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Comment by Rooster61 | Hacker News Reader

I'm very, very concerned for the astronauts piloting this upcoming trans-lunar flight. Given that Boeing, well, does Boeing things, the current state of NASA in this political climate, and the fact that problems keep arising with this current stack, it makes me feel that there is a significant chance of issues mid-flight.

Godspeed to them, hopefully I'm being overly dour.

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Sadly, the worst thing I'm worried about is the current president pushing for a landing before he leaves office in order to have that feather in his cap. Isaacman seems competent and this article shows they are responding to the concerns of the plan and are "shortening the steps in the staircase" to a landing.

So far, Isaacman's competence has mostly consisted of (rightfully) throwing is predecessors under the bus. The real test will be if there are problems on his watch, but also it seems likely the result of having backbone will not be good for Isaacman and sycophants will end up running the agency again.

> Isaacman's competence has mostly consisted of (rightfully) throwing is predecessors under the bus.

That's irresponsbility and incompentence in any position, especially at that level of management.

How? He essentially said that the program would not work as designed and would probably kill people. That is both true and necessary to say in order to fix it--these are exactly the lessons NASA (allegedly) learned from Challenger.

The GGP said he threw people under the bus. That's different than making changes to a program.

> true

I don't believe you can know that. Saying it with assurance - by Internet randos or by the NASA administrator - is more a signal of a lack of analysis. Other people aren't idiots and complex technology issues aren't that certain - those are self-serving fairy tales.

Wow, in the past no presidents pushed for NASA to launch under deadlines. Imagine telling them they need to get to the moon before the end of the decade. Unprecedented.

Good thing we have a large number of CRUD SaaS experts to tell us what's wrong with the space program

Re: JFK and the 60s, I think the experts were in charge and had the final say on launch decisions with buy-in from all parties. Space exploration is certainly not risk-free.

Then you had Challenger, when experts were not listened to, and people died when they shouldn't have.

I don't understand the hostility.

NASA was also far better funded back then and didn’t have to fight congresspeople and the aerospace giants lobbying them. Things move a lot more quickly when money isn’t a concern and you’re not having to scatter R&D and manufacturing across the four corners of the earth to get congress on board with you.

> NASA was also far better funded back then

Is that true? The US has far more money to spend now, in real dollars.

> didn’t have to fight congresspeople and the aerospace giants lobbying them

Is that true? I doubt it. Big budget programs then probably were no different, though with fewer transparency and anti-corruption laws and rules.

NASA got astronauts killed during Apollo, for some reason people forget about that or think it doesn't count because they weren't flying when it happened. After that they pumped the brakes and reevaluated their approaches, but the whole program remained extremely risky.

As someone who worked on Orion I find this comment section hilarious.

How so? Hearing from someone who has worked in this environment would be enlightening.

Just as the comment above says. This discussion is a lot of armchair software engineers who don't understand the processes arguing about things they don't have any actual insight into. Just normal HN pedantry and certainty in subjects they have no expertise in. Also loads and loads of either astroturfers, or true believers in SpaceX. Mixed with a lot of hate for NASA, which having spent many 80+ hour weeks with working with many of their engineers, I find extremely sad (but maybe fitting for these political times).

But nothing you just said is enlightening, it's just shit-talking people who would probably admit at the drop of a hat that they aren't not aeronautical engineers.

Do you want to provide your specific insights into the announcement in the post?

We're just going off what we read in the news. I'm sure that informed commentary from someone with first-hand knowledge would be interesting.

Tell us about the flammable tape and the heat shield and the ECLSS and the power hiccup, about how while Orion has been in development SpaceX has built and deployed Cargo and Crew Dragon 2 and flown 20 crews into orbit, or how it costs six times more than Crew Drahon, so far. Or about the side hatch not opening easily under pressure (Apollo I anyone?). Or the status of the docking system for Artemis II.

JFK set a goal that NASA managed to meet, but it is kind of difficult to see it as a hard deadline considering JFK was dead for years before any of the Apollo launches took place.

But even assuming we do view it as a deadline, the Apollo 1 losses are a pretty good argument that maybe we shouldn't repeat that.

JFK set the goal 8 years out, not less than three to align with his presidential term to try to make himself look good. He also got a lot of feedback from NASA on the timelines of what was possible so the goal wasn't pulled out of thin air.

Challenger was pretty directly caused by the Reagan admin pressuring NASA to launch it too, so yes?

Politicians have pressured NASA for launches previously and it has killed astronauts.

Sadly, I feel the same way. Here's a great video of Starliner:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L96asfTvJ_A

You summarized my concerns almost perfectly. My only addition is that you didn't stress enough how much this anti-science administration has destabilized NASA, both directly and indirectly. The institutional decision making has definitely been compromised.

Artemis II is a disaster in progress.

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