| platinum/gold/unobtanium that would be worth a hundred
| zillion kajillion trillion dollars, without taking into
| account that if you actually brought that much of a given
| precious metal into the market the price would crash to
| zero and we'd all be drinking Coke out of disposable
| platinum cans.
| cwillu wrote:
| On the one hand, this is technically true. On the other,
| this is effectively because the gains to such a large
| windfall cannot be captured by a single entity: Aluminium
| becoming so cheap as to become a nearly disposable
| material is a massively _good_ thing.
|
| It's not inconceivable that having platinum become
| plentiful might also be such a boon.
| kibwen wrote:
| Sure, but using aluminum as an example, if we take the
| modern production of aluminum (as a proxy for underlying
| demand) and multiply by the price of aluminum in the
| 1800s (when it was so incredibly precious that it was
| chosen to cap the Washington Monument), we would expect
| the modern aluminum industry to have revenues of around
| $100 trillion, or about 1000x what it actually has. The
| point is just that one cannot assume a resource
| extraction industry's future profitability without taking
| into consideration how increased supply will also lower
| the price of the product.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Isn't that the goal? If we can get rid of scarcity in
| materials and energy then everyone's living standards can
| go up. If we can move metal smelting off world, pollution
| goes down at the same time. Am I ignorant to think that
| would be a big positive for human kind?
| kibwen wrote:
| I'm not saying it's not a potential positive for society,
| rather I'm saying that the economic calculations shown so
| far are exceedingly simplistic and merely extrapolate
| from the current market price of these metals, so we
| cannot use these numbers to conclude that this will be
| the most profitable endeavor in human history.
| giantrobot wrote:
| It will costs trillions to bootstrap that industry in
| space. It would cost mere billions to make that industry
| on Earth cleaner. The Earth is fucking gigantic. It's
| literally filled with raw materials. Access to those
| materials is downright cheap compared to attempting to
| access the same material in space.
| anovikov wrote:
| But it has nothing to do with manned spaceflight. U.S. is
| beyond doubt the space power #1 today, and it has nothing
| to do with manned flights.
| twawaaay wrote:
| Experience shows that the path to being #1 is usually to
| some extent doing a lot of stuff around the topic,
| throwing a lot of darts at the board and seeing what
| sticks.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| I'd argue that the goals of manned space flight and
| meeting those goals are what put the USA on the path to
| be #1, so it seems to be to have something to do with
| manned flights.
| jamesgreenleaf wrote:
| Short-term wasteful, long-term critical.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Critical in which way in your opinion?
| jamesgreenleaf wrote:
| It's critical that intelligent life on Earth learns to
| adapt and survive in the greater universe. Staying on
| this one planet is a virtual guarantee of extinction in
| the long-term.
| evanlivingston wrote:
| Why is it critical that intelligent life on earth
| survives?
| trap_goes_hot wrote:
| I agree - 'critical' is sorta meaningless in this
| context. But the general response is - because organisms
| adapt for their own survival and our genes are selfish.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| That's easy: because literally everything else is
| contingent on it. Either we survive and flourish allowing
| any of our other actions to matter, or we doom ourselves
| to extinction, in which case literally nothing we do
| matters.
| idlewords wrote:
| We're already all individually doomed to extinction, yet
| this doesn't prevent most of us from finding meaning in
| our lives. And in the long run, any civilization, no
| matter how flourishing, is doomed. Conditioning whether
| anything we do matters on the existence of an infinite
| chain of future progeny is a losing game.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Critical for the species on the universal timescale
| maybe, humans as we know them have been fine without it
| for ~300,000 years. Horseshoe crabs have been around for
| over 400 million years.
|
| We might be better off spending the next couple hundred
| years focusing on making sure we don't destroy our own
| home before trying to move on to the next (or at least
| more comprehensive threat detection). There's a very good
| chance we'll off ourselves before we have to start
| worrying about anything at even a solar system scale, let
| alone galaxy or universe.
| jamesgreenleaf wrote:
| That's another good problem to solve. Humanity is large
| enough that we don't have to work on only one thing at a
| time.
| spaceman0997 wrote:
| > There's a very good chance we'll off ourselves before
| we have to start worrying about anything at even a solar
| system scale, let alone galaxy or universe.
|
| That's precisely the reason why we will be better off by
| investing into space exploration now.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I see the logic but don't agree.
|
| Even if Mars or another planet were to survive the
| destruction of Earth, a stand-alone colony or space
| station would be doomed. At best I think we're at least
| 100 years off for any long-term self-sustained space
| colony... and it's quite possible we'll be sidetracked
| significantly if the climate causes widespread migration
| and famine as expected.
|
| If we can't solve exponentially simpler earth-based
| problems, then I think we have no business in expanding,
| and would be unlikely to succeed regardless.
|
| I support space exploration and development, but putting
| more resources outward when we have so many inward
| problems feels like a fool's errand.
|
| We can work on both, but one's a much more imminent
| danger.
| spaceman0997 wrote:
| > At best I think we're at least 100 years off for any
| long-term self-sustained space colony
|
| We think alike - but IMHO that's going to happen only if
| we begin now. That's why we shouldn't hold off.
