[HN Gopher] NASA announces overhaul of Artemis program amid safe...
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NASA announces overhaul of Artemis program amid safety concerns,
delays
Author : voxadam
Score : 166 points
Date : 2026-02-27 16:33 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbsnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbsnews.com)
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Every new story about Artemis gives me even more respect for the
| Apollo engineers.
| cratermoon wrote:
| More frequent launches with less ambitious progress per launch
| makes good sense, and follows the old-school approach used
| through Apollo to mitigate risk. Having a lunar lander test in
| earth orbit, for example, is roughly the same mission as Apollo
| 9, is a good call. Validating everything works together has
| been a sort of sore spot for the Artemis program.
| mandevil wrote:
| And even the Apollo 10 mission which went 99.99% of the way
| from the Earth to the moon, just 15km from the surface (but
| couldn't have landed on the moon- LM structure was too heavy)
| was incredibly important step. The sort of thing that people
| today would want to skip, it doesn't seem flashy or
| necessary. Why take all the risk of going into lunar orbit
| and separating the modules (requiring the very first
| rendezvous not in in Earth orbit) but not actually land on
| the Moon? It was about getting all of the ground crew proved
| and worked out, and proving that the rendezvous would work
| and they could get home, so that the actual landing mission
| could focus their efforts on just working out the last 15km,
| confident that all of the other problems were already dealt
| with. Trying to do all of that in one mission would have been
| a gigantic mess- A11 crew felt a lack of training time as it
| was.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| Orion doesn't seem operationally or financially capable of
| launching more than once a year. It's not that they don't
| want to do test flights, it's that they can barely do
| anything.
| mandevil wrote:
| Which goes back to the Pork-on-a-stick requirement that
| everything be about keeping the workers still employed.
| bamboozled wrote:
| I'd say we'll look back in a few decades and recognise the
| Apollo programs as the peak of the USA. Those people did truly
| amazing things. I recommend "Space Rocket History" podcast if
| you like Apollo. It's a wonderful and highly detailed podcast
| and covers the US and Soviet space race in great detail.
| elteto wrote:
| I think the main difference was political: for Apollo you had
| the most powerful nation in history throw their economic and
| political will into pushing a project forward.
|
| NASA programs today are mainly about creating/maintaining jobs
| and keeping private industry contractors busy. They lost the
| political agency and freedom to move fast that they had in the
| 60s.
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| Well to be fair Nasa isn't nearly as good as it once was. The
| quality of engineer during the Apollo era was far better and
| more like what can be found at Spacex
| GorbachevyChase wrote:
| You meant cinematographers, right?
| dirasieb wrote:
| to be fair they had way less requirements on making the CGI
| look good
|
| back then TVs weren't that popular and those that had one were
| stuck with very low definition video, today our 2k and 4k
| screens would be able to spot their flaws easily
| TheChaplain wrote:
| If you visit US, I really recommend a detour to the Kennedy Space
| Center if you can, there's a ton of interesting stuff especially
| about the Apollo program.
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| Make sure you look at ALL the stuff in the rocket garden and
| make sure you take the bus to the Apollo center and make sure
| you do them in that order.
|
| If you've never seen a gator then looking in the ditches by the
| road during the bus tour is a good bed.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Yes! I just got to go there earlier this month for the first
| time. They even have the lectern from the Kennedy speech (and
| the speech itself)!
| qingcharles wrote:
| Especially if you can time your visit to Florida with a launch.
| Seeing the Shuttle launch in real life made me realize what a
| poor medium television is to actually show you reality.
|
| (I don't know what the current policies are but you used to be
| able to apply in advance for VIP tickets, or buy them on the
| secondary market, which gives you much closer viewing of the
| launch)
| bregma wrote:
| Went to Florida some years ago when my kids were all teens and
| pre-teens. Did Disney World, Universal Studios, Sea World, the
| works.
|
| We unanimously agreed KSC was by far the best of all. If you
| only do one thing in Florida, that would be it.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Been once as a kid and once as an adult. Wonderful place. The
| rocket garden is wonderful.
| Rooster61 wrote:
| I'm very, very concerned for the astronauts piloting this
| upcoming trans-lunar flight. Given that Boeing, well, does Boeing
| things, the current state of NASA in this political climate, and
| the fact that problems keep arising with this current stack, it
| makes me feel that there is a significant chance of issues mid-
| flight.
|
| Godspeed to them, hopefully I'm being overly dour.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Sadly, the worst thing I'm worried about is the current
| president pushing for a landing before he leaves office in
| order to have that feather in his cap. Isaacman seems competent
| and this article shows they are responding to the concerns of
| the plan and are "shortening the steps in the staircase" to a
| landing.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| So far, Isaacman's competence has mostly consisted of
| (rightfully) throwing is predecessors under the bus. The real
| test will be if there are problems on his watch, but also it
| seems likely the result of having backbone will not be good
| for Isaacman and sycophants will end up running the agency
| again.
| drstewart wrote:
| Wow, in the past no presidents pushed for NASA to launch
| under deadlines. Imagine telling them they need to get to the
| moon before the end of the decade. Unprecedented.
|
| Good thing we have a large number of CRUD SaaS experts to
| tell us what's wrong with the space program
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Re: JFK and the 60s, I think the experts were in charge and
| had the final say on launch decisions with buy-in from all
| parties. Space exploration is certainly not risk-free.
|
| Then you had Challenger, when experts were not listened to,
| and people died when they shouldn't have.
|
| I don't understand the hostility.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| NASA was also far better funded back then and didn't have
| to fight congresspeople and the aerospace giants lobbying
| them. Things move a lot more quickly when money isn't a
| concern and you're not having to scatter R&D and
| manufacturing across the four corners of the earth to get
| congress on board with you.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| NASA got astronauts killed during Apollo, for some reason
| people forget about that or think it doesn't count
| because they weren't flying when it happened. After that
| they pumped the brakes and reevaluated their approaches,
| but the whole program remained extremely risky.
| blackjack_ wrote:
| As someone who worked on Orion I find this comment section
| hilarious.
| Rooster61 wrote:
| How so? Hearing from someone who has worked in this
| environment would be enlightening.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| We're just going off what we read in the news. I'm sure
| that informed commentary from someone with first-hand
| knowledge would be interesting.
| georgemcbay wrote:
| JFK set a goal that NASA managed to meet, but it is kind of
| difficult to see it as a hard deadline considering JFK was
| dead for years before any of the Apollo launches took
| place.
|
| But even assuming we do view it as a deadline, the Apollo 1
| losses are a pretty good argument that maybe we shouldn't
| repeat that.
| cloche wrote:
| JFK set the goal 8 years out, not less than three to align
| with his presidential term to try to make himself look
| good. He also got a lot of feedback from NASA on the
| timelines of what was possible so the goal wasn't pulled
| out of thin air.
