Our return to the Moon.

[maw lod qan]

  I've really been, anxious, to see progress with the Artemis program. I guess I'll just have to be patient.

I can't stop thinking that our first manned launch was in '61. The next year, the President made his famous speech, to the moon and back, safely, before the end of the decade.

With pencils, paper, sliderules, and hand drafting, we went thru Mercury, Gemini and then Apollo. We kept his schedule.

Now, working with advanced computers, existing knowledge and designs we seem to struggle more now.

Artemis's first launch was delayed 6 years. Even now, the heat shield is being questioned. 

I hate to even mention, budget concerns!

Do you think it will be possible for them to get things going even close to the schedule?

Time's a-wasting! Some of use are growing old!

 

[tomato]

I was just a kid through the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo era but as I have read more about those days and the immense problems that were overcome in such a short space of time my respect for those achievements just keeps on growing.

Technology has advanced so much since the but where are the real challenges to harness it? “I think this nation should commit itself to having Tik Tok at everyone’s fingertips before the decade is out” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

Of course one could argue we have more pressing problems closer to home now but there is no cohesive commitment to fixing them, either.

[Sunshine]

What baffles me to no end is the fact that this is literally being reinvented some 60 years later.

[Guest]

I have very vague memories of Apollo 11.  I can remember watching it on a black and white tv.  I remember the rocket liftoff and maybe some of the surface videos.  Why reinvent it, because that is what we do.  We are just stupid that way lol 

[Carbon Brush]

I'm glad it is not just me who thinks the new NASA package is Apollo again!

This is all from memory, not referenced. To get the 60s technology into perspective....

The first pictures of the far side of the moon were taken using film, which was on board processed.
Then shown to a really basic TV camera for slow data rate transmission to home.

Sir Patrick Moore, an amateur stargazer, TV presenter and author, spent time in the USA squinting through the eyepiece of a decent scope in a clear sky, so NASA would have a decent map.

Apollo11 was filmed in monochorme because a colour video cmeara was a huge clumsy thing.
First time they used colour on a later mission, it fried when pointed at the sun.

Half a century later, come on NASA, just what are you playing at?

Just copy some of the SpaceX ideas to get you going.
Well maybe not filling LEO with satellite clutter.

 

[John]

1 hour ago, Sunshine said:

What baffles me to no end is the fact that this is literally being reinvented some 60 years later.

But without the strong incentive that Russian ambitions on the moon created back then.

 

 

[maw lod qan]

1 hour ago, John said:

But without the strong incentive that Russian ambitions on the moon created back then.

 

 

  Yes, I purposely left out that incentive.

  And the fact that once again,  nothing is being saved and reused.

  I feel as if this is being looked at like another chance for the "Ole boys" to fill their piggy bank.

  Yes, it is to fill the night sky with clutter, but SpaceX is launching a rocket a week, if not more!

 

[Andy ES]

I just about remember Apollo, the Apollo applications project is more of a memory, and of course Skylab.

I can’t see the point of further Moon landings unless they lead to a mission to Mars, which I wholeheartedly support.

I think Kennedy said about Apollo something like,

”We do not yet understand the benefits these endeavours will give us”

Currently reading Andrew Chaikin’s “A Man  on the Moon” for the 3rd time, highly recommended.

[Grump Martian]

The idea is for Artemis to dock with the coming Lunar Gateway space station . Then board the Space X lander to get to the moons surface. All this by 2025. Where is the complete and tested Gateway station. Is the Space X lander going to be ready? I'm not sure that the next astronauts to land on the moon will be American. Nor that it will happen in the foreseable future.

[Tomatobro]

I well remember, many years ago, while in the USA an argument started in a local paper about the cost of space programs and how it all was a waste of money etc.

I think it was a NASA accountant who published a reply which went something like this. 

A high proportion of NASA money goes into wages which are taxed so some gets returned. The goods and services they buy are also taxed. The people involved demand that local facilities such as hospitals, schools and support facilities be improved which benefits all.  local support business are created and grow and create employment which generates local revenues and taxes. Higher education is stimulated which leads to advanced technologies further down the road.

I wish I had cut it out and kept the reply as it was a masterful rebuke of the waste of money comments.  

 

[Andy ES]

25 minutes ago, Tomatobro said:

wish I had cut it out and kept the reply as it was a masterful rebuke of the waste of money comments

I expect there are lots of figures banded about, many of them inaccurate ( including possibly this one), but I think heard from a popular scientist that there has been a 7:1 return on expenditure during the Apollo period.

In terms of new technologies etc,

 

[Nik271]

It's a question of priorities. Apollo took the lions share of NASA total budget in the 70s which was running close to 4% of the US federal budget in some years.

Currently NASA's budget is 0.5% of the US budget, and I bet Artemis is just a small part of it. You can tell everything is going to be done on the cheap.   

Edited August 14, 2023 by Nik271
typos corrected

[maw lod qan]

Now I've read that the first manned Starliner launch will be next year, no earlier than March.

Boeing is confident it will be able to do its contracted 6 launches to the ISS before it is decommissioned in 2030!

I need to call my doctor! She ask me this past Thur at my annual old guy exam if I was depressed! I said no!

But now, I am really depressed!

 

[EarthLife]

Whoever said the human race was logical? .. Dr. Gillian Taylor