The Lunacy of Artemis

In terms of delta-v, yes. Going to the moon only takes 50% more delta-v than going to LEO. But the rocket equation makes getting that extra 50% a lot harder. Time for more staging and complexity and still having terrible payload fraction.

It is very expensive to change orbits. If you had two space stations like the ISS with ascending nodes 180 degrees from each other it would be about as expensive to transit between them as it is to launch a rocket from the Earth to begin with. See

https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/02/there-are-no-g...

You've got the advantage in space that you can use electric rockets with a high specific impulse. Back in the 1950s folks like von Braun imagined that manned space flight might use electric rockets but after they discovered the Van Allen belts they discovered this is much too slow to make it through the magnetosphere.

Granted, human spaceflight is crazy expensive. And yet...

Jet Propulsion Labs, to pick a single NASA site, has never been more busy. I counted 30 spacecraft listed as "active" on their Current Missions page, but I think I missed a couple of them.

https://www.nasa.gov/jet-propulsion-laboratory-current-missi...

I don’t think this is accurate. ISS was conceived almost 10 years after the Shuttle started launching, and the U.S. obviously had space station ambitions even before the Shuttle was on the drawing board (Skylab).

Additionally the Soviets did the exact same, with Mir being launched prior to the Buran’s first test flight — heck Salyut 1 was launched in 1971.

> The second reason we are going to the moon so that we can put the first person of color and the first woman on the moon. That is explicitly an Artemis mission purpose.

If China gets there first, the enormous amount of international credibility and resulting soft power that they will gain internationally, at the US's expense, will be immense and will be worth the resources they spend several times over.

Depending on where you established infrastructure on the moon, it might be pretty easy to conceal the things you're doing in space. You won't see anything launched from the other side, and anything leaving the moon is going to fall towards Earth, so may be difficult to detect (e.g. no heat signature).

The moon is also a pretty decent staging ground for the rest of the solar system, so getting there late means ceding any potential resource or technological advantages that being first might have attained.

There's also a slim possibility that there are things that can only be manufactured in low or zero gravity.

I think the last two reasons aren't a great justification, but anything that materially impacts geopolitics on Earth, as weapons systems and spying do, probably are if you think there's a credible threat that your adversary is capable of them. And that's probably a big part of why the US stopped going to the moon. The cost and risks didn't stack up when the US already had a pretty compelling technological lead, better intel, and the USSR never signalled that it was serious about going there.

China are serious, though, and the way they've vertically integrated the world's manufacturing base means they actually have a lead on the US in a number of areas. That's probably why there's suddenly a lot more urgency and credibility about claims of wanting to go back.

> WHY WE’RE GOING TO THE MOON

> We’re going back to the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and inspiration for a new generation of explorers: the Artemis Generation. While maintaining American leadership in exploration, we will build a global alliance and explore deep space for the benefit of all.

I enjoy using traditional cold-war bogey-men to scare ignorant politicians into accidentally sponsoring real science as much as any other person, I do, but... as long as we're not actually buying into that sillyness, right?.... right?

On Self-Licking Ice Cream Cones, a paper by Pete Worden about NASA's bureaucracy, to describe the relationship between the Space Shuttle and Space Station. [0, linked from 1]

0. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234554226_On_Self-L...

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-licking_ice_cream_cone

The abort button on Apollo 14 would at worst have rendezvouzed the lander with the orbiter prior to landing on the moon. It would have killed the mission, but definitely not the astronauts.

The brownout also had several safe abort alternatives and the question was only ever about how to continue the mission, not how to save people.

For example, you mention the computer on the Apollo 11 lunar module crashing. In fact, it was recovering and working properly. The astronauts had left the rendezvous radar on during descent, in case it was needed for abort. That was not a nominal configuration, and the radar kept stealing cycles and causing the guidance computer to be overloaded with tasks. Remember, it was a hard real time system. What did the computer do? Reset and prioritize the key task: landing.

Apollo 12: Got hit (twice) by lightning. The electrical system wasn't fried, it survived it, in a protective mode. Importantly, the computers in the Instrument Unit, placed on the third stage, were completely unaffected.

Apollo 15: One lost parachute, still landed safely (if a bit hard) because of redundancy.

I could go on, but you get the point. It was a well-engineered system backed by a team of engineers.

Could someone confirm that? SpaceX raised money last year [0], however I couldn't find how much of this money (if any) went to the Starship program.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/02/spacex-raising-750-million-a...

Artemis 2 and 3 should be delayed until NASA can fix their shit.

