Artemis Launch Coverage of Manned Mission(s)

GW Johnson · 2022-12-18 11:37:16

SpaceX did better after Musk went off to deal with Tesla and now Twitter. Shotwell has done rather well with SpaceX in his effective absences, more than once. It would have gone under without her. She knows how to get things done, he does not. It shows in the market domination with Falcons and Dragons, and in capturing the lunar lander thing from NASA.

Musk was still active at SpaceX, specifically Boca Chica, and got them into trouble with the feds, over permits and licenses to launch, by doing things the feds said not to do. Typically it takes a handful of years to repair a damaged relationship with federal agencies, and that is exactly why the Starship/Superheavy launch has been delayed for lack of a license to launch, for so long. And there are real concerns over the environmental and safety impacts. Superheavy resembles the old NOVA designs in its thrust and explosive power.

Remember that not all feds are the same. NASA now needs them to fly and develop Starship/Superheavy, or else Artemis cannot land on the moon in this decade at all (nobody has a ready-to-deploy lander design, they all need considerable development effort). It'll take some influence from NASA, but I think the FAA will finally let them fly sometime in 2023. That delay gave Shotwell some time to add in some design improvements they found they needed, before they actually do fly.

Meanwhile, Musk spent some time with Tesla, which was starting to show problems with its self-driving AI killing people (personally I think the term AI is an oxymoron). I'm not aware of an equivalent to Shotwell at Tesla, which may explain their stock still dropping after Musk left and went to Twitter. And we have all seen the mess he is making of that.

Look for the orbital first flight of Starship/Superheavy sometime first half of 2023. But do NOT count on it succeeding. Odds are it will fail going up. If not, it is likely to fail coming back, during entry. Or at landing.

It'll have to fly multiple times successfully, before anyone can trust it as the NASA lunar lander. And they will have to add large landing pads not to stab into the lunar regolith on landing. They still have to learn that lesson, like all the others they have learned, the hard way.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2022-12-18 11:42:24)

SpaceNut · 2022-12-18 17:07:32

Nasa set this is motion when the Request for the design they wanted for the SLS got swapped for the shiny musk trail run of the starship without having a backup.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-08-09 08:53:19

NASA may delay crewed lunar landing beyond Artemis 3 mission

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/2 … -3-mission

GW Johnson · 2023-08-09 11:04:23

A lot of NASA's chickens are finally coming home to roost.

I see that Boeing's "Starliner" is still not going to be ready for its crewed flight test anytime this year, and next year the scheduling (when is an Atlas-5 available) may delay it even further. The problem is flammable tape wrapping wiring harnesses, and troubles with the chutes failing the design criteria established for man-rating the design. Boeing got paid about twice what SpaceX got paid, for developing a manned capsule. Since it's nearly 5 years behind, makes you wonder what they spent the money on. Sure wasn't a man-rate-able capsule.

And it's not just Boeing. Lockheed-Martin built the Orion that will be used in Artemis. They didn't like the effort to construct the heat shield material as the ablative held in honeycomb cells that is long known to work well, so they made that last heat shield without the honeycomb. And THAT did away with the composite material reinforcing effect. Surprise, surprise: heat shield erosion on that last flight was much higher than they expected, and the material literally flaked off irregularly.

Now they are talking about delays of the next Artemis flight while they "address heat shield issues". Makes you wonder what happened to the money they saved by cheapening the heat shield, doesn't it? And "address heat shield issues"??? Really??? Just build it with the honeycomb that you already know works, and quit trying to change it to cheapen it.

Meanwhile, Crew Dragon after Crew Dragon has flown safely, and so also have cargo Dragon after cargo Dragon.

Even so, SpaceX is in real trouble with Starship/Superheavy, mostly by getting into permit trouble with that last launch's ascent failure and far-flung debris. By the time the bugs are worked out of that design, it will be too late for use as a lunar lander for Artemis 3 or maybe even Artemis 4. And the Blue Origin lander isn't ready, either. Space is HARD! There is no room in such efforts for stupid decisions made at the tops of these outfits.

And so where is the Gateway station that Artemis landings are supposed to stage from? Not one piece has yet been launched.

The chickens on the roost are getting restless, NASA. One of the bigger, fatter ones is spending most of your money with old space semi-monopoly contractors.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2023-08-09 11:13:07)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-10-22 05:03:10

A site with a lot of info and some cheesy animations with music

'Artemis 3 mission to the moon'

https://artemisbasecamp.com/artemis-3-m … -the-moon/

GW Johnson · 2023-10-22 09:27:06

I found very serious errors in the launch animations. The two altitude readouts did not agree, and both said it had reached low Earth orbit above the von Karman line while showing 30-something km altitude. Whoever put that together did not know his butt from a ole in the ground.

