Regardless of whether this particular mission is perfectly planned, this is precisely the kind of thing that will help humanity outgrow the dark age of war, inequality and climate mismanagement.<p>It is a noble endeavor - science, engineering and peaceful exploration hold the keys to our survival and prosperity.<p>It is also important psychologically to our survival - a reminder there is a bigger pie, that we can solve hard problems, that progress can be made, that competence and education counts, as does courage, and that we can work together for a common cause.<p>This is the best of America, and for a while we can be proud of the human race.
I hope so, but if this goes awry in any way, especially if – god forbid – they lose the crew, my fear is it’ll be a blow to the American hegemony that will be very hard to recover from. Orange man is bad, but I think something like that would add a whole other dimension to the US’s loss of face. I’m as anti-american as they come, but despite everything Pax Americana must be acknowledged and I shudder at the thought of it shattering.<p>Godspeed!
> Pax Americana must be acknowledged and I shudder at the thought of it shattering.<p>Shudder away! We've already had both Carney and the finance minister of Singapore essentially declare Pax Americana to have ended. Everybody else is just being polite.
> <i>if – god forbid – they lose the crew, my fear is it’ll be a blow to the American hegemony that will be very hard to recover from</i><p>This has zero impact on American hegemony. That mission is being prosecuted in Iran and with respect to NATO.
>I’m as anti-american as they come, but despite everything Pax Americana must be acknowledged and I shudder at the thought of it shattering.<p>No, you're not. I look forward to the end of Pax Americana and every humiliation this hateful, racist, blood-soaked empire will suffer until it finally dies.<p>The day that another nation lands on the moon and collects the American flag like the garbage it is will be a good day for the world.
I hope it does. But every day that goes by I feel that the future is just going to be like what's shown in the expanse series
My personal take for a long time has been that the primary driver of <i>most</i> war today is boredom. War today is undertaken for entertainment. It's a special kind of entertainment that taps into deep brain stem circuits and provides a false but deeply resonating sense of purpose and meaning. When you hear that "people don't have a sense of meaning," it means their brain stem is not feeling the tribal loyalty emotions connected to warfare.<p>It would be cheaper to solve resource shortages in almost any other way. I don't really buy that explanation, at least for most wars. I think most wars today have roots that are far less rational.<p>Note that this applies IMO to all participants on all sides insofar as they had any role in starting or sustaining the war.
Wildly disagree with that. I think the overwhelming majority of people want simple, peaceful existence, and that the 'lack of meaning' can be solved through deeper shared community goals and aspirations.<p>More prominent figures like Trump, Putin or al-Assad don't wage war out of boredom, but out of ego, or visions of a glorious future that only they can impart (which I guess is still ego).<p>I also think that the various regional conflicts in Africa are in no way driven by the fact that the various political groups are just sitting there with nothing to do.<p>That said, I do think that a 'common enemy' provides a great deal of focus to communities, as we're wired for it... but the definition of community (who is 'us') is largely malleable and entirely flexible. But it's only one way of providing that meaning.<p>I also think conflict is largely glorified through American media, which is aggressively pushed on a lot of the English speaking world. The videos of the SF soldiers talking about killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan, and how cool it was with no remorse for the taking of life in a conflict that none of the local population asked for. Of the people I've talked to that have been through armed conflict (specifically Angola, and Serbia), and so strongly against conflict that the reactions are almost scary.<p>So no, I don't think conflicts are started or sustained out of a sense of boredom.
I agree that its not rational, but it's also not boredom. Its simply stupidity and ignorance.
> My personal take for a long time has been that the primary driver of most war today is boredom. War today is undertaken for entertainment.<p>incredible claim, any research or evidence behind this?
The expanse future isn't that bad - even at the start of the series we've already made it to the asteroid belt and Jupiter moons, and the civilization consists of several sovereign self-governed entities with individual entrepreneurship and private enterprise allowed. It means we didn't annihilate ourself in a nuclear war, nor our civilization collapsed into allways-fully-connected ant colony (or one global fascist/communist/religious regime).
Agreed it’s a tolerable vision, it could be worse. But it’s also a vision of humanity mostly living in enormous disenfranchised structural underclasses - corporate-authoritarianism in the asteroids and subsistence-UBI for all those unnecessary humans on Earth.<p>It’s a vision of incredible technological progress without any growth in our ability to justly and humanely govern ourselves or move past violent conflict.<p>I agree with GP this is our current trajectory. I’d live in that world and hope I’d get lucky, but what a disappointment if that’s all we can manage.
uh I would argue that at the beginning of The Expanse things are middling to bad and at the end things are <i>pretty fucking bad</i>. The epilogue of the final book is the only thing that's unabashedly optimistic.<p>The main series takes place over about 30 years during which several billion people die system-wide as a result of various wars and terrorist attacks, and uncountably many die in the immediate aftermath of the finale. I love it but it's not really a feel-good story!
> this is precisely the kind of thing that will help humanity outgrow the dark age of war, inequality and climate mismanagement.<p>Is that irony or plain naiveness? historically and technically, conquest of space is inseparable from warfare. As for climate change, one can argue that technology is one of the primary driver: aviation alone is estimated to 4% of global temperature rise.
This is a new space race. From a geopolitical level, a nation that has a better presence on the moon will have a better strategic advantage.
Space Force would disagree.<p>The talk of taking the Moon would belie.
>Regardless of whether this particular mission is perfectly planned, this is precisely the kind of thing that will help humanity outgrow the dark age of war, inequality and climate mismanagement.<p>You watch too much Star Trek. This is precisely the kind of thing that will benefit the military industrial complex, enrich billionaires at the expense of everyone else, and justify the government raping natural resources like it's a little girl locked in a cage.<p>No one cares about space any more and no one engaging in space travel is doing so for science anymore. Those days, if they ever really existed, are over. NASA has been cleansed and gutted and purged of wrongthink and now only exists to further the cause of American propaganda and be parasitized by SpaceX and intelligence agencies.
> this is precisely the kind of thing that will help humanity outgrow the dark age of war, inequality and climate mismanagement.<p>How do you figure? The previous Moon missions certainly didn't accomplish that.
The key phrase is "kind of thing". It certainly does matter what kinds of things we focus our attention on as a species. I think you would have to be quite cynical to think that progress in spaceflight over the past 60+ years hasn't had a positive impact.
> I think you would have to be quite cynical to think that progress in spaceflight over the past 60+ years hasn't had a positive impact.<p>Spaceflight aside, how exactly has humanity started to outgrow war, inequality, and climate mismanagement? Call me cynical, but I'm not seeing it.
