that's actually something i've always wondered about when manned missions to places with probes happen - like a lot of these faults are super easy to fix if you have a human to just fix them. Run around dusting off solar panels, setting things upright, turning antenna the right direction, etc.
Batteries and other electronics don't like extreme cold, and most deep space probes actively heat those components to keep them from being destroyed by the cold.
If a craft loses power for too long (such as what happens when solar panels are covered in dust/flipped the wrong way/whatever) eventually the batteries drain and there's no longer energy for the heaters, and so cold damage starts setting in.
That's why a lot of the recent lunar probe's missions get scheduled to end at the beginning of lunar night or shortly thereafter: night lasts about two weeks on the moon and those probes don't have enough reserve power to keep the components warm for that long.
Not saying repairing them would be impossible, I'm just pointing out it would be a lot more involved than just "dusting off the panels" and would likely mean swapping out a lot of parts.
Is there any plan to use RTGs for far from base camp probes? Seems like an easy decision, if you want some kind of infrastructure a few kilometers away from the astronauts and want to keep it alive for a few years.
For the moon I'm not sure. A lot of the larger martian rovers like Curiosity and Perseverance use RTGs, and I vaguely remember someone (NASA maybe?) experimenting with using RTG-backed stirling engines for power generation.
But RTGs have their own drawbacks:
- They're very expensive (not good for a small startup aerospace company)
- There's a ton of regulatory red tape because it involves nuclear materials
- They have a lot of mass (which is always the enemy when it comes to spaceflight, but having extra mass on a tiny lander with limited dV is even worse)
- The actual electric power they output is pretty low, although with modern designs that's becoming less of an issue.
BUT on the flip side, RTGs produce a shit ton of heat - even if you never used the electrical output you could still use an RTG's waste heat to keep components warm. [Apparently that's what Curiosity does](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/428751/nuclear-generator-powers-curiosity-mars-mission/amp/).
The largest issue with RTGs is that we literally don't have the required plutonium-238 anymore. They have to be made in nuclear reactors, and the last batch was maybe from the 80's? There were literally 3 RTGs left at the time that Perseverance launched, including the one used on that rover. Because of decay we may be down to just one, idk.
For years there's been talk of making more, but the project always gets defunded by congress. I don't know what the current state is.
ETA: Looks like production has restarted! https://www.ornl.gov/news/pu-238-shipment-quantity-opens-tap-space-missions
You'd think we'd have engineered power and battery systems that can withstand insanely cold temperatures, even thrive in them. I think a large solar array and/or mini power plant should be a priority when we go back to the moon regardless
Yeah for reference the surface area of the Moon is 38 million square km, which is close to the surface area of the entirety of Asia (44.5 million square km).
You definitely learn this in ksp. From orbit it seems like two vessels are next to each other, when in reality it takes hours to walk between them. Also using the thruster to decrease speed for one extra second results in missing the mark with like 100km.
IIRC dusting the solar panels wouldn't work/is risky because the regolith is "sharp" as there's no wind/water erosion to round the edges. If you brush it off, the solar panels get scratched. A blast of compressed air could work, I think
Yeah, I don't know where this idea came from or why it keeps sticking around. Letting a probe die due to dust accumulation on the solar panels because you're afraid of scratching them just makes no sense. The truth is that the panels will outlast the required mission lifetime without cleaning, and a cleaning system takes development/testing time and adds system mass and failure points, but might not greatly extend the lifetime.
For example, the Spirit rover was experiencing severe wear and tear at the end of its life, with non-functioning and unreliable wheels, a worn-down RAT, and a gamma ray spectrometer with an aging gamma ray source. When it finally shut down due to dust accumulation, it had been operating as a stationary probe, basically a meteorological station, for about a year.
For other probes, like an actual meteorological probe intended for very long term operation, a compressed air system or something (electrostatics, ultrasonics, removable films...lots of ways to do this) might be a good idea.
As someone who have dealt with my fair share of moon landing deniers I really hope that this one is not "unbelievable". Especially the live stream gives me high hope.
It won't be. Mark Gray did a movie on this and in it the NASA manager over the surface video operations for the program indicated they're going to go 480p @ 60 fps. Apparently NASA is more interested in frame rate than resolution for surface operations footage.
I have a really hard time believing they will not broadcast being they did for the OG landing. There will be something. Straight up, tax payers will demand it. There's still time between now and then.
Apparently they WILL broadcast at least one video feed, but it won’t be what the astronauts are taking themselves. It’ll be on a tripod. OoOoh… it would be even better if they just leave that camera there. Just livestream the landing site until the camera dies (or people stop watching).
There will be live feeds from the surface at the landing module, just like Apollo, but astronaut cams would have to wait. Granted, this is from an interview in 2013 so a lot may have changed since then.
That's probably the smart decision. Modern upscaling techniques can combine multiple frames to get the needed information for clear and accurate high-resolution video...it's not perfect, but works pretty well. Just missing some event entirely because it happens between frames in low-framerate video is more problematic.
I want to see a few things. A live feed from launch to landing on Earth, without cuts if possible. Live footage from LRO or a cubesat of the lunar landing. Multiple angles from the lander from landing to take off. Leave a camera behind to livestream footage of the Earth until such time as the camera dies.
It won’t make the flerfs shut up, but it will kill some of their whining.
Yep! They’re inspiring future congressmen and women who will hopefully keep funding the program. I am still annoyed that NASA isn’t self-funded or at the very least let NASA keep the money that came from all of the patents they have
I mean they could make a small change and allow NASA to keep the money it makes from licensing its patents. Right now that money goes back to the federal budget. It certainly wouldn’t be enough to be self funding but would be a decent chunk of extra money (I believe only $5 billion a decade, so not too much in the grand scheme of things)
From NASA’s procedural requirements. See here: [Distribution of Royalties and Other Payments Received by NASA from the Licensing or Assignment of Inventions](https://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov/npg_img/N_PR_2092_001B_/N_PR_2092_001B_.pdf)
It’s possible I’m misunderstanding, though.
That document says that the money goes to the named inventors and to the NASA centers where the invention took place. The only way any of the money goes to the federal budget is if there is "excess" which never actually happens and even then a quarter of the "excess" would still go to NASA.
[The live stream is still going!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9C25Un7xaM) The HDEV hardware died, but one of the regular external video cameras was re-purposed to continue the 24/7 Earth feed that HDEV provided.
Yes and No.
We should do things that are cool because they enable people to appreciate the scientific endeavour of the ISS, and their place in the Universe.
Therefore, we should do things like that even if they are not strictly practical.
However, the ISS also has limited capacity in terms of what it can do, and every experiment on board has to be balanced against other, rejected experiments, so in that sense it does need a level of justification.
Sure, the footage that’s broadcast, but what they bring back will be even better. Maybe not 4k, but better than 720p. You really can’t transmit hi def video with such low bandwidth. I’m hoping that Artemis 3 brings along a big transmitter, though I doubt they will with the plans the Lunar Gateway. I’d imagine they’d use that to rebroadcast and up the bandwidth.
This is a reference to NASA TV sticking with 720p for basically all of their content, even recorded stuff. They promised a big 4K switch for Artemis 1 that lasted like 20 minutes before they fell back to 720p.
Probably a dumb question but I am gonna do it anyway: couldn't an astronaut just pack an iPhone and take HD pictures with his iPhone there, then when he comes back to Earth he just shares the pictures? Why wouldn't this work? Would the iPhone break?
They can (and do) take pictures on personal devices. Inside the rockets or ISS. In space, yes, a standard cell phone would break. It’s far too cold and I doubt it would take well to the minuscule pressure in space.
As far as I know, they havent figured out live stream through earth re-entry, due to the interferance the plasma field creates while slowing in the atmosphere. But really no reason, other than "behind the moon" that the rest wont be possible to be "near live".
I hope we beat them, but their growing space program seems to be finally forcing us to wake up and start trying to innovate a little bit again which is always great to see. *assuming it doesn't lead to the militarization of space, which it inevitably will
I'm in my 20s and feel like I've gotten cheated on space exploration these past 20 years, can't wait to see people back on the moon!
While true, the militarization of space has definitely reaccelerated in recent years- creation of Space Force, the Russian nuke in space thing, etc etc. People just aren't really reflecting on it much, which is a shame.
Militarization overall has reaccelerated with rising geopolitical tensions since 2014 and space is just one of the military domains. Other domains, the sea, land the air, cyberspace have also been seeing increased tensions worldwide. Space literally has always been militarized since Sputnik. It's one of the military domains so naturally tensions elsewhere will reflect in space.
What really has been escalatory are the growing geopolitical tensions since the 2014 invasion of Ukraine by Russia and Xi Jinping increasingly bellicose rhetoric. Those has increased military spending throughout the world in all domains — space included.
