Very clean launch, solar panels deployed, and they now are adjusting Earth obit parameters I think. Please post links for where the proceedings may be watched. In 10 days atmospheric re entry will be the hot topic. -- Three of four RS-25 engines had been shuttle flown before, but re use is not an Artemis thing. -- Does anyone know if the planned 2028 landing is still based on a later version of Starship?
I hope for the best but fear the worst. There was an assumption that re-using the shuttle hardware would save money. That did not happen as all the ‘glue’ parts had to be reinvented. Worse the solid rocket motor failures and the excessive complexity of the Boeing capsule has and continues to bother me. A rocket is more than engines and nozzles. GOOD LUCK! Bob Wilson
Nope. Not even SpaceX. Speaking of which......we've had HOW MANY flights with video from Starlink to date? C'mon Artemis! Get your crap together!!! We're still using 1960's ground telemetry for video? AND WHY THE BLEEP do we not have comm relay nodes on the $#@! Moon yet??? Isn't THAT something we can do while we're waiting for Bezos and Musk to re-invent a lander??
A voice from the past, TDRSS: NASA is replacing its aging Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) … Pretty much everyone wants Starlink access. I would but paying $25/mo for 160 mbs is half the price of Starlink. Bob Wilson
I pay $14 for what is advertised as 1gb/s but I cheat. I'm employed by the provider. I also pay $5/mo for portable, low power, space-based 500kb/s as a fallover for long term terrestrial service interruptions.
Excellent! At age 76, permanently unemployed by traditional companies. So I work for my housekeeper. Bob Wilson
I'll be catching up with you in a few years. Who knows? I might even take up hog hunting. I sorta doubt it though. Now that I'm a city slicker, I live less than a quarter mile from a pretty good grocery store. They sell ham, bacon, and sausage.
Seeing the video of the crew, it took me maybe 10~15 minutes to realize I was looking at the soles of someone's shoes, up REAL close. Groan... Too, their behaviour seemed halfway between the all-business astronauts of yore, and the space tourists that went up recently (with Space-X?). Saw this on Reddit this morning, a different perspective.
Defo need more hog hunters in TX. The problem is absolutely, ag-vaporising-wild there. If you can make a decent living despite hugely-expensive maint, for helicopter trips for hunters to shoot them point blank from the air... there's a problem If you ever need to dust off your .30-30 lever gun, there's boar meat to be culled.
According to: Human Landing Systems - NASA. There are two competing lander designs by SpaceX and Blue Origin. Being funded by NASA (?). Neither has been built yet. The question came to mind while watching media coverage of Artemis launch during which an interviewee mentioned that later the crew capsule would land on moon. Which it cannot do.
My greatest hope is to see the capsule under parachutes just above the ocean. Time is not a friend to SLS. Bob Wilson
Putting out the compost and recycling this morning, occurred to me: there’s four very distant souls in this picture:
An historical note to the 'meh' crowd: Ask any of the original Apollo astronauts what was the gutsiest of the missions and they will just about ALL say "Apollo 8." Why? No it wasn't because they were doing a TLI with slide-rules and flying a very rapidly built spacecraft with a Casio watch's worth of computing power, on its SECOND EVER crewed mission.....or getting infected by a megalomaniacal idiot during a Pandemic.....or even that they did it FIRST. Until now they were the only ones who did it without a lifeboat. Kurson wrote about THAT mission in a pretty good (and fairly accurate!) book.
Summer of '69 was a turbulent time for many, lunar landing was not the only thing on my mind. Anyway... In 2019, we "rewatched" Apollo 11 mission (the first to land on moon) 50 years on, with an ingenious website someone built, that has all the data streams synced in real time. A few take aways, regarding Neil Armstrong: They've just wrapped up the final checklist, before separating the LEM to begin descent, and Neil says something like "Well, is there anything else...?" Just before LEM touchdown, the system on cruise control, Neil recognizes the chosen landing place is boulder strewn, takes over control, scoots them over, past a small crater as well IIRC, and lands it. His heart rate at touchdown was 159 bpm. On the way back, mission control radios to let them know they've passed the point where moon's gravitational pull becomes less than earth's. Neil responds "Yeah, we felt a bump".
