SO..... NASA has been cleaning out their attic and basement, and collecting all of the leftover Shuttle bits - and they're trying to pollute the Atlantic Ocean with most of them. Bets? Go or No-Go?? The Googles say that the WX is 80% go mission for today.
Supposed to happen mid afternoon west coast time. Far cry from the original Apollo missions, more of a RoboCab?
It will be the first time that one of our Northern neighbors have left the planet - ish. I'm sure some drive-by 'scientist' will point out that the Moon is in orbit around the Earth and the Artemis 'fly by' won't count for leaving the planet all the way behind them, but THOSE critics will staying on the ground instead of being the "SPAM in the can." - a REALLY OLD can built by the lowest bidder, using left over re-warmed parts from what is widely considered one of the least safe human spaceflight programs. Either way? They will go further away from home than any other humans thus far. GOD Speed Artemis II!
Am really glad not to be further associated with the company responsible for most of primary engineering on this mission
Are they going to do a sustained orbit around the moon, or just a figure-eight, touch-and-go. the latter.
Welp, they cleared the tower. I missed the launch by 5 minutes but enjoyed the replay. Respectfully dissagree. We can solve a lot of problems down here by solving them out there - meaning OUT there.....not just in LEO. If we are to find out what's over the next hill, we have to figure out how to get over that hill. We reaped a lot of benefits from the last Space Race - meaning ALL OF US. I look forward to what comes next.
Saw the walkway swing out of the way, just past T-10 IIRC, but there was still multiple structural "stays" attached just down a bit, and maybe half dozen hoses. Didn't see any of the latter disconnect: it happens at the last split-second?
Saw the launch, was mercifully free of shens, thank the stars... Hope I can say that for the rest of the figure-8 mission around the dark side. Malfing toilet solution's a relief... just hope the rot at Boeing Aerospace doesn't survive the wake-up call from Artemis I's debacle Listened to the Artemis II astronauts on Colbert in '23, talk about how much more 'horsepower' is in the same space behind the consoles in Orion. Problem is... when things hit the fan (like Apollo 13's famous terrors and Buzz's snapping off the Apollo 11 lander's launch booster ignition switch, nearly stranding them on the surface), you can better figure out ways around a problem, the less complex and miniaturised your controls are. Buzz fixed his launch switch with a ballpoint pen; gonna be hard to diagnose let alone figure out solutions for a chipset being out of spec and burning up, somewhere in the console, Hopefully redundancies haven't gone out of fashion for Orion... but given Boeing designed it, no less stressful than astronauts being sent there with the computing power of a Game Boy