| XorNot wrote:
| Challenger was pretty directly caused by the Reagan admin
| pressuring NASA to launch it too, so yes?
|
| Politicians have pressured NASA for launches previously and
| it has killed astronauts.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Sadly, I feel the same way. Here's a great video of Starliner:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L96asfTvJ_A
| russellbeattie wrote:
| You summarized my concerns almost perfectly. My only addition
| is that you didn't stress enough how much this anti-science
| administration has destabilized NASA, both directly and
| indirectly. The institutional decision making has definitely
| been compromised.
|
| Artemis II is a disaster in progress.
| michael_pica wrote:
| I'm glad this is getting overhauled, the existing plan was a bit
| of a mess and NASA can't afford mistakes on a program of this
| scale. Hopefully we get safer and more effective result out of
| this.
| daymanstep wrote:
| Relevant: https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm
| disillusioned wrote:
| I knew a lot of this, and had a good idea of how bad this whole
| thing was but... damn, how comprehensively horrible a parade of
| bad, multi-decade decisions this is turning out to be.
| bhouston wrote:
| On the surface, the changes appear logical.
|
| The difference in philosophy between NASA's current approach and
| SpaceX is quite stark. SpaceX has launched 11 Starships in the
| two and a bit years, with a lot of them blowing up. Where as
| Artemis is trying to get it near perfect on each run.
|
| I wonder if NASA could start to adopt SpaceX like approaches?
| Where one doesn't try to get everything correct before acting?
|
| I wonder which approach is more capital efficient? Which is more
| time efficient?
|
| (It seems that Artemis cost is $92B, where as SpaceX's Starship
| costs are less than $10B so far, give or take. So it seems that
| SpaceX is a more efficient approach.)
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| They've blown up 11 Starships without any of them making it to
| orbit. Artemis I flew around the moon and came back already.
|
| And don't compare costs because Starship does not and may never
| work so I dont care how much cheaper it is. If we are comparing
| fictional rockets I have a $1 rocket that can fly to Jupiter.
| bhouston wrote:
| > They've blown up 11 Starships without any of them making it
| to orbit.
|
| They purposely were not trying for orbit from my
| understanding. The last one did orbit the earth at suborbital
| heights and release satellites. It did seem to do what they
| wanted it to do, it wasn't a failure.
| delichon wrote:
| Not only were they not trying to reach orbit, they are
| specifically trying to do risky things that they can learn
| from. It's not exactly destructive testing because they
| hope to succeed, but it's close.
| UltraSane wrote:
| That just seems like a huge waste of money
| qingcharles wrote:
| Elon Musk's net worth now (sadly) near a trillion
| dollars... :/
| delichon wrote:
| It wouldn't if you were scheduled to fly on it.
| elictronic wrote:
| Each Expendable Starship Super Heavy launched costs less
| than a single engine on the Artemis program.
|
| Every time you see a Starship launch what you aren't
| seeing is manufacturing processes corrected, issues in
| launch protocols and field issues resolved. All the
| little things that build up to make your system reliable.
| Do you want the doctor who has done a hundred successful
| surgeries, or the one who has done one or two but spent a
| long time in school watching videos.
|
| The big difference is in the end, Starship gets built
| faster, costs much less, and can do more. It's not even
| close.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| You can't compare costs for a rocket that doesn't work
| yet. It's fictional. As I said in my post, if we are
| comparing fictional rockets then I have a $1 rocket that
| can fly to Jupiter.
| signatoremo wrote:
| Of course you can. It wasn't fictional when Superheavy
| flew back and was caught, was it? It costed real money,
| not fictional. What kind of mental gymnastics are you
| doing?
| UltraSane wrote:
| Until it actually works every dollar is waste.
| verzali wrote:
| I doubt they set out to launch eleven times without
| reaching orbit.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| They very explicitly were not setting out for orbit for
| most of them.
| verzali wrote:
| Yes, but if you asked someone at SpaceX before flight 1
| where they would be by flight 11, I doubt they would have
| been happy about the reality.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| And?
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Not a single one of them had reaching stable orbit in the
| flight plan.
| freejazz wrote:
| Easy not to fail when you are purposefully not trying to
| succeed
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| This is why NASA can never adopt the SpaceX philosophy.
| People don't understand the concept of test fight.
| shiandow wrote:
| The real question is which is more likely to avoid catastrophic
| failures in practice.
|
| And we 'tried until it didn't blow up immediately' is not a
| great sign.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> And we 'tried until it didn't blow up immediately' is not
| a great sign.
|
| But everything that didn't blow up has been tested 11 times
| already. Things that did fail have had more than one design
| iteration tested. One approach has gains more real-world test
| experience.
| bigyabai wrote:
| NASA is constrained by the triple-whammy of taxpayer
| dollars, an administration that hates public science, and a
| market that rewards private enterprise more than them.
|
| JPL would blow up a rocket every week, if the budget had
| room for it. Alas, we don't see that testing pace outside
| defense procurement.
| dash2 wrote:
| So is Artemis cheaper than Starship then?
| bigyabai wrote:
| Are you familiar with the definition of the word
| "constrained"?
| dash2 wrote:
| I was referring to the quote "JPL would blow up a rocket
| every week, if the budget had room for it." That makes it
| sound as if JPL can't afford to follow the SpaceX
| strategy, hence my question.
| riffic wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociotechnical_system
|
| NASA and SpaceX are fundamentally incomparable, considering how
| these two organizations are established and the motivations
| that drive all the actors within. Sure, NASA could _start_ to
| adopt certain approaches but I don 't imagine it to work in a
| way anyone else would imagine it to.
| schiffern wrote:
| Also interesting to hear what the NASA people assigned to work
| with SpaceX say:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxIiiwD9C0E&t=1440s
| connoronthejob wrote:
| Neither craft have achieved their missions so it's a bit early
| to make that call.
| verzali wrote:
| Well the SLS has already sent a capsule around the Moon. And
| it has kept a lot of people employed. That's pretty much what
| it was intended to do.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Only the latter achievement was a real intention. The
| former is just the malarkey useful to sell it
| kdheiwns wrote:
| NASA is beholden to politicians and voters who get easily
| ruffled when politicians can point to explosions and say "those
| are you tax dollars." NASA needs to be perfect and impress
| people or they get their budget cut even further.
| DSMan195276 wrote:
| I think the public funding aspect complicates this, NASA is
| probably not in a position where it can blow up a bunch of
| rockets and still get funding for the next year.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They used to depend on the Army to blow up the rockets for
| them.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Congress is fickle enough without rockets blowing up, even if
| NASA explains up front that it's going to happen. There is much
| which is suboptimal about NASA, not just their attitude towards
| perfection, which is downstream of the political reality they
| have to deal with. For instance, a project that could be done
| in one year given adaquate funding will instead be spread out
| over ten years or more, to spread out the costs and keep NASA's
| monetary requirements as smooth and predictable as possible,
| for the sake of Congress.
