After more than 53 years, humans may finally return to the Moon this week
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I love that the assigned roles on this flight are "commander", "pilot", "mission specialist", and "Canadian".
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I remember the Apollo 8 Christmas as a kid, so much excitement....not knowing which was better....astronauts or the prospect of presents. And then of course there was THAT photo. Even at my rural British primary school everyone knew about Apollo.
Maybe I'm just old and jaded but I'm not feeling the same sense of excitement this time. I fully agree with Isaacman that NASA has the ability and duty to inspire. I really really hope this mission will start that.
Good luck everyone. I know it's not much help, but a grumpy old Brit is rooting for you.
Maybe I'm just old and jaded but I'm not feeling the same sense of excitement this time. I fully agree with Isaacman that NASA has the ability and duty to inspire. I really really hope this mission will start that.
Good luck everyone. I know it's not much help, but a grumpy old Brit is rooting for you.
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When Canada was named they put all the letters in the english alphabet in a hat and then drew out one at a time - C eh, N eh, D eh...
exiting stage right...
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And if the cloud bursts thunder in your earYou shout and no one seems to hear
And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon
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Um.... I hope you meant Wednesday afternoon; otherwise they'd be strapped in and making good use of their diapers for more than 24 hours before launch.
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I to remember Apollo 8, going outside hoping to see the sunlight glint off an orbiting command module in my little reflector telescope. What we knew then was that our space program was being run by the best folks. The people in charge today are all about conquest, not exploration. I'm sure the flight team is, but the folks at the top are all about making a buck from this. That is what is missing. The sense of wonder, stepping into the unknown, and analyzing the facts instead of making up a bunch of malarky.
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Blame Canada! Gasp
As a Canadian I am roaring with laughter at the Canadian jokes in the comments.
Jeremy Hansen will be a mission specialist on the flight.
https://www.space.com/space-explora...ronaut-jeremy-hansens-artemis-2-mission-patch
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♫ Here am I floating 'round my tin can
Far above the moon
Planet Earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do...♫
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I know I still have their first LP (vinyl) in a box in the basement!
May have to dig that out...
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"Return to the moon"...as in they're only going to orbit it and come home. Which is kind of like telling my boss I 'went to work today', by driving passed the parking lot before grabbing a McFlurry and heading back home.
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Best of luck to the mission. I, personally, would be reluctant to fly on any mission powered by an SLS rocket. Their history and safety culture are...let's just say...suspect.
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I am truly hoping for the best for these brave souls, but so many unknowns with a program that has so little positive track record ...
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IPunchCholla
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Can anyone point me to a good simple explanation of what determines the launch window for a lunar orbit? My searches so far have only come up with seemingly circular explanations. “A launch window is the hours during a day that you have to launch to make an insertion into lunar orbit.” Isn’t really useful. Beta angle is a controlling factor for ISS docking and determines that launch window. I’m assuming it has something to do with the moon being on the far side of earth from the sun during its orbit just based on the timings…
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The Orion capsule is much scarier than the SLS rocket. This flight is the first time that many brand new or substantially redesigned hardware systems have been in space, much less sent out to the Moon. Several systems also severely malfunctioned on the last test flight. Casey Handmer did an excellent write up on the subject.
Ignoring the heat shield, take for example: the life support systems have never been launched with Orion. The battery design, has been significantly redesigned, on every Orion flight. The power distribution system faulted more than 24 times, blaming "space radiation" (isn't this thing supposed to operate in deep space?).
I can't believe they're putting people on this thing, much less 4 people when we at a minimum should send 2 to reduce the possible (possible, but I pray not likely) loss of human lives.
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Nor should you be as excited. Repeating a feat 53 years after the fact shouldn't rise to the same level of anticipation. Sure, it's cool and I'm glad to see NASA do something new(ish), but I'm not at a fever pitch - and I wasn't alive during any of the previous Apollo flights to the moon.
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Fingers crossed, but breath decidedly un-held. Been disappointed in the SLS too many times to be that hopeful, but I still would love to see a successful launch. Not hurt by the fact that my wife worked on Orion testing, so for her and all the hundreds of people who worked their butts off, I'm cheering it on!