To be clear:

SLS is shit. It is waaaay more expensive, heavier and less performant than Saturn V, Starship, etc.

Orion is shit. It is heavier, more expensive and wasteful in many ways than it needs to be. It's already old by this point too.

The Lunar Gateway is shit. It's a solution looking for a problem, and everyone knows it.

Instead we have a giant rocket that costs billions per launch whose only purpose is to launch Orion to the moon in one shot, and it can't even deliver Orion to a conventional lunar orbit.

The political climate in the 1960s was far more tense than it is today, which fueled the space race in ways that forced both sides to give their absolute best efforts to move space exploration forward.

While arguably today there are comparable tensions, countries no longer have to prove anything to the world, and space exploration is mostly a scientific endeavour fueled by private companies that want to make a profit. There's less of an urgency to get to the moon, which can explain that difference in spirit that you mention.

FWIW I don't think that's a bad thing. Space exploration is the most difficult human endeavour, and taking the time to do it right seems like the optimal way to go. The fact world superpowers achieved what they did in a couple of decades of the last century, a mere 60 years after flying machines were invented, is nothing short of extraordinary. But it was a special time, and we shouldn't feel pressured to repeat it.

> Instead Artemis feels like "let's dig the parts pile and put what we have together, and invent the glue required for the missing parts", akin to today's Docker based development ecosystem.

That doesn't seem like a bad approach to me. There is a lot of value to be gained by gluing existing technology together, and if anything, Docker is proof of how wildly successful that can be. Most scientific breakthroughs are effectively a repurposing or combination of previous ideas, after all. I don't think this is a valid criticism of Docker, nor of this approach.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/09/NA...

Apollo was a development and technical marvel. I don't think I would necessarily consider it done in an "optimal way" except for optimizing for time at great expense.

Artemis certainly isn't fiscally optimal either, mostly driven by a bunch of stipulations in their budget placed there by senators from states where all of these Shuttle-derived parts are built.

Isn't that just personal opinion? If anything, the current era of spaceflight has finally restored the Apollo ethos that had been dead for decades. So the answer to your question is "we're already doing it". Lots of people seem to be going nuts and saying "but not like that!" as they seem to have some alternative weird vision for what Apollo was. My dad grew up watching Apollo launches, he even got to work on the Apollo-Soyuz mission in a small part. He's one of the people more hyped for SpaceX's mission/goal and Starship than anyone I know.

What if we don't have the same spirit any longer? Nobody is going to acknowledge that publicly at NASA but they are acknowledging it by their actions. What if people who had "spirit" went to make youtube videos, work for Musk, Wall Street or Google? It takes some time to gauge the stickiness and depth of bureaucratic muck, but after a few years people can see it, and move on to other things. Guess who's left? Those who don't have much spirit left.

SpaceX claims to care a lot about going to Mars, but Mars has even less potential customers than the Moon has

Rocket companies are bad ways to maximize profits.

Could we have restarted Saturn V production in 1975? yes, at some vast cost to remake tooling.

What about 1985? oof, that's a little harder, how many of the people alive know how to make a Rocketdyne F-1, but probably still doable, at some yet greater cost.

What about 1995? maybe still possible - lots of the base industries we relied on to make it have ceased to exist, and the production knowledge for base components have changed so much that you're almost gonna start over. Some knowledge on how to build it is still alive, it's only 30 years later.

What about 2005? almost impossible, you'd have to recreate whole kinds of technologies from scratch - the tech trees have evolved so much, almost all of the first hand knowledge is dead, or very near to dead. It'd probably be easier to start over, with a clean sheet.

This is why the US Army still buys some number of tanks every year - so the production line stays open and we dont lose the knowledge. We're running into issues restarting some missile production (which is being used in Ukraine because of similar issues).

I do think in the end Artemis will likely be a success, but at a vast cost - but dont forget how expensive Apollo was. It too was vastly expensive.

can you use a plunger, instead of a pump? more like a syringe?

> You have to get the propellant into space. This is going to take a large number of flights (~15) at a pace that has not been done before for a vehicle of that size (a launch every six days)

SpaceX has done 2 Falcon 9 launches in 1 day, and they would have done 3 if the third one had not have been scrubbed [1]. I really don't think that launching Starship is going to be any different, especially as it was specifically designed for reuse, unlike Falcon 9.

> You need to launch at pace because otherwise the propellant will boil off, which is another issue - you need to shade or insulate the propellant for a much longer period of time in much harsher conditions

First part is same argument as above. Second part (shading) - again, I don't see why it is harder than other hard things. Just add more insulation. Possibly do some passive or active cooling.