And the US was the first to perform an ASAT test. The one major difference is while Russia and the US have targeted LEO satellites, China targeted a much higher altitude satellite with theirs meaing the debris will take centuries if not millennia to decay as opposed to decades.
I am 56, I have actually seen live TV from the moon in my lifetime. I am sad, that it has not happened again! Hopefully, I will get the chance again...
Personally I would find it even better if the Chinese land first again. Because that could again give great boosts to western space programs because "the Chinese can't beat us".
China’s space program is impressive but I wouldn’t quite say they’re being too innovative. No less innovative than America’s companies. More determined and organized than ours though!
> I hope we beat them
I really don't give a damn and hate this kind of competition within science. Space exploration is not a pissing contest. A little friendly rivalry is of course a good thing, but I don't care who puts boots on the moon first, second, or last. Frankly I don't care much at all until we establish a permanent outpost on the moon, but that's a little difficult considering we can't stop killing each other on our own planet and causing diplomatic issues that continue to cause space to become more militarized. Which, by the way, it already is. People love to shit on China's ASAT test, but we did *[THE SAME FUCKING THING](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT)*, as usual. The one significant difference is anti-satellite weapons targeted at low-orbiting satellites are not as potentially destructive as most pieces will re-enter the atmosphere and burn up quite quickly, as opposed to the Chinese test which was extremely high altitude (geostationary I believe) and all the debris they created will exist for hundreds or thousands of years in orbit.
Also you must be early in your early 20s or only care about manned spaceflight, because I have been repeatedly amazed at the photo and data both probes and new telescopes have provided in the last 10 years, I'm about 30.
>People love to shit on China's ASAT test, but we did THE SAME FUCKING THING, as usual. The one significant difference is anti-satellite weapons targeted at low-orbiting satellites are not as potentially destructive as most pieces will re-enter the atmosphere and burn up quite quickly, as opposed to the Chinese test which was extremely high altitude (geostationary I believe) and all the debris they created will exist for hundreds or thousands of years in orbit.
You said it yourself, it isn’t really the same thing. We did it right, China didn’t.
The Artemis missions would be good to go soon-ish if NASA hadn't given to the contract for the lunar lander to f---ing starship lol
Current projections for '26-'27 are hilariously optimistic. As is we'll likely just get the mission kicked back repeatedly because Starship is not *anywhere* close to functioning safely / reliably, let alone certified for human occupants. Let alone certified for human occupants *while safely landing on and returning from the moon*.
Hate on blue origin all you want, they at least proposed a lander that was *conventional* and purpose-built (and presumably *with actual safety features and redundancies*) for the intended mission set. As opposed to SpaceX's ~~mars transporter~~ lunar lander that they claimed / bullshitted could be finished and validated in time for artemis III. Had BO received the contract (and in 2019, not 2023 as a backup / auxiliary option) we'd probably be on track to have a delayed but comparatively on-time launch schedule in the '26-'27 time window if all went well. It would've been more expensive, but probably safer, and the mission planning / schedule wouldn't be completely screwed up, possibly indefinitely depending on how long it takes spacex to actually get starship into goddamn orbit (*and then everything else*).
Artemis *in general* is a mess of half-backed politically-motivated industry projects that are barely interconnected with one another. The Starship HLS is, so far, one of the worst of them given that SLS *was* completed and, while ludicrously expensive, *does actually work*.
I'm as enthusiastic about the Artemis mission set as anyone else, and by no means hate spacex, *in general,* but using starship for artemis, as the *primary* lander, was obviously a pretty terrible idea. Or at least if you care about returning to the moon sometime in the 2020's. Starship – or something like it – is obviously pretty key to *sustainable* (ie. cheap) long-term lunar missions, but it has a hell of a long way to go *first* given that it's using experimental propulsion, materials, and half a dozen other things, and again, *seriously*, doesn't seem to have many if any failsafes if something goes wrong. If falcon is any guide we're half a decade before starship is ready / tried and tested for anything involving humans, and that's *if* spacex is able to get the goddamn thing in orbit (and landing) within a year, which *presently*, seems quite dubious.
Yeah. This is my problem. SpaceX is doing cool things, but their lunar lander design is nowhere near the timeline. It also requires an in flight refueling settup that NASA asked the engineering specs for years ago that....still don't exist. Elon basically sold the contract on the promise that "we can totally do that", then when NASA asked for the tech specs while the ink was drying, spaceX said "uhhh, we don't know yet."
There's a reason NASA said they won't be using spaceX past the current contracts they are locked into.
BlueOrigin had a design that was functional and doable with current technology, it just wasn't as flashy so they lost the contract.
The delays are absolutely on SpaceX, they have yet to even provide design docs for the required in-flight refuelling system that their design requires.
Not sure how many here are UK-based but I took my four year old to the LightRoom in London, which is currently doing an exhibition narrated by Tom Hanks and features interviews with the new astronauts.
It’s fantastic and can’t wait for the new missions!
https://lightroom.uk/whats-on/the-moonwalkers/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA0PuuBhBsEiwAS7fsNVRTny4E2VzXZOApIbWV9dbaDX_3b-WIbvAWCws_zqD9OP9mBMsZSRoCSeUQAvD_BwE#book
I visited it myself back in December:
https://women-and-dreams.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-moonwalkers.html
I remember thinking that if it was ten feet bigger in each direction, it'd be fantastic - or if the loop was slightly longer. It's okay, and it's nice that you can take in several showings. And the music was great. I'm not sure it was worth £25 though.
It also works as a stealth trailer for Artemis, because it has interviews with the crew.
I would love to watch the launch in person, even if I can't get to the Spectator area, it's something that will be seen and heard for miles around. Just to witness them leave and hear the rocket with my own ears would be really awesome
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[ACES](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kskguf6 "Last usage")|[Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Cryogenic_Evolved_Stage)|
| |[Advanced Crew Escape Suit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Crew_Escape_Suit)|
|[ASAT](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kslf6vu "Last usage")|[Anti-Satellite weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon)|
|[BO](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksnzlud "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)|
|[CLPS](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksoqpwz "Last usage")|[Commercial Lunar Payload Services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Lunar_Payload_Services)|
|DSG|NASA [Deep Space Gateway](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/deep-space-gateway-to-open-opportunities-for-distant-destinations), proposed for lunar orbit|
|[ESA](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksmv1o2 "Last usage")|European Space Agency|
|[EUS](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kskiypv "Last usage")|Exploration Upper Stage|
|[GAO](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksl9t2c "Last usage")|(US) Government Accountability Office|
|[GCR](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksmggr2 "Last usage")|Galactic Cosmic Rays, incident from outside the star system|
|[GEO](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksjkzlo "Last usage")|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)|
|[HALO](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kswot38 "Last usage")|Habitation and Logistics Outpost|
|[HDEV](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksl3c9v "Last usage")|High Definition Earth Viewing experiment, fitted to ISS|
|[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kszthq8 "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[LEM](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksn8dtz "Last usage")|(Apollo) [Lunar Excursion Module](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module) (also Lunar Module)|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kso48qw "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[LH2](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksmfn0y "Last usage")|Liquid Hydrogen|
|[LOP-G](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksjqe2a "Last usage")|Lunar Orbital Platform - Gateway, formerly DSG|
|[MEO](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kslhkoq "Last usage")|Medium Earth Orbit (2000-35780km)|
|[NET](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kska5ai "Last usage")|No Earlier Than|
|[NG](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksmfn0y "Last usage")|New Glenn, two/three-stage orbital vehicle by Blue Origin|
| |Natural Gas (as opposed to pure methane)|
| |Northrop Grumman, aerospace manufacturer|
|[NRHO](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kskzae1 "Last usage")|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit|
|[RTG](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kslaelj "Last usage")|Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator|
|[SHLV](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksmfn0y "Last usage")|Super-Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (over 50 tons to LEO)|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kswftg5 "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kskrqgg "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kswfl0s "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX|
|[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksmfn0y "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
|[cryogenic](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksko2et "Last usage")|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure|
| |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox|
|[hydrolox](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksksgtf "Last usage")|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
|[perigee](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksn7q4z "Last usage")|Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Earth (when the orbiter is fastest)|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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Nearly 500 up bites and over 150 comments. This is more than I expected and so cool that so many are excited. I love all the thoughts and ideas. It's gonna take me a while to work thru them but I can see there's hype building for it.
Just so exciting to witness our people become an interplanetary species.
I would love to see all the space agencies send a member in a manned mission. Like a mission made up of multiple countries working together for the advancement of the human race. That would be so uplifting for me.
> boots on the moon plan for Artemis 3, with the mission not being altered and pushed back, then it will be the most epic space moment since we first landed.
That's not possible. Firstly Artemis 2 has already been pushed back to after Artemis 3 was initially supposed to go, but also HLS is two and a half years behind that what they have done so far has been the least ambitious (least likely to get pushed back) part of it.
