• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

NASA Sets Launch Date for Artemis I Moon Mission - August 29th

ManaByte

Gold Member
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-sets-launch-coverage-for-artemis-mega-moon-rocket-spacecraft

The first in a series of increasingly complex missions, Artemis I will be an uncrewed flight test that will provide a foundation to extend human presence to the Moon and beyond. The mission will demonstrate the performance of the SLS rocket and test Orion’s capabilities over the course of about six weeks as it travels about 40,000 miles beyond the Moon and back to Earth.

And for those Flat Earthers, NASA will be broadcasting a special treat in 4K on their YouTube channel:
5:30 p.m.: Coverage of first Earth views from Orion during outbound coast to the Moon.
 
Only running about 20 years behind schedule And billions over budget.

300497c7-7eb0-4829-8f3b-54578a010294_text.gif
 

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
Only running about 20 years behind schedule And billions over budget.

Nasa budget is 0.5% of the federal budget... back during the apollo era it was almost 5%.

Just get congress to throw an extra 200B per year on NASA and things will get done faster.

Oh, and remember that back then NASA was the apollo program - nowdays it does other stuff.
 
Last edited:
Nasa budget is 0.5% of the federal budget... back during the apollo era it was almost 5%.

Just get congress to throw an extra 200B per year on NASA and things will get done faster.

Oh, and remember that back then NASA was the apollo program - nowdays it does other stuff.

Yea, I don’t get that complaint. NASA is so severely under budgeted (and understaffed) it isn’t even funny. It deserves so much more. Hell, almost any hard Science discipline deserves more funding than they get these days. Seeing the amount of money that goes into the entertainment industry or private pockets in the medical industry vs what goes into NASA or is spent on active R&D is repugnant and makes me physically ill.
 
I don't give a shit about the moon, the U.S. annexed that rock like 50 years ago. Do something impressive like walk on the bottom of the Marianas Trench or stop cockteasing the flight to Mars and get it done. I don't care about budget excuses, winners find a way to win.
 

ManaByte

Gold Member
I don't give a shit about the moon, the U.S. annexed that rock like 50 years ago. Do something impressive like walk on the bottom of the Marianas Trench or stop cockteasing the flight to Mars and get it done. I don't care about budget excuses, winners find a way to win.

They need to go back to the moon before Mars. They need to get Gateway setup as the staging point.

https://www.nasa.gov/gateway
 

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
I don't give a shit about the moon, the U.S. annexed that rock like 50 years ago. Do something impressive like walk on the bottom of the Marianas Trench or stop cockteasing the flight to Mars and get it done. I don't care about budget excuses, winners find a way to win.

Mars is super hard... it has the right combination of gravity and atmosphere to make landing there a nightmare. Things like the Skycrane are not done in an internal competition at NASA to produce the crazier landing systems, but out of bare necessity. Heck at some point they were landing things inside essentially a giant bouncy ball and you know, it worked well... but it's so absurd it just demonstrates how unintuitive is designing landing systems for Mars.
 

kraspkibble

Permabanned.
Well this is exciting. Hope it all goes smoothly!

I work with a guy that doesn't believe in space. It blows my fucking mind.

He's fairly articulate and "smart". It's bizarre how someone can believe that.
he doesn't believe in space?

what are his thoughts on the sun and moon? does he think they are fake and the sky is just a giant tv screen?

anyone who doesn't believe in space is the complete opposite of smart. you need to be completely empty in the head.
 

Tams

Member
There are some real downers on Artemis (especially over on Arse Technica). I get why (pork barrel stuff), but it's still a marvel of human ingenuity and much need for us to advance and the West.

I'm not paying for it though. That said, I wish my own country wpuld seriously try and get back into space exploration rather than just the peripheral stuff (some satellites pretty much and maybe Virgin Orbit).
 

G-Bus

Banned
he doesn't believe in space?

what are his thoughts on the sun and moon? does he think they are fake and the sky is just a giant tv screen?

anyone who doesn't believe in space is the complete opposite of smart. you need to be completely empty in the head.

Believe me, I'd love to ask. Hard to have a real conversation like that at work and not expect someone to think I'm being a dick or for him to get pissed off.

One day after a safety meeting he was talking to my work partner and so I'm standing right there with them and hes saying he thinks the government starts these big forest fires and there's proof etc etc.

Something about satellites with lasers start them strategically. His proof was these suspiciously straight lines where they start and I just kind of interject saying firefighters will start fire lines a head of a fire to burn the fuel up so the fire has no where to go and the look he gave me was of disgust. He didn't really have anything to say after that and the conversation died.

Someone else even tried to defend this guy's point of view while trying to make me feel like I'm in the wrong or being an asshole or something. It's so weird.

I didn't want to get into the sun and moon shit. Ran into him another time while he was talking to my partner and he was going off about what I assume was some flat earth bullshit. Something to do with being way up north and the way the sun moved across the sky.