> There is no gravity: whereas on earth the propellant separates relatively cleanly into liquid and gas this isn't the case in space

Very similar problem to how you feed liquid propellant into a rocket engine when it relights in zero gravity. You use a small ullage thruster for this.

[1] https://news.satnews.com/2024/03/31/spacex-enjoys-two-out-of...

That is not going to happen, without technology that currently only exists in Science Fiction, like artificial gravity, for the simple reason that we require 1g to live, let alone thrive.

> because of immediate access to materials that’d need to be launched into orbit otherwise.

1. How does this "immediate access" benefit the aforementioned "very large, permanently spaceborne crafts", which apparently won't be moored to planetary bodies?

2. There is no "immediate access". Having rocks next to me, and having the sort of highly refined materials that go into building the tech required for spacecraft, are 2 VERY different things. But, I am always happy to be proven wrong: Let's take a very simple task, like ISRU'ing LOX & Methane, and let's do it, at scale, here on Earth, where there is no lack of energy, breathable atmosphere, building materials and labour. Strange, isn't it, that no one seems to be doing that.

> In a universe where there are large human civilizations not just throughout the solar system but also scattered amongst other star systems, there are numerous paths and discoveries that each branch will take that Earth’s branch in its lonesome may never have trodden.

I agree. But given that, what evidence supports the idea that the branch that eventually allows us to leave our solar system requires us to first waste tons of resources on trying to send people to inhospitable, irradiated rocks for no good reason?

Especially since we have a perfectly good alternative to this waste of time: Sending robots.

> It also just seems a bit cruel to be able to see the vastness of the universe and never be able to touch any of it, in person.

Unless we discover a way to do FTL travel, it doesn't matter if that feels cruel or not, it is reality.

And I can pretty much guarantee that the person discovering the means to cheat physics in such a way won't be doing so while constantly worrying about his habitats airlock malfunctioning, or the piss-regeneration system giving out, or the supply ship getting canceled in the next congressional-bickering about the budget.

It will happen here on Earth, likely by someone who never visited even LEO, someone who works and lives in a stable environment with books, people to talk to, air to breathe and delicious non-freeze dried food to eat, who never has to worry whether there will be enough recycled piss to make his next cup of coffee.

No matter how much of the universe we touch it will always just be a vanishing sliver.

How would it do so exactly? Please give me a technical reason for this assumption.

Because, I predict it would do the exact opposite: Keeping humans alive away from Earth eats up an enormeous amount of resources all on its own. Resources that could instead go into building better robots, building more robots, building more rockets.

And this counters my argument...how exactly?

Even forgetting the fact that scientific progress isn't measured in "kilometers driven" (just count the number of experiments that Perseverance carries, and compare the amounts of data produced(, there is no technical reason a robot cannot drive as far as a vehicle carrying humans.

In fact it's the opposite: One of the most important restrictions regarding the LRVs driving distance wasn't technological in nature, it was due to the the fact it had to carry humans:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Roving_Vehicle#Usage

An operational constraint on the use of the LRV was that the astronauts must be able to walk back to the LM if the LRV were to fail at any time during the EVA (called the "Walkback Limit"). Thus, the traverses were limited in the distance they could go at the start and at any time later in the EVA.

And even though they relaxed the constraints later on, the fact still remains: As soon as you have a human in the mix, things become more cumbersome, way more expensive, slower, less risks can be taken, and if things go wrong, the results can suddenly involve dead people instead of just trashed equipment.

Right now, with our current science and technology, sending humans on space-exploration missions, simply isn't worth it. It adds a huge pile of problems to an already difficult task, and technically speaking, we get almost nothing out of it; Robots are just better at examining rocks on other planets than we are, for the simple reason that the robot doesn't require a huge support infrastructure just to be kept alive.

And the usual argument that developing such infrastructure would, in itself, confer some future advantage, has to be viewed with a lot of scepticism; fact of the matter is, the development of space-toilets does very little to improve the day-to-day tech we use here on Earth.

Space Exploration is not comparable to any exploratory task in history, based on the sheer amount of resources and time required. These resources are finite. Allocating them correctly may not be super romantic, may not tickle the "human spirit", sure. But when things are this expensive and difficult, such considerations simply take a backseat.

And if they don't, well, then there is the very real possibility of programs running into so many problems, delays and exploding costs, that at some point governments and companies can, or will, no longer support them, meaning decades before any significant development is even tried again.