|
| > If we can't solve exponentially simpler earth-based
| problems, then I think we have no business in expanding,
| and would be unlikely to succeed regardless.
|
| It's not like there's a single "we" that can keep
| attention at one thing at a time only. There are a lot of
| great engineers _excited_ about space stuff, who don 't
| care about ecology/whatever else at all. It makes sense
| to use their skills and enthusiasm _while_ other
| engineers excited about that work on solving our Earth-
| bound problems.
|
| Another point is - whatever helps us survive on Mars and
| the Moon will help us greatly to reduce harm done to
| Earth.
|
| > Even if Mars or another planet were to survive the
| destruction of Earth, a stand-alone colony or space
| station would be doomed.
|
| > We can work on both, but one's a much more imminent
| danger.
|
| For sure, but there are also dangers other than climate
| change - war, asteroid impact, pandemics, rogue AI
| takeover... It's not that either Earth gets destroyed and
| the Martian colony will die anyways or nothing has
| happened and we don't need the backup.
|
| Perhaps there will be another pandemic and the people on
| Earth will die off but the Martians survive. Perhaps
| asteroid impact will make Earth uninhabitable for 10-50
| years but no more. Etc
| signatoremo wrote:
| Your mistake is to prioritize climate change over space
| exploration and not some other industry. Spending on
| space exploration is tiny compared to, for example,
| consumer electronics or entertainment. Imagine how much
| we can save if phone lifecycle is five years instead of
| two; or if video games playing time is reduced by half,
| etc. So many candidates, yet you choose to target space
| exploration, an industry that has historically been
| responsible for so many science and technology
| innovations.
| Maursault wrote:
| So does staying in this Universe.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Exposure to things humans haven't ruined is uniquely
| inspirational.
| goddtriffin wrote:
| If we don't experiment with getting off of this rock,
| we're dooming the lives of all known living organisms in
| the known universe.
|
| An entire universe, void of all life, that doesn't get to
| experience itself deeply saddens me. Though that might
| just be the fitness-function within me talking.
| idlewords wrote:
| Thinking you have to infect the universe or otherwise
| perish is the mentality of a virus.
| runarberg wrote:
| I think you are right, but on a more abstract level. I don't
| think it is the rocket per-se (people don't care about the
| specifics of technology), but a lot of people are asking:
| "whats the point".
|
| We know what the point is with James Webb Space Telescope, we
| know that the point is with each successive Mars rovers. But
| the moon seems just so pointless. We've been there, there is
| nothing there. We've also seen how capable robots are in space,
| and we continue to be excited to see each generation of robots
| outperform the previous, bringing in new and exciting
| discoveries and confirmations. For the moon, there is nothing
| to be excited about.
| PointyFluff wrote:
| pff...whatever.
|
| I was a merely 4000 Meters from the moon's surface in KSP just
| lasts week.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I think if you double-check you were 4000 meters from Mun, not
| the Moon.
| Arcuru wrote:
| They may have been playing RSS, which does have the Moon:
| https://github.com/KSP-RO/RealSolarSystem
| whoopdedo wrote:
| The Apollo missions took only 3 days to reach lunar orbit. Why is
| this taking longer?
| api_or_ipa wrote:
| Apollo 17 launched at 12:33am on Dec 7th 1972, and entered
| lunar orbit at 2:47pm EST on Dec 10th, so, roughly 3.5 days.
|
| Artemis I launched at 1:47am EST on Nov 16 and entered lunar
| orbit on Nov 20th at 2:09pm ET so roughly 4.5 days. Remember
| too that Artemis I isn't meant for a landing, instead it
| entered a distant retrograde orbit which orbits at a
| considerably higher distance from the surface. Spacecraft move
| considerably slower at higher apogees, so I don't think there's
| anything suspect about Artemis I taking a bit longer to reach
| it's planned orbit around the Moon.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Also, maybe the original launch date a month ago was more
| optimal? I'm sure it's hard trying to time the perfect launch
| trajectory while also juggling weather and a bunch of other
| variables.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| The space race is over?
| adsfqwop wrote:
| I'm not an expert, but I think there's pretty much an infinite
| number of ways to execute space trajectories.
|
| Just looking at it visually it seems Orion is (perhaps?) taking
| a more roundabout (slower) route, and it's also ending up at
| the moon in a different orbital configuration than Apollo.
|
| Another factor, I am sure, is cost. The faster you want to get
| there, the more fuel you need to burn. I'm also going to guess
| it's not a linear equation, which means the faster you want to
| get there, the fuel requirements will increase in something
| like an exponential proportion.
|
| Therefore slower is cheaper, to a point. If you go TOO slow,
| your astronauts will starve, or you need to bring more food and
| provisions, which will cancel the cost savings on speed
| reduction. So somewhere in there is going to be an optimal
| cost/fuel/food/provision trajectory for each mission.
|
| So, in summary: different mission, different parameters for
| optimal execution.
| focusedone wrote:
| This person Kerbals.
| troutwine wrote:
| The Apollo missions varied in the time they took to reach lunar
| orbit but it's worth considering they had limited consumables
| to be concerned with.
| spoonfeeder006 wrote:
| I'm just imagining being one of those astronauts in 2024
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