Global rates of poverty are 83% lower than they were in 1969 when we landed on the moon.<p>So actually, millions of lives have massively benefited from science and technology. To be cynical in the face of all that is a personal take, not a reflection of the facts.
> Global rates of poverty are 83% lower than they were in 1969 when we landed on the moon.<p>Obvious post hoc fallacy
So landing on the moon triggered a reduction in global rates of poverty? do you have any research or citations for this claim?
Vaccines, Mobile Phones, Internet, GPS (How do you think container ships navigate), High yield seeds/fertilizers and the Green Revolution, Weather Satellites, I could go on.<p>It's really getting tiring repeating this stuff over and over again to the anti-space crowd.
Sparked the environmental movement, to name but one major impact.
> > The previous Moon missions certainly didn't accomplish that.<p>> Sparked the environmental movement, to name but one major impact.<p>It...really didn't. There was a new wave with a different political orientation (less conservative/elite) in the environmental movement roughly contemporary to the space program from—the 1950s through the 1970s—but it was driven by a variety of human driven (nuclear testing, oil spills, etc.) environmental disasters combined with more modern media coverage that occurred in that time than by the space program itself.<p>I know there are people who try to ignore all that and pretend that the whole thing was just the Earthrise photo in 1968 but much of the development of the new character of the movement happened before Earthrise, and even what happened after generally clearly had other more important causes.
Also wrt. "climate mismanagement", pretty much all tools we get to measure climate exist because of space program, and many require it to function.
This is absurd. Have you heard of Rachel Carson's 1962 "Silent Spring"?
You don't solve these problems in a single step, but notice how space imagery and analogies pop up every time people try to talk about peace, global problems, mutual empathy, understanding, etc. The Pale Blue Dot, images of Earth from orbit or the Moon, etc. Those are anchors in public consciousness, competing in memetic space with usual divisive, dystopian, hope-draining pictures and soundbites - we need more of them to improve on the big problems, and we absolutely would not have them if not for people actually flying to space.<p>Or, put differently, space exploration is one of the few things "feeding the right wolf" for humanity at large.
> You don't solve these problems in a single step<p>Obviously, but there's no evidence that the previous Moon missions were a step toward solving the problems.<p>> notice how space imagery and analogies pop up every time people try to talk about peace, global problems, mutual empathy, understanding, etc.<p>You think these problems will be solved with... photos?<p>How many more photos do we need? Everyone has seen the photos already. I'm sure Putin and Trump have seen the photos of Earth.
Nobody it'll say space exploration will alone solve those problems. But it helps, and can help more - much more, if we go all the way in and establish permanent economic activity and eventually settlements in the space near Earth and beyond.
> if we go all the way in and establish permanent economic activity and eventually settlements in the space near Earth and beyond.<p>Could you please explain exactly how these would help to stop war and inequality?<p>As far as I can tell, space exploration is going to exacerbate inequality, for example, by making Elon Musk even more obscenely wealthy than he already is.
Is the problem <i>inequality</i> or rather <i>poverty</i>? Because those are not the same thing.<p>What we've done in space has absolutely helped with poverty. It makes weather forecasts possible, which helps even the poorest farmers.<p>This can happen at the same time a handful of people become obscenely wealthy from it.<p>Though in Musk's case, I suspect the wealth is a bubble which will pop before he can cash out more than 8% of it.
> Regardless of whether this particular mission is perfectly planned, this is precisely the kind of thing that will help humanity outgrow the dark age of war, inequality and climate mismanagement.<p>More likely, it is precisely the kind of thing that will be managed specifically to keep people distracted, so that the people who have a near term benefit from the dark age of war, inequality, and climate mismanagement can continue realizing that benefit without interruption by people taking action right up until there is no one left to distract or benefit.
It is a bit chilling to watch these astronaut profiles having just read yesterday about the heat shield issues observed on the prior mission, and that this will be the first time we can test the heat shield in the actual pressures and temperatures that it will have to endure.<p>Godspeed crew of Artemis II.
It'll probably turn out fine (in the same way that you'll probably survive one round of Russian roulette.) I am quite nervous about this though.
Get nervous in 10 days, they won't need a heat shield until reentry.
> in the same way that you'll probably survive one round of Russian roulette<p>Is that with or without spinning the chamber between rounds? The odds are worse if you spin each time. They get worse as the game goes on if you don't spin.
I had to watch "go at throttle up" on replay on the news in 1986 for the entire year, like almost every newscast<p>I was only a teenager and it burned into my brain badly<p>To this day cannot watch any launch with people onboard live
The event itself was a few years before my time, but after reading about it and eventually watching the historical news footage, the phrase "go at throttle up" also seared itself into my brain, and ever since I flinch when I hear it.
Truly. I'm not sure why anyone needs to be on the rocket at all, let alone our best and brightest.
Because human beings are remarkably capable, especially the best and the brightest. There's a great paper called the "dispelling the myth of robotic efficiency." <a href="https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article-abstract/53/2/2.22/212515" rel="nofollow">https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article-abstract/53/2/2.22...</a> // <a href="https://lasp.colorado.edu/mop/files/2019/08/RobotMyth.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://lasp.colorado.edu/mop/files/2019/08/RobotMyth.pdf</a><p>Yes, a robot car that drives on its own will be a better driver than most humans who text and drive, or have 400ms reaction times.<p>But making a machine that can beat a 110ms reaction time human with 2SD+ IQ, and the ability to override the ground controllers with human curiosity is much harder. Humans have high dexterity, are extremely capable of switching roles fast, are surprisingly efficient, and force us to return back home.<p>So in terms of total science return, one Apollo mission did more for lunar science and discovery than 53 years of robots on the surface and in orbit.
How does any of that matter for this mission, which will not be landing on the moon?
Because many small steps are required before every giant leap.<p>I would like to point out that the current misadventure in the ME has cost at least $38,035,856,006 in 32 days. And that won't receive half of the "this is a waste of money" critiques this mission will. And there are a ton of people who are against that excursion.<p>Most people who will come across this will react with either extreme negativity or indifference. Very few people will react positively. This thread itself is evidence of that. This is a nerdy community filled with people who are deeply positive about space exploration and excluding my comments, the straw poll was,<p><pre><code> ~81 positive (48%), ~43 negative (25%), ~45 neutral (27%).
</code></pre>
Only a plurality of comments were positive. 88 comments were neutral or negative.
> <i>How does any of that matter for this mission</i><p>This is a fair question. The closest answer I can get is eyes and ears onboard complement sensors.
To test the stuff that will allow to land humans on the moon
Are you referring to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troctolite_76535" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troctolite_76535</a>
(<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Schmitt#NASA_career" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Schmitt#NASA_career</a>)?