| renewiltord wrote:
| NASA did have SpaceX like approach. Much more aggressive as a
| matter of fact. They cooked the occupants of Apollo 1 and they
| sent another mission out broken so they had to fix it live in
| space.
|
| The question is whether _you_ have the appetite for killing
| three astronauts on a test run like the Apollo team did.
|
| EDIT: Fine, I'll clarify. By "SpaceX like approach" I mean
| iterative design. By "more aggressive" I mean risk tolerance
| much greater than SpaceX to the degree that they do things that
| SpaceX wouldn't do.
| freejazz wrote:
| Insane that this is getting downvoted.
| schiffern wrote:
| This is ignoring the massive distinction between manned
| flight (where failure is not an option) and unmanned tests.
| NASA and SpaceX both know this well.
|
| Calling it a "SpaceX like approach" and connecting to Apollo
| 1 is a neat trick, but SpaceX wouldn't (and doesn't) adopt
| that risky approach during manned flights.
|
| It's all about "the _right_ risk for the job. " You can't be
| risky with human safety, but you also don't want to be overly
| timid and failure-averse during safely managed R&D tests, or
| your R&D grinds to a halt.
| MSKJ wrote:
| If I were to bet, even with no information. I would wager that
| the private company is more capital efficient than the
| government ran one
| XorNot wrote:
| Maybe go read the report on Starliner before making that
| call? Boeing is a private company too and no one is this
| deferential about it.
| lstodd wrote:
| Boris Chertok's memoir[0] on early Soviet space program is
| essential reading.
|
| inexact quote: "You know, we're throwing towns into the sky"
| related to the early mishaps of R-7 program development, but
| they kept doing it. After that R-7 derivatives became the most
| reliable launch vehicle.
|
| [0] https://www.nasa.gov/history/history-publications-and-
| resour...
| ptero wrote:
| > inexact quote: "You know, we're throwing towns into the
| sky" related to the early mishaps of R-7 program development
|
| I have not looked at the source (in Russian) for several
| years; now that I am curious I will check at home tonight.
| But as far as I remember "we are shooting towns into the sky"
| remark was _not_ in reference to the R-7, but in reference to
| N1-L3, a hellishly expensive competitor to the Apollo manned
| Moon mission rocket. The meaning of the phrase was that each
| and every test should be taken extremely seriously as the
| cost of each flight is comparable to the cost of building a
| new city.
|
| R-7 was developed much earlier when Korolev and his team at
| OKB-1 were iterating rapidly on much cheaper models that were
| primarily funded as rockets for strategic thermonuclear
| strike warheads. The civilian (Sputnik and later Gagarin)
| flights were an offshoot of that and were small enough that
| it happened as a side project. R-7 was a comparatively simple
| and cheap design, which may be why that family became a
| workhorse from the late 50s to carrying crews to the ISS. And
| the super expensive N1-L3 was a stillborn.
|
| That's my recollection, need to recheck the sources.
| lstodd wrote:
| I read it last some years ago too but I think it was in
| relation to many early moonshot failures - first half of
| Luna program and also early attempts at Mars and Venus.
|
| Have to reread it too.
|
| Still, while R-7 was initially funded as ballistic missile
| system, that was abandoned quite early, since it was very
| unwieldy, basically unusable.
|
| Ballistic program in OKB-1 continued separately resulting
| in superchilled-LOX R-9.
|
| N1 failure is attributed mostly to Korolev - Glushko
| rivalry that resulted in N1 lacking engines in time. It is
| widely belived that Kuznetsov bureau delivered just a bit
| too late - Korolev died, Moon race was lost and N1 project
| was literally buried.
|
| EDIT: Mishin (OKB-1 head after Korolev) had no
| administrative push, and Glushko ended up heading it and
| building Energia-Buran. It's all a sad story of unchecked
| emotions leading to monumental waste.
| ptero wrote:
| > N1 failure is attributed mostly to Korolev - Glushko
| rivalry that resulted in N1 lacking engines in time.
|
| That is a viable version. But I think this was one of the
| problems and there were plenty of others. While Chertok
| does point to the engines as a major problem, he also
| admits that the whole system became way too complex to
| succeed.
|
| His description of electrical components (for which IIRC
| he was the chief engineer) and checkouts is telling. He
| also describes the feeling of "good envy" as the Russian
| engineers were listening in on comms between the Earth
| and the Apollo 13 during its mission. Which drove home
| the point of how much advantage US had, at least in
| electronic, and how powerful it was for its successful
| lunar program.
|
| > It's all a sad story of unchecked emotions leading to
| monumental waste.
|
| I have a softer view. Both Korolev and Glushko wanted
| their own leadership, which is normal. Korolev ran his
| shop in a dictatorial fashion, as that was the only way
| he could operate efficiently. Which is also fine and can
| produce spectacular results (and it did early on). But it
| comes with its own risks, including motivating strong
| leaders to branch out. I would not call it unchecked
| emotions that Glushko, _after many years at OKB-1_ went
| to run his own projects.
|
| Living in a someone's shadow while under his dictatorial
| control is not for everyone. I can see the arguments for
| both sides. My 2c.
| ghaff wrote:
| "For all Mankind" is a great alternate history show that
| imagines the N1 succeeding.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > I wonder if NASA could start to adopt SpaceX like approaches?
| Where one doesn't try to get everything correct before acting?
|
| that would be such a culture change you'd have to disband NASA
| and start it over.
| kunai wrote:
| Yeah there is no way they do that with THREE LOCVs in their
| history. The fire, Challenger, and Columbia.
|
| It's a risk-averse culture for a reason.
