NASA has struggled to deal with the widespread sentiment that NASA has “been there, done that."
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Artemis II is unlikely to be the cultural touchstone Apollo 8 was, and that’s OK
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It's all pork that goes to the same aerospace contractors, and keeps going to them whether they succeed or fail.
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I was able to watch the Artemis 2 launch into space in person. The first time I've seen a NASA launch in person in my life as I was 80 miles south of Cape Canaveral. I heard someone say "it is launching!" and ran outside to take this.
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Want your lunar base funded, lavishly and in perpetuity? Call it a Space Force lunar outpost, put its budget under the Pentagon, and you'll have it made ....
/s?
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It isn't though. You went from saying just not interested/excited to stuff like this.
No aspect of this launch was built on the back of human misery. It would be like you saying you like a book and someone else saying they won't support reading because it is built on the backs of human misery.
Artemis going away tomorrow would not reduce human misery at all. It would just be Artemis going away and exactly all the misery that exists today still being here. Same thing with zeroing out the entire budget of NASA. The fact that misery exists has nothing to do with how much or little money NASA is spending and what it is spending it on.
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I’m struggling to care and such framing makes it even more exhausting.
So much is going wrong in the US and the world because of the US it is an event fighting for importance and losing. The world is being pushed to extremes and the US has reversed course from global efforts to smooth out the tensions in the world to a role of global pyrotechnics and extremism.
I hope for a safe trip for the astronauts, but with little science attached to the mission and an albatross of a rocket involved, it seems to have little to no value.
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Repeating what we did half a century ago is the starting point. Where we go from here is the big question.
We can't establish a base on the moon (regardless of its purpose) without showing that we can get there and back again, safely.
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Spanish Times, circa 1510:
"Why are we going back to the New World? Been there, done that."
"Why are we going back to the New World? Been there, done that."
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For these low frequency missions, demanding abort capability for every possible failure just makes everything vastly more expensive, and longer to develop. There will be no problem recruiting capable crew that are willing to accept a certain amount of risk. The real problem here is PR. A failure with loss of life destroys public support from the program.
This is one of the reasons I think the manned space program isn't worth doing.
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There isn't an abort from every possible issue. That is a strawman. However a free return trajectory and the ability to do an abort to Earth AT ALL is going to be a basic requirement. It just is. If something replaces Orion it is going to be because it is better and safer not some more dangerous hackjob.
I mean why would NASA replace Orion with something more dangerous to save what would be a not very significant amount of money? In the overall mission cost. Especially as you said the PR issues involved with losing a crew.
That is fine just be honest that if you zero out HSF that money doesn't magic over to probes and other science missions. It just goes away. The federal budget is not a fixed pool of money and removing program X you get an equal amount in program Y.
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Ultimately, that's the problem, isn't it? We're not doing it for science. We did all the science there was to do there under Apollo. This time we're doing it strictly for the sake of chest-thumping jingoism.
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I agree. We’ll go there and barge we beat the Chinese to the moon. Twice.
Then we’ll leave, just like we did 58 years ago.
Meanwhile the Chinese will go there and actually build something.
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You don't genuinely believe that do you because that is so wrong it makes your silly NASA and DOD comment look informed.
There is no scientist on the planet which will say "yup 100% of the moon science all done by Apollo". Does even seem plausible to you.
All the Apollo missions spent less than 4 day combined in EVA on the lunar surface. You couldn't do all the science in a random canyon on Earth in 4 years much less 4 day. You think we just by pure luck had a lunar program that just so happened to finish just as all the science was done?
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Of the two countries the US is developing reusable tech to support long duration plans. China current plans are 100% expendable. A modern day Apollo. Now that might change eventually but without radical change they won't stay or build anything on the moon anymore than Apollo did for exactly the same reason.
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Seems kind of odd that this article is titled "Why is NASA bothering to go back to the Moon if we’ve already been there" and you never really talk about the actual reasons that NASA is planning on going back to the moon...
Not saying it is a bad article. but there a some very specific reasons why they want to go back and none of them get mentioned.
Not saying it is a bad article. but there a some very specific reasons why they want to go back and none of them get mentioned.
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I am interested in how the technology has improved in the last 50+ years. Will the Artemis crew be able to land Orion when they return to Earth, the way SpaceX rockets do, or will they have to be recovered from the ocean like the Apollo crew?
Is the SLS reusable? If so, what's the turnaround time for another launch?
Is the SLS reusable? If so, what's the turnaround time for another launch?
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If you want to read and respond to my posts please do me the basic courtesy of actually reading them for complete ideas, instead of just jumping to the conclusion that suits your response and then quoting me out of context.
As I very clearly said and you decided to cut off your reply:
"You asked if the world would be better off without Artemis, and I said no. But the world would be better off without Elon Musk. And if that meant SpaceX was worse off because he truly was some magic sauce for it existing like some believe? Oh well.
