Artemis Stuff - up

[Kornee]

This superb demolition job on the Artemis mission by ThunderFoot is too good to let pass, not withstanding my revulsion over the pervading pro slaughter of Gazans attitude at SV:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxG0WAwwrGk
Go Elon! Go NASA! Go USA USA USA! Ha ha ha ha. How to progress backwards from more than half a century earlier. Easy done evidently.

[Secular Sanity]

Wow! That's not good.

[C C]

How many rockets is it going to take to fuel up that thing to get it to the moon? I've done the math or the simple version, which is that Starship needs about 1,200 tons of propellant to tank it up. And per launch it can launch about 100 tons to low earth orbit, if you believe their claims. So minimalistically, you're looking at like 12 refueling flights. I'm not joking.

Nothing really new. Three years ago, after Blue Origin lost the initial Moon contract to SpaceX, Jeff Bezos launched a campaign of in-depth criticism about Starship. Going over all the details about how overly complex, high-risk, and extravagant it was (including the fueling trips). He kept doggedly preaching and raising hell-fire about it until NASA finally awarded a second contract to BO circa a year ago.

It seems like not long ago, Yazata posted something about SpaceX designing yet larger versions of Starship.

Of course, NASA's non-reusable Space Launch System is an absurdly over-priced dinosaur compared to the commercial ventures.

Over the last two decades, Musk has been ridiculed or disparaged, in the beginning, for every enterprise he has taken up (including the regular SpaceX stuff that produced the astonishingly successful Falcon rockets). Neuralink appeared to be one endeavor that was finally biting off more than it could chew, but that one may even be showing signs of catching up and turning a curve.     

Bezos' Blue Origin wins NASA contract to build astronaut lunar lander
https://www.reuters.com/technology/space...023-05-19/

Blue Moon (lunar lander project)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Moon_(spacecraft)

[Kornee]

It's not just the fantastically inefficient logistics, and inherently iffy stability of such a slender ratio lander. As ThunderfOOt emphasizes repeatedly - WHY?
Pointing out that huge advances in robotics and AI make human exploration/colonization of the Moon or Mars or other planets redundant and vastly too risky and expensive as a present day option. So the real motivation from NASA/US gov (Elon's is clearly $$$$)? I like this commenter's take on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxG0WAww...rxJ4AaABAg

"Thunderf00t's mistake is assuming this is a solo pissing contest, or about science. The Chinese want to land humans on the moon by 2030, and build a moon station by 2035; and suddenly Nasa starts Artemis. This is an old-school Apollo-Era pissing contest, just against the Chinese. I'm just glad we get some space exploration and science out of it."

Quite so imo. Except - that last bit is overly cheery. To repeat ThunderfOOt - the science is now best done using inherently safer and much more cost effective rovers and such.
But - Gung Ho! To the stars!