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Comment by kwertyoowiyop | Hacker News Reader

Every new story about Artemis gives me even more respect for the Apollo engineers.

More frequent launches with less ambitious progress per launch makes good sense, and follows the old-school approach used through Apollo to mitigate risk. Having a lunar lander test in earth orbit, for example, is roughly the same mission as Apollo 9, is a good call. Validating everything works together has been a sort of sore spot for the Artemis program.

And even the Apollo 10 mission which went 99.99% of the way from the Earth to the moon, just 15km from the surface (but couldn't have landed on the moon- LM structure was too heavy) was incredibly important step. The sort of thing that people today would want to skip, it doesn't seem flashy or necessary. Why take all the risk of going into lunar orbit and separating the modules (requiring the very first rendezvous not in in Earth orbit) but not actually land on the Moon? It was about getting all of the ground crew proved and worked out, and proving that the rendezvous would work and they could get home, so that the actual landing mission could focus their efforts on just working out the last 15km, confident that all of the other problems were already dealt with. Trying to do all of that in one mission would have been a gigantic mess- A11 crew felt a lack of training time as it was.

Orion doesn't seem operationally or financially capable of launching more than once a year. It's not that they don't want to do test flights, it's that they can barely do anything.

Which goes back to the Pork-on-a-stick requirement that everything be about keeping the workers still employed.

I’d say we’ll look back in a few decades and recognise the Apollo programs as the peak of the USA. Those people did truly amazing things. I recommend “Space Rocket History” podcast if you like Apollo. It’s a wonderful and highly detailed podcast and covers the US and Soviet space race in great detail.

In a few decades we will look back and say now is peak (space) USA with SpaceX launching successfully, creating Starlink, Blue Origin finally reaching orbit, Rocket Lab reaching for Neutron, even ULA making BVlcan work.

Yeah, it's a wonderful time for private companies doing things in space using research paid for by tax payers and for billionaires aiming to become trillionaires. Outside of that, it's technically interesting but totally boring compared to the hope and excitement of the Apollo era.

We came in peace for all mankind...more of that would be nice.

None of the private companies are making billionaires become trillionaires but if SpaceX going public does create a trillionaire it will be at cost of saving the taxpayers billions of dollars.

And if you don’t think landing and reuse of F9 first the isn’t exciting, I don’t think your priorities are right.

None of the private companies are making billionaires become trillionaires but if SpaceX going public does create a trillionaire it will be at cost of saving the taxpayers billions of dollars.

Just like the way privatizing utilities companies had led to much lower energy / water ? These people aren't working for free...

I think the main difference was political: for Apollo you had the most powerful nation in history throw their economic and political will into pushing a project forward.

NASA programs today are mainly about creating/maintaining jobs and keeping private industry contractors busy. They lost the political agency and freedom to move fast that they had in the 60s.

to be fair they had way less requirements on making the CGI look good

back then TVs weren't that popular and those that had one were stuck with very low definition video, today our 2k and 4k screens would be able to spot their flaws easily

You meant cinematographers, right?

Well to be fair Nasa isn't nearly as good as it once was. The quality of engineer during the Apollo era was far better and more like what can be found at Spacex

What is that based on? NASA's recent accomplishments are far beyond anyone. Off the top of my head: The many Mars missions, JWST, Europa Clipper (still in progress), etc. SpaceX hasn't left Earth orbit, afaik.

DART is an example of both an incredible NASA accomplishment and a SpaceX launch that left Earth orbit.

SpaceX launched a Tesla Roadster to Mars orbit.

If you had your pick of launch systems to work on, I don't believe you would pick any of NASA's platforms since the shuttle.

Their explorer robotics are interesting, something I would be proud to work on; but a pretty different nitch.

So NASA is not drawing from the best people anymore.

That is only looking at (mostly orbital) launch systems, such a minor part of NASA's R&D and missions that the Obama administration decided to contract it out.

NASA doesn't develop or build lots of technology that has become mature enough that private industry can take it on and NASA can focus on the past-the-bleeding-edge stuff.

>What is that based on?

Reality? Outside of JPL the talent level at Nasa is frankly very poor. You really want to claim that the current version of Nasa could pull off the Apollo program today?

Again, what is that based on? NASA has one success after another. JWST, helicopters flying on Mars, Europa Clipper (ongoing), etc. etc. etc.

All of which are peanuts compared to Apollo. Not to mention insane cost overruns and timeline failures on their projects like JWST or SLS for example. Many of those successful projects came out of JPL, where I mentioned the talent level is much higher.

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