GW

kbd512 · 2023-10-22 13:46:40

GW,

C'mon man. Corn pop was a bad dude. He graduated top of his class, from the Flat Earth Academy of Rocket Surgery. Embrace the age of idiotarianism. You got what you voted for. Now we have morons who think space starts where air-breathing SR-71s operated. Welcome to Derpistan, comrade. If men can identify as women, then air-breathing airplanes can identify as rockets. Airplanes can orbit the Earth at 30km. Math is racist.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-11-23 08:17:33

Lunar Gateway’s Advanced Solar Electric Propulsion Engine Passes Initial Qualification Tests
https://hackaday.com/2023/11/08/lunar-g … ion-tests/

‘Lunar gold rush’: NASA wants to mine the moon
https://www.eenews.net/articles/lunar-g … -the-moon/

SpaceNut · 2023-12-23 17:37:35

Controlled by political whim the Senate Launch system has prevailed even when it should have changed courses long ago.

Getting the program off the ground has been a bumpy, and often delayed, journey. Although the Artemis program officially started in 2019, the design of Orion began in 2006 as part of NASA's Constellation, a crewed spacecraft program that was canceled in 2010. Orion's first flight test came in 2014, when it launched to space on top a Delta IV Heavy rocket and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean 4.5 hours later. Planning for the SLS launch rocket, which incorporates parts left from NASA's canceled Space Shuttle program, began in 2011.

Artemis Prepares to Take People to the Moon and Beyond

In April 2023, NASA named the four astronauts in the crew for Artemis II, the upcoming mission that could launch as early as November 2024. During the 10-day journey, the spacecraft will circle the moon, traveling deeper into space than any crewed spacecraft has ever gone before.
It will help pave the way for Artemis III, which is planned to touch down on the lunar surface in 2025, and Artemis IV, a future mission to both land on the moon and visit the yet-to-be-built Lunar Gateway space station. The outpost will be positioned beyond the moon and serve a number of purposes - not least of which as a stopover for missions to Mars.
The named Artemis II crew members include Americans Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, and Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. The astronauts will be carried around the moon inside Orion, a solar-powered, reusable spacecraft roughly 16 feet in diameter at its widest - about the length of a large sedan - that was designed to ferry humans into deep space. Orion will sit atop the Space Launch System (SLS), NASA's most powerful rocket to date.

By the time Artemis II is done, NASA will have spent more than $90 billion on Artemis, according to a November 2021 report from the space agency. NASA has already spent $11.8 billion on development of the SLS alone, and admits that, at current costs levels, the SLS could be unaffordable.
Artemis I, an uncrewed mission, was planned for Aug. 29, 2022, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but shortly before liftoff the launch was scrubbed due to a problem with one of the SLS's four engines.
Bad luck struck again on Sept. 3, 2022, when the agency canceled a second attempt due to a liquid hydrogen fuel leak. A third launch attempt, planned for Sept. 27, 2022, was canceled due to concerns about a growing hurricane. Finally, on Nov. 16, 2022, the rocket lifted off, and 25 days later, after a journey of more than a million miles, the Orion capsule returned to Earth. Its only occupant was a mannequin, wearing a spacesuit and equipped with a barrage of sensors, named Moonikin Campos.

SpaceNut · 2024-01-03 18:56:16

NASA’s Most High-Risk Space Mission In Decades Planned For 2024

tahanson43206 · 2024-01-10 20:31:27

This will be an attempt to deliver a post created by GW Johnson for this topic. The original post was blocked by AISE....

Sure enough! There is something in this post that triggers AISE !!!

Well, fact: latest news reports say the Artemis 2 mission around the moon has been postponed from "sometime in 2024" to no earlier than Sept 2025, AND that the Artemis 3 landing has been postponed into 2026.
Informed speculations: (1) Artemis 2 still awaits a solution to the excessive heat shield erosion seen in the Artemis 1 unmanned test. (2) Artemis 3 still lacks anything anybody might use as a lander anytime soon.
Speculative discussion: Ref item (1) see post 29 for a description of the problem they ran into with the heat shield. No one wants to remove the tiled heat shield they installed on the Artemis-2 Orion, and replace it with the hexagonal-reinforced form of the heat shield that worked fine before all during Apollo.
Why? It would cost too much. Money is trumping safety once again, just as it did with Challenger and Columbia.
Pause ... I have found the line that causes the error ... the line was intended to begin a quotation.