I won't celebrate rocket launches built on the backs of human misery."
You seem to be stuck in this "Artemis good!" mindset, and unable to process how anything else could possibly also be true. I do not in fact care about Artemis. Like, at all. That includes being mad it exists, or that money is spent on it, or that it launched, anything.
The same does not hold true for SpaceX. I am actively hostile to SpaceX, because it is in fact built on the back of human misery, by way of one DOGE-running Elon Musk.
And the point I am making that you keep trying to avoid, is that a future with space exploration that's not built around a holistic humanitarian approach does not interest me.
I don't resent that you're excited about space. But you could better understand why other people aren't.
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TL;DR: It IS history-making, but IMHO it falls a bit short of "historic".
Being of an age where I remember the Mercury program and followed Apollo from the beginning, and wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid, enthusiastically following NASA and could have been you in my enthusiasm, my honest answer is, "No."
In my, perhaps narrower, view, "historic" always means "first time". While one can quibble about the Artemis program being historic because it's planned to be the first time astronauts will be that far out into space, that's largely incidental, even if planned, and doesn't require more than what came before (even if what came before never went out that far).
Four astronauts instead of three? Yeah, that's been done, too.
But the technical details and even effort aside, what's really missing is the historic sense of unity. The entire country was united behind the Apollo program, and the world watched. There was pride in what we were doing, even if it was just beating the Soviets to the Moon. That unity was historic in its own way, but the purpose, the peaceful exploration of space, drove that endeavor.
The atmosphere then was MUCH different than it is today. It was literally the opposite of what we have now. We have a fascist government, an incompetent man-child dictator, the systematic destruction of our institutes of freedom and democracy and a direct attack on the entire country by our elected leaders.
THAT is historic in scope and not in a good way.
It very much feels like cheering on Artemis in some kind of spasm of the kind of patriotism that held sway back in 1969 is a non-starter in 2026.
In the 1960's we were naive, and often easily misled. Lots of behind the scenes stuff happened that few knew about. My own memories from that time more vividly recall Apollo 13's return than the actual launch of Apollo 11. But like a billion other people I watched the first steps on the moon. (How many alive then remember that the first images from the camera deployed to capture that were upside down? Walter Cronkite saying something to the effect of millions of people now standing on their heads...)
This does not have that sense of history. It feels very much like a "been there done that", even if it's been two generations since then. And that's mostly because... why bother? Because the Chinese are doing it? Good luck to them. They'll FAFO and discover the place is actively hostile to life, human or otherwise, too. For today, for us, there's no sense of national pride. There's none of the trappings of "history in the making" here. I expect the folks at NASA have a MUCH different take on that. I'm just speaking as one of the puling masses who watch through the wire fence.
Perhaps we've grown jaded about rocket launces, because we've been to a hell of a lot of places since 1969 remotely, and have had a manned presence in space for 30 years or more. We have rockets LANDING again. It's not the mystery it used to be. The sense of adventure is tempered with experience and time.
That said, this is one for the history books, as many things are that don't necessarily rise to the level of "historic". History isn't always the big things. Historic always is. Going back to the moon after 60 years is certainly big. But it's was done before. This deserves its place in the annals of history, as all such things do. But it won't capture a sense of history like Apollo 11 did. It's NOT "Bolding going where no one has gone before", even if it IS boldly going.
In my, perhaps narrower, view, "historic" always means "first time". While one can quibble about the Artemis program being historic because it's planned to be the first time astronauts will be that far out into space, that's largely incidental, even if planned, and doesn't require more than what came before (even if what came before never went out that far).
Four astronauts instead of three? Yeah, that's been done, too.
But the technical details and even effort aside, what's really missing is the historic sense of unity. The entire country was united behind the Apollo program, and the world watched. There was pride in what we were doing, even if it was just beating the Soviets to the Moon. That unity was historic in its own way, but the purpose, the peaceful exploration of space, drove that endeavor.
The atmosphere then was MUCH different than it is today. It was literally the opposite of what we have now. We have a fascist government, an incompetent man-child dictator, the systematic destruction of our institutes of freedom and democracy and a direct attack on the entire country by our elected leaders.
THAT is historic in scope and not in a good way.
It very much feels like cheering on Artemis in some kind of spasm of the kind of patriotism that held sway back in 1969 is a non-starter in 2026.
In the 1960's we were naive, and often easily misled. Lots of behind the scenes stuff happened that few knew about. My own memories from that time more vividly recall Apollo 13's return than the actual launch of Apollo 11. But like a billion other people I watched the first steps on the moon. (How many alive then remember that the first images from the camera deployed to capture that were upside down? Walter Cronkite saying something to the effect of millions of people now standing on their heads...)