He's a journeymen electrician. Hunts and gardens, cures his own meet and bunch of other self sufficient stuff. Pretty knowledgeable dude so I like talking to him but he goes off on these weird tangents and it's baffling.
 

Kilau

Member
Won't be surprised if this gets another delay, weather has been ass here in the "sunshine" state.
 
hope everything goes well. this is so exciting! even if it's "just" the ship going around the moon. hopefully no more delays and we will get to see a human back on the moon in a few years :D
 

MastaKiiLA

Member
Big old meh from me for multiple reasons. This thing is overpriced and outdated. Chucking a billion dollar plus rocket into the ocean to send an empty capsule around the moon feels wrong now. I understand it's a proper testing approach, but that's the thing. Who the fuck wants another launch of this boondoggle after this? This is just a vanity project for some politicians, and this launch is more of a show of gratitude to the team that built it, but I don't want another goddamn SLS launch after this. Scrap this stupid program. Put Artemi 2's budget into Starship, so SpaceX can iterate more times and get human rating faster.

Anyway, that's my rant. I hope everything goes smoothly, and all the effort put into it pays off. But please let this be the one and only time this cash sink flies.
 

jason10mm

Gold Member
He's a journeymen electrician. Hunts and gardens, cures his own meet and bunch of other self sufficient stuff. Pretty knowledgeable dude so I like talking to him but he goes off on these weird tangents and it's baffling.
To be fair, he could be on a hunting forum right now comaining how the folks at his work believe in fantasy shot like if there were no hunting all the animals would live in peace, nothing would die, and deer farts could rebuild the ozone layer :p
 

jason10mm

Gold Member
hope everything goes well. this is so exciting! even if it's "just" the ship going around the moon. hopefully no more delays and we will get to see a human back on the moon in a few years :D
Yup, and they better all be 'murican just so the old joke "there are countries that use the metric system and then there are countries that sent men to the moon" still holds up :p
 
It does amaze me how people moan about stuff like this being overpriced and budget etc. The jw scope only cost 5 billion.

Yet defence budgets are what 700billion talk about waste.
A lot of people still think the earth is flat and many more are too busy being racist.

Who they going to get to film it now that Stanley Kubrick is dead?
Obviously he will be resurrected to make his director comeback.
 
Last edited:

Tams

Member
Big old meh from me for multiple reasons. This thing is overpriced and outdated. Chucking a billion dollar plus rocket into the ocean to send an empty capsule around the moon feels wrong now. I understand it's a proper testing approach, but that's the thing. Who the fuck wants another launch of this boondoggle after this? This is just a vanity project for some politicians, and this launch is more of a show of gratitude to the team that built it, but I don't want another goddamn SLS launch after this. Scrap this stupid program. Put Artemi 2's budget into Starship, so SpaceX can iterate more times and get human rating faster.

Anyway, that's my rant. I hope everything goes smoothly, and all the effort put into it pays off. But please let this be the one and only time this cash sink flies.
Fortunately, if it flies well, then at the very least two more launches are going to happen. Likely quite a few more.

The cold, hard truth, other than the employment and skills it promotes, is that there's no alternative. Star Ship is closest and hasn't even reached space yet.
 

MastaKiiLA

Member
Fortunately, if it flies well, then at the very least two more launches are going to happen. Likely quite a few more.

The cold, hard truth, other than the employment and skills it promotes, is that there's no alternative. Star Ship is closest and hasn't even reached space yet.
Starship could get humans to the moon faster than Artemis if it had the budget of Artemis. From a science perspective, Artemis just isn't pushing the science far enough ahead. It was never going to be able to do that either, hauling around legacy tech from the shuttle program. It's a fancy jobs program, which is fine but not inspiring. I was more excited to see Starship belly-flop and likely explode than I am for an actual lunar mission. The successor to Apollo should've been far more ambitious. But I'll stop the sour grapes now. I'm almost certainly have a wide grin on my face during the launch anyway, because space shit is just cool. I might be a victim of great expectations.
 

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
Starship could get humans to the moon faster than Artemis if it had the budget of Artemis. From a science perspective, Artemis just isn't pushing the science far enough ahead. It was never going to be able to do that either, hauling around legacy tech from the shuttle program. It's a fancy jobs program, which is fine but not inspiring. I was more excited to see Starship belly-flop and likely explode than I am for an actual lunar mission. The successor to Apollo should've been far more ambitious. But I'll stop the sour grapes now. I'm almost certainly have a wide grin on my face during the launch anyway, because space shit is just cool. I might be a victim of great expectations.

America has a proper lunar capable rocket and today is the maiden flight… let’s enjoy the fireworks and bicker later wooohoooo!
 
Nasa budget is 0.5% of the federal budget... back during the apollo era it was almost 5%.

Just get congress to throw an extra 200B per year on NASA and things will get done faster.

Oh, and remember that back then NASA was the apollo program - nowdays it does other stuff.

And yet, it's amazing what SpaceX and private industry was able to do with a fraction of the budget of NASA....
 
Top Bottom