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2024-01-10 20:35:12

In this post, I will use the quotation method that FluxBB likes, rather than the one invented by Dr. Johnson ...

Resuming post by GW Johnson intended for Artemis Launch topic ...

From post #29:

They didn't like the effort to construct the heat shield material as the ablative held in honeycomb cells that is long known to work well, so they made that last heat shield without the honeycomb. And THAT did away with the composite material reinforcing effect. Surprise, surprise: heat shield erosion on that last flight was much higher than they expected, and the material literally flaked off irregularly.
Now they are talking about delays of the next Artemis flight while they "address heat shield issues". Makes you wonder what happened to the money they saved by cheapening the heat shield, doesn't it? And "address heat shield issues"??? Really??? Just build it with the honeycomb that you already know works, and quit trying to change it to cheapen it.

As for item (2): SpaceX's Starship is going to have to demonstrate success multiple times all the way not only to orbit, but through re-entry, and all the way to successful landings, before it can be trusted. No one can argue about that.

*** End of text provided by GW Johnson ...

(th)

GW Johnson · 2024-01-12 09:56:34

here's my post without the quote:

***********************

Well, fact: latest news reports say the Artemis 2 mission around the moon has been postponed from "sometime in 2024" to no earlier than Sept 2025, AND that the Artemis 3 landing has been postponed into 2026.

Informed speculations: (1) Artemis 2 still awaits a solution to the excessive heat shield erosion seen in the Artemis 1 unmanned test. (2) Artemis 3 still lacks anything anybody might use as a lander anytime soon.

Speculative discussion: Ref item (1) see post 29 for a description of the problem they ran into with the heat shield. No one wants to remove the tiled heat shield they installed on the Artemis-2 Orion, and replace it with the hexagonal-reinforced form of the heat shield that worked fine before all during Apollo.

Why? It would cost too much. Money is trumping safety once again, just as it did with Challenger and Columbia.

As for item (2): SpaceX's Starship is going to have to demonstrate success multiple times all the way not only to orbit, but through re-entry, and all the way to successful landings, before it can be trusted. No one can argue about that.

It will take time to pull that off.

It looks like they figured out the hard way from flight test 1 how to have a survivable launch pad that does not damage booster engines with flung debris. It also now looks like they can do hot staging from flight test 2. They have NOT YET figured out how to solve the propellant ullage problems in the booster post staging, as demonstrated by the booster explosion during flight test 2. They do NOT YET have a demonstrably-reliable engine at high thrust settings, as demonstrated by the probable engine troubles (no one really knows yet) that lost Starship on flight test 2. Their heat shield tiles still fall off in droves (both flight tests). They still do not have the right legs for hard-pad landings, much less rough-field landings.

If it takes only one flight test failure to resolve each of these issues, and 3 successful flights to produce "confidence", that's AT LEAST 7 MORE FLIGHTS before they can even BEGIN testing a lunar lander variant. And during those same flights, they have to demonstrate on-orbit refueling, too!

If the flight rate is one every quarter, that's nearly 2 years (well into 2026) before tests COULD EVEN BEGIN on the lunar lander variant. If Musk making bad decisions gets them into trouble with the FAA again, the flight rate might reduce to all the way down to 1 every 2 years, which is what the launch pad debacle did. That could put a Starship-variant lander a decade or more away.

NOW do you understand why NASA pushed back the Artemis landing into 2026?

And that's doing it WITHOUT the Gateway lunar station! Put Gateway back in as a program requirement, and it may not be just years, but actually decades, before NASA lands people on the moon again.

Why? Because (1) NASA has NEVER done more than one big thing at a time, and (2) Gateway is going to kill a crew exposed to a big solar flare, with about 2 years' stand-down at a minimum, if Congress doesn't kill the program entirely (we've been there 3 times before with two shuttle losses and the Apollo 1 fire).

I’m very pessimistic about NASA putting astronauts on the moon any time soon. Much less Mars.

GW

*************************

The quote was a couple of paragraphs out of post 29 above. Clearly my attempt to quote by simple copy and paste was the problem. I have yet to understand how to do what so many others seem to be able to do. But the software here sometimes hiccups over the word quote in your text. That much is clear.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2024-01-12 10:03:06)

GW Johnson · 2024-01-12 13:02:18

Now, here is the quote that I wanted to go in that post just above. It is 2 paragraphs out of post 29, describing the ill-fated change to the Artemis heat shield.