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| Tell that to the Starliner crew and the Artemis II crew.
| freejazz wrote:
| > I wonder if NASA could start to adopt SpaceX like approaches?
| Where one doesn't try to get everything correct before acting?
|
| This seems so ridiculous in the abstract. Like, what is that
| exactly supposed to entail in the context of launching rockets?
| RandallBrown wrote:
| When SpaceX launches a rocket, they think it will work. When
| NASA launches a rocket they _know_ it will work.
|
| The cost of going from "I think this will work" to "I know
| this will work" is really expensive. It might be
| cheaper/faster to fail a few times and fix those problems
| than it would be to verify everything up front.
| freejazz wrote:
| Again, that is put so vaguely as to be actionably useless.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| SpaceX is willing to blow up a rocket, even if it
| exploding is fully planned and expected. That's it,
| really not hard to comprehend.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| So let's say you want to check something like a new fuel
| nozzle.
|
| SpaceX might design and build the nozzle, then put it in
| the rocket and launch it. It might work how they
| intended, or it might not, but they'll find out
| immediately. They'll make changes, build a new nozzle,
| launch another rocket, and continue until it works like
| they want.
|
| NASA will do a lot more testing, simulation, redesigning,
| etc. until they KNOW that the nozzle will perform
| perfectly on the first try.
|
| On the surface, NASA's approach sounds cheaper because
| you aren't wasting rockets. In reality it looks like
| SpaceX's approach might be better.
| elteto wrote:
| You don't test the nozzle on _launch day_, what kind of
| ridiculous statement is that? You think the Air Force is
| paying SpaceX so they can test things the day it flies?
|
| All components go through several test campaigns on the
| ground, while iterating on the design to address issues.
| These campaigns take months/years. That's why changes are
| stacked into "blocks", which are the equivalent of rocket
| versions. Each block must be certified by the Air Force
| and NASA to be deemed worthy of flying their payloads.
| kakapo5672 wrote:
| Columbia. Challenger.
| elteto wrote:
| > When SpaceX launches a rocket, they think it will work.
| When NASA launches a rocket they know it will work.
|
| That is such an ignorant thing to say. You think Falcon 9
| has had 500+ successful launches because they _think_ it
| will work?
|
| The difference is that SpaceX is a private company that has
| the ability to iterate fast. NASA is a jobs program and
| Artemis/SLS a barrel of pork, simple as that.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Given that SLS is the part of Artemis that has actually shown
| it works, and Starship is the part that is nowhere near
| schedule, and doesn't work, it's very funny to suggest that
| NASA should learn from SpaceX and not the other way around.
|
| SpaceX hasn't even had the confidence to put Starship in LEO
| yet, and has not carried 1kg of real payload (and barely a few
| kg of test payloads) - while SLS did an orbit of the Moon, with
| real payload satellites.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| It's not like SLS is on schedule either, and it is absurdly
| more expensive than Starship. It's very likely that Starship
| will eventually be operational with lower total costs by any
| accounting measure. (And I say this as a current NASA
| contractor and current anti-fan of Musk)
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I agree that SLS is not an efficient project by any stretch
| of the imagination, and they have their own problems. I
| don't really see a reason to believe that Starship will
| ever achieve the goals that were declared for it. In
| particular, their plan for how to achieve the Moon mission,
| requiring an unclear number of missions to fuel a single
| flight in orbit.
| brandonagr2 wrote:
| You don't have long to wait to see an obvious reason, the
| first v3 starship is in preflight testing right now.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| And do you think the this next launch will deploy actual
| satellites in orbit around the Moon? If not, I still
| don't see why you'd compare it to SLS's current success.
| Or do you think this will deploy 100 tons to orbit for
| less than $10/ton, or fly to Mars, since these are the
| stated goals for Starship?
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| Do you think perhaps you should give SpaceX as much time
| as NASA has had for SLS to fail at its goals before
| complaining that SpaceX's system in testing isn't
| accomplishing all of its goals?
| pfdietz wrote:
| Even if Starship completely fails, SLS is a pointless and
| ludicrously expensive dead end. Terminating it is the
| only logical thing to do.
| kunai wrote:
| Might as well get some ROI out of it though.
|
| IMO the Blue Origin hate was overhyped. They're clearly
| the only ones who know what they're doing. NASA and
| SpaceX both are way in over their heads.
| luke5441 wrote:
| The whole moon thing is a pointless and ludicrously
| expensive dead end. But if one wants to do it, one should
| choose between the working approaches.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| Orion is actually pointless, I don't understand why the
| mission goals are valuable. Partial success would be
| meaningless. Success is meaningless.
|
| Starship in contrast has a variety of meaningful
| objectives. Even if Starship only achieves proving that
| cryogenic fuel transfer in LEO is possible that's a
| valuable mission goal in and of itself.
|
| If you really think "the whole moon thing is pointless"
| NASA is pointless.
| pfdietz wrote:
| NASA does not seem to be constituted to be able to engage
| in a coherent manned space program of actual value. It's
| a long standing systemic issue.
|
| They are great at pretending to deliver value, but
| there's no "there" there.
| avmich wrote:
| > I don't really see a reason to believe that Starship
| will ever achieve the goals that were declared for it.
|
| If you consider declared goals for Starship to be too
| hard (I assume not impossible), what aspect makes them
| that hard?
|
| And since we talk about the Moon here, not stated goals
| of using Starships for Mars flights - what part of the
| Starship design makes it hard to believe that Starships
| may in next few years be regularly used for flights to
| the Moon?
|
| I'm curious what it is which makes it so hard to believe.
| bparsons wrote:
| We have no idea what starship has cost. It's a private
| company.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| I don't think "no idea" is fair. We don't have exact
| numbers, but there are various statements out there that
| give clues. Even the highest estimates I can put together
| put Starship far cheaper than SLS.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| You have to consider that Starship has not reached
| anywhere near the operational goals for Artemis, and
| there is no realistic time line for when it might. So we
| really do have no idea how much it might cost by the time
| it reaches the milestone SLS has already cleared
| (successful flight in lunar orbit, with a full payload
| that it successfully deploys).
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| You also have to consider that SpaceX has the fastest,
| most reliable, most cost efficient launch service in
| operation ever, and are using the same methodology to
| develop the most advanced launch system ever attempted.
| nine_k wrote:
| Even if a Starship needs to be scrapped after landing,
| the Super Heavy booster works, returns nominally to the
| launch site, and can be reused. This alone should make
| the whole thing cheaper than SLS.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Only if the SuperHeavy booster can achieve the same
| performance as the SLS (payload to orbit), with similar
| levels of operational complexity.
|
| The SLS has already proven it can fly to lunar orbit and
| back on one single launch. In contrast, even if
| everything goes according to plan, Starship requires at
| least a dozen re-fueling flights while it hangs in orbit
| around the Earth to be able to then fly to the Moon.
|
| Will one Starship launch, when it eventually works, be
| cheaper than SLS? Very likely. Will 12+ Starship launches
| + the time in orbit be cheaper than a single SLS launch?
| Much, much less likely.