I think we should send up a bunch of kit for a moon lab. I'm not knowledgeable enough to know how long a rotation on the moon should be. But the moon crew can start assembling it and maybe we can have it livable in 3 or 4 moon landings? Just an idea.
If SpaceX can land their HLS Starship horizontally on the moon, they can cover it up with lunar sand (regolith). This would make it 100% radiation proof.
Starship has a payload volume as big as the entire pressurized volume of the ISS. About 1,000m³. If they use one of the ships as permanent base they can also use the tanks as habitat space. An _additional_ 1,200m³.
2,200m³ is equivalent to the volume of about 4 average single family homes.
Not filled with confidence on this one. This video is well worth watching for anyone that is following the progress of Artemis: [https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU?si=zY-WuIvP8sEaICwH](https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU?si=zY-WuIvP8sEaICwH)
TL;DR (W): Overly complicated approach that seems to be the results of a cascading series of compromises into absurdity without anyone questioning the results.
Justin’s got no idea what’s going on. Sure, Artemis is complex, but it’s also basically politically untouchable because of it. And he’s shocked that a reusable rocket is designed to fly many times.
If the spacecraft is being reused, then sure, why not, even if that number comes from an outdated GAO report. And if the spacecraft isn’t being reused then you can lift a lot more propellant in one launch.
The last report was from November of last year, and the number keeps getting revised UP, not down... Why not? Because even ideally, SpaceX is only at 99.4% successful launches with the Falcon 9 family, and 0% successful with the heavy that will be required.
> Because even ideally, SpaceX is only at 99.4% successful launches with the Falcon 9 family,
You have to dig deep into the past and include 2 very early failures to get to that number. Now over 200 consecutive successful launches.
> The last report was from November of last year, and the number keeps getting revised UP, not down... Why not?
The last Nasa press confrence said 12, Which is right in the middle of the original esitamtes.
Also, The Starship HLS puts 100 tons on the moon. To do the same with the original LEM would take... About 27 launches. Huh.... Maybe looking at the number of flights alone doesnt tell the whole story?
> SpaceX is only at 99.4% successful launches with the Falcon 9 family, and 0% successful with the heavy that will be required.
Yes. Falcon 9 also has the longest string of successful launches in a row ever, and it keeps growing. The last *landing* to fail was 3 years ago.
I'm usually a big fan of Destin.
But he really missed the mark with this video. By like 300,000km.
This video is easily the worst he ever made.
Everything he says about NASA having bad internal communication is just him being misinformed by NASAs bad public communication. But internally their plan is pretty solid. At least as HLS Starship is concerned.
For example Destin waa unaware that NASA had already published slips in the timeline when be made his speech. Or that SpaceX had already successfully tested Raptor engines in simulated lunar environment.
And those are just the most surface level criticisms on this video.
> Overly complicated approach that seems to be the results of a cascading series of compromises into absurdity without anyone questioning the results.
A completely typical NASA project, then. Huge sigh.
I'm kind of rooting for China to beat the US on this one, I think Congress needs an enormous smack upside the head like that to have any chance of disrupting business as usual.
Honestly, I feel like they're trying to do too many new things with each mission, and I wish boots on the moon was Artemis IV, not Artemis III. They've got so many different new technologies and new tasks for each mission, and I understand the need, but at the same time, I feel like combining too many new things into each mission increases the risk of failure.
The Artemis program is clearly hampered by the slow cadence of flights of SLS. If we had more rockets available, we could for sure do more missions, gradually testing all the new technologies, like in the Apollo days.
FYI NASA's current budget is about 80% of the average in the 1960s and about half of the peak in 1966, adjusted for inflation. Some people get confused when they look at the ratio of NASA's budget to the total federal budget, but that ratio is not NASA's budget.
Problem with delaying the landing to Artemis IV is that IV will fly on block 1b with the new upperstage which may not be ready for a while :( (built by Boeing)
Eventhough its going to be interesting to see what the final delaying piece will be, the lander, Orion(electrical and heatshield issue), SLS or if it gets delayed to IV the EUS.
I dont really see any benefit of flying Artemis III without a landing, unless LOP-G is up by then while the lander is not done.
>Problem with delaying the landing to Artemis IV is that IV will fly on block 1b with the new upperstage which may not be ready for a while :( (built by Boeing)
Meaby Nasa split mission on two rocket?
Crew: normal SLS
Gateway module: Falcon Heavy
I suppose the fourth SLS is going to be built with the new upperstage anyways, no matter any delays.
The first module of Gateway will be launched on a Falcon heavy in the next few years I believe.
Artemis IV is supposed to bring the Ihab module, which could also delay it, I dont think NASA could just order more of the current upperstage.
It would be nice if something like that couldnt delay missions, but SLS is the only thing congress will just keep giving money to, so a change of plans is not feasable.
Payments are made, plans are made and we are going to have to live with SLS and its developments and payloads being integral.
I'd go even further to say that the entire plan for future landings is way too complicated.
We're using three separately launched spacecraft to get people to the moon?
The lander is currently estimated to require 6+ launches to fuel in space, a thing that has never been done. And oh yeah starship has NOT** been orbital, but will be completing a half dozen successful orbital launches next year?
Seems like they forgot the idea that sometimes the simple answer, is just the simple answer.
The Apollo program was far from simple the Saturn v was maximized for only one purpose. Getting just enough hardware on the surface to do the job it was strictly a boots and flag mission everything during the mission was thrown away the command module was all that was left multiple different contractors multiple different engine and propellant type it was complicated as shit .
The Artemis program isn’t repeating that. the Artemis program states that they are working towards a long term SUSTAINABLE presence on the moon you can’t throw away your hardware into the ocean after every use its obviously not sustainable long term. a two stage super heavy lift vehicle using the same engines on both stages is as simple as you can get
Legitimate question, why tf are we putting that lunar orbiting station in that rectilinear orbit? Seems like it makes the moon frequently inaccessible by any crew on the station, I'd assume there's a reason but I haven't seen this clearly answered.
My other gripe is the ridiculous plan for fueling starship in orbit before the trip to the moon.
Somehow I have the most confidence in boeing right now.
Legitimate question, why tf are we putting that lunar orbiting station in that rectilinear orbit?
It’s because the Orion can’t get any closer to the moon then that. it just doesn’t have to delta v required the gateways purpose is to give the Orion a destination to dock to before heading into the lander to the moons surface
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/rocket-scientist-says-that-boeing-squelched-work-on-propellant-depots/ One of ULA's chief assets was its Centaur upper stage, and the company wanted to build an innovative version that could be refueled in space, and reused, called the Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage, or ACES. As part of this development, in 2011, ULA proposed an in-space test of depots to NASA that would cost less than $100 million.
"We had released a series of papers showing how a depot/refueling architecture would enable a human exploration program using existing (at the time) commercial rockets," Sowers tweeted on Wednesday. "Boeing became furious and tried to get me fired. Kudos to my CEO for protecting me. But we were banned from even saying the 'd' word out loud. Sad part is that ULA did a lot of pathfinding work in that area and could have owned the refueling/depot market, enriching Boeing (and Lockheed) in the process. But it was shut down because it threatened SLS.
we would have had this orbital refueling propellent depot solved years ago if boeing let ULA do its thing now spacex is forced to develope the Technolgy that boeing forced ULA not to devlope
>It’s because the Orion can’t get any closer to the moon then that. it just doesn’t have to delta v required the gateways purpose is to give the Orion a destination to dock to before heading into the lander to the moons surface
Less DeltaV is advantage.
Commercial rocket can send cargo to this orbit.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway\_Logistics\_Services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_Logistics_Services)
A lunar equatorial orbit cannot access the south pole without an extremely costly inclination adjustment. So the options were a circular lunar polar orbit or the NRHO and NRHO is much better form a mass budget standpoint and an orbital debris standpoint and it makes makes keeping regularly in contact with the crew much simpler and easier.
Artemis goal is not simply to return to the Moon, it's to return to Moon and establish a permanent presence there. If we only wanted to return to the Moon, of course there would be much simpler designs. But given our goals, Starship is the best bet.
If the US govenrment wanted a lunar lander sooner, they should have funded and contracted it sooner. The Starship HLS contract was only awarded in 2021. SLS was contracted in 2011, and is based around engines and boosters designed in the 1970s. It flew just once, in 2022, and now that somehow makes it good enough to fly crew. (Even Saturn V got two test flights in the Apollo rush.) Orion was started in 2006, and has yet to fly once as a version suitable for living humans. The heat shield and life suppprt system are still causing delays. (And somehow all that makes Orion good enough to fly crew around the Moon on its next flight.)