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With a Canadian on board and millions of Americans wanting to say Farewell to Kings, why not set course for Cygnus X-1?
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFUeJIAmLGI
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Can anyone confirm this statement? The astronauts aboard Apollo 13 hold the current distance record. Afaik, Artemis II will simply do a lunar flyby and will not follow a Distance Retrograde Orbit in this mission. Therefore, they will not exceed Apollo 13’s range. Future Artemis missions that follow a DRO will, but not this one.
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Launching on the SLS would make me nervous. It does make me nervous for this crew. The entire development has been a cavalcade of issues.
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They should really wait until the USA government has a chance to repair some of the recent damage. Maybe 10 years, at least, but maybe more. I sincerely hope it goes well but I'm concerned current politics might cause human casualties. We have practicing doctors telling patients to do what RFKJ says. The rest of science isn't immune.
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I also remember Apollo 8. I was in Chad, Africa in a Muslim town. A received a Newsweek magazine with the pictures. My Arabic teacher went to great lengths to say that the clerics explained how 3 unbelievers could go to the moon because heaven was above the moon. The kids believed that THAT picture showed the earth below and the moon above. It’s hard when your beliefs are challenged by facts.
BTW God Speed to the astronauts
BTW God Speed to the astronauts
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I'm not sure of the details of Apollo 13's flight, but I do know it was an unpowered, direct return trajectory which is exactly what Artemis II will be doing. So then all that matters is what's the excess velocity at the point of gravitational crossover and how close you're aiming at the moon. For orbital landing purposes, you want that value to be darned close to zero. Any excess velocity is energy you have to shed to insert into orbit. For Apollo 13, there was a desire to get the astronauts home as quickly as possible so there was no reason to "swing wide" around the moon. Artemis has no such constraint.
NASA brass has been working the talking point that this will be the furthest from the earth's surface ever, so I'm sure that's indeed to case - at least for a launch on the 1st.
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I remember the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs as they happened. The black and white TV coverage. Walter Cronkite's sonorous tones describing what we were watching. The feeling of excitement at the idea of space flight.
60+ years later... My biggest worry is the heat shield and getting them back safely. I remember Apollo 1. Even at that young age I knew that if you added oxygen to a fire, it would get bad in a hurry, and wondered in my elementary school mind why the hell they'd test something that could ignite in an oxygen environment at all. All three men, Chaffee, White and Grissom, were well know, famous astronauts by then from their Mercury and Gemini days only a few yeas before. It was a shock that they died. On the same level as Kennedy's assassination a few years earlier, and part of what sparked the space race like it did.
Then Apollo 13, and seeing the usually unemotional Cronkite wiping tears of happiness at their safe return from his eyes...
I get the sense that the highs aren't as lofty, and the lows are rising. The push to go to the moon in the 1960's was all about national pride, regardless of whatever talking points one might try to make from them. I get the same sense about Artemis, with the same overtones of a "fuck you" to the rest of the world. I also see it more as setting the stage for future conflict than a "giant leap for mankind."
But at the heart, if they come back alive, I'll be satisfied with that. The moon is indifferent. It's always the people who matter most. And of all the things I recall from back then, to now, it's been the people doing those things that made me go, "Gee whiz." I'd just prefer the tears be happy ones.
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It depends on the launch date. If they launch on the 1st, 2nd or 3rd, they will break the distance record. If they launch on the 4th, 5th or 6th, it will be close enough that it's within the margin of error of NASA's trajectory projections (this was one of the questions in the L-2 presser yesterday).
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The good news for the crew is that chances aborting the mission before lunar injection due to SLS and/or Orion faults, or scrubbing the whole mission before launch are high.
With the revised Artemis roadmap, NASA should have planned for 2-3 unmanned high cadence missions in a short period of 1-2 years to test and stress systems, including docking and lunar injection, and resolve known issues. There is no justification to put lives at risk and jeopardizing the whole program with this crewed mission.
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Yeah, ”briefly return to the vicinity of the moon” doesn’t have the same ring to it, I guess…
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