Yes, and more!<p><pre><code> > Apollo was over three orders of magnitude more efficient in producing scientific papers per day of fieldwork than are the MERs. This is essentially the same as Squyres’ (2005) intuitive estimate given above, and is consistent with the more quantitative analogue fieldwork tests reported by Snook et al. (2007).
</code></pre>
Scientific papers are a pretty poor measure of productivity so here's another one. We know about the existence of He-3 thanks to samples brought back from astronauts on the moon. Astronauts setup fiddly UV telescope experiments on the moon, trying to set up a gravimeter to measure gravitational waves, digging into the soil to put explosive charges at different ranges for seismic measurement of the moon's subsurface... They were extremely productive. Most of what we know about the moon happened thanks to the 12 days spent on the lunar surface.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Ultraviolet_Camera/Spectrograph" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Ultraviolet_Camera/Spectro...</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Surface_Gravimeter" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Surface_Gravimeter</a>
ok sure but are humans a full decade of NSF budget better than robots
I suspect it's the optics of it.<p>If you can fly people around the moon, then landing people on the moon is a more reasonable next step.<p>I agree that it may not be entirely logical, but keeping public and funding opinion positive & invested _is_ important.<p>edit: I thought RocketLab flew their elecron rocket around the moon a few years ago? So it's definitely doable... so again I think it's about the optics.
Because the goal of the program is to return humans to the moon. Artemis I was the unmanned test. This is the first manned test, and what they learn will support the subsequent missions that eventually land humans on the moon.<p>This is the same way that all manned spaceflight programs are conducted. You iterate and learn a little bit at a time. "Move fast and break things" doesn't work here. :)
Yes. It's completely debile. If you win you get nothing if you lose it looks very bad.<p>Maybe its a reflection of american society?
Because they want to be on the rocket. To see the moon up close with your own eyes? It's spiritual.
Yeah. Doesn't really make sense. The entire mission could be done remotely.<p>Even with a goal of eventually putting humans on the moon, it'd be better to do an automated run, measure everything in the cockpit, and put in sandbags and/or something to consume O2 to make sure the CO2 scrubbers are working correctly. It's maybe cruel, but a few dogs would work fine for that sort of thing. A flame would be better, but it's pretty dangerous.<p>The first mission in decades doesn't need to have humans in it.
It is a test of the spacecraft. They need people onboard to test all the human systems. But yes, if this was a purely scientific flyby and not part of a larger manned program, machines would do it fine.
I mean, that's how these heat shields work. They aren't reusable, you can't test them and then use them again. Or do you mean the design? We already did Artemis I.
See this recent blog post about it (I am not the author): <a href="https://idlewords.com/2026/03/artemis_ii_is_not_safe_to_fly.htm" rel="nofollow">https://idlewords.com/2026/03/artemis_ii_is_not_safe_to_fly....</a><p>It says that it is not safe to fly. They are sending humans without having tested in real conditions that their design was sound, <i>GIVEN</i> that the first time they did that (without humans), it turned out that their design was unsafe.
An article written by a "Polish-American web developer, entrepreneur, speaker, and social critic" says it's not safe to fly. And? What do the astronauts flying on board with significantly more information say?
There is also an old article written by a professional bongo player about the Challenger explossion. He has other hobbies, but he was not a Rocket Scientist <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/history/rogersrep/v2appf.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.nasa.gov/history/rogersrep/v2appf.htm</a><p>The takeaway, is that the software was fine, but other systems like the main engine used too much cutting edge technology and have a lot of unexpected failure modes and too many problems like partialy broken parts that should no get partialy broken. [For a weird coincidence, Artemis II uses the same engines.] He concluded that when you consider all the possible problems the failure rate was closer to 1/100, but management was underestimating them and the official value that was 1/100000. [Anyway, the engines didn't fail in Columbia, it was one of the other possible problems.]<p>The articles explain that the shield has problems but management is underestimating them again. Let's hope the mission goes fine, but in case of a explosion it would be like a deja vu.
Did you read it? They're prolific here and the essence of the post is a bunch of citations and quotes from Nasa's own staff and literature.
Yes, I've also read material <i>outside</i> of that article from NASA's own staff and literature.<p>Statements like this:<p>"Put more simply, NASA is going to fly Artemis II based on vibes, hoping that whatever happened to the heat shield on Artemis I won’t get bad enough to harm the crew on Artemis II."<p>Are just so intellectually dishonest and completely ignore the extensive research and testing that's gone into qualifying this flight.
You really have no argument except the appeal to authority.
So did they! And they showed their work. So far you're just beating around the bush.<p>What would would help is if you said something like "Maceij says modeling a different entry approach on computers is no substitute for a bona fide re-entry testing a new design, but that's incorrect because _____."
I mean the design.<p>They've changed the AVCOAT to be less permeable and altered the re-entry profile.<p>One of the findings of Artemis I is that lack of permeability led to trapped gas pockets which expanded and blew out pieces of heat shield. The reason for the change to be less permeable is to make it easier to perform ultrasonic testing, not to improve performance.<p>They altered the re-entry profile on the theory that the skip period contributed to spalling, but Charles Camarda disagrees in this doc: <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ddi792xdfNXcBwF8qpDUxmZzIksrs0jy/edit" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ddi792xdfNXcBwF8qpDUxmZz...</a><p>> Another chart which the Artemis Tiger Team did not intend to show on Jan. 8th, was the figure showing the spallation events as a function of time during the skip entry heating profiles (Figure 6.0-4 of NESC Report TI-23-0189 Vol. 1). In this figure, it was quite clear that the Program narrative they were feeding to the press, that it was the dwell time during the skip which allowed the gases generated to build up and cause the delta pressures which caused most of the spallation was, again, patently false. In fact, during the first heat pulse (t ≈ 0 to 240 sec), approximately 40-45% of all the medium to large chunks of ablator spalled off the Artemis I heatshield.<p>> Hence, varying the trajectory would do little to prevent spallation during Artemis II. I was never shown the new, modified trajectory at the Jan. 8th meeting.
The heat shield is a bit different, and the reentry profile is a bit different as well.
We already did Artemis I and the heat shield lost a lot more material than it was supposed to on that flight. "Specifically, portions of the char layer wore away differently than NASA engineers predicted, cracking and breaking off the spacecraft in fragments that created a trail of debris rather than melting away as designed. The unexpected behavior of the Avcoat creates a risk that the heat shield may not sufficiently protect the capsule’s systems and crew from the extreme heat of reentry on future missions."<p>Fixes have been made to the design, but they haven't been tested in flight.
That was the intent of the piece. It is impossible to assess the true intent of such a piece when it so blatantly is asking for attention.
