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Comment by 4khilles | Hacker News Reader

The heat shield is a bit different, and the reentry profile is a bit different as well.

I suppose "this will be the first time we can test this slightly modified heat shield in the slightly different pressures and temperatures that it will have to endure." isn't quite as eye catching.

With humans on board? Even if they are not necessary for the actual mission?

Yeah, that's what "untested" means in spaceflight.

> that's what "untested" means in spaceflight

Sort of. At a certain threshold, everything is untested. I’d put this closer to modified than untested—the general config was tested in Artemis I and the specific configuration in a variety of ground tests.

I'd say it's tested. It failed. Then they're flying it anyway. Wonderful stuff.

The heat shield on Artemis I didn’t fail in the sense that were there a crew they would have died

It failed testing. What you’re describing is the exact same thinking that destroyed Challenger. The O-rings are leaking, they’re not supposed to do that at all, but they’re not leaking enough to cause a failure....

Is there any word on how the Artemis II heat shield fared, after the tweak to the reentry profile?

And the next flight will use a different design. I wonder why?

Artemis II is scheduled for re-entry to Earth on April 10th. That is when the heat shield issue will be the most dangerous.

If it fails and the mission fails with loss of life while knowing it went ahead despite the IG report about the heat shield... It might be the end of NASA.

Hopefully it will return safely.

> It might be the end of NASA

If idiots and emotions rein, maybe. Then the centre of gravity for space exploration correctly shifts to Musk and China.

For manned spaceflight, I'd say it already has. NASA itself has launched a grand total of one manned flight since July 2011. China has launched 14 and SpaceX has launched 20. Worse, the NASA vehicle is completely unsustainable. It was obsolete before it ever flew and it's so expensive that the mission launched yesterday likely costs more than the entire R&D cost of SpaceX's rocket and capsule. Probably China's too.

The problem is that the purpose of NASA's manned spaceflight program isn't to explore space. It's to make the President look good (and I'm not just talking about the current one here) and funnel money to contractors. In that respect it's doing quite well.

The center has already shifted to Musk, SpaceX is 83% of global lift capacity. Artemis is flying an obsolete rocket at insane cost, and higher risk.

I mean, sure. But that's like equipping a sub with a screen door and claiming that in the grand scheme of things, it's a slightly different door with slightly different permeability characteristics.

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