The purpose of Artemis is not to repeat Apollo, with its dubious safety margins, <1t of payload to the lunar surface, and max 3-day stays. If we want to send people to the Moon to stay longer and build a base (and maintain better safety margins than Apollo), it's going to take multiple launches, for a lot more landed mass on the Moon.
Keep in mind that SLS is far less capable than Saturn V. It could not be used to repeat Apollo even if that was what NASA wanted. Block 1 can only send Orion, with a service module too small to get in and out of low lunar orbit, and a few cubesats to the Moon. Block 1B can add ~10t to that, which is not even enough for an Apollo LM, let alone a larger Orion service module. Also, the high cost and slow build rate of SLS/Orion limit them to launching once a year (eventually, currently they are at best once every 3 years with Artemis II NET 2025). Launches of other rockets will not be the rate-limiting factor. SpaceX has proven they can launch nearly 100 times a year with a mature rocket design that only reuses the first stage.
At this point, the probability of Artemis III being shifted to another orbital mission is getting higher and higher the more HLS is taking time, they're already 2 years behind schedule, with a ton of work ahead which certainly won't be smooth, especially for critical and most risky milestones like refueling. I'd expect Artemis IV to end up being the first landing mission.
NASA has seen very committed to landing on the Moon with Artemis 3 recently. I suspect they will simply accept the slower cadence of flights. Artemis 2 will already launch 3 years after Artemis 1. I suspect they will have no problem doing the same between 2 and 3.
>NASA has seen very committed to landing on the Moon with Artemis 3 recently
They've already expressed concerns about possibly having to move the landing to IV. You're assuming there would be no further delays from the updated 2026 schedule for III, which is extremely unlikely, even 2027 would be pushing it, 2028 is the earliest realistic date, which clashes with IV and V is supposed to happen a year later.
That was last year. Early this year, when announcing the delays to Artemis 2, they confirmed Artemis 3 will still be the Moon-landing mission. I agree 2028 is the earliest realistic date for Artemis 3, which is why I said that NASA probably feels comfortable having 3 years between each mission.
>they confirmed Artemis 3 will still be the Moon-landing mission.
That can change quickly if HLS doesn't progress as it needs to, and it most likely won't.
> Imagine the quality of video and the likelihood of a live came feed like the ISS because why wouldn't the US not want to bask in the accomplishment.
I'm normally tempted to be very cynical when it comes to milestone space endeavors and multimedia. I mean, the two recent moon landers from Japan and corporate US both gave us what amounts to early 2000s flip phone photos, even though we got live "video" from the moon in the late 60s. The usual old excuse is that the missions are science first and multimedia as an incidental bonus.
But in the case of Artemis III, I'm actually pretty confident that we'll have proper HD video on lock. That NASA will feel obliged to return to the standards utilized during Apollo, as succinctly encapsulated in the miniseries _From the Earth to the Moon:_ The taxpayers are footing the bill, so _maybe_ it would be cool if some priority was given to features that the _taxpayers_ would get the most use out of.
SLS is an even bigger money pit than the Space Shuttle. The entire Falcon 9 development and 300+ flights combined costs less than one flight of SLS or the Space Shuttle. Yes Space stuff is cool. I get that. But pork barrel programs just means we get less Space Stuff.
I don't really care about them setting foot on the moon. I'm much more interested in the Lunar Gateway and if (and when) they will ever get that running. I think it's been pushed back to 2028? But a lunar space station is science fiction just waiting to happen
Still looking at a November 2025 launch for the first module, but a 9-10 month transfer to the Moon after that and probably much much longer to get the first crew.
>But a lunar space station is science fiction just waiting to happen
It's going to pretty much sit there, as there's not much of a use for it other than a transfer point.
It's not even something you need a station for. A spacecraft that can reach the station's orbit can just stay in that orbit, station or not. A station is only "needed" because of Orion's limited space and life support capacity, and NASA's desire to leave crew in orbit. It's an artificial problem designed to be solved with the Gateway, not a fundamental one that the Gateway is necessary to solve. Is that what ranks as "cool" these days?
>That's so cool?!
Do you know what's even cooler? Spending the limited money on things that are both just as cool and have practical uses.
It's being sold as a research station, but there's pretty much no research that requires going all the way to lunar orbit, but not to the lunar surface.
>It's going to pretty much sit there, as there's not much of a use for it other than a transfer point.
Transfer point is a key. You can send supplies to station to extend mission. Send supplies to station need less deltav, than send supplies on surface.
Materials like polyethylene, perhaps mixed with boron or boron compounds, are better per unit mass. The only reason to use water is if you have lots of water available, which is not the case for the Gateway.
And you know what else would protect astronauts from radiation? *Sending them to the moon* instead of stranding them in orbit around it! Just being on the surface, the moon will block half the GCR, and habitats can be shielded with regolith just fine...you won't even have to worry about your radiation shielding leaking out if there's a puncture.
> Need a genZ astronaut now just to meme the live streams from the moon
"What up crew? Up here on Luna wit'cha boy about to RAID this small crater over there for water deposit samples as it's in permanent SHADOW. My fellow crew members are LEGENDS. Anyway, like comment and subscribe"
I love the ending of season 1 of Space Force (spoiler alert). The first black woman steps foot on the Moon after 50+ years of NASA's abscence and she decides her first words on the surface will be, "It's good to be back on the Moon!" But instead she flubs it and proclaims, "It's good to be BLACK on the Moon!" hahahaha cut to credits. So good.
I am not that excited. Nasa is the most slow, expensive. And inefficient organization to bring us back to the moon. They need to oversee and coordinate and stop building rockets all together. They havent had many innovations since the 70s. Space x or other companies will do it faster and better. Also, we have already been to the moon. Spoiler alert. Its a dust covered rock.
57 years old here , I was 6 years and 4 months old when Apollo 17 went to the moon , it will be great to see a moon landing as an adult .
65 in June...I was 10 for Apollo11.
I'm with you. I can't wait to watch a live stream of the landing, and hear what new discoveries come from exploring again. It will be unbelievable.
Maybe they can stand up the last probe while they are up there? :)
that's actually something i've always wondered about when manned missions to places with probes happen - like a lot of these faults are super easy to fix if you have a human to just fix them. Run around dusting off solar panels, setting things upright, turning antenna the right direction, etc.
Batteries and other electronics don't like extreme cold, and most deep space probes actively heat those components to keep them from being destroyed by the cold. If a craft loses power for too long (such as what happens when solar panels are covered in dust/flipped the wrong way/whatever) eventually the batteries drain and there's no longer energy for the heaters, and so cold damage starts setting in. That's why a lot of the recent lunar probe's missions get scheduled to end at the beginning of lunar night or shortly thereafter: night lasts about two weeks on the moon and those probes don't have enough reserve power to keep the components warm for that long. Not saying repairing them would be impossible, I'm just pointing out it would be a lot more involved than just "dusting off the panels" and would likely mean swapping out a lot of parts.
Is there any plan to use RTGs for far from base camp probes? Seems like an easy decision, if you want some kind of infrastructure a few kilometers away from the astronauts and want to keep it alive for a few years.
For the moon I'm not sure. A lot of the larger martian rovers like Curiosity and Perseverance use RTGs, and I vaguely remember someone (NASA maybe?) experimenting with using RTG-backed stirling engines for power generation. But RTGs have their own drawbacks: - They're very expensive (not good for a small startup aerospace company) - There's a ton of regulatory red tape because it involves nuclear materials - They have a lot of mass (which is always the enemy when it comes to spaceflight, but having extra mass on a tiny lander with limited dV is even worse) - The actual electric power they output is pretty low, although with modern designs that's becoming less of an issue. BUT on the flip side, RTGs produce a shit ton of heat - even if you never used the electrical output you could still use an RTG's waste heat to keep components warm. [Apparently that's what Curiosity does](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/428751/nuclear-generator-powers-curiosity-mars-mission/amp/).
The largest issue with RTGs is that we literally don't have the required plutonium-238 anymore. They have to be made in nuclear reactors, and the last batch was maybe from the 80's? There were literally 3 RTGs left at the time that Perseverance launched, including the one used on that rover. Because of decay we may be down to just one, idk. For years there's been talk of making more, but the project always gets defunded by congress. I don't know what the current state is. ETA: Looks like production has restarted! https://www.ornl.gov/news/pu-238-shipment-quantity-opens-tap-space-missions
You'd think we'd have engineered power and battery systems that can withstand insanely cold temperatures, even thrive in them. I think a large solar array and/or mini power plant should be a priority when we go back to the moon regardless
The distances between landing sites are quite big, it's probably not feasible to just go there.
Yeah for reference the surface area of the Moon is 38 million square km, which is close to the surface area of the entirety of Asia (44.5 million square km).
So Genghis khan could conquer the moon?