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| Actually, we already know that with booster reuse
| disposing of 12 tanker starships will cost less than an
| SLS launch and actually be able to get to the moon, which
| SLS with Orion can't actually do.
| cheschire wrote:
| Isn't SLS still costing like $4 b's per launch?
| PearlRiver wrote:
| This is why I do not believe in America setting up a
| permanent lunar base.
|
| The Chinese are basically going to launch a few astronauts
| up there with a modern Saturn 5. But for them that would be
| a success because it is their first time.
|
| You only get to land on the moon once before people stop
| giving a shit.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > You only get to land on the moon once before people
| stop giving a shit.
|
| Depends on what happens once on the moon. If all you do
| is send 2 people at a time to collect rocks, then it does
| get boring to the general public. If each landing
| assembles the next section of a moon habitat, then I
| think the interest sticks around longer.
| echelon wrote:
| > You only get to land on the moon once before people
| stop giving a shit.
|
| If America (or China) says the best spots on the moon
| belong to America (or China), suddenly it's Space Race
| 2.0 and everyone cares.
|
| This is what will happen once any building actually
| starts happening.
| margalabargala wrote:
| I think it's actually a reasonable comparison.
|
| To OP's point, Artemis has cost $92 billion over 14 years.
| This has produced exactly one launch.
|
| It's hard to put an exact timeline on Starship since a lot of
| its development overlaps with Falcon 9 using the same
| components, but it's inarguable that it has cost one tenth
| Artemis so far.
|
| I agree that Starship has been plagued by delays and the
| capabilities are so far mostly just talk. However, it has
| flown a number of times, and I would be willing to make a
| strong bet that it will orbit the moon with real payload long
| before it catches up to Artemis in budget.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Starship has not yet flown even a fraction of what SLS has,
| so I think the comparison is premature. If it takes another
| ten years to get to a point that it can successfully
| achieve its Artemis objectives, I doubt it will remain
| cheaper than SLS. And given that it has already been
| delayed way beyond the first estimates for when it might be
| ready (it was supposed to have flown to Mars with
| astronauts on board by 2022, I believe), I don't see why
| another 10 years is any worse an estimate than others.
| margalabargala wrote:
| SLS has flown once. What are you talking about?
| timhh wrote:
| > the capabilities are so far mostly just talk
|
| lol what? They've caught and successfully reflown the super
| heavy booster, and they've mostly successfully done a soft
| landing of Starship in the sea. How is that remotely "just
| talk"?
| gwbas1c wrote:
| The Artemis mission is _manned._ I assume the Starships are
| _unmanned._
|
| The risk profile is very different.
| Arthurian wrote:
| 2cents from a kid who grew up in a NASA family during the
| shuttle years - As others have commented, NASA's baseline
| objective is to not kill astronauts. My understanding of their
| ethos growing up was that there was absolutely no excuse not to
| pursue excellence and prioritize safety when people's lives
| were on the line. One would have to think that goal is
| fundamentally incompatible with SpaceX's way of doing things
| (see the many exploding rockets - who wants to get in that?).
| And from what I've read and heard through the grapevine,
| working with SpaceX as a contractor on Artemis has certainly
| had pain points related to these mismatched priorities.
| zardo wrote:
| The shuttle lost two crews. Maybe pushing its limits in
| unmanned testing would have prevented those incidents.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| They very nearly lost the first shuttle they launched.
| Jumping straight into manned testing was quite reckless,
| but _politically_ necessary. If they had tested the shuttle
| without crew, that would have gotten people thinking that
| crews probably aren 't necessary for a lot of shuttle
| missions, in particular launching satellites. It also would
| have prompted people to compare the cost of shuttle
| launches to other unmanned rocket launches, in particular
| for commercial satellite launches (which they were doing
| until the Challenger disaster.) These are comparisons that
| would have been very problematic for NASA as a political
| entity.
| HerbManic wrote:
| The lesson is that people can be irrational even it the
| logic is sound.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> They very nearly lost the first shuttle they
| launched._
|
| Which mission are you referring to?
|
| If it's STS-1, AFAIK there were no close call incidents
| during the actual flight, but the mission commander, John
| Young, did have to veto a suggestion to make that mission
| an RTLS abort instead of an actual orbital flight. Doing
| that would have been reckless, yes: Young's reason for
| not doing it was "Let's not practice Russian roulette."
| mikkupikku wrote:
| The overpressure caused by the SRB ignitions exceeded
| predictions due to the geometry of the launch pad. This
| overpressure forced the orbiter's bodyflap away, beyond
| the design limits of the hydraulic system that controls
| it. John Young said that if he had known this, he would
| have ejected, which would have caused the loss of the
| shuttle.
| pdonis wrote:
| Ah, I see. But in fact the body flap was not inoperative,
| and the Shuttle landed safely. So this looks to me like a
| case where Mission Control turned out to be justified in
| not telling the crew what had happened.
|
| One thing I wonder about is whether it would have been
| possible to test the flap while in orbit, to see if the
| hydraulic lines were actually ruptured or not.
| pdonis wrote:
| I don't think so, because both losses were due to bad
| management decisions under irrational political pressure,
| not any lack of engineering knowledge that more unmanned
| testing could have provided.
|
| Challenger was lost because NASA ignored a critical flight
| risk with the SRB joint O-rings. And by "ignored", I mean
| "documented that the risk existed, that it could result in
| loss of vehicle and loss of lives of the crew, and then
| waived the risk so the Shuttle could keep flying instead of
| being grounded until the issue was fixed". They didn't need
| more unmanned testing to find the issue; they needed to
| stop ignoring it. But that was politically unacceptable
| since it would have meant grounding the Shuttle until the
| issue was fixed.
|
| Columbia was lost because NASA ignored the risks of tile
| damage due to their belief that it couldn't be fixed anyway
| once the Shuttle was in orbit. But that meant NASA also
| devoted no effort to eliminating the risk of tile damage by
| fixing the issue that caused it. Which again would have
| been politically unacceptable since it would have meant
| grounding the Shuttle until the issue was fixed.
| MaulingMonkey wrote:
| > They didn't need more unmanned testing to find the
| issue; they needed to stop ignoring it.
|
| _Should_ such testing have been needed? No.
|
| _Was_ such testing needed, given NASA 's political
| pressures and management? Maybe. Unmanned testing in
| similar conditions before putting humans on it might've
| resulted in a nice explosion without loss of life that
| would've been much harder to ignore than "the
| hypothesizing of those worrywart engineers," and might've
| provided the necessary ammunition to resist said
| political pressures.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Unmanned testing in similar conditions before putting
| humans on it might 've resulted in a nice explosion
| without loss of life that would've been much harder to
| ignore_
|
| The loss of the Challenger was the 25th manned orbital
| mission. So we can expect that it might have taken 25
| unmanned missions to cause a similar loss of vehicle. But
| what would those 25 unmanned missions have been doing?
| There just wasn't 25 unmanned missions' worth of things
| to find out. That's also far more unmanned missions than
| were flown on any previous NASA space program before
| manned flights began.
