NOT BECAUSE IT IS EASY, BUT BECAUSE IT IS HARD. Because this challenge will serve to measure the best of this nation’s abilities.
Who’s excited for NASA’s Artemis program, or any of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) missions?
I’m most excited for Artemis 3 and the wireless power transmission via laser CLPS tech demo. What about you guys?
I’m all in favor of going back, but…
I seem to remember a joint US-Soviet Artemis mission to the moon back around 1980 or so…
Whatever happened to those guys?
canceled for the same reasons Apollo was.
Kneel before Zod!
It’s definitely an exciting era for spaceflight!
The best part about this latest push to get back to the moon is that even if congress does something to screw up NASA’s efforts with Artemis/CLPS (which is sadly more expected than unexpected), SpaceX will keep plowing forward with Starship development and we’ll probably get to the moon on roughly the same timeline anyhow, which in turn increases pressure on Congress to just let NASA do its thing.
Between Artemis, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Axiom’s plans to expand the ISS and eventually ship-of-theseus the ISS into a much larger next-generation space station, I’m nerding out pretty hard. I’ve been a space nut since I was a little kid in the 90s and it’s amazing to see things finally moving again.
The commercial ventures will more likely just give congress an excuse not to fund anything.
One end of the political spectrum will say “we should be using this money for (whatever social program) instead”. While the other end says, “the private sector is always the right answer government should stay out of it”.
The best bet to spur politicians to fund NASA would be China’s space program.
Well maybe, but compared to traditional cost-plus contracts with the old guard (Boeing/Lockheed/ULA) contracts with the newer companies (SpaceX especially) are so much cheaper and provide so much more bang for buck that it almost looks stupid to not spend on them. For considerably less than the ~$18B burned on SLS so far, NASA’s spending on SpaceX has gotten them a whole new launch vehicle with heavy lift variant, reliable cargo delivery, and now crew delivery all from US soil.
I do agree that China’s progress will light a fire under congress’ collective rears though.
Although maned flight, back to the moon maybe someday mars, is the most interesting, and in the long run will be the most historically significant, I would truly love to see what the reconnaissance programs are doing these days.
Just a personal curiosity because I worked on the old film return programs before it all went digital in the 1980s.
Is this a copy paste from an earlier thread? Is that allowed?
+plus a HLS
but I’m team space. SLS and Starship need to fly or I’m going to riot
We also need to discover the way to fully digitize ourselves into a Computer ala Tron!
Once we learn how to do that we can do the reverse for any Superpowers we might want!
that’s not happening any time soon
We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
My favorite part of this last year or two has been NASA learning how to throw punches at congress.
Hope that continues. NASA’s been taken on rides by other parts of the government and even the military (the latter of which is partially responsible for making the space shuttle worse than it had to be) for far too long. It deserves the level of autonomy that other branches have.
Personally I’d materialize Elementals(especially Death, Light and Void Elementals) into Reality if given the chance!
Space exploration has always been a secondary consideration with politicians. They all take the short-term view of history, always have always will.
Eisenhower turned over the civilian space program to Kennedy primarily as a cover for development of ICBMs and satellite reconnaissance systems. As president Kennedy had little direct interest in the space program but, as a true “cold warrior” even more interest in ICBMs, and especially satellite reconnaissance, than Eisenhower. Beating the Soviet Union to the moon was a goal both as a PR demonstration of American technical superiority to the third world, and as a continuing cover for the more important (in his mind) covert satellite reconnaissance programs.
LBJ was the primary author of the Space Act in 1958 that established NASA, while keeping government in control of spaceflight technology but ensuring that military and civilian space development were independent of each other.
As a senator Sputnik had spurred Johnson to get Americans into space, as president Gagarin spurred Kennedy. Eight days after Gagarin’s flight, Kennedy sent a memo to Vice President Johnston asking him for an update on America’s space status. JFK wanted to know if the United States could beat the Soviet Union in a space race; could we put a man on the moon and bring him back?
Johnston responded to Kennedy’s question with a strong recommendation to send people to the moon.
At that time Kennedy was also trying to recover after the Bay of Pigs debacle, within three weeks of Johnson’s response he addressed Congress. “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth”
After Kennedy’s assassination there was a lot of grumbling that space exploration was too expensive. Federal budgets in the mid-1960s were sapped by the Vietnam War and in 1967 the crew members of Apollo 1 were killed in a fire during a pre-launch test. These were reasons to abandon the space program as a priority, but Johnson didn’t. Through the ‘60s, he protected the Apollo program’s budget with the goal of overtaking the Russians.
Johnson mostly wanted to beat the Soviets, but Johnson also saw space as an economic engine for the South (his base). That’s why NASA has major facilities in places like Huntsville, Alabama, Merritt Island, Florida, Hancock County, Mississippi, and Houston.
It’s not just China’s progress, but they are the primary concern. Regardless, accelerating our own efforts to assure our lead is a fool’s errand unless we (and everyone else) more directly address the massive and ongoing theft of intellectual property that has fueled much of China’s ability to reduce technological gaps with the West and advanced Asian nations.
LETS GO, NASA STACKED THE ARTEMIS 2 CORE STAGE!
Artemis is officially on the rails!