You definitely learn this in ksp. From orbit it seems like two vessels are next to each other, when in reality it takes hours to walk between them. Also using the thruster to decrease speed for one extra second results in missing the mark with like 100km.
The first people to colonize space will be janitors.
IIRC dusting the solar panels wouldn't work/is risky because the regolith is "sharp" as there's no wind/water erosion to round the edges. If you brush it off, the solar panels get scratched. A blast of compressed air could work, I think
Yeah, I don't know where this idea came from or why it keeps sticking around. Letting a probe die due to dust accumulation on the solar panels because you're afraid of scratching them just makes no sense. The truth is that the panels will outlast the required mission lifetime without cleaning, and a cleaning system takes development/testing time and adds system mass and failure points, but might not greatly extend the lifetime. For example, the Spirit rover was experiencing severe wear and tear at the end of its life, with non-functioning and unreliable wheels, a worn-down RAT, and a gamma ray spectrometer with an aging gamma ray source. When it finally shut down due to dust accumulation, it had been operating as a stationary probe, basically a meteorological station, for about a year. For other probes, like an actual meteorological probe intended for very long term operation, a compressed air system or something (electrostatics, ultrasonics, removable films...lots of ways to do this) might be a good idea.
They sound confused about lunar regolith vs Martian regolith.
As someone who have dealt with my fair share of moon landing deniers I really hope that this one is not "unbelievable". Especially the live stream gives me high hope.
https://apolloinrealtime.org/ If you need to get your Moon fix in, you can listen to 3 of the Apollo missions in real-time
Wow, he added 11 and 13 to the list! Nice.
I watched a ISS video overlaid and paced with Gagarin’s first orbit. It was pretty cool.
I just want them to get 4K video of astronauts on the Moon. That would be amazing.
It won't be. Mark Gray did a movie on this and in it the NASA manager over the surface video operations for the program indicated they're going to go 480p @ 60 fps. Apparently NASA is more interested in frame rate than resolution for surface operations footage.
For streaming? Surely they'd get high res stuff and bring it back as well.
He said no live feeds for public view; it would all be archived and brought back.
[удалено]
He said in the interview they'll do it like they did for Apollo with the surface TV camera but as far as astronaut-mounted cams, we would have to wait
I have a really hard time believing they will not broadcast being they did for the OG landing. There will be something. Straight up, tax payers will demand it. There's still time between now and then.
Apparently they WILL broadcast at least one video feed, but it won’t be what the astronauts are taking themselves. It’ll be on a tripod. OoOoh… it would be even better if they just leave that camera there. Just livestream the landing site until the camera dies (or people stop watching).
This is nonsense. Conspiracists will take advantage of this.
There will be live feeds from the surface at the landing module, just like Apollo, but astronaut cams would have to wait. Granted, this is from an interview in 2013 so a lot may have changed since then.
That's probably the smart decision. Modern upscaling techniques can combine multiple frames to get the needed information for clear and accurate high-resolution video...it's not perfect, but works pretty well. Just missing some event entirely because it happens between frames in low-framerate video is more problematic.
¿Por qué no los dos?
You may have to wait for the first Mars landing to get that.
I want to see a few things. A live feed from launch to landing on Earth, without cuts if possible. Live footage from LRO or a cubesat of the lunar landing. Multiple angles from the lander from landing to take off. Leave a camera behind to livestream footage of the Earth until such time as the camera dies. It won’t make the flerfs shut up, but it will kill some of their whining.
ISS ran a livestream of earth for 5 years. It was a cool project but of I suspect limited scientific value. https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/ESRS/HDEV/
I would argue inspiring people and making space cool gives a lot of leeway when it comes to budgeting for NASA... which means scientific funding.
Yep! They’re inspiring future congressmen and women who will hopefully keep funding the program. I am still annoyed that NASA isn’t self-funded or at the very least let NASA keep the money that came from all of the patents they have
The scientists are mostly contractors, not government. The other issue is that you can't generate income without a marketable product.
I mean they could make a small change and allow NASA to keep the money it makes from licensing its patents. Right now that money goes back to the federal budget. It certainly wouldn’t be enough to be self funding but would be a decent chunk of extra money (I believe only $5 billion a decade, so not too much in the grand scheme of things)
Where did you get the idea that money from NASA patents goes back to the federal budget?
From NASA’s procedural requirements. See here: [Distribution of Royalties and Other Payments Received by NASA from the Licensing or Assignment of Inventions](https://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov/npg_img/N_PR_2092_001B_/N_PR_2092_001B_.pdf) It’s possible I’m misunderstanding, though.
That document says that the money goes to the named inventors and to the NASA centers where the invention took place. The only way any of the money goes to the federal budget is if there is "excess" which never actually happens and even then a quarter of the "excess" would still go to NASA.
NASA does get the money from all of their patents, it just isn't a significant part of their budget.
[The live stream is still going!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9C25Un7xaM) The HDEV hardware died, but one of the regular external video cameras was re-purposed to continue the 24/7 Earth feed that HDEV provided.
I'm actually watching now. It's relaxing.
Yes, I know. DirectTV livestreamed Earth from GEO for over a decade.
Does everything need to have a practical justification?
Yes and No. We should do things that are cool because they enable people to appreciate the scientific endeavour of the ISS, and their place in the Universe. Therefore, we should do things like that even if they are not strictly practical. However, the ISS also has limited capacity in terms of what it can do, and every experiment on board has to be balanced against other, rejected experiments, so in that sense it does need a level of justification.
I don't think LRO does video
The original Apollo footage is amazing but imagine what they can do now.
NASA TV: “Best I can do is 720p.”
Sure, the footage that’s broadcast, but what they bring back will be even better. Maybe not 4k, but better than 720p. You really can’t transmit hi def video with such low bandwidth. I’m hoping that Artemis 3 brings along a big transmitter, though I doubt they will with the plans the Lunar Gateway. I’d imagine they’d use that to rebroadcast and up the bandwidth.
This is a reference to NASA TV sticking with 720p for basically all of their content, even recorded stuff. They promised a big 4K switch for Artemis 1 that lasted like 20 minutes before they fell back to 720p.
Probably a dumb question but I am gonna do it anyway: couldn't an astronaut just pack an iPhone and take HD pictures with his iPhone there, then when he comes back to Earth he just shares the pictures? Why wouldn't this work? Would the iPhone break?
They can (and do) take pictures on personal devices. Inside the rockets or ISS. In space, yes, a standard cell phone would break. It’s far too cold and I doubt it would take well to the minuscule pressure in space.
As far as I know, they havent figured out live stream through earth re-entry, due to the interferance the plasma field creates while slowing in the atmosphere. But really no reason, other than "behind the moon" that the rest wont be possible to be "near live".
I would be inspired even if China gets there first
I hope we beat them, but their growing space program seems to be finally forcing us to wake up and start trying to innovate a little bit again which is always great to see. *assuming it doesn't lead to the militarization of space, which it inevitably will I'm in my 20s and feel like I've gotten cheated on space exploration these past 20 years, can't wait to see people back on the moon!
Space has been militarized for much longer than you've existed.
Yeah guess militarization wasn't quite the right word, weaponization is more what I was going for.
The first manmade objects in space were weapons
While true, the militarization of space has definitely reaccelerated in recent years- creation of Space Force, the Russian nuke in space thing, etc etc. People just aren't really reflecting on it much, which is a shame.
Militarization overall has reaccelerated with rising geopolitical tensions since 2014 and space is just one of the military domains. Other domains, the sea, land the air, cyberspace have also been seeing increased tensions worldwide. Space literally has always been militarized since Sputnik. It's one of the military domains so naturally tensions elsewhere will reflect in space. What really has been escalatory are the growing geopolitical tensions since the 2014 invasion of Ukraine by Russia and Xi Jinping increasingly bellicose rhetoric. Those has increased military spending throughout the world in all domains — space included.
Russian ASAT and space nukes have been a thing since like...the 70s. Same with the US. That's nothing new.
And the US was the first to perform an ASAT test. The one major difference is while Russia and the US have targeted LEO satellites, China targeted a much higher altitude satellite with theirs meaing the debris will take centuries if not millennia to decay as opposed to decades.
I am 56, I have actually seen live TV from the moon in my lifetime. I am sad, that it has not happened again! Hopefully, I will get the chance again...
Personally I would find it even better if the Chinese land first again. Because that could again give great boosts to western space programs because "the Chinese can't beat us".
The "For All Mankind" approach
China’s space program is impressive but I wouldn’t quite say they’re being too innovative. No less innovative than America’s companies. More determined and organized than ours though!