|
| Even leaving the above aside, if it would have been
| politically possible to even fly that many unmanned
| missions, it would have been politically possible to
| ground the Shuttle even after manned missions started
| based on the obvious signs of problems with the SRB joint
| O-rings. There were, IIRC, at least a dozen previous
| manned flights which showed issues. There were also good
| critiques of the design available at the time--which, in
| the kind of political environment you're imagining, would
| have been listened to. That design might not even have
| made it into the final Shuttle when it was flown.
|
| In short, I don't see your alternative scenario as
| plausible, because the very things that would have been
| required to make it possible would also have made it
| unnecessary.
| zardo wrote:
| > So we can expect that it might have taken 25 unmanned
| missions to cause a similar loss of vehicle.
|
| That doesn't follow. If those were unmanned test flights
| pushing the vehicle limits you can't just assume they
| would have gone as they actually did.
| PopePompus wrote:
| Testing wasn't really the issue with the loss of the two
| shuttles. In both cases, it was mostly a management issue.
| For Challenger NASA had seen o-ring erosion in earlier
| launches, and decided it was not a big risk to the crew.
| Then they launched Challenger against the recommendations
| of the engineers in charge of o-ring seals. For Columbia,
| they has seen foam strikes in earlier launches, but since
| they had not caused catastrophe in the past, they decided
| that foam strikes were acceptable. Even when it was clear
| that a large foam strike had occurred on the launch of
| Columbia, management wasn't concerned enough to try to get
| ground-based images of the shuttle to check for damage.
| Could Columbia's crew have been saved had they known the
| extent of the damage? No one can say of course, but not
| even trying to do everything possible was inexcusable.
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| The problem there is the Shuttle was deliberately designed
| so it couldn't be flown unmanned, which risked lives and
| wasted money for lots of simple satellite launches.
| elictronic wrote:
| You risk it when there are no people on board to find the
| issues. Fix issues, rinse repeat.
|
| NASA/Congress pushes the armchair quarterback approach.
| Analyze forever, fail because analysis isn't the same thing
| as real world experience, get stuck using 50 year old rocket
| technology. Each engine on SLS cost more than the entire
| Starship super heavy launch vehicle.
|
| By weight the RS-25 engines cost about 70% of that of
| building their 7000lb mass dry mass out of gold. That's
| insane.
| ggreer wrote:
| SpaceX has the most reliable orbital launch vehicle ever
| made. Falcon 9 block 5 has had 550 successful launches out of
| 551 attempts, giving it a 99.8% success rate. For comparison,
| Soyuz-2's success rate is 97%, Ariane 5 is 95.7%, and the
| Space Shuttle was 98.5%. All of these are worse than Falcon
| 9's block 5's _landing_ success rate of 98.9% (552 out of 558
| attempts[1]).
|
| The current Starship launches are part of a development and
| testing program. They expect quite a few failures (though
| probably not as many as they've experienced). But since each
| Starship launch is only 1/25th the cost of an SLS launch,
| SpaceX can afford to blow up a lot of them. And they won't
| put people on them until they have a track record of safe
| operation. Falcon 9 didn't have crew on it until the 85th
| launch.
|
| 1. The number of landing attempts is higher than the number
| of launches because Falcon Heavy results in multiple landings
| per launch.
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| NASA says its baseline is to not kill astronauts and yet it
| is currently planning to send astronauts on a mission in
| space with an Environmental Control System on its first space
| flight in a capsule that has flown in space once, and was
| different on that one flight, and had unexpected heat shield
| problems with another different heat shield and on a untested
| return path that is guessed to fix the issues. Actions speak
| louder than words.
| bregma wrote:
| If NASA switches to the Space X approach of just blowing up its
| rockets it would soon need to change its name to "Need Another
| Seven Astronauts".
| jvanderbot wrote:
| NASA should not do what businesses do, because by definition
| their job is to do what businesses cannot or will not do.
|
| They should not adopt spacex practices, they should adopt
| spacex lift vehicles (once proven).
| leonflexo wrote:
| Systemic inefficiencies aside. I wonder how much of that is a
| public funding feedback loop? The cost gets higher, because the
| standards, requirements, and processes are stricter, because
| there is the need to validate the use of public funds,
| exacerbated by being higher, increasing the
| standards/requirements etc etc... Especially in a political
| environment where there is no shortage of sniping funding for
| points.
|
| Regardless, first thing it reminded me of was that interview
| quote about how if nasa had SpaceX track record they would have
| lost funding long ago. Is there a US political landscape, even
| back to 2008-2016, where that isn't the case?
| alwa wrote:
| I wonder how much is a cost-plus billing issue, too... and a
| contrast between primes with a single customer in mind and a
| commercial firm chasing a bigger pie than the immediate
| program at hand
|
| https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4498/1
| tokyobreakfast wrote:
| SpaceX's move-fast-and-break-things approach was lauded and
| NASA panned as being stuck in the past until <checks notes> the
| zeitgeist turned against Musk at which point the drones and
| tech blogs they read and write now view SpaceX as dangerous and
| wasteful at all costs. When a mere few years ago they couldn't
| shower them with enough praise.
|
| I have no skin in this game other than to say the old school
| methods resulted in a janky ship that stranded two astronauts
| in space for months until they could catch a ride home on a
| SpaceX ship.
| XorNot wrote:
| Starship is starting to be a very long and not so cheap
| project though that doesn't seem to be making significant
| iterative improvements - Rockets are still exploding
| regularly where you'd expect them to have moved beyond that
| phase.
| nine_k wrote:
| Sorry, what? Starship 11 proceeded with a totally nominal
| ascent, orbit, descent, and powered landing that would end
| up with it standing on the ground, were it not deliberately
| landed into water.
|
| What SLS currently has achieved had been achieved by
| Falcons and Dragons years ago, only way more cheaply and
| successfully.
|
| No matter what we may think about Mr Musk, SLS is dead end.
| tencentshill wrote:
| SpaceX doesn't have investors itching to take AWAY money from
| their programs. they are obligated to be perfect on the first
| run. Public vs. private.
| dyukqu wrote:
| This reminds me of my all-time-favourite HN comment[0] (and a
| life lesson too):
|
| _This idea is captured nicely in the book "Art and Fear" with
| the following anecdote: "The ceramics teacher announced on
| opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All
| those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded
| solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the
| right solely on its quality.
|
| His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would
| bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the
| "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty
| pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality",
| however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one
| - to get an "A".
|
| Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works
| of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded
| for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was
| busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their
| mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about
| perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their
| efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay."_
|
| [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22105478
| nixpulvis wrote:
| This works if there's no cost of failure in the meantime.
|
| If we're putting humans into rockets into space, I'd like to
| think we adopt a balanced approach.
| distortionfield wrote:
| Isn't this a non-sequitur though? Artemis presumably
| doesn't have to actually load up humans on the rockets to
| flight test them.
| danw1979 wrote:
| It works perfectly well when you've got deep pockets and
| unmanned test vehicles though.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| Those deep pockets are funded by the same pot we all feed
| from.
| taeric wrote:
| No. This works if you are able to tell a work of fiction
| and don't have to provide evidence.
|
| And it works because we all know that repetition and
| practice are, in fact, important. So it feels believable
| that having people just repeat something over and over is
| the answer.
|
| Similarly, people can be swayed by the master coming in and
| producing a single artifact that blows away everyone. You
| see this archetype story as often as the student that
| learns by just repeating a motion over and over.
| (Indeed.... this is literally the Karate Kid plot...)
|
| The truth is far more mundane. Yes, you have to repeat
| things. But also yes, you have to give thought to what you
| are doing. This is why actual art classes aren't just "lets
| build things", but also "lets learn how to critique things
| that you build."
| ahoka wrote:
| Now tell the fake story about the moneys and the ladder too.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| The actual real world result is the opposite. When you score
| on quantity you get James Patterson, not F Scott Fitzgerald.