This is a NASA cover up:<p><a href="https://youtu.be/pzZWs7CexYI?t=78" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/pzZWs7CexYI?t=78</a><p><a href="https://youtu.be/Wuao1LgO66w?t=218" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/Wuao1LgO66w?t=218</a>
I will be watching the launch from Europe, so it will be not earlier than half past midnight for us. My kids (9 and 10) are sleeping on the couch in front of the projection screen, so that they do not even have to get up when I wake them up at midnight, which I promised.<p>Just wanted to add my grain of positivity here. Godspeed Artemis 2!
> add my grain of positivity<p>The best of science, reason, research, engineering, training, expertise, co-operation...<p>The best of humanity. <i>Le meilleur de l'humanité.</i>
Even though you could question the whole Artemis concept, it's still extremely exciting watching the countdown with my son. I just missed the original Apollo flights and had assumed I would never see a moon landing in my lifetime. We may well not have a landing for quite some time yet, but it's still cool to see a Moon bound rocket standing on the launchpad...
I don't know if it's feasible for you, but if you can, try to take your kid to see a live rocket launch. The TV is grossly unable to display how awesome these things are in person.
The scale really is unfathomable for the human brain.
It is one of the things I regret not ever getting to see a shuttle launch. The closest I ever got was when I flew over Florida while a shuttle was on the pad.
And a landing! S Padre is great for kids and rockets.<p>For the more adventurous and/or bilingual the beaches on the Mexican side seem to have awesome views too.
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We lived ~60 miles North of the Cape when I was a young boy, and watching the Saturn V's go on the way to the moon was a forming experience.
I lived in Port Orange FL until i was 12, during night launches my dad would take the family to New Smyrna Beach or some where a short drive South where we watched the shuttles come up over the water somehow. I can't remember the details it was a lonnnng time ago haha. I do remember the launches sounding like popcorn popping.<p>I live in Dallas now and will be turning 50 soon, i want to catch the next Starship launch live but would have to time it perfectly to get time off of work ahead of time.
80 miles for me! I was a Space Shuttle era kid though. Saw the Challenger disaster during my lunchtime. And then on perpetual replay for the rest of the week on WESH/WCPX/WFTV most likely. Even still, just knowing we were launching all those people into space was awe-inspiring.
It's even more exciting when you realize that the last crewed mission beyond Low Earth Orbit was 1972 and each person on that spacecraft today are younger than that.
Its going to be a first for me and my son as well. Looking forward to tonight to make an even over it.
Fingers crossed that this <a href="https://idlewords.com/2026/03/artemis_ii_is_not_safe_to_fly.htm" rel="nofollow">https://idlewords.com/2026/03/artemis_ii_is_not_safe_to_fly....</a> doesn't have any effect.
Liftoff! The planning that went behind this is mind boggling. Well done
Recent and related:<p><i>Artemis II is not safe to fly</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47582043">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47582043</a> - March 2026 (598 comments)
Of course it's not "safe"! We put a ton of explosives into a huge can, put a small can with humans on top of it, set it on fire and try to control what happens and get the humans into space, and then we try to drop the same can from the space, while it's traveling at miles per second, and land it on the ground. It's not "safe" and won't likely be "safe" in our lifetimes, there's always big risk, that's why astronauts get so much respect - they take a lot of risks. These risks become smaller with time, but still they are quite serious. And of course anything that reduces risks - while not disabling the whole program - is good, but I don't think "safe" is the word that is justified when talking about those things.
It's been 54 years since humans last visited the Moon. Hopefully, in a few years we will get boots back on the surface.
Out of curiosity, why do you see this as a worthwhile endeavor?<p>My personal perspective is that the resources are better used for other purposes, but it's possible that I just haven't encountered some compelling reason yet.
Do you watch sports, football, the Olympics? If not I'm sure you know someone who does. Same category as this. Each of the 32 NFL team is worth about the cost of 1-2 Artemis launches. The entire league could fund the whole Artemis program nearly twice. Hosting the Olympics is worth about 3-10 launches.<p>Like sports, the objective is ultimately useless except as a showcase of what humanity has to offer, and people like to see that.
I think in general space exploration is a great use of taxpayer money, but the artemis program doesn't seem great from either a "science per dollar" or "novel accomplishment per dollar" standpoint.<p>If the goal was just to flex on the rest of the world I would've much rather we focused on going somewhere <i>new</i> or returning to the moon in a more sustainable way
"returning to the moon in a more sustainable way"<p>Isn't this the point of this mission? If your point is "it shouldn't take this much money", then I agree. But also point to almost everything else.
Each Artemis launch costs something like $4b (that's the incremental cost of a new rocket, it's much higher if you amortize the design costs).<p>IMO the program is not optimized for cost or sustainability, it's optimized for creating jobs in various congressional districts. Of course that provides a certain amount of <i>political</i> sustainability to the so-called Senate Launch System.<p>I just don't see a future where NASA can afford multiple SLS launches per year to maintain a continuous Lunar presence
> <i>Each Artemis launch costs something like $4b</i><p>Early launches, yes, because SLS is a garbage heap. Later ones, almost certainly not.
I think that is the point, but whether this mission will actually do that is rather unconvincing.<p>After (and if) Artemis III lands on the moon and brings home the astronauts there seems to be very little planned on how we actually get to the moon base which NASA is claiming this will lead to, let alone the manned Mars mission that is also supposed to follow.<p>In other words, I think NASA is greatly exaggerating, and possibly lying, about the utility of this mission.
> <i>there seems to be very little planned on how we actually get to the moon base</i><p>There is a lot of research going into <i>in situ</i> construction methods and even nuclear power plants on the moon [1]. (Which would be necessary to bootstrap eventual indigenous panel production [2].)<p>To me it’s encouraging to see this fundamental work being attacked than an endless sea of renderings. The reason you aren’t seeing heavy detailing, despite construction slated to begin with Artemis V, is we’re waiting for the launch vehicles. (“Any exploration program which "just happens" to include a new launch vehicle is, de facto, a launch vehicle program” [3].)<p>[1] <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-department-of-energy-to-develop-lunar-surface-reactor-by-2030/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-department-of-energy-...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00971-x" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00971-x</a><p>[3] <a href="https://blog.matt-rickard.com/p/akins-laws-of-spacecraft-design" rel="nofollow">https://blog.matt-rickard.com/p/akins-laws-of-spacecraft-des...</a>
> This effort ensures the United States leads the world in space exploration and commerce.<p>> <i>“History shows that when American science and innovation come together, from the Manhattan Project to the Apollo Mission, our nation leads the world to reach new frontiers once thought impossible,”</i><p>> Under President Trump’s national space policy<p>I smell politics and American exceptionalism, not science. There are a lot of could-bes in these statements as well, I have serious suspicions that these goals are not serious engineering. I am 99.999% certain that NASA will not build a nuclear reactor on the moon this decade, nor even the next decade. NASA is not giving me any signals they are capable of that.