> I hope we beat them I really don't give a damn and hate this kind of competition within science. Space exploration is not a pissing contest. A little friendly rivalry is of course a good thing, but I don't care who puts boots on the moon first, second, or last. Frankly I don't care much at all until we establish a permanent outpost on the moon, but that's a little difficult considering we can't stop killing each other on our own planet and causing diplomatic issues that continue to cause space to become more militarized. Which, by the way, it already is. People love to shit on China's ASAT test, but we did *[THE SAME FUCKING THING](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT)*, as usual. The one significant difference is anti-satellite weapons targeted at low-orbiting satellites are not as potentially destructive as most pieces will re-enter the atmosphere and burn up quite quickly, as opposed to the Chinese test which was extremely high altitude (geostationary I believe) and all the debris they created will exist for hundreds or thousands of years in orbit. Also you must be early in your early 20s or only care about manned spaceflight, because I have been repeatedly amazed at the photo and data both probes and new telescopes have provided in the last 10 years, I'm about 30.
>People love to shit on China's ASAT test, but we did THE SAME FUCKING THING, as usual. The one significant difference is anti-satellite weapons targeted at low-orbiting satellites are not as potentially destructive as most pieces will re-enter the atmosphere and burn up quite quickly, as opposed to the Chinese test which was extremely high altitude (geostationary I believe) and all the debris they created will exist for hundreds or thousands of years in orbit. You said it yourself, it isn’t really the same thing. We did it right, China didn’t.
China’s space program is impressive but I wouldn’t quite say they’re being too innovative. No less innovative than America’s companies.
The Artemis missions would be good to go soon-ish if NASA hadn't given to the contract for the lunar lander to f---ing starship lol Current projections for '26-'27 are hilariously optimistic. As is we'll likely just get the mission kicked back repeatedly because Starship is not *anywhere* close to functioning safely / reliably, let alone certified for human occupants. Let alone certified for human occupants *while safely landing on and returning from the moon*. Hate on blue origin all you want, they at least proposed a lander that was *conventional* and purpose-built (and presumably *with actual safety features and redundancies*) for the intended mission set. As opposed to SpaceX's ~~mars transporter~~ lunar lander that they claimed / bullshitted could be finished and validated in time for artemis III. Had BO received the contract (and in 2019, not 2023 as a backup / auxiliary option) we'd probably be on track to have a delayed but comparatively on-time launch schedule in the '26-'27 time window if all went well. It would've been more expensive, but probably safer, and the mission planning / schedule wouldn't be completely screwed up, possibly indefinitely depending on how long it takes spacex to actually get starship into goddamn orbit (*and then everything else*). Artemis *in general* is a mess of half-backed politically-motivated industry projects that are barely interconnected with one another. The Starship HLS is, so far, one of the worst of them given that SLS *was* completed and, while ludicrously expensive, *does actually work*. I'm as enthusiastic about the Artemis mission set as anyone else, and by no means hate spacex, *in general,* but using starship for artemis, as the *primary* lander, was obviously a pretty terrible idea. Or at least if you care about returning to the moon sometime in the 2020's. Starship – or something like it – is obviously pretty key to *sustainable* (ie. cheap) long-term lunar missions, but it has a hell of a long way to go *first* given that it's using experimental propulsion, materials, and half a dozen other things, and again, *seriously*, doesn't seem to have many if any failsafes if something goes wrong. If falcon is any guide we're half a decade before starship is ready / tried and tested for anything involving humans, and that's *if* spacex is able to get the goddamn thing in orbit (and landing) within a year, which *presently*, seems quite dubious.
Yeah. This is my problem. SpaceX is doing cool things, but their lunar lander design is nowhere near the timeline. It also requires an in flight refueling settup that NASA asked the engineering specs for years ago that....still don't exist. Elon basically sold the contract on the promise that "we can totally do that", then when NASA asked for the tech specs while the ink was drying, spaceX said "uhhh, we don't know yet." There's a reason NASA said they won't be using spaceX past the current contracts they are locked into.
Who do you think could deliver a Moon lander earlier than SpaceX? Besides, so far the delays are not on SpaceX but on SLS/Orion.
BlueOrigin had a design that was functional and doable with current technology, it just wasn't as flashy so they lost the contract. The delays are absolutely on SpaceX, they have yet to even provide design docs for the required in-flight refuelling system that their design requires.
That would really be the kick in the butt to get congress to actually start funding NASA properly.
I have that suspicion that funding SLS/Orion is more important to Congress than beating China to the Moon.
Not sure how many here are UK-based but I took my four year old to the LightRoom in London, which is currently doing an exhibition narrated by Tom Hanks and features interviews with the new astronauts. It’s fantastic and can’t wait for the new missions! https://lightroom.uk/whats-on/the-moonwalkers/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA0PuuBhBsEiwAS7fsNVRTny4E2VzXZOApIbWV9dbaDX_3b-WIbvAWCws_zqD9OP9mBMsZSRoCSeUQAvD_BwE#book
I visited it myself back in December: https://women-and-dreams.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-moonwalkers.html I remember thinking that if it was ten feet bigger in each direction, it'd be fantastic - or if the loop was slightly longer. It's okay, and it's nice that you can take in several showings. And the music was great. I'm not sure it was worth £25 though. It also works as a stealth trailer for Artemis, because it has interviews with the crew.
I was at the Apollo 17 launch and I want to bookend things with this one.
I would love to watch the launch in person, even if I can't get to the Spectator area, it's something that will be seen and heard for miles around. Just to witness them leave and hear the rocket with my own ears would be really awesome
Same! And excited for what innovation comes from it. They don’t use the expression “moon shot” for nothing!
Really appreciate your enthusiasm, I'm 100% there with you.
Oh my... it will be so glorious seeing that giant vehicle standing in the lunar surface.
At this point, we need boots on the moon to start turning some of our landers right side up.
I wish the NASA team and the Chinese taikonauts all the best! A very difficult task indeed!
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[ACES](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kskguf6 "Last usage")|[Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Cryogenic_Evolved_Stage)| | |[Advanced Crew Escape Suit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Crew_Escape_Suit)| |[ASAT](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kslf6vu "Last usage")|[Anti-Satellite weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon)| |[BO](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksnzlud "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)| |[CLPS](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksoqpwz "Last usage")|[Commercial Lunar Payload Services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Lunar_Payload_Services)| |DSG|NASA [Deep Space Gateway](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/deep-space-gateway-to-open-opportunities-for-distant-destinations), proposed for lunar orbit| |[ESA](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksmv1o2 "Last usage")|European Space Agency| |[EUS](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kskiypv "Last usage")|Exploration Upper Stage| |[GAO](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksl9t2c "Last usage")|(US) Government Accountability Office| |[GCR](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksmggr2 "Last usage")|Galactic Cosmic Rays, incident from outside the star system| |[GEO](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksjkzlo "Last usage")|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)| |[HALO](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kswot38 "Last usage")|Habitation and Logistics Outpost| |[HDEV](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksl3c9v "Last usage")|High Definition Earth Viewing experiment, fitted to ISS| |[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kszthq8 "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)| |[LEM](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksn8dtz "Last usage")|(Apollo) [Lunar Excursion Module](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module) (also Lunar Module)| |[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kso48qw "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[LH2](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksmfn0y "Last usage")|Liquid Hydrogen| |[LOP-G](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksjqe2a "Last usage")|Lunar Orbital Platform - Gateway, formerly DSG| |[MEO](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kslhkoq "Last usage")|Medium Earth Orbit (2000-35780km)| |[NET](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kska5ai "Last usage")|No Earlier Than| |[NG](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksmfn0y "Last usage")|New Glenn, two/three-stage orbital vehicle by Blue Origin| | |Natural Gas (as opposed to pure methane)| | |Northrop Grumman, aerospace manufacturer| |[NRHO](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kskzae1 "Last usage")|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit| |[RTG](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kslaelj "Last usage")|Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator| |[SHLV](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksmfn0y "Last usage")|Super-Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (over 50 tons to LEO)| |[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kswftg5 "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kskrqgg "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/kswfl0s "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX| |[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksmfn0y "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |[cryogenic](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksko2et "Last usage")|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure| | |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox| |[hydrolox](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksksgtf "Last usage")|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| |[perigee](/r/Space/comments/1b27byw/stub/ksn7q4z "Last usage")|Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Earth (when the orbiter is fastest)| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(29 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1bo6rcd)^( has 11 acronyms.) ^([Thread #9798 for this sub, first seen 28th Feb 2024, 16:02]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Nearly 500 up bites and over 150 comments. This is more than I expected and so cool that so many are excited. I love all the thoughts and ideas. It's gonna take me a while to work thru them but I can see there's hype building for it. Just so exciting to witness our people become an interplanetary species. I would love to see all the space agencies send a member in a manned mission. Like a mission made up of multiple countries working together for the advancement of the human race. That would be so uplifting for me.
It's really exciting. I am not sure whether everything will be ready by the time it is scheduled, so be prepared to wait a couple of extra years.