And as someone who wants space exploration to go forward as quickly and efficiently as possible, that simply doesn't seem like a very desirable outcome to me.

I feel like we're squandering an amazing chance to explore space by getting stuck on sending people instead of leveraging the enormous progress in microelectronics, robotics, and autonomy of the last 60 years.

There were good reasons why people were interested in sending people into space in the early days of space exploration. Before automated systems were sufficiently developed, manned programs looked like the best choice. But once automated systems became sufficiently advanced, it was clear that they were the way to go.

You can see this when it comes to reconnaissance satellites - both the U.S. (with the uncompleted Manned Orbital Laboratory) and the USSR (with Almaz, which was completed) began with the idea of having manned reconnaissance satellites, but as time progressed they realized autonomous ones were better.

If we were sticking people in reconnaissance satellites just for the sake of sticking them in reconnaissance satellites today, it would obviously be farcical. But NASA’s manned space program has being doing the equivalent for decades - blowing a huge part of their budget on sending people into space just for the sake of sending them into space (by the 80’s this had reached the point where they had a program of sending teachers into space for the purpose of having them come back and tell students how cool it was to go to space). But since NASA has more open ended objectives than the military, it’s easier to hide the fact that this isn’t accomplishing much, or that these programs have diverted so much from many of NASA’s core objectives.

[1]https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/nasa-budget

Moreover, in refueling ISS you can use something like a flexible bladder and pressure differential to simplify the job of moving liquid from container A into container B. But in the rocket-to-rocket case, you might be moving propellant from an almost-empty Starship into an almost-full depot rocket. In that case, you're trying to hunt around for liquid in an almost empty fuel tank, and push it into an almost full one.

You can't use a bladder because Starship is too big, and it's hard to maintain a big pressure difference (unless you're willing to vent a lot of propellant in the process).

The problem would be very hard even without cryogens.

"On Flight 3, they did an intertank transfer of cryogens, which was successful by all accounts,"

It has admittedly been a weirdly quiet confirmation though, coming from a NASA official rather than from the usual sources (Elon/Gwynne/SpaceX official X).

I'm not to say this is the only true answer, other approaches exist, like the (so far unproven) unconditional basic income, or just social security services. But I would definitely argue that it has positive effects for an economy to keep people busy, to give them purpose and secure jobs.

Edit: Having said all that, of course I'm neither an authority on NASA internals here, but the strategy would make sense and definitely is applied in other areas and countries, too.

People have forgotten how much destructive testing NASA used to do back in the Apollo era (eg with the Ranger program, 9 were launched over 5 years, the first 5 were total failures, 6th was a partial failure).

SpaceX has pretty rapidly improved in Raptor reliability, we've gone from seeing them routinely spitting out green flames (ie eating themselves) on the early tests, to now routinely firing them on the test stand without issue (with the exceptions assumed to be when they're trying to probe the limits). We've gone from them having trouble lighting them reliably, to lighting and maintaining all engines at launch on both vehicles in the most recent test flight. Similarly it's been a while since we've seen a static fire where an engine failed to light. This is despite the constant performance upgrades pushing its already world leading specs even higher.

The most recent explosions were very likely not due to the engines. For the booster, iirc the theory based on the public data is that the oscillations due to some issue with the grid fin control system caused the propellants to slosh around very hard, damaging the plumbing, causing the engines to shut down and the booster to smash into the water. The Starship had a very visible leak under its skirt that caused it to be unable to maintain attitude, I think the theory with this is that it was a stuck or damaged valve in the RCS.

And, of course, as the other poster mentioned, they're almost at the point where what's failing is the reusability rather than launch, the only launch related milestone left to prove out is engine relight in vacuum. While they will probably figure out reuse eventually, it is not strictly necessary for HLS, especially as it pertains to the Starship itself (which is a much bigger challenge than the booster). The booster is the most expensive part of the vehicle, so their priority is to get reuse for it working. If they encounter significant hurdles with reusing the Starships, they can throw them away for early HLS launches and still be cheaper than SLS.

As far as controlling large numbers of engines and having them be cheap, restartable and throttleable, we have the Merlin in Falcon 9 and especially Falcon Heavy as an example. Heavy has to control 27 engines at liftoff. For powerful, highly efficient engines, we have the RS-25 in Shuttle/SLS and BE-4 in Vulcan/New Glen as additional examples.

Also the arguments about not having heavy rockets has nothing to do with engines, it's either "we don't need them" or "just use propellant depots". Without certain Alabama senator even SLS would be probably dead already. Big rockets are only useful when you sacrifice performance for reuse AND have enough payloads to maintain good flightrate.