And it's not just Boeing. Lockheed-Martin built the Orion that will be used in Artemis. They didn't like the effort to construct the heat shield material as the ablative held in honeycomb cells that is long known to work well, so they made that last heat shield without the honeycomb. And THAT did away with the composite material reinforcing effect. Surprise, surprise: heat shield erosion on that last flight was much higher than they expected, and the material literally flaked off irregularly.
Now they are talking about delays of the next Artemis flight while they "address heat shield issues". Makes you wonder what happened to the money they saved by cheapening the heat shield, doesn't it? And "address heat shield issues"??? Really??? Just build it with the honeycomb that you already know works, and quit trying to change it to cheapen it.

GW

PS -- the software took it. This worked.

Last edited by GW Johnson (2024-01-12 13:03:35)

SpaceNut · 2024-01-13 15:26:44

No starship means no moon landing, no means for Halo to stop before getting to the moon as there is no means to get the station into the Lagrange location. No moon lander no men on the moon as they chose the wrong method to do so when it did not match the request which was more LEM of the past. Bezo at that time still did not make the grade for the capability as well. Only under the many years that passed that Nasa made the corrections for this vehicle to even come to being.
It's going to take all of the extra time to provide the safe haven capability that Nasa is, so risk obsessed to needing such a ship capability.
What even happened to the 2-ship method to be able to get man to the moon.

GW Johnson · 2024-01-18 11:14:15

The 2-ship method was Von Braun's plan for Apollo with Saturn-5, until NASA finally accepted lunar orbit rendezvous in the mid 1960's. Originally, ca. 1963, the entire CSM was also the lander.

Only when they went to a separate lander, leaving the CSM in orbit, were they able to do one launch, one mission. Until then, they were going to have to use one Saturn-5 as a tanker and do on-orbit refilling of the other to send that bigger CSM cluster to the surface direct. Not knowing how to do cryogenic LOX transfers on-orbit would have pushed the moon landings into the later 1970's, perhaps past 1980.

It took moving heaven and Earth to get NASA to accept that lunar rendezvous idea, since it came from an outsider to NASA. I don't remember his name anymore. That "not invented here" attitude thing is very real, and very nearly afflicted the Apollo landings.

GW

PS update 1-19-24: what "moved heaven and earth" was meeting Kennedy's deadline. They could not do that otherwise.

Last edited by GW Johnson (2024-01-19 10:08:02)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2024-02-19 04:32:34

Uruguay signs Artemis Accords

https://spacenews.com/uruguay-signs-artemis-accords/

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#26 2022-12-18 11:37:16

Re: Artemis Launch Coverage of Manned Mission(s)

#27 2022-12-18 17:07:32

Re: Artemis Launch Coverage of Manned Mission(s)

#28 2023-08-09 08:53:19

Re: Artemis Launch Coverage of Manned Mission(s)

#29 2023-08-09 11:04:23

Re: Artemis Launch Coverage of Manned Mission(s)

#30 2023-10-22 05:03:10

Re: Artemis Launch Coverage of Manned Mission(s)

#31 2023-10-22 09:27:06

Re: Artemis Launch Coverage of Manned Mission(s)

#32 2023-10-22 13:46:40

Re: Artemis Launch Coverage of Manned Mission(s)

#33 2023-11-23 08:17:33

Re: Artemis Launch Coverage of Manned Mission(s)

#34 2023-12-23 17:37:35

Re: Artemis Launch Coverage of Manned Mission(s)

#35 2024-01-03 18:56:16

Re: Artemis Launch Coverage of Manned Mission(s)

#36 2024-01-10 20:31:27

Re: Artemis Launch Coverage of Manned Mission(s)

#37 2024-01-10 20:35:12

Re: Artemis Launch Coverage of Manned Mission(s)

#38 2024-01-12 09:56:34

Re: Artemis Launch Coverage of Manned Mission(s)

#39 2024-01-12 13:02:18

Re: Artemis Launch Coverage of Manned Mission(s)

#40 2024-01-13 15:26:44

Re: Artemis Launch Coverage of Manned Mission(s)

#41 2024-01-18 11:14:15

Re: Artemis Launch Coverage of Manned Mission(s)

#42 2024-02-19 04:32:34

Re: Artemis Launch Coverage of Manned Mission(s)

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