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| And F Scott Fitzgerald died in poverty essentially unknown,
| while James Patterson is worth over $800 million.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I think we're all misunderstanding SpaceX. I think it's more of
| an engine factory disguised as a general space company that
| managed to borrow the dad's card.
|
| The only thing SpaceX truly has an edge is its engines.
|
| They have perfected the engine for a ship like a giant Mars
| class rockets. And that engine has been in full scale series
| production for years, while the actual Starship keeps blowing
| up. The reason they developed their hoverslam landing
| technology, also, was because they wanted their precious
| engines back.
|
| It's as if they handed groups of gamers a credit card and they
| went onto plunder stocks of RTX cards from 20 miles around with
| some Roombas bought on reward points. It's just inches below
| the threshold for typical BS detector if it weren't
| specifically tuned for the relevant topics.
|
| All makes sense if everything was an elaborate ploy to get
| someone to pay for specifically the engines.
| baggachipz wrote:
| NASA has been directed by Congress to use the remaining Space
| Shuttle RS25 engines on SLS. There aren't that many RS25's
| left, so Artemis requires that they make the most of each
| launch. Getting more RS25's produced is one of those "nobody's
| made them in a long time and it would be terribly expensive and
| time-consuming to do so" type of situations.
|
| _correction_ : there are 16 RS25's left, but production has
| begun on more for the Artemis V mission. However, production is
| slow so they can't just yeet SLS's into space and test rapidly.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| My suspicion is ULA can't manufacture SLS quickly enough, at
| high enough quality, to meet multiple, gradual tests.
| carabiner wrote:
| It's everything. NASA doesn't have the money, brainpower,
| efficiency etc. to implement SpaceX development method. They
| can't fab it fast enough, nor can they iterate on the
| engineering fast enough, nor are they will to sustain the
| optics of a "government rocket blowing up" like Musk is. They
| don't have the caliber of engineering talent available or a
| workflow setup (high autonomy, long hours, better pay).
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| ULA has nothing to do with SLS.
| palmotea wrote:
| > The difference in philosophy between NASA's current approach
| and SpaceX is quite stark. SpaceX has launched 11 Starships in
| the two and a bit years, with a lot of them blowing up. Where
| as Artemis is trying to get it near perfect on each run.
|
| > I wonder if NASA could start to adopt SpaceX like approaches?
| Where one doesn't try to get everything correct before acting?
|
| My understanding is the difference is politics. The US
| political system is dysfunctional, and so riven by anti-
| government factions, that there's too much pressure to _not
| fail_.
|
| If NASA tried the SpaceX approach, after the second rocket blew
| up NASA's administrator would have been hauled in front of
| Congress and interrogated over the "waste of taxpayer money"
| and then the program may get canceled.
| Galxeagle wrote:
| I had a lightbulb moment when someone said 'the point of
| iterative approaches is not to find bugs, it's to do something
| (small) successfully and build confidence+learn'. There's a
| subtle but important difference between the iterative approach
| that SpaceX takes and 'debugging through exhaustive retries',
| and I'm worried NASA would look like the latter (and
| admittedly, some of the more recent starship launches look that
| way too).
|
| The ability to pick a small-but-well-defined goal as an interim
| milestone - _and stay focused on it_ - is a key skill, and too
| often I 've seen waterfall-like companies slowly scope-creep
| their first MVP until it's a lumbering mess. You almost always
| need someone with a strong personality to push team to 'get it
| done', and that level of ownership is really hard to come by in
| an organization historically built around ass-covering.
|
| I think Commercial Crew is the right model for NASA. Pick the
| design objectives, provide some level of scaffolding regulation
| (i.e loss-of-crew calculations), and then contract out to
| private sector to actually 'get it done'. (Yes Starliner was a
| failure, but Dragon is definitely a success. A 50% hit rate and
| success of the program overall is better than Artemis)
| kiratp wrote:
| Same contractors (Beoing) who built Starliner...
|
| Explaining Why NASA's Starliner Report Is So Bad >
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L96asfTvJ_A
| tiahura wrote:
| Did we ever get clarification as to how the Dragon 8 crew member
| got hurt and why SpaceX got warned?
| https://www.popsci.com/science/nasa-spacex-safety/#:~:text=%...
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Why does it seem like we can't do shit anymore? Was it always
| like this and there was no news coverage of all the failures? If
| not what is the main cause of failure right now? Is it onerous
| regulations and bureaucracy? Stressed work environments?
| ericmay wrote:
| We're doing really complicated stuff. And think about it
| though, in the 60s/70s we had one organization - NASA. That was
| it. Today, we have RocketLab, SpaceX, Blue Origin, _and_ NASA,
| plus Boeing I guess.
| michaelsshaw wrote:
| Essentially, neoliberalism. The goal of everyone on the project
| is now higher and higher profits. Delivering a working product
| doesnt necessarily mean best profits anymore. Spacex would
| rather drag the project along with ships that dont work than to
| just make something that works. The government has privatized
| so much of their workload into so few specialized companies
| that they really can't stop them from doing this.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Way more safety and rigid testing procedures and a better
| understanding - the Apollo program was all done by the seat of
| the pants engineering that somehow worked all based on the
| ideas of the team that built the German V2.
|
| Each F1 rocket engine was hand tuned by drilling holes into the
| "plate" so it would not cause the combustion mixture to vibrate
| the engine into smithereens.
|
| Such an approach would never be tolerated today by NASA.
| XorNot wrote:
| That doesn't imply that it was faster though. It just implies
| they didn't have the technology to simulate it, nor CNC
| machining to do it another way.
|
| I mean does it _sound_ like that was faster then what we can
| do today?