> <i>I am 99.999% certain that NASA will not build a nuclear reactor on the moon this decade, nor even the next decade. NASA is not giving me any signals they are capable of that</i><p>You don’t think NASA and the DOE, together with Lockheed and Westinghouse, can build a reactor? Why? The major technical issues were largely de-risked with the 2022 solicitation.
They’ve changed it so III isn’t landing. That will be IV apparently.
I feel like these missions are just paving the way for billionaires to have a new vacation spot.
Even if you think Space travel is worth the money (which I personally do), adding humans to the mix makes projects incredibly more expensive. Even in the realm of space travel and research, sending humans is a questionable use of the money.
Sports would also be much cheaper without humans.
The most important (if not entertaining) things you can do in space don't involve humans. Telescopes, communications, earth observation, sending probes to distant bodies, etc.<p>It's nice that we can send humans to space and it's good to keep that capability going so that the knowledge doesn't die. But the unmanned missions tend to pull the weight of actually accomplishing useful things. Humans just get in the way.
Turns out I don't understand the point sports either.
People are going to have to die in order for us to increase our space knowledge. It sucks but thats just how it be, it requires humans for most of it.
The difference being that sports are not exclusively paid by taxes, I guess?
> <i>difference being that sports are not exclusively paid by taxes</i><p>Space isn’t financed “exclusively” by taxes, either.
In the USA tax payers pay for most stadiums/arenas.
I think there is a major difference though. Sports events are not pretending to be anything else. The Artemis mission claims to be advancing science and claims to be a stepping stone for an eventual moon base and a manned mission to Mars. I personally have serious questions about all of these.
Do you really disagree that it’s advancing science? Surely actually testing hardware, building knowledge on how to run this type of mission, learning to use lunar resources, figuring out how to keep people alive, etc. will teach us things we couldn’t learn any other way.<p>Fwiw do share your concerns about the methods (sending humans on this specific mission is questionable, SLS is questionable compared to SpaceX approach).
It's not science, it's engineering. I don't think it's advancing science in a way that wouldn't be possible with a fraction of the cost without sending humans there.
Do you think we will learn more from Artemis or the Asteroid Redirect Mission? Because that's a concrete example of how funding this mission caused other experiments to be cancelled.
The fact that we hope to get some new tech with this whereas sports aims for nothing is just icing on the cake. I think big space missions are worth it every now and then on a humanitarian level; even if no new discoveries are made, a new generation of engineers will become fluent in what we have already discovered. Humanity's education is not "done" when the last fact is written in a book, it needs to be constantly refreshed or it will disappear.<p>Even in sports you do not get "nothing", it has certainty helped advance the field of medicine.
I don’t have any questions about a mission to Mars, it is a stupid and pointless trip that I don’t want to ask any questions about.<p>The Moon, I dunno, it’s at least in Earth’s gravity well so it isn’t like we’re going totally the wrong direction when we go there, right?<p>At best it could be a gas station on the trip to somewhere interesting like the Asteroid belt, though.
Whether a moon base is needed or even beneficial is a question I have not heard a convincing answer in favor. And even if moon base is indeed needed and/or beneficial to future space exploration / resource extraction why robots cannot more efficiently build (or assemble) such a moon base is another question I need an answer to.<p>We are sending humans to (or around) the moon now, but it may just turn out to be a wasted effort, done solely for the opulence (or more cynically bragging rights / nationalist propaganda).
> <i>Whether a moon base is needed or even beneficial is a question I have not heard a convincing answer in favor</i><p>If we want to go to Mars, the Moon is a good place to learn. Simple things like how to do trauma medicine in low g; how to accommodate a variety of human shapes, sizes and fitness levels; how to do <i>in situ</i> manufacturing; all the way to more-speculative science like how to gestate a mammal. These are easier to do on the Moon than Mars. And the data are more meaningful than simulating it in LEO. If we get ISRU going, doing it on the Moon should actually be cheaper.<p>If we don’t want to colonize space, the Moon is mostly a vanity mission. That said, the forcing function of developing semi-closed ecologies almost certainly has sustainability side effects on the ground.
We don‘t want to colonize space. Colonizing space is science fiction, not a serious goal for humanity, and certainly not an engineering challenge. There is no reason for humans to live anywhere other then on Earth. We have more reasons to live on Antarctica or the deep ocean then on the Moon, Mars or Alpha Centauri.<p>What I really want is for us to send a lander and a launcher to Mars capable of returning to earth the the capsules Perseverance has been collecting. I would love for geologists on earth to examine Mars rock under a microscope. I would want them to take detailed pictures of an exoplanet using the Sun as a gravitational lens. And I would love it if they could send probes to Alpha Proxima using solar sails to get there within a couple of decades.<p>None of these would benefit from having a moon base. In fact this moon base seems to be diverting funds away from missions with more chance of success and more scientific value.
We are nowhere near the capability to launch robots to the moon that can autonomously build or assemble a moon base for any useful definition of moon base.<p>> We are sending humans to (or around) the moon now, but it may just turn out to be a wasted effort, done solely for the opulence<p>My 4 year old is extremely excited to watch the launch tonight because it’s manned. I’d say a few billion is worth it if all it does is inspire a new generation of astronauts, engineers, and scientists.
And neither are we anywhere near the capability to lunch construction workers to the moon which can build or assemble an equivalent moon base with their human labor. So this answer does not satisfy me one bit.<p>> inspire a new generation of astronauts, engineers, and scientists<p>This is a good point. And I would like it to be true. However when you have to lie about (or exaggerate) the scientific value of the mission, that is not exactly inspiring is it. Your 4 year old could be equally inspired by the amazing photos James Webb has given us, and unlike Artemis, James Webb is providing us with unique data which is inspiring all sorts of new science.
> And neither are we anywhere near the capability to lunch construction workers to the moon which can build or assemble an equivalent moon base with their human labor. So this answer does not satisfy me one bit.<p>We have the capability to do that. We don’t have the will to do it, but we have the technology. We don’t even have autonomous robots that are capable of building a moon base on earth.<p>> Your 4 year old could be equally inspired by the amazing photos James Webb has given us, and unlike Artemis, James Webb is providing us with unique data which is inspiring all sorts of new science.<p>He’s not though. People gather around as a family and watch manned space missions. It’s exciting in a way that a telescope or a probe isn’t.
