Artemis II

I know it's been around 50 years since we've last landed, but given the cost to get to the moon, you'da thunk maybe we'd done more than a drive by?

I know lofty goals can lead to hazards, but this would be akin to swimming thru waters, from Alaska to Florida, infested with all sorts of perils, just to pass by Disney from the outside, snap a few photos of the back gate, swim back home and say "I've been there."

And broken toilets that cost more than my house, that when working 100% are still so loud you need hearing protection when you go??
:rofl1:

Still, good they went and even better they're back safe.

When do we leave again?
 
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I had the live feed going from launch, and kept tabs on it at the important times up to the Moon swing by. I missed splashdown as I was busy with show prep and blasted work. Elated they are home and safe!
 
What I don't understand was recovering the astronauts and bringing them back to the ship. The flotation collar made a lot of sense - one spacecraft was lost due to flooding. Beyond that, it seemed like a lot of make-work and spend-money. The front porch? Once they were on that floating front porch, they drifted a fair distance from the capsule. Why not have just put a motor on it and putt putted to the ship? Why not just tie a rubber inflatable boat to the capsule and unload the astronauts into that?

The USS Murtha was 3000 yard away - roughly 6 minutes by a fast boat. I know a guy who had a 40 or 50' rigid inflatable boat that, iirc, he bragged would do 40 mph (w/ three huge outboards). That could have carried everyone, including the dive team that set up the inflation collar.

Someone please tell me that hoisting people into two helos is safer than transporting them 2 miles by boat.
 
SMSW said:
What I don't understand was recovering the astronauts and bringing them back to the ship. The flotation collar made a lot of sense - one spacecraft was lost due to flooding. Beyond that, it seemed like a lot of make-work and spend-money. The front porch? Once they were on that floating front porch, they drifted a fair distance from the capsule. Why not have just put a motor on it and putt putted to the ship? Why not just tie a rubber inflatable boat to the capsule and unload the astronauts into that?

The USS Murtha was 3000 yard away - roughly 6 minutes by a fast boat. I know a guy who had a 40 or 50' rigid inflatable boat that, iirc, he bragged would do 40 mph (w/ three huge outboards). That could have carried everyone, including the dive team that set up the inflation collar.

Someone please tell me that hoisting people into two helos is safer than transporting them 2 miles by boat.
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From what I understand they make the helo hoist plan in advance for a few reasons, in case of emergecy evac being needed & very rough seas as two prime reasons. They stick with the plan even if everything else and conditions are ideal.
 
I think space travel is exciting, but c'mon, we already did this more than once back in the late '60s, and even more. It seems to me that the level of media excitement was disproportionate to what was actually accomplished.

Apollo missions orbited the moon many times, but from lower altitudes, so this time the crew saw a wider view of the "dark side" than Apollo. I wasn't watching religiously, but the media seemed to make it sound like they were seeing something for the first time. I think there were certain features of the moon that they saw for the first time, but the general concept of seeing the side of the moon facing away from Earth had already been accomplished in the '60s as well.

And they seemed to make a big deal out of them traveling 1.5% further from Earth than previous missions.

Anybody else get the feeling that this was more of a PR operation than anything else?
 
dwalby said:
Anybody else get the feeling that this was more of a PR operation than anything else?
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It's all PR. The moon is a prop made in Hollywood out of 2x4's and canvas and lots of paint. Everyone knows the moon is made of green cheese and if they really went there they would have brought some back. :rofl1:

Nevertheless, I watched the whole thing on youtube last nite. Suckers are born every minute (just ask P.T.)
 
In engineering terms "nominal" points all hit for re-entry. That's the self-deprecating way to say "exactly as per design".

Talked to the crew to, around, from the moon - right up to before and after re-entry LOS from Houston...

Then they couldn't communicate with the surface crew assigned to recover the Artemis II astronauts after splash-down! Ya think SOMEbody ate some crow last evening?????

Glad they are safe!
 
dwalby said:
I think space travel is exciting, but c'mon, we already did this more than once back in the late '60s, and even more. It seems to me that the level of media excitement was disproportionate to what was actually accomplished.

Apollo missions orbited the moon many times, but from lower altitudes, so this time the crew saw a wider view of the "dark side" than Apollo. I wasn't watching religiously, but the media seemed to make it sound like they were seeing something for the first time. I think there were certain features of the moon that they saw for the first time, but the general concept of seeing the side of the moon facing away from Earth had already been accomplished in the '60s as well.

And they seemed to make a big deal out of them traveling 1.5% further from Earth than previous missions.

Anybody else get the feeling that this was more of a PR operation than anything else?
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I think for a lot of the media talking heads, weren't alive in 1969, so this was their first time. I got the feeling some of them had no idea what Apollo was until they started to prep for Artemis coverage, Some pretty dumb questions.

I'm loving it and glad that it's getting media attention, apathy (and an expensive diversion to the Space Shuttle) is in part I think what killed true manned exploration like Apollo. It all brings me back to the days when I was in high school and my Dad was an electronics displays and controls engineer at Rockwell before and throughout the Apollo program. He was part of the ground team for Apollo 10 and got to see the launch, then spent the mission at Houston, and finally was on the USS Princeton for the splash down and recovery.
 
dwalby said:
I think space travel is exciting, but c'mon, we already did this more than once back in the late '60s, and even more. It seems to me that the level of media excitement was disproportionate to what was actually accomplished.
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To be fair, that was two to three generations ago, so many people today never experienced it live.
 
I can remember, at the age of 13, sitting in front of a black and white tv watching the first moon landing with my Mum! I haven't really payed any attention to Artemis, nor does it really seem to have been a big thing this side of the pond!
 
Obo said:
I know it's been around 50 years since we've last landed, but given the cost to get to the moon, you'da thunk maybe we'd done more than a drive by?

I know lofty goals can lead to hazards,
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This was a test. It was only a test.

As someone in the software / tech business, I'm sure you already know the axiom that you test one thing at a time. Otherwise, when you are analyzing a failure you don't really know for certain what caused or contributed to it.

Actually landing on the moon, and then leaving it to reunite with the orbiter, adds a whole lot more complexity to an already incredibly complicated mission process.

I haven't followed closely enough to know such basic facts as:
  • Did this mission even include a landing component?
  • If it did, was it real or an untested dummy?
  • If it was real, was there fuel for it? Were there provisions aboard? Did the toilets work?
  • Has the extraction, separation, rendezvous and docking process already been tested in space (purely terrestrially-based tests don't count, unless they turn up a flaw)?

Baby steps...
 
somebody needs to tell that lady astronaut that the men leaving the toilet seat up does not count as “broken” and it does not need to be reported as “out of service.”
 
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