Artemis Stuff

[Yazata]

Well. Orion is back on Earth after what appears to have been a flawless landing.

https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1601995737449263104

I've made some critical remarks about Artemis in the past, regarding its cost, delays and seeming lack of imagination. So in interests of fairness, I need to also say that I am hugely impressed by the total start-to-finish success of the Artemis 1 mission, the very first flights of these vehicles. Everyone in aerospace knows how hard it is to get this kind of success the very first time a new rocket flies.

The idea of flying astronauts on this the second time it flies, on another very similar lunar orbit mission which is the plan, no longer seems fanciful. If the vehicle behaves as well next time, it should be a big success.

(NASA photos)

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[Yazata]

Orion in San Diego with its red flotation bags still inflated. Lots of rather superficial reentry damage visible, but apparently nothing that would endanger astronauts aboard. Remains to be seen how easily it could be cleaned up and refurbished for reuse.

I'm still very pleased and impressed!

(Photo by Jack Beyer of nasaspaceflight.com)

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[Yazata]

The 4-person Artemis II crew was announced this morning, and one of them is Christina! Another is Victor Glover, another of my favorite astronauts (he was on Crew-1, the second crewed Dragon flight). The other two crewmembers are the Commander, Space Station veteran Reid Wiseman and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen on his first flight.

This will be the first crewed Artemis flight and will basically repeat the Artemis I trajectory, looping around the Moon without landing, except with people aboard this time.

https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis-ii/

Your Artemis II crew posing next to an Orion capsule
(nasa photo):

(A good looking group)

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[Yazata]

Next week NASA will be announcing the company that will design and manufacture their Artemis Moon Car.

I'm still curious whether NASA will go with an Apollo-style dune-buggy design, or whether they choose a fully-enclosed pressurized design like Toyota is designing for JAXA.

Artist's conception of astronauts on an off-road extraterrestrial joy-ride from NASA.

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[Yazata]

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-j...nar-rover/

The JAXA pressurized Moon car is still alive!

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Japan’s Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Masahito Moriyama have signed an agreement to advance sustainable human exploration of the Moon.

Japan will design, develop, and operate a pressurized rover for crewed and uncrewed exploration on the Moon. NASA will provide the launch and delivery of the rover to the Moon as well as two opportunities for Japanese astronauts to travel to the lunar surface.

Today, President Biden and Prime Minister Kishida also announced, “a shared goal for a Japanese national to be the first non-American astronaut to land on the Moon on a future Artemis mission, assuming important benchmarks are achieved.”

The pressurized lunar rover is intended to enable astronauts to travel farther and work for longer periods on the lunar surface. The signing took place April 9 at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Along with Nelson and Moriyama, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) President Hiroshi Yamakawa also participated in the signing.

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[Yazata]

Lots of rather superficial reentry damage visible, but apparently nothing that would endanger astronauts aboard.

Spoke too soon. It seems that while the Orion capsule returned successfully, it was iffier than initially reported. The biggest defect was with the heat shield, whole chunks of which were lost during reentry. It's supposed to be ablative but not like this! (See below) This has NASA very concerned and elicits a collective "holy shit" from those who see it!

There were many other problems with Artemis I, but none of them were as loss-of-vehicle-&-crew serious as the heat shield. Some were serious though, such as circuit breakers that tripped repeatedly (24 times), depriving the capsule of some of its power until the breakers could be reset. There were communications problems and damage to the pad from the huge SLS launch.

Here's a report from the NASA Office of the Inspector General that discusses what went wrong with Artemis I. NASA is to be commended for their openness in making this public.

Bottom line is that Artemis II might be delayed for as much as a year while they get the heat shield sorted out. Fixes have to be engineered, then tested, before they let Christina and her crewmates fly it.

https://oig.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/...24-011.pdf

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nsNS

[Yazata]

Eric Berger is saying

"To be clear we are *far* from anything being settled, but based on what I'm hearing it seems at least 50-50 that NASA's Space Launch System rocket will be canceled. Not Block 1B. Not Block 2. All of it. There are other ways to get Orion to the Moon."

https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1856522880143745133

This is HUGE if it is true. I'm sure that Eric Berger is hearing it, people have been advocating canceling the SLS for years. But with Trump headed back to the White House and probably a new NASA Administrator, perhaps there is new impetus towards actually doing it.

SLS is a very impressive giant rocket that worked very well on its very first flight. Kudos to its engineers. But it never seemed realistic to build a permanent Lunar presence around it. It isn't reusable and it's so expensive that it's hard to imagine a flight cadence of more than one flight per year. You can't sustain a permanent crewed Moon base with one flight/year. So SLS kind of doomed humanity's return to the Moon to merely being a flags-and-footprints media stunt simply intended to put the first woman and "person of color" up there, then get canceled.

But assuming that its development continues on track, Starship promises access to the Moon at a fraction the cost. Each brand new Starship will be far less expensive than an SLS rocket. Then amortize that lower cost over many flights. Cost/flight will be 1/10 or even less. Once it starts flying frequently like Falcon 9's do today (almost every other day!) it's easy to imagine Starships headed to the Moon monthly or whatever, with 100 tons of cargo given orbital refueling.

A significant permanent human presence on the Moon becomes realistic.

Now that Trump is headed back to the White House with Elon singing the sweet Starship song in his ear, maybe this is the direction that things are headed.

[C C]

Eric Berger is saying

"To be clear we are *far* from anything being settled, but based on what I'm hearing it seems at least 50-50 that NASA's Space Launch System rocket will be canceled. Not Block 1B. Not Block 2. All of it. There are other ways to get Orion to the Moon."

https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1856522880143745133

This is HUGE if it is true. I'm sure that Eric Berger is hearing it, people have been advocating canceling the SLS for years. But with Trump headed back to the White House and probably a new NASA Administrator, perhaps there is new impetus towards actually doing it.

Would free up a lot of money for other projects. But that's surely not how it works. There's never collectivism or a community pot when it's actually useful or practical.

[Yazata]

Regarding what could replace SLS in the short term, Eric goes on to say

"My sense is that the solution would be launching Orion on one rocket (probably FH, from 39A) and then docking with a (separately launched) Centaur V and boosting it to the Moon."

He does imply, without actually saying, that it's the incoming Trump administration telling him this.

"Honestly the people who will ultimately make this decision aren't even in place yet. But there is a big desire for big changes."

https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1856522880143745133

[Yazata]

Each single-use SLS is estimated to cost ~ $2 billion. Each multi-use Starship will cost ~ $100 million. (5% as much.) Fly it ten times, and the cost amortizes to ~ $10 million/flight (0.5% as much.) Of course Starship will require orbital refueling, which will require multiple tanker flights.

So while Starship won't be able to offer the same straight-shot direct to the Moon that SLS offers, with orbital refueling it will be able to deliver far more payload to the Moon, more often and more cheaply.