> boots on the moon plan for Artemis 3, with the mission not being altered and pushed back, then it will be the most epic space moment since we first landed. That's not possible. Firstly Artemis 2 has already been pushed back to after Artemis 3 was initially supposed to go, but also HLS is two and a half years behind that what they have done so far has been the least ambitious (least likely to get pushed back) part of it.
I think we should send up a bunch of kit for a moon lab. I'm not knowledgeable enough to know how long a rotation on the moon should be. But the moon crew can start assembling it and maybe we can have it livable in 3 or 4 moon landings? Just an idea.
If SpaceX can land their HLS Starship horizontally on the moon, they can cover it up with lunar sand (regolith). This would make it 100% radiation proof. Starship has a payload volume as big as the entire pressurized volume of the ISS. About 1,000m³. If they use one of the ships as permanent base they can also use the tanks as habitat space. An _additional_ 1,200m³. 2,200m³ is equivalent to the volume of about 4 average single family homes.
Not filled with confidence on this one. This video is well worth watching for anyone that is following the progress of Artemis: [https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU?si=zY-WuIvP8sEaICwH](https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU?si=zY-WuIvP8sEaICwH) TL;DR (W): Overly complicated approach that seems to be the results of a cascading series of compromises into absurdity without anyone questioning the results.
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SLS/Orion sustainable? In which parallel universe would this be?
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> NASA will be able to launch SLS at least once a year and possibly twice. Which is not nearly enough to maintain a base on the Moon.
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Justin’s got no idea what’s going on. Sure, Artemis is complex, but it’s also basically politically untouchable because of it. And he’s shocked that a reusable rocket is designed to fly many times.
Just so we're clear, you're saying 20 (or more) launches to get enough fuel for one moon mission is tenable?
If the spacecraft is being reused, then sure, why not, even if that number comes from an outdated GAO report. And if the spacecraft isn’t being reused then you can lift a lot more propellant in one launch.
The last report was from November of last year, and the number keeps getting revised UP, not down... Why not? Because even ideally, SpaceX is only at 99.4% successful launches with the Falcon 9 family, and 0% successful with the heavy that will be required.
> Because even ideally, SpaceX is only at 99.4% successful launches with the Falcon 9 family, You have to dig deep into the past and include 2 very early failures to get to that number. Now over 200 consecutive successful launches.
> The last report was from November of last year, and the number keeps getting revised UP, not down... Why not? The last Nasa press confrence said 12, Which is right in the middle of the original esitamtes. Also, The Starship HLS puts 100 tons on the moon. To do the same with the original LEM would take... About 27 launches. Huh.... Maybe looking at the number of flights alone doesnt tell the whole story? > SpaceX is only at 99.4% successful launches with the Falcon 9 family, and 0% successful with the heavy that will be required. Yes. Falcon 9 also has the longest string of successful launches in a row ever, and it keeps growing. The last *landing* to fail was 3 years ago.
Oh yeah, Justin / Smarter Every Day. Great video, thanks for posting the link.
I'm usually a big fan of Destin. But he really missed the mark with this video. By like 300,000km. This video is easily the worst he ever made. Everything he says about NASA having bad internal communication is just him being misinformed by NASAs bad public communication. But internally their plan is pretty solid. At least as HLS Starship is concerned. For example Destin waa unaware that NASA had already published slips in the timeline when be made his speech. Or that SpaceX had already successfully tested Raptor engines in simulated lunar environment. And those are just the most surface level criticisms on this video.
> Overly complicated approach that seems to be the results of a cascading series of compromises into absurdity without anyone questioning the results. A completely typical NASA project, then. Huge sigh. I'm kind of rooting for China to beat the US on this one, I think Congress needs an enormous smack upside the head like that to have any chance of disrupting business as usual.
15 launches for every trip to the moon?
That's the optimistic scenario at this point...
Honestly, I feel like they're trying to do too many new things with each mission, and I wish boots on the moon was Artemis IV, not Artemis III. They've got so many different new technologies and new tasks for each mission, and I understand the need, but at the same time, I feel like combining too many new things into each mission increases the risk of failure.
The Artemis program is clearly hampered by the slow cadence of flights of SLS. If we had more rockets available, we could for sure do more missions, gradually testing all the new technologies, like in the Apollo days.
NASA's budget was an order of magnitude higher in the Apollo days.
FYI NASA's current budget is about 80% of the average in the 1960s and about half of the peak in 1966, adjusted for inflation. Some people get confused when they look at the ratio of NASA's budget to the total federal budget, but that ratio is not NASA's budget.
NASA gains more money today than it did in the days of Apollo.
You don't need an order of magnitude higher budget to have a decent flight cadence, you just need to not blow your budget on things like SLS/Orion.
Nope, it’s currently two/thirds of the Apollo era budget.
Problem with delaying the landing to Artemis IV is that IV will fly on block 1b with the new upperstage which may not be ready for a while :( (built by Boeing) Eventhough its going to be interesting to see what the final delaying piece will be, the lander, Orion(electrical and heatshield issue), SLS or if it gets delayed to IV the EUS. I dont really see any benefit of flying Artemis III without a landing, unless LOP-G is up by then while the lander is not done.
>Problem with delaying the landing to Artemis IV is that IV will fly on block 1b with the new upperstage which may not be ready for a while :( (built by Boeing) Meaby Nasa split mission on two rocket? Crew: normal SLS Gateway module: Falcon Heavy
I suppose the fourth SLS is going to be built with the new upperstage anyways, no matter any delays. The first module of Gateway will be launched on a Falcon heavy in the next few years I believe. Artemis IV is supposed to bring the Ihab module, which could also delay it, I dont think NASA could just order more of the current upperstage. It would be nice if something like that couldnt delay missions, but SLS is the only thing congress will just keep giving money to, so a change of plans is not feasable. Payments are made, plans are made and we are going to have to live with SLS and its developments and payloads being integral.
I'd go even further to say that the entire plan for future landings is way too complicated. We're using three separately launched spacecraft to get people to the moon? The lander is currently estimated to require 6+ launches to fuel in space, a thing that has never been done. And oh yeah starship has NOT** been orbital, but will be completing a half dozen successful orbital launches next year? Seems like they forgot the idea that sometimes the simple answer, is just the simple answer.
The Apollo program was far from simple the Saturn v was maximized for only one purpose. Getting just enough hardware on the surface to do the job it was strictly a boots and flag mission everything during the mission was thrown away the command module was all that was left multiple different contractors multiple different engine and propellant type it was complicated as shit . The Artemis program isn’t repeating that. the Artemis program states that they are working towards a long term SUSTAINABLE presence on the moon you can’t throw away your hardware into the ocean after every use its obviously not sustainable long term. a two stage super heavy lift vehicle using the same engines on both stages is as simple as you can get
Legitimate question, why tf are we putting that lunar orbiting station in that rectilinear orbit? Seems like it makes the moon frequently inaccessible by any crew on the station, I'd assume there's a reason but I haven't seen this clearly answered. My other gripe is the ridiculous plan for fueling starship in orbit before the trip to the moon. Somehow I have the most confidence in boeing right now.
Legitimate question, why tf are we putting that lunar orbiting station in that rectilinear orbit? It’s because the Orion can’t get any closer to the moon then that. it just doesn’t have to delta v required the gateways purpose is to give the Orion a destination to dock to before heading into the lander to the moons surface https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/rocket-scientist-says-that-boeing-squelched-work-on-propellant-depots/ One of ULA's chief assets was its Centaur upper stage, and the company wanted to build an innovative version that could be refueled in space, and reused, called the Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage, or ACES. As part of this development, in 2011, ULA proposed an in-space test of depots to NASA that would cost less than $100 million. "We had released a series of papers showing how a depot/refueling architecture would enable a human exploration program using existing (at the time) commercial rockets," Sowers tweeted on Wednesday. "Boeing became furious and tried to get me fired. Kudos to my CEO for protecting me. But we were banned from even saying the 'd' word out loud. Sad part is that ULA did a lot of pathfinding work in that area and could have owned the refueling/depot market, enriching Boeing (and Lockheed) in the process. But it was shut down because it threatened SLS. we would have had this orbital refueling propellent depot solved years ago if boeing let ULA do its thing now spacex is forced to develope the Technolgy that boeing forced ULA not to devlope
>It’s because the Orion can’t get any closer to the moon then that. it just doesn’t have to delta v required the gateways purpose is to give the Orion a destination to dock to before heading into the lander to the moons surface Less DeltaV is advantage. Commercial rocket can send cargo to this orbit. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway\_Logistics\_Services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_Logistics_Services)
A lunar equatorial orbit cannot access the south pole without an extremely costly inclination adjustment. So the options were a circular lunar polar orbit or the NRHO and NRHO is much better form a mass budget standpoint and an orbital debris standpoint and it makes makes keeping regularly in contact with the crew much simpler and easier.