Indeed, in 1969, as a small child, I watched the Moon landing together with my parents, in Europe, like also the following missions, in the next years.<p>They have certainly contributed to my formation as a future engineer.
The key here is “could be”. But most four (or in my case, six) year olds can’t really grasp the abstract concepts of what JWST is or the data it’s sending back. For that matter most 40 year olds can’t.<p>A manned mission on the other hand is tangible in a way a probe isn’t. “See the big round thing in the night sky? There are four people going around it in a spacecraft”.<p>It isn’t a _complete_ argument in favour of manned missions- that has to account for the risk of the endeavour and reward of the science potential of having people there to react in ways robots can’t. But it’s hard to pretend that the inspiration pretty much everyone feels when they see manned missions is somehow achievable purely by robotic ones.
> <i>neither are we anywhere near the capability to lunch construction workers to the moon which can build or assemble an equivalent moon base with their human labor</i><p>Why do you say this? What is the bottleneck you feel we are more than half a decade from?
The moon has about the same make up as the Earth when it comes to distribution of elements in the crust. If it's anywhere near 8% like Earth then it makes sense to mine aluminum and other metals on the moon in order to build megastructures in orbit. Since the moon has no atmosphere you can accelerate things using mechanical mass drivers. Basically rail systems. At 5,300 mph you hit escape velocity and can then move payload somewhere with no rockets. It would keep us from polluting Earth too. This is the precursor to O'Neil cylinder type structures. AI robots will probably be the play but you still want a transportation system that works and frankly building a landing zone would improve overall outcomes regardless.
The rocks at the surface of the Moon are richer in metals than the crust of the Earth. They are especially richer in iron and titanium.<p>Without oxidizing air, it is easier to extract metals from the Moon rocks.<p>There is little doubt that it would be possible to build big spaceships on the Moon.<p>However, what is missing on the Moon is fuel. For interplanetary spacecraft, nuclear reactors would be preferable anyway, which could be assembled there from parts shipped from Earth, but for propulsion those still need a large amount of some working gas,to be heated and ejected.<p>It remains to be seen if there is any useful amount of water at the poles, but I doubt that there is enough for a long term exploitation.
This argument comes up a lot, about whether a space program is “worth it” in some sense. One problem I’ve found is that these discussions often treat this in the abstract. And then we get into the nature of human endeavor, the economic benefits of that R&D, etc.<p>Let’s talk about this in terms of practicalities. The NASA budget for 2026, per Wikipedia, is $24.4B. I often find it hard to really reason about the size of federal budgets, and the impact on tax payers, but I have a thought experiment that I think helps put it into perspective. Suppose we decided to pay for the NASA budget with a new tax, just for funding NASA. And we did that in the simplest (and most unfair) possible way: a flat rate. Every working adult in the US has to pay some fixed monthly rate (so excluding children and retirees). Again, per Wikipedia, that’s around 170M people. Take the NASA budget, divide by 170M, and you get … $11.96/month.<p>Obviously, there’s lots of flaws in this. That’s not we pay for NASA, we have income tax as a percentage with different tax brackets. But it is a helpful way to frame how much a country is spending, normalized by population. And I think it puts a lot of things in perspective. $11.96/month is comparable to a streaming service. And we talk a lot about whether NASAs budget is better used for other purposes, but we don’t do the same thing for a streaming service.<p>Hell, look at US consumer spending: <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm</a> (note that that spending is in dollars per “consumer unit,” which is I think is equivalent to an adult US worker, but there might be some caveats). Based on that, the average US consumer spends around $26.17/month on “tobacco products and smoking supplies”. I just feel it’s a little silly to worry about the NASA budget when the US consumer spends twice that on what is objectively a luxury good. At least NASA won’t give you cancer.
> And we talk a lot about whether NASAs budget is better used for other purposes, but we don’t do the same thing for a streaming service.<p>Actually, we do. I just cancelled two of mine in the last hour, and I know many people who are serial join/cancel subscribers because they "talk a lot about whether the [monthly fee] is better used for other purposes".
NASA isn't expensive. The science parts and the job creation parts almost certainly return a significant economic multiplier. The spend is very good value for around 0.5% of the federal budget.<p>That doesn't mean Moon shots are the best possible use of that budget. There are strong arguments for creating more space stations first, and then using them as staging for other projects.<p>Mars and the Moon are <i>ridiculously</i> hostile environments. Hollywood (and Elon Musk) have sold a fantasy of land-unpack-build. There aren't enough words to describe how utterly unrealistic that is.<p>Current strategy is muddled, because it contains elements of patriotic Cold War PR fumes, contractor pork, and more than a hint of covert militarisation. Science and engineering are buried somewhere in the middle of that.<p>They could be front and centre, but they're not.
I would like to watch a new Moon landing, but in my opinion more useful would be to build a space station with artificial gravity.<p>At some point it may become cheaper to build a spacecraft on the Moon and launch it in interplanetary missions than to do it from Earth. It might also be useful to build some bigger telescopes on the Moon than it is practical to launch from Earth, because due to the pollution of the sky extraterrestrial telescopes become more and more necessary.<p>Despite the fact that there may be some uses for bases on the Moon, it is likely that those bases should be mostly automated and humans should stay in such bases only for a limited time, much like staying on the ISS. The reason is that it is very likely that the gravity of the Moon is still too low to avoid health deterioration. According to the experiments done on mice in the ISS, two thirds of the terrestrial gravity were required to avoid health issues and one third of the terrestrial gravity provided a partial mitigation.<p>So even the gravity of Mars is only barely enough to avoid the more severe health problems, but not sufficient.<p>For long term missions, there is no real alternative to the use of a rotating space station, to ensure adequate gravity.<p>While with underground bases on Moon or on Mars it would be much easier to provide radiation protection, there remains the problem of insufficient gravity. It may be necessary to also build a rotating underground base, at least for a part where humans spend most of the time.
That’s a very fair point. Frankly I don’t know enough about the Artemis mission and general path, and would like to learn more. I’m certainly open to the argument that NASA’s budget isn’t properly allocated to the right priorities. I was responding just to the classic argument of “why spend money on NASA when we could be spending on …”
> Out of curiosity, why do you see this as a worthwhile endeavor?<p>to me it's inspiring and gives people something to cheer for. It also keeps a lot of people employed, productive, and at least has the possibility for new innovation. When looking at the mountains and mountains of wasted taxpayer dollars I dislike these the least.
Because one day, far far in the future, the humanity would reach out to the stars, and these are the first tiny steps to enable this. There's always the question of directing the resources, and this program is not that expensive, really - around $100bn. Given that fraud at COVID time alone is estimated to have cost the Treasury twice as much, seems like a worthy investment into the future.