| briandw wrote:
| I feel the same. The Golden Gate Bridge took 3 years to build,
| start to finish. It was the biggest suspension to have ever
| been built at the time. Compare that to any modern public works
| project of today. There are countless examples of how we used
| to be able to build things before 1970.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Per Wikipedia, the Golden Gate Bridge was proposed in 1917,
| approved by the state for design in 1923, funded in 1930,
| started construction in 1933, and completed in 1937.
|
| The reason modern projects take so long is that so many of
| them are stuck in design or awaiting funding stage for what
| feels like interminable ages; once the construction phase
| starts, they tend to go fairly quickly. But if you look at
| projects 100 years ago, well, they also seem to have fairly
| lengthy pre-construction timelines. It's just that we
| conveniently forget about those when we look back on them
| nowadays.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| 11 people died during the construction of the Golden Gate
| Bridge. We have onerous safety requirements and red tape
| which is why everything is so slow. Very few people die on
| construction sites now. Do we want 11 dead people or do we
| want things done extremely slow? I guess as a society we have
| answered that question.
| thereisnospork wrote:
| We've probably answered wrongly. Even money aside, how many
| more people die in traffic accidents due to the extra miles
| driven because of delays in construction?
|
| Some regs are worth it, certainly, but being overly
| cautious is in itself unsafe.
| XorNot wrote:
| Sure and sometimes you just need to actually issue safety
| equipment and install a fall net.
|
| The historical comparisons are complete BS: they wind up
| at "if we sacrifice enough people to the industrial god
| he will reward us" rather then discussing anything real.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| What is it then? What is real? It has to be environmental
| and safety regulations, long running environmental
| studies, general bureaucracy and NIMBYism holding
| construction and infrastructure back right? That's what
| held up the high speed rail in California (along with
| funding factors). We've always had unions so that
| shouldn't be it.
| thereisnospork wrote:
| Things are so bad that we can't even seem to manage to
| install a fall net[0] in a timely manner.
|
| [0]https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-12/go
| lden-g...
| mmustapic wrote:
| The Apollo program budget was immensely large, and the
| objective was clear: put people on the moon before the Soviet
| Union.
|
| Artemis objectives are less well defined, more ambitious and
| with way less money. The big budget is being allocated to
| brutes killing people in the streets and a decadent ballroom
| for the emperor. The difference in importance between the two
| is the cause of all the failures.
| Robdel12 wrote:
| And we can't forget the nationalism at the time. Everyone was
| rallied behind the program and wanting to beat the Soviet
| Union. I mean, sputnik scared the hell out of everyone.
|
| I think that's probably important framing for how things were
| reported back then. But also, I'm wrong like 99.9999999% of
| the time. So!
| grvbck wrote:
| I think the narrative is more difficult now, as is visibility
| of goals. "Land a man on the Moon and return him safely" is a
| clear objective, while "decarbonize the global economy" or
| "make AI safe and useful" are fuzzier, and don't give you a
| single flag-planting moment.
|
| But there's no lack of huge achievements. The Mars rovers are
| amazing: super-sonic parachutes, retro rockets, deploying a
| little helicopter with no real-time control is huge. So is
| planting JWST at the L2 point and unfolding it a million miles
| from earth.
|
| Also, the NASA budget in the 1960's was 10 times higher.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Basically because we don't feel like it.
|
| If you look at the unmanned side of NASA, that's going great.
| NASA can get amazing stuff done.
|
| The manned side gets political attention, and the nature of
| current politics makes it a bad kind of attention. Results are
| essentially irrelevant. Jobs and cronyism are the point.
|
| The overall design of the Space Launch System makes very little
| sense. We know all too well that solid rockets are a bad idea
| for crewed spaceflight. Hydrogen is a bad fuel for a first
| stage. It's horrendously wasteful to use expensive, complicated
| engines designed to be reused, and then throw them away on
| every launch. Early estimates were over $2 billion per launch,
| which in the current age is total clownshoes. The actual costs
| will be much higher still.
|
| So why are they doing it? Because using all this old, rather
| inappropriate tech allows them to keep paying the contractors
| for it. If you gave NASA a pile of money and told them to build
| a moon program, they wouldn't build this. But it's not their
| choice.
| dirasieb wrote:
| it's because we "destroyed the technology" :^)
| jjk166 wrote:
| Artemis was never a "return to the moon" program. NASA had one
| of those; congress killed it and replaced it with a "keep
| shuttle jobs going" program. There has always been and will
| always be pork spending, but in this case keeping the gravy
| train going has been the primary if not sole driver, as opposed
| to programs like Apollo where it was a means to an end. People
| have known it was a problem from day one and probably most
| people thought it would get cancelled and replaced by something
| more sound long before this point.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| This is a good change. To summarize for those not following
| closely:
|
| SLS, a rocket derived from Shuttle tech, takes astronauts on the
| Orion spacecraft to the vicinity of the moon. From there, a
| lander built by either SpaceX or Blue Origin will take the
| astronauts to the surface and then back to Orion. The astronauts
| will then return to Earth in Orion.
|
| Artemis I flew a couple of years ago and took an uncrewed Orion
| spacecraft around the moon and back to Earth.
|
| Artemis II, which should hopefully fly in April, will take 4
| astronauts around the moon--the first time humans have been that
| far in space in 50+ years.
|
| Artemis III was going to be a crewed moon landing, planned around
| 2028, but between delays in the lander development and the
| complexity of this mission, no one expected it to happen on time.
|
| The major change that NASA has announced is to launch SLS more
| often--ideally once every 10 months. There are two major
| advantages to this:
|
| 1. More frequent launches will improve reliability because the
| team/engineers will understand the system better. There will be
| more commonality between launches.
|
| 2. With more launches before the end of the decade deadline there
| are more opportunities for intermediate milestones. In
| particular, Artemis III will turn into an Earth-orbit mission in
| which Orion will dock with one or both of the landers. This will
| test out the system before heading to the moon. Moreover, NASA
| plans to have at least two lunar landing attempts in 2028, which
| means that even if the first attempt is scrubbed, they will still
| have a chance to land before the end of the decade.
| trothamel wrote:
| A couple of new posts by Nasa Administrator Isaacman:
|
| Launch cadence across NASA programs:
|
| https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2027456699175497741
|
| An infographic showing the new architectures:
|
| https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2027456713507356713
|
| It's interesting how Artemis III (the new one) will try to prove
| out both HLS landers in one LEO mission.
| t1234s wrote:
| I made sure to watch the first SLS launch in person as I'm not
| confident they will be able to launch again.
| Robdel12 wrote:
| They're getting slightly bullied into following their own rocket
| certification process. Wild they're going right to human flight
| without their three unmanned certification flights, etc. NASA
| themselves will not allow mission critical payloads on rockets
| that don't meet that process. But they're (trying) to skip it
| with Artemis.
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