This does not have that sense of history. It feels very much like a "been there done that", even if it's been two generations since then. And that's mostly because... why bother? Because the Chinese are doing it? Good luck to them. They'll FAFO and discover the place is actively hostile to life, human or otherwise, too. For today, for us, there's no sense of national pride. There's none of the trappings of "history in the making" here. I expect the folks at NASA have a MUCH different take on that. I'm just speaking as one of the puling masses who watch through the wire fence.
Perhaps we've grown jaded about rocket launces, because we've been to a hell of a lot of places since 1969 remotely, and have had a manned presence in space for 30 years or more. We have rockets LANDING again. It's not the mystery it used to be. The sense of adventure is tempered with experience and time.
That said, this is one for the history books, as many things are that don't necessarily rise to the level of "historic". History isn't always the big things. Historic always is. Going back to the moon after 60 years is certainly big. But it's was done before. This deserves its place in the annals of history, as all such things do. But it won't capture a sense of history like Apollo 11 did. It's NOT "Bolding going where no one has gone before", even if it IS boldly going.
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Maybe it should be a zero-sum game. Maybe we should be taking a firmer stance on what we expect our tax dollars to be spent on. Maybe we should be putting more pressure on Congress instead of shrugging and saying "oh well, that's $93 billion down the drain, can't be helped". Maybe I'm talking out of my butt here, but maybe the status quo is deeply broken and the ridiculous amount of money we spend on jingoism in space is emblematic of that
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Even SpaceX launches are not BUILT on human misery. Elon Musk being a sociopathic piece of shit didn't increase human misery by launching rockets. Arguably he was contributing less to human misery when he was more interested in playing with rockets then playing Nazi kingmaker on social media.
You can say SpaceX made him rich but yeah so did Tesla and Paypal. It isn't like if SpaceX never existed Elon Musk would have been a poor guy and not have the resources to do all the terrible shit he has done. It isn't like SpaceX dollars (which only became profitable last year) is what put him over the top so that he could start courting nazis.
(Side note I read every word of your post I just think quoting 6 paragraphs provides no context as to what is being responded to and why but I did it here)
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I'd hardly characterise travelling less than 2% further from the earth, than Apollo 13 did, as being historic.
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Thank you for this. I felt exited for the launch yesterday in ways I didn't expect to, but was also left with a lot of nagging questions about the whole endeavor. When I saw this article in this site that I respect a lot, I was hoping it might help me sort out those thoughts, but, in the end I felt like it didn't really address a single thing, and I think you've explained that well.
There is a lot of sentiment here of just "1) Maned Chemical Rockets 2) ??? 3) Star Trek". I can think of a lot of good reasons for a manned space program, and I enjoy seeing it succeed, but it's feeling very hollow.
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Artemis is literally the product of a Trump Presidential Memorandum signed Decwmber 11, 2017 as a legacy building exercise.
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.go...ing-americas-human-space-exploration-program/
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I don't mind you quoting just part of my post, but when you cut off the part that provides context to the line being about SpaceX and not Artemis and then pretend it was about Artemis all along it's disingenuous.
And I don't agree with your premise at all. Elon Musk and SpaceX are inseparable. Here you are calling him a Nazi kingmaker as he runs the rocket company, while pretending that doesn't matter. That strikes me as utterly bizarre.
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I never said they aren't inseparable. I agree they are inseparable. That still doesn't make SpaceX rocket launches BUILT on human misery. It just doesn't.
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One of the reasons the manned space program's "BLEO" side has had its twists and turns is because the Obama administration sided with the "been there done that on the Moon" people and made Mars and an asteroid the targets. But while we know (in broad brushstrokes) how to get a crew as far as the Moon, Mars is years away, never mind a main belt asteroid. That led to the asteroid retrieval mission. IIRC, that landed with a thud. During the first Trump administration, the Moon returned to the target list. The asteroid retrieval morphed into the gateway which has been scrapped in favor of rendezvousing with a lunar lander launched by SpaceX and/or Blue Origin.
After going through something like this, do we need to do it again?
The Moon is close, and a base on that will help us with what we need to know for a crew on Mars to stay there until the return launch window opens. I think it makes sense. We don't need another detour again.
After going through something like this, do we need to do it again?
The Moon is close, and a base on that will help us with what we need to know for a crew on Mars to stay there until the return launch window opens. I think it makes sense. We don't need another detour again.
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That is not correct. Obama sided with the Augustine report which state the constellation program with the rate of development and the funding giving by Congress had no chance of landing on the moon in the next 20 years. Here we are 17 years later and only maybe getting to a place where a landing in the next 5 years might be possible. So it seems like they were right.