I do agree NASA's Artemis program is strange. However it's enmeshed with Starship, and that's sufficiently different story.

I always thought the dark side of the moon meant from earths’ view: we can see the light side (even when it’s dark) but we can’t see the dark side (even when it’s light)

I could see governmental types having a colloquial use of the word at times like these that doesn't mean "it's always in the literal absence of light".

If you think about it in a national security sense instead of an astronomical one, the question is "what is a rival power up to", then indeed it is dark and unknown.

Mind I only watched from the timestamp, I might have missed something and this guy is a complete shit for brains.

Remember, it's Senate Launch System.

Despite that, NERVA has been proposed for a number of missions, mostly deeper space.

Politics.

> People keep going "the mission is go to to the moon". Is it? Why are we doing that?

Again, politics. The US has to assert dominance in space and cannot allow parties like China to one-up them. It's also a great way for political leadership to score points with the public. A more rational approach for establishing a permanent human presence on the moon would have included a thorough requirement analysis like Apollo did. Just FYI, SpaceX to this day (i.e. less than 12 months before the initially planned first landing!) don't even known how many tanker launches are required...

> How much do the "proven technologies" cost?

Less than developing a set of radically new systems from scratch - if done correctly (i.e. no cost-plus contracts). Some ideas, just for pondering:

* Falcon 9 is a reliable, proven, and partly reusable system. Its capabilities are sufficient to put crew and cargo into LEO

* FH is a proven and partly reusable system. Its capabilities are sufficient even for Lunar missions.

* Designing a mission around these existing capabilities would eliminate the risk of developing two completely new rockets (SLS and Super Heavy/"Starship") while allowing for testing vital equipment basically from day one (i.e. autonomous docking with fuel tanks, long term fuel storage in orbit, etc.)

> Are they reusable?

There's no reason why a moon lander and transfer vehicles shouldn't be reusable. This is not a question of the engines or fuel used. Just a side note: the "Lunar Starship" isn't going to be reused either on its first missions. This is a medium to long term goal that hinges on quite a few factors (like the feasibility of long-term cryogenic storage in space).

> one might look at how the long term storage and handling of hydrazine has worked out in enclosed environments on Earth

First of all, the environments are not the same - i.e. no unprotected humans will ever be around the fuel tanks or perform hazardous activities like smoking near them or operate valves. Secondly, in stark contrast to cryogenic fuels, we actually do have plenty of data points for long term use and storage of non-cryogenic fuels in space. Most satellites used hydrazine or its derivatives for station keeping and manoeuvring in deep space missions for decades. This is nothing new whatsoever.

On the other hand no one has ever successfully performed a vehicle to vehicle fuel transfer in space, let alone cryogenic fuel or long term storage of said fuels in space. This is new territory that doesn't even have all of its physics fully understood.

I'm talking about the entirety of Artemis. SLS was basically a job-saving programme initiated by Congress to appease senators that feared job losses in their respective states after the Shuttle programme was axed. Alternative designs that would use fuel storage in space and space tugs could've worked without an expensive new rocket.

> IMO, the lander it the least objectionable part of the whole thing

Then we have a disagreement :) The HLS requires the following in order work:

* the development of a rapidly reusable, radically new rocket system with new engines that haven't been flight tested before; alternative options could've used existing systems

* development of long term in-orbit cryogenic fuel storage - something that has never been tried before

* development of safe and reliable cryogenic fuel transfer between vehicles in orbit - again, a capability that has never been demonstrated before

* a lander with a single point of failure for exiting/entering the vehicle (on account of its ridiculous height)

* a lander that relies on turbo-pump driven bi-propellant engines for ascend - something so risky that Apollo-era engineers didn't even consider it

* a lander with a mass of around 100 tons for 2 crew initially - horrible weight to payload ratio, as this mass has to be launched from the surface

* several (actual number unknown as of now, but certainly more than 4) required refuelling launches

In conclusion we have 4 mission critical technologies that have never been demonstrated before, yet need to work flawlessly. We also have added risk due to the use of turbo-pump driven bi-propellant cryogenic fuel and the requirement of a 30+ metre crane for accessing the vehicle. I cannot comment on the stability during landing and ascend or the risks involved with dust and rocks from the exhaust plume on the moon.

As far as the economics go, yeah, I agree that with such tight budget a mission like that is very challenging to say the least. Low-balling the cost, exaggerating the timeline and hiring the person who on her own decided to hand out the contract throws a bad light on the issue, though.