Because humans are destined to colonize space, and this is just an early step in a journey that will take hundreds or thousands of years.<p>More importantly, challenges like space exploration help drive knowledge and our economy; and are critical for national prestigue.<p>(And, most people don't focus on this, space exploration is a way for the US to demonstrate its military technology in a non-antagonistic way. There's a lot of overlap in space exploration technology and miliary technology.)
The moonshot is a halo program that, when executed in a non-profit form, ends up benefiting society as a whole due to smart people being cornered and forced to solve hard problems that typically have applicability elsewhere on Earth.<p>Edit: remember the Kennedy speech — We choose to go to the moon not because it is easy, but because we thought it would be easy.
<i>> My personal perspective is that the resources are better used for other purposes, but it's possible that I just haven't encountered some compelling reason yet.</i><p>Well, people are often obsessed with rationality, and seek reasons to do something, but there is one reason that works almost for anything: just because. If we want to go forward, we'd better try a lot of things, including those that do not look very promising. We don't know the future, the only way to uncover it is to try. Did you hear about gradient descent? It is an algo for finding local maxima and to do its work it needs to calculate partial derivatives to choose where to go next. In reality doing things and measuring things are sometimes indistinguishable. So society would better try to move in all directions at once.<p>A lot of people believe that to fly to the Moon is a good idea. Maybe they believe it due to emotional reasons, but it is good enough for me, because it allows to concentrate enough resources to do it.<p><i>> the resources are better used for other purposes</i><p>It is much better use for $$$ than the war with Iran. I believe that the war have eaten more then Artemis already, and... Voltaire said "perfect is an enemy of good". The Moon maybe not the perfect way to use resources, but it is good at least.
Go take a look at how much this costs compared to the rest of the federal budget. I think you'll be surprised by how little money NASA gets.<p>Now, the military...
It is great to advance of what is humanly possible. Sending a robot? Great! Good data. If it dies, who cares, it does not live anyway. All abstract.<p>But sending a human? That feels more real. If we have the power to go alive to the moon, we also have the power to go even further. And we lost it, now we are reclaiming it.<p>And it doesn't matter to me what I think of the US government - this is progress for all of humanity. Also the comment section on the youtube stream is interesting - lot's of different flags are posted, sending good wishes from all around the world, low effort comments otherwise of course, but largely positive. (Very rare I think)<p>So, more rockets into space please and less on earth.
I want humanity to continue to be explorers. The Moon is a good next thing, then asteroid mining, humans on Mars and Venus, and eventually colonizing the Milky Way.
It encourages kids to study science.<p>It unites Americans towards a cause.<p>The engineering advancements have commercial applications.<p>And at the most basic level, it's a jobs program. Look at how many Americans are working because of this.
Successful space travel is one of the few big news events where nobody has to be unhappy.<p>Most of the other big news events are ones where people get severely hurt, and political ones where one partly loses.<p>With this, we can look up at the moon, and say "Humanity did that."
Think of all that cheese.
Simply because Earth is too small a place for humanity to limit itself to.
You're right. The future of humanity is not in space, but in venture-backed smartphone apps.
Because inevitably the Earth will have yet another ELE. And it's a better use of tax dollars than warmongering, YMMV.
It's a better thing to strive for than war.
How many days of a war with Iran could be funded with the Artemis budget?
It's quite telling that all the replies you're getting are about "hope" and "jobs" with no actual scientific reason. I guess we're taxing people for vanity space missions and jobs programs. Makes sense.
Because it is good for humans to have a thing to do. Not sure why this is not considered a valid reason. A lot of these 'it would be better to do X' assumes everyone has the same psychological profile as you. They don't. Many people are driven to explore and would go mad otherwise.
I do much better with things to look forward to, or when I have a feeling that progress can be made. An interesting movie coming out, new music coming out. Or even better reminding me what humans are capable of above just grinding to get by or grinding to exploit others. Haven't been many moments of feeling progress lately.
Hopefully, in a few years we will figure out that hydrogen rockets can not reliably launch on time and we'll switch to less leaky fuels. Then maybe we won't need to pull 40 year old engines out of museums to dump in the ocean.<p>I'm all for human spaceflight, but the Senate Launch System seems the best argument for shutting down human spaceflight programs.
NASA is risking the Astronauts lives, and could have done the mission uncrewed to test what is being tested for the first time with humans:<p>Artemis II is not safe to fly - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47582043">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47582043</a>
Direct livestream link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf_UjBMIzNo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf_UjBMIzNo</a>
I tuned in for 60 seconds, the presenter got everything wrong, and I just tuned out until liftoff.<p>She called the top of the ET (well, it's no longer an ET, but it's the stage that was the STS ET) the "upper stage". She said that the propellents are stored at thousands of degrees below zero. And so on. This is a NASA presenter?
> <i>She called the top of the ET (well, it's no longer an ET, but it's the stage that was the STS ET) the "upper stage". She said that the propellents are stored at thousands of degrees below zero. And so on. This is a NASA presenter?</i><p>To be fair to her, she seemed to explicitly refer to what sits <i>on top</i> of the core stage, it just wasn't in the diagram she was gesturing to the top of at the time.<p>To be fair to you, I think the cryogenic comment was worse and she actually said "thousands of degrees below Fahrenheit".<p>The problem is they're trying to run hours of programming leading up to this launch for some reason, but aren't willing to force the experts to come in to do the commentary. They should have given her a script.
You are not the target audience for this sort of presentation. Media directed at the laity is more about being directionally than quantifiably correct, and is full of metaphor and embellishment to capture the imagination rather than communicate something with precision.<p>People who want the actual details and numbers will read.
I firmly believe you can have both exciting, inspiring, and factually correct communication if you make that a priority.<p>The experience of hearing factual things presented with passion and obvious expertise is in itself inspiring. Why settle for less?
i'm sure the whole talk track was piped through an AI for clarity and excitement and the presenters were told to read the script.
I feel like they really fumbled the video feeds, it was a mess. Rapid shifting of camera angles as it left the pad, black video, switching to a grainy video of the crowd during booster separation, and a hasty switch back well after they separated.<p>Come on guys. You're going to the moon. You couldn't plan the launch camera / video feed better? This is how the world sees it, gets excited about it.
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You're supposed to have peanuts, not popcorn, tonight:<p><a href="https://science.nasa.gov/missions/what-are-jpls-lucky-peanuts/" rel="nofollow">https://science.nasa.gov/missions/what-are-jpls-lucky-peanut...</a>
Found a stream on YouTube earlier (which presumably wasn't an official one because it disappeared 15 minutes later after a claim by "FUBO TV") and it had a poll attached: "Will the Artemis astronauts land on the moon?"<p>40% of people had voted yes. Which is somewhat worrying given the mission plan and hardware.