The "Flexible path" outlined by the Augustine Commission did not preclude a moon landing at some future date. It just indicated that the budget didn't exist for the current level of tech readiness and since Congress was unwilling to fund more the current moon plan would likely just result in money being spent with nothing to show for it. Now from a PR/political standpoint I get why it failed. Even if it is 100% BS a "plan" to land on the moon in 10 years or the same with Mars is a lot cooler than we will slowly expand our capabilities and proficiency in deep space over the next 10 years and THEN look to land on the moon or Mars.
I would add the Flexible bath advocated building capabilities to include propellant depots in cislunar space in order to improve technical readiness and economics. That NASA could be doing stuff in space that made future BEO missions more viable. That portion was then promptly ignored by everyone to include NASA, Congress, Obama, and oldspace companies. Almost 20 years later our moon plans are highly dependant on propellant depots that don't (yet) exist although they might soon.
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As long as Elon Musk is in charge it does to me. If you want to hand wave that away to enjoy the pretty rocket fires and sleep better that's on you.
I have been explaining nothing but my perspective this entire time. And that's the thing, you cannot stamp your foot and say "it just doesn't" like that's some kind of final statement on anything. You simply don't count it. Okay.
I will continue to not celebrate SpaceX accomplishments as long as Elon Musk is in charge.
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theradicalmoderate
Ars Tribunus Militum
If the coxswain's in the front, then they're rowing the boat backwards. That makes the metaphor... unfortunate.
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theradicalmoderate
Ars Tribunus Militum
Assumes facts not in evidence.
We've had some nice tweets from some of the relevant committee members. We have a very important RFI, which solicits thoughts for a cislunar commercial crew program. We have a bit of language in an authorization bill that seems promising. But the real battle gets fought at the appropriation level, and that will almost certainly happen not via regular order, but via a continuing resolution for FY27, at the last moment. There's plenty of time for things to go horribly wrong.
That said, anything other than SLS will be cheaper. Orion's no prize, but it's an adequate stopgap until some better crew transit system comes along. As long as Congress is willing to let Jared do what he says he's doing, things will be better. But he's gonna have to do some re-plans of his existing budget, and that customarily requires Congress's consent.
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Go look into the working conditions of Musk's companies, SpaceX in particular. It's a sweatshop and all its accomplishments are built on the burnout of disposable labor. That's human misery.
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Obviously the Nazis have all moved back to earth so they have closed down their base.
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If it's not a race, then we'll be stuck back in the "To The Moon! No, Mars! Um, Asteroid rendezvous?" cycle of shifting the goalposts every other election cycle, and none of them will ever be done.
I don't care which one they pick, just pick one and stick to it.
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I was at a large Y (gym) in VA with quite a few people present working out and I think I was the only one who bothered to turn on the stream at about 2 minutes before launch. Walked around and no one seemed to be watching it on their phone or the TV's that are on many of the cardio machines like bikes and treadmills. I bet less than 5% of people in US knew the launch was going on until perhaps the news cut to it if they had one of those channels on and even fewer really cared. So many other things on media these days along with an insane war and a totally incompetent idiot in the White House driving the country into the ground. Was a nice 5 minute distraction and then back to reality. I also think basically no one sees a race with China or cares about that as well.
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"I expect Artemis II to be largely forgotten by most Americans before the end of April." Yes ... rightfully so since there is no currently viable follow on. Apollo had missions lined up every 6 months with escalating technical goals and available hardware. They were smart that way .. always give the public a bit more each mission. And even then no one cared after 12 (well.. except me I guess). Now Nasa only promises a 'possible' follow-up years from now with 3 and that is based on pie-in-the-sky predictions from musk and (maybe) bezos. Hard to hold general public interest in something like that.
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My God kill me if we ever get to a point in society, where we have to fill out a form about the value proposition before we can do a project.
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Evidence of the sample returns accomplished so far suggests otherwise.
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... I don't really get this article, like idk yeah it's not as big as Apollo but it feels weird to both put a spotlight on that idea and then dismiss it at the same time. If it's not a big deal why bother trying to diminish it at all?
This however kinda gets me. It's a constant refrain in so much discourse these days. The commodification of everything. What is the return? What does it get me? What value does it have? Every sort of article talking about some kind of tech seems to inevitably have a bunch of comments pointing in this direction and it's so depressing.
"What's the value return" used to be the kind of response we mocked hypothetical moneylenders and businessmen for asking, something they asked before crushing the soul out of something. Now even the anticapitalists talk like this.
This however kinda gets me. It's a constant refrain in so much discourse these days. The commodification of everything. What is the return? What does it get me? What value does it have? Every sort of article talking about some kind of tech seems to inevitably have a bunch of comments pointing in this direction and it's so depressing.
"What's the value return" used to be the kind of response we mocked hypothetical moneylenders and businessmen for asking, something they asked before crushing the soul out of something. Now even the anticapitalists talk like this.
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