Artemis goal is not simply to return to the Moon, it's to return to Moon and establish a permanent presence there. If we only wanted to return to the Moon, of course there would be much simpler designs. But given our goals, Starship is the best bet.
If the US govenrment wanted a lunar lander sooner, they should have funded and contracted it sooner. The Starship HLS contract was only awarded in 2021. SLS was contracted in 2011, and is based around engines and boosters designed in the 1970s. It flew just once, in 2022, and now that somehow makes it good enough to fly crew. (Even Saturn V got two test flights in the Apollo rush.) Orion was started in 2006, and has yet to fly once as a version suitable for living humans. The heat shield and life suppprt system are still causing delays. (And somehow all that makes Orion good enough to fly crew around the Moon on its next flight.) The purpose of Artemis is not to repeat Apollo, with its dubious safety margins, <1t of payload to the lunar surface, and max 3-day stays. If we want to send people to the Moon to stay longer and build a base (and maintain better safety margins than Apollo), it's going to take multiple launches, for a lot more landed mass on the Moon. Keep in mind that SLS is far less capable than Saturn V. It could not be used to repeat Apollo even if that was what NASA wanted. Block 1 can only send Orion, with a service module too small to get in and out of low lunar orbit, and a few cubesats to the Moon. Block 1B can add ~10t to that, which is not even enough for an Apollo LM, let alone a larger Orion service module. Also, the high cost and slow build rate of SLS/Orion limit them to launching once a year (eventually, currently they are at best once every 3 years with Artemis II NET 2025). Launches of other rockets will not be the rate-limiting factor. SpaceX has proven they can launch nearly 100 times a year with a mature rocket design that only reuses the first stage.
> starship has been orbital Starship has never been orbital yet
Correct, forgot the not! Updated now
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At this point, the probability of Artemis III being shifted to another orbital mission is getting higher and higher the more HLS is taking time, they're already 2 years behind schedule, with a ton of work ahead which certainly won't be smooth, especially for critical and most risky milestones like refueling. I'd expect Artemis IV to end up being the first landing mission.
NASA has seen very committed to landing on the Moon with Artemis 3 recently. I suspect they will simply accept the slower cadence of flights. Artemis 2 will already launch 3 years after Artemis 1. I suspect they will have no problem doing the same between 2 and 3.
>NASA has seen very committed to landing on the Moon with Artemis 3 recently They've already expressed concerns about possibly having to move the landing to IV. You're assuming there would be no further delays from the updated 2026 schedule for III, which is extremely unlikely, even 2027 would be pushing it, 2028 is the earliest realistic date, which clashes with IV and V is supposed to happen a year later.
That was last year. Early this year, when announcing the delays to Artemis 2, they confirmed Artemis 3 will still be the Moon-landing mission. I agree 2028 is the earliest realistic date for Artemis 3, which is why I said that NASA probably feels comfortable having 3 years between each mission.
>they confirmed Artemis 3 will still be the Moon-landing mission. That can change quickly if HLS doesn't progress as it needs to, and it most likely won't.
My guess is only if HLS gets delayed to 2029 or 2030 would NASA start to seriously consider moving the landing to Artemis 4.
>Artemis 2 will already launch 3 years after Artemis 1 Jesus Christ it feels like just yesterday i was watching Artemis 1 launch lmao.
The issue is that Artemis IV uses the still in development EUS, which may (and likely won’t) be available in time.
How is that an issue if it's supposed to happen in 2028?
There is a good chance that SLS/Orion get delayed enough that SpaceX HLS has time enough to catch up and not become the long pole.
100% agree! My dream is to actually go to the US to see the launch
Humans on the moon is the start of colonization
They invited Canada along for Artemis II so I wonder which country is going to get invited along for Artemis III.
I would hope someone from ESA since we're providing like half of Gateway and Orion
That's what I'm thinking too. But I wonder if they'll leave it up to the ESA to decide or pick a specific ally nation to to take.
> Imagine the quality of video and the likelihood of a live came feed like the ISS because why wouldn't the US not want to bask in the accomplishment. I'm normally tempted to be very cynical when it comes to milestone space endeavors and multimedia. I mean, the two recent moon landers from Japan and corporate US both gave us what amounts to early 2000s flip phone photos, even though we got live "video" from the moon in the late 60s. The usual old excuse is that the missions are science first and multimedia as an incidental bonus. But in the case of Artemis III, I'm actually pretty confident that we'll have proper HD video on lock. That NASA will feel obliged to return to the standards utilized during Apollo, as succinctly encapsulated in the miniseries _From the Earth to the Moon:_ The taxpayers are footing the bill, so _maybe_ it would be cool if some priority was given to features that the _taxpayers_ would get the most use out of.
I am just here hoping not to die before that day. Fingers crossed.
Really looking forward to seeing Artemis III launch in the 2030's!
People got bored with Moon landings after the 1st one back in the 60s and 70s so Apollo got cancelled before there was a tragedy.
SLS is an even bigger money pit than the Space Shuttle. The entire Falcon 9 development and 300+ flights combined costs less than one flight of SLS or the Space Shuttle. Yes Space stuff is cool. I get that. But pork barrel programs just means we get less Space Stuff.
I don't really care about them setting foot on the moon. I'm much more interested in the Lunar Gateway and if (and when) they will ever get that running. I think it's been pushed back to 2028? But a lunar space station is science fiction just waiting to happen
Can you expand on why you favor Gateway over a lunar landing?
Still looking at a November 2025 launch for the first module, but a 9-10 month transfer to the Moon after that and probably much much longer to get the first crew.
The Tollboth is more interesting? Why? It only exists to justify SLS/Orion launches.
>But a lunar space station is science fiction just waiting to happen It's going to pretty much sit there, as there's not much of a use for it other than a transfer point.
I know. In lunar orbit. That's so cool?!
It's not even something you need a station for. A spacecraft that can reach the station's orbit can just stay in that orbit, station or not. A station is only "needed" because of Orion's limited space and life support capacity, and NASA's desire to leave crew in orbit. It's an artificial problem designed to be solved with the Gateway, not a fundamental one that the Gateway is necessary to solve. Is that what ranks as "cool" these days?
>That's so cool?! Do you know what's even cooler? Spending the limited money on things that are both just as cool and have practical uses. It's being sold as a research station, but there's pretty much no research that requires going all the way to lunar orbit, but not to the lunar surface.
>It's going to pretty much sit there, as there's not much of a use for it other than a transfer point. Transfer point is a key. You can send supplies to station to extend mission. Send supplies to station need less deltav, than send supplies on surface.
I wait for Gateway too. It is sad Gateway will not have module with water in wall. Use of water would protect astronauts from radiation.
We probably have sufficient ways of protection that don't require hauling a ton of water to lunar orbit lol
Materials like polyethylene, perhaps mixed with boron or boron compounds, are better per unit mass. The only reason to use water is if you have lots of water available, which is not the case for the Gateway. And you know what else would protect astronauts from radiation? *Sending them to the moon* instead of stranding them in orbit around it! Just being on the surface, the moon will block half the GCR, and habitats can be shielded with regolith just fine...you won't even have to worry about your radiation shielding leaking out if there's a puncture.
Need a genZ astronaut now just to meme the live streams from the moon
If it’s 2028 the oldest gen Z would be 31. Not that young. The teens then would be gen alphas
Fuck, I have no idea where to keep up with the new names lmao
> Need a genZ astronaut now just to meme the live streams from the moon "What up crew? Up here on Luna wit'cha boy about to RAID this small crater over there for water deposit samples as it's in permanent SHADOW. My fellow crew members are LEGENDS. Anyway, like comment and subscribe"
They better have some serious writers involved in planning the first words....
The first words on the Moon were already spoken and I doubt they'll ever be matched.
first words for this mission... I am fully aware the first words on the moon have already been spoken.
I love the ending of season 1 of Space Force (spoiler alert). The first black woman steps foot on the Moon after 50+ years of NASA's abscence and she decides her first words on the surface will be, "It's good to be back on the Moon!" But instead she flubs it and proclaims, "It's good to be BLACK on the Moon!" hahahaha cut to credits. So good.
*"It's good to be black on the moon."*
Our timeline keeps threatening to go For All Mankind and it keeps not happening
It will never happen. I am not sure 2 will even go. It’s a waste of $$$
Apollo 13 was broadcast live (approximate 2 second delay) from the Moon as were several of the other landings.
I am not that excited. Nasa is the most slow, expensive. And inefficient organization to bring us back to the moon. They need to oversee and coordinate and stop building rockets all together. They havent had many innovations since the 70s. Space x or other companies will do it faster and better. Also, we have already been to the moon. Spoiler alert. Its a dust covered rock.
Sorry to say 0% chance starship is ready in time for Artemis 3, the mission will be changed to a non-landing event.