There is also a stream on ESA Web TV <a href="https://watch.esa.int/" rel="nofollow">https://watch.esa.int/</a>
The SpaceX cameras of live launches are way better. This NASA stream is mostly all computer generated art after the initial pad launch. Hardly any live space feeds from the ship.
Gonna watch with my son if it doesn’t get postponed.
Wish them all the best and safe travels. I’ll be tuning in as you never know when the next crewed mission will be, probably not another 50 years if advancements in space travel happen.
Mild Space Weather: <a href="https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/" rel="nofollow">https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/</a><p>Moderate geomagnetic storm watch until April 2.
Is there any website that gives me updates mirroring the livestream but in plain text? I won't be able to tune in for the launch but this is exciting and I'd like to follow the developments! I'm sure the answer is "Twitter" but I don't understand how that platform works.
<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/missions/2026/04/01/live-artemis-ii-launch-day-updates/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/missions/2026/04/01/live-artemis-...</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47601017">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47601017</a>
<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c4g4ygw0r02t" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c4g4ygw0r02t</a>
I'm watching it rapt, but also wondering which KIND of leaky will result in a scrub..
Can't understand why there doesn't seem to be much wider excitement at all, around "our Apollo 8", that I've been waiting decades for (late 40s here).<p>Apparently here in the UK our schools are hardly even hyping it.
From here on the space coast of Florida: GODSPEED THE CREW OF ARTEMIS II
If the crew were to be lost into deep space or something, is there a protocol for self euthanization?
Range is go after they worked to verify the FTS. Great news.
Godspeed AI-I
There are tons of comments here that say, "this could have been a robot." And no, it really couldn't have.<p>The best of humanity is remarkably capable as compared to the best physical machines / robots. There's a great paper called the "dispelling the myth of robotic efficiency." <a href="https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article-abstract/53/2/2.22/212515" rel="nofollow">https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article-abstract/53/2/2.22...</a> // <a href="https://lasp.colorado.edu/mop/files/2019/08/RobotMyth.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://lasp.colorado.edu/mop/files/2019/08/RobotMyth.pdf</a><p><pre><code> > “the expert evidence we have heard strongly suggests that the use of autonomous robots alone will very significantly limit what can be learned about our nearest potentially habitable planet” (Close et al. (2005; paragraph 70).
>
> Putting it more bluntly, Steve Squyres, the Principal Investigator for the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, has written:
>
> “[t]he unfortunate truth is that most things our rovers can do in a perfect sol [i.e. a martian day] a human explorer could do in less than a minute” (Squyres, 2005, pp. 234-5).
</code></pre>
Yes, a robot car that drives on its own will be a better driver than most humans who text and drive, or have 400ms reaction times.<p>But making a machine that can beat a 110ms reaction time human with 2SD+ IQ – and the ability to override the ground controllers with human curiosity – for exploration is much harder. Healthy, smart humans have high dexterity, are extremely capable of switching roles fast, are surprisingly efficient, and force us to return back home.<p>So in terms of total science return, one Apollo mission did more for lunar science and discovery than 53 years of robots on the surface and in orbit.
They are not going to land on the Moon! They are just going to sit in a can for two weeks and take photos. (OK. Tthe can is on top of a lot of burning explosive material and if they don't aim correctly they will get in a weird trajectory that will kill them. Not for the faint of heart.)<p>I'm not sure if they can override the commands send from Earth, but turning on and off the engines like in the Apollo XIII movie is like 100 times less accurate than the automatic orders. It's not 1969, now computer can play chess and aim to go around the Moon better than us.<p>Also, there is still Artemis III to test the live support equipment with humans inside, before Artemis IV that is spouse to attempt landing on the Moon.
Even I'm a big space fan, at moment I just can enjoy anything that comes from USA. I just can't applause to a super bully.
That's your own thing. Think about it to applause the dedicated work of people who have spent their life building these missions and have to do this work through multiple different administrations.
What a sad, disappointing instinct. It completely divorced from reality to assume that "enjoy[ing] anything that comes from [the] USA" implies any sort of political allegiance to whoever happens to sit in the Oval office at that particular point in time.<p>There's no way you're "a big space fan" if the first thing you think of when you see a rocket launch that was announced 9 years is Donald Trump.
KSP irl. I still dont know how they keep the framerate so high with so many parts.
Safe trip to the crew. I do hope that they have ironed out all the issues.
Why do this? Why look to space and understand Earth's smallness? So we can understand reality as Carl Sagan explains in his pale blue dot speech.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g</a>
too windy outside for this to happen imo
Oh hell... Thanks for this reminder, I have almost forgot about it with all the problems I'm trying to solve now.
4.5hrs to go
I'm just SO HAPPY we can talk about something that doesn't involve the Iran war, ICE etc. This is a really historic moment, I hope that the current and future administrations continue investing in space exploration. I've waited my whole life for this as the entire "action" happened before I was born. Hubble/James Webb/ISS are cool but Artemis is something else!
>we can talk about something that doesn't involve the Iran war, ICE etc.<p>And yet, you did bring them up.
... federalized voting, birthright citizenship... it is amazing how space exploration can be a unifying moment of positivity.
Did the CIA do its job correctly and put Trump on that rocket?
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Really hoping those of us who think NASA has jumped the shark won't have to keep ourselves from saying "I told you so" next week out of respect for the dead.<p>This is four people putting their lives at risk for poor engineering and bad project management.<p>The "right stuff" applies to the engineers too, but they've all unfortunately left Boeing and NASA.
This opinion may be unpopular here but it's hard to get excited about a colossal waste of taxpayer money after all the damage DOGE did. I don't understand how these NASA missions with questionable scientific value and obscene budgets get off the ground.<p>I mean I do understand, NASA funding is important to oligarchs. But still.
I personally find the grind easier when there also big things happening. You can't just cook the same, most basic, cheapest meal every day for your family and expect them to be happy. Who wants to join a club that doesn't do anything interesting? Same with society. It sometimes needs to dream, to aspire and inspire. To lift peoples head from the toil and look up.
Artemis was already set in stone well before DOGE came about and IMO if the federal government is going to set mountains of cash on fire I'd rather it be to NASA than half the crap the government wastes every year.
Good idea, we should divert taxpayer money to offshore wind and AI-powered food delivery startups instead.
I find it interesting the MSM is too busy sperging out about Trump to not treat this as page-three news and place it below the cut.<p>It's also the first woman and black guy to go to the moon, for those keeping score at home.
predicting malfunctioning systems (just a guess)