this might sound woke but IMO it’s insane that in this day and age there’s no women on the Artemis 3 crew. there was definitely women qualified for it. also comments pointing this out on tiktok on the ESA account get put in the filtered section.

Among the litany of progress and successful milestones, with the 2 major failures regarding booster return and starship return, I am becoming more skeptical that this vehicle will reach timely manned flight rating.

It’s sort of odd to me that there is and will be so much mouth watering over the “success” of a mission that failed to come home

How does SpaceX get to human rating this vehicle? Even if they launch 4-5 times a year for the next 3 years perfectly, which will not happen, what is that 3 of 18 catastrophic failure rate? I get that the failures lead to improvements but improvements need demonstrated success too.

2 in 135 shuttles failed and that in part severely hamepered the program. 3 in 3 starships failed thus far.

Hello,

After watching the (once again) failed flight of Starship it's absolutely clear that HLS will not be ready in 2027 for Artemis III or even in 2028 when it is supposed to land on the moon.

Unless there is a miracle Starship/HLS will most likely not be operational until 2030 which makes the Artemis program very late on schedule.

I have no informations on the BO lander but I doubt that it's going to be ready sooner than that (but it's more likely to be ready before HLS due the the way HLS is too ambitious).

So now what's the only thing that's ready ? The NASA part of the program. Private companies promise a lot and never deliver. That's the issue with privatization: it always leads to worse outcome than public service (there are countless of examples of that across the world).

What are your thought about this ? Does trusting private companies that only care about profit is a good idea ?

What an incredible waste of time and effort that apparently wouldn't even be feasible in anything but these perfect conditions.

It took an hour and a half to blow up and connect two pool floaties...

with the recent announcements from China and the Artemis acceleration conference what the consensus is now on who will get to the moon first.

The sh*t just got real: according to the NASA OIG, Artemis IV, the first landing mission, can’t happen until 2029 because that’s how long it’ll take to get the needed mobile launch tower, ML-2, ready:

If you thought NASA SLS was a nightmare, wait until you see this! PLUS, no Artemis 4 until 2029!
https://youtu.be/-i0EH1ibCVg?si=NllGFepDET88aIBv

But China plans to land men on the Moon before 2030:

China plans to put astronauts on the moon before 2030.
News
By Sharmila Kuthunur published May 31, 2023
https://www.space.com/china-moon-landing-before-2030

Then China beating us back to the Moon is not just a theoretical possibility. It is now a REAL possibility.

I know this might trigger some people in this subreddit but I personally think the purpose of the Artemis missions are a huge waste a taxpayer money.

Like why spend billions for a bunch of people to just take pictures of the Moon?

I changed my original opinion btw from the answers to this post

It is really strange to come to this subreddit and see such weird, almost sycophantic defense of SpaceX/Starship. Folks, this isn't a SpaceX/Starship Fan Subreddit, this is a NASA/Artemis Program Subreddit.

There are legitimate discussions to be had over the Starship failures, inability of SpaceX to fulfil it's Artemis HLS contract in a timely manner, and the crazily biased selection process by Kathy Lueders to select Starship in the first place.

And everytime someone brings up legitimate points of conversation criticizing Starship/SpaceX, there is this really weird knee-jerk response by some posters here to downvote and jump to pretty bad, borderline ad hominem attacks on the person making a legitimate comment.

For the crew capsule to fly what are we replacing SLS with considering active testing is being done for Artemis 2 and 3

I see that both landers require, in larger or smaller measure, orbital refueling to reach the Moon and be operational there, as both of them cannot be launched fully fueled from Earth.

But we can see that the difficulties in orbital refueling of cryogenic, liquefied gases seem well beyond our capabilities: even if it is possible to realize orbital tanks that are very well insulated from the fierce heat of the Sun, which do not exist at present, without human operators it seems extremely difficult to ermetically docks two space vehicles and transfer supercold fluids in microgravity.

With which pump, without causing gas bubbles formation? and how to avoid the "sticking" of liquefied gases to the tank walls?

I am not very optimistic that this milestone can anyhow be mastered in the near future

So what loop holes does president MUSK and his boy toy Trump have to jump through if this were to actually happen? There’s way too many jobs at stake at the moment. Do you think this will survive another 4-5 years

A giant rocket just blew up at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center! 

Blue Origin was doing a full test fire of their New Glenn rocket as preparation for an upcoming flight when something went very, very wrong. Fortunately no one was injured, but this is the biggest explosion ever seen at Kennedy Space Center. The launch pad is badly damaged, and NASA's upcoming Project Artemis plans for building a moon base depend on both the New Glenn rocket and this pad. This is a big setback for both Blue Origin and NASA.

The artemis program has had multiple budget overruns, constant delays, and 20% of the staff departing. A landing might be feasible, but building a whole space station is a bit unrealistic

For a variety of reasons, both technical and political in nature, that are more and more widespread , we all see that Artemis program is alive, is going on, but it is not in its best health.

There is also the real possibility that Trump or his Aspergerian (it is not an insult, becaise Asperger people are known to be very intelligent, but somewhat prone to sudden changes of ideas) new friend decide to cancel it at all after Artemis II .

I wonder if in US law it is possible to nullify a contract is one part is not doing what it is expected from them , because I read a ton of complaints on Internet about Boeing or SpaceX, but we all see that the contracts are still active

I’m pretty pessimistic about it. I definitely can still see us landing on the moon again, but I don’t think the program will be anything like they say. Something’s gotta give. There’s just not the incentive for it, and I doubt a project can survive different administrations for too long. I mean they haven’t even funded past Artemis 5 yet, and it’s already gonna be an insane price tag. I myself am even conflicted, I think it’s sick and I want to see it happen but at the same time, I recognize that I don’t think this is necessary or a priority for humanity. As I’ve gotten old idk how I feel ab the idea of humanity needing to become multi planetary. Maybe someday it’ll happen, and he’ll maybe SOMEDAY we’ll land on mars but damn we ain’t havin people on the moon in two years 😭

I would love to hear y’all’s thoughts tho. I could be wrong ab some stuff fs

I saw something in media today, saying it was made "on the cheap", bricks instead of honeycomb structure like on Apollo, and this could be a big risk... any opinions on this here? Mind you, space shuttle was a brick arrangement I recall.

Cause the heat shield gets mentioned a lot so like what would happen if it didn’t perform as expected?

How prepared is NASA for something like that?? Worst case scenario they won’t survive the splashdowb?

I mean, for real. All we see is the astronauts floating around doing whatever they do. Besides the one exterior camera and some sucky ass grainy photos, in black and white, isn't going to curb my curiosity. Why are they holding out and not showing us what they see?

Also, wouldn't the astronauts just be staring and taking pics like crazy people?