Posted on 12/05/2024 2:37:22 PM PST by BenLurkin
NASA announced it is delaying Artemis II and III missions, meant to take American astronauts back to the moon, because of a problem with the capsule’s heat shield.
Artemis II, a mission to take astronauts around the moon, was moved from September 2025 to April of 2026. Artemis III would land astronauts on the south pole of the moon, and likely won’t happen until mid-2027, NASA said.
NASA decided to push the launch of Artemis II because they found cracks in the heat shield after the Artemis I mission in 2022. Artemis I flew around the moon with no astronauts on board.
Nelson said NASA found the root cause of the cracks in the heat shield and is comfortable that they’ve found a “path forward.”
Nelson also emphasized, the new timeline would put astronauts on the moon well before 2030, when China would like to land on the moon.
Nelson and Lucas said it’s vital the U.S. land on the south pole of the moon, first. Scientists believe they could find water at the south pole of the moon, which could allow astronauts to refuel and launch for Mars.
Nelson said, though, he didn’t know whether China plans to land on the south pole of the moon or the equator in 2023.
(Excerpt) Read more at ktla.com ...
NASA spokesperson Dr Pettit, also an astronaut, said it was because they lost that technology from the Apollo moon missions.
NASA contracted with SpaceX to build the Dragon spacecraft (both versions), and the project currently known as Starship BECAUSE they saw a need for competition. Starship is the future for NASA Moon missions. SpaceX has delivered big time; Boeing has not. Starliner is Boeing's problem. The disaster that is SLS, however, can be laid directly at the feet of Congress which insisted on re-using Space Shuttle technology. To be fair: SLS has orbited the Moon. Starship has achieved exactly one highly eccentric Earth orbit.
South pole? Hope they dress warm!
Maybe bring some sled dogs.
And what is it we’re going to learn from this?
Wasn’t it heat shield tile damage that doomed the space shuttle Columbia and killed all its crew?
Former Space Shuttle engineer Julie Kramer White at NASA was the Orion's chief engineer.
Whats wrong? Didn’t have the muslim prayer rug in the right spot? No transgender bathrooms on the craft? Too low of a DEI or ESG score?
Starship is not the future on Moon mission if the US wants to get a manned mission there before the Chinese. Starship v2 is far behind where it should be because of all the Biden shenanigans.
Right now, it would take 6 Starship refuelings just to get to the moon and orbit. The lunar orbiter is still in the design stage, and is too big to fit in Starship fairing. So that would be multiple trips with multiple refuelings just to get that assembled.
Why do they need it? Because there is no provision to put a fueling station on the moon. In fact there is no provision to refuel the Starship in any case.
Worse, the Starship and its booster both would have to be man-rated - that’s months/years of testing all successfully.
But all of that aside, StarShip has to do many test refuelings to prove the concept. More months/years of testing all successfully.
Plus there is no Starship crew escape on landing - more months/years of testing all successfully.
Its unlikely, as things stand now, that the US will get a man on the moon until well after the Chinese set up their stations on the surface.
The only way to get there quickly is to get Artemis up and running - its a straight shot with no refuelings. It can take the Lunar Orbiter and the crew in one shot.
Why is that? Because StarShip is very heavy - its stainless steel after all. Artemis is light weight composite and so can lift more weight and ‘throw’ it farther.
I remember gruesome news articles stating that searchers and lay people alike found charred remains of the Columbia shuttle crew scattered across Texas.
My cousins down there thought they found part of Shuttle astronaut Michael Anderson, but it turned out to be a heater hose from an old ‘62 Buick instead.
... That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
And what do you know...
The name of the center star is Alnilam [אלנילם].
Oh look, there's "Neil" inside: אל*ניל*ם
What next, the Holy Grail? An entire galaxy?
Congratulations, NASA. You're everything we've come to expect from years of government training.
Agreed. Starship is built for an entirely different mission: to colonize Mars. Musk envisions having to build thousands of them in contrast to just a handful of SLS’s for Artemis. To that end, cost and speed of construction were prioritized for Starship. It’s heavy but cheap and quick to build. But of course that comes with a severe performance penalty.
The Moon is symbolic of the kingdom of David and "Betelgeuse" is Beit-El-Jews, the House of God of the Jews; i.e. the Temple. Big hits at the box office.
Yet on the insignia, the Moon is yellowish and Betelgeuse is white, touching but not touching the Moon.
Betelgeuse and its red coloration have been noted since antiquity; the classical astronomer Ptolemy described its color as ὑπόκιρρος (hypókirrhos = more or less orange-tawny), a term later described by a translator of Ulugh Beg's Zij-i Sultani as rubedo, Latin for "ruddiness".[26][a] In the 19th century, before modern systems of stellar classification, Angelo Secchi included Betelgeuse as one of the prototypes for his Class III (orange to red) stars.[27]Three centuries before Ptolemy, in contrast, Chinese astronomers observed Betelgeuse as yellow; Such an observation, if accurate, could suggest the star was in a yellow supergiant phase around this time,[28][12] a credible possibility, given current research into these stars' complex circumstellar environment.[29]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse#Observational_history
There’s nothing wrong with that heat shield that a few pronouns wouldn’t fix.
NASA will never go back to the moon.
If they can keep delaying the project by a year every year they will never have to go....ever.
Lol.
NASA better start teaching their astronauts Chinese—because at the rate NASA is going the Chinese will already own the place.
Yep. As Dan Aykroyd famously said in Ghostbusters:
"Personally, I liked the university. (read: government) They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything! You've never been out of college! You don't know what it's like out there! I've WORKED in the private sector. They expect RESULTS!"
Someone recently said that way too many things are fake, gay or retarded.
If NASA wants to avoid a similar indictment it needs to get on its horse and ride. In a way people can recognize as worth the money. Or it’ll be DOGE hell to pay.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.