13 ms·
Artemis II safely splashes down
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- Isolated_Routes 6mo agoAd astra per aspera
- eqmvii 6mo agoHeld my breath the whole time after all the heat shield warnings. Very glad it all worked, or that there was enough margin!
- neaden 6mo agoSame! Glad everyone made it safe.
- telesilla 6mo agoYes it was worrisome, but how could it not be even with the best tech we'll ever have - I feel relief still on every plane touchdown. Bravo, Artemis team for an exceptional return to extra-orbital space travel.
- Levitating 6mo agoThe LOS was also more than 6 minutes as predicted (I measured a bit over 7 minutes). What a tension.
- llbbdd 6mo agoI wasn't clear, was the LOS just comms or a full loss of telemetry from the craft? Either way, terrifying.
- loloquwowndueo 6mo agoEverything. No radio signals make it in or out of the capsule due to ionization from the heat and plasma of reentry.
- philistine 6mo agoI’ll note, since it is supremely interesting to me, that Starship is able to communicate with the ground during its whole reentry due to its sheer size and ability to connect with Starlink satellites. I assumed loss of signal due to reentry was a given for any spaceship!
- llbbdd 6mo agoWould this capsule had been been able to communicate if it was integrated with starlink or is the size more important? I'd imagine if they could have achieved communication via Starlink they would have done it, but just curious.
- albumen 6mo agoNo, the plasma forms a teardrop shape around small craft like Orion, completely cutting off radio comms. Larger craft like starship or the shuttle which have a roughly cylindrical shape (vs Orion’s circular cross section) aren’t fully enclosed by the plasma. The shuttle had a transmitter attached to its tail for later flights, which could send back telemetry during re-entry.
- llbbdd 6mo agoAwesome, thank you! I wonder if some kind of very long-tethered deployed antenna could enable this for the capsule or if the ratio of long-enough-to-work vs thick-enough-to-not-burn-off-completely just doesn't work. Time to read about the shuttle.
- m4rtink 6mo agoWell, provided you had a 30 MW microwave transmitter on board, you could punch through the plasma just fine, it has been done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile) "Sprint accelerated at 100 g, reaching a speed of Mach 10 (12,000 km/h; 7,600 mph) in 5 seconds. Such a high velocity at relatively low altitudes created skin temperatures up to 6,200 °F (3,400 °C), requiring an ablative shield to dissipate the heat. The high temperature caused a plasma to form around the missile, requiring extremely powerful radio signals to reach it for guidance. The missile glowed bright white as it flew."
- Rebelgecko 6mo agoIt seems like they had limited telemetry for a short period before they did any audio
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- rootusrootus 6mo agoI was wondering about that, so I looked up the heat shield issues. It seems like their solution was very defensible and there was every reason to believe it would work out just fine. The plan that did not work as they wanted had a new idea, a double re-entry, and when the results were concerning they backed off to using a traditional single re-entry. That seems like a legitimate fix?
- thegrim33 6mo agoYes, but it was the biggest opening for propagandists to latch on to for demoralizing and spreading fear/uncertainty/doubt about the mission.
- magicalhippo 6mo agoScott Manley went into the details in a recent video. The reason the heat shield failed was due to gas buildup inside the ablative material. This was due to the skip reentry profile they used, where the craft does a single skip (as in skipping stones) during reentry. The high bounce caused the shield to be heated enough that the heat penetrated the material causing gas release but not enough that the material ablated. Thus gas would build up deep inside up until it caused large chunks to break off. They could reproduce this in tests. The fix was two-fold. First they lowered the bounce height, so a much less pronounced skip, avoiding the lowered heating of the shield. And they tweaked the material formula a bit so it was more porous, allowing subsurface gas to escape rather than build up.
- masklinn 6mo agoIn my understanding of the Manley video, the materials change will only occur for Artemis 3, for which it will be irrelevant as that will not be leaving LEO.
- masklinn 6mo agoNot sure why I'm being downvoted. Here's the segment where Manley explains this: https://youtu.be/shcj7MUK5BU?t=828 https://youtu.be/shcj7MUK5BU?t=828 and this is also the section where Manley explains Artemis III is not going to the moon so it won't actually be testing this change. And from an older NASA explanation: https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-shares-orion-heat-shield-findings-updates-artemis-moon-missions/ https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-shares-orion-heat-shi... > Engineers already are assembling and integrating the Orion spacecraft for Artemis III based on lessons learned from Artemis I and implementing enhancements to how heat shields for crewed returns from lunar landing missions are manufactured to achieve uniformity and consistent permeability.
- llbbdd 6mo ago"Reid Wiesman reporting all crew members green; that's not their complexion, all crew members are in good shape."
- philistine 6mo agoDammit. I hoped Jeb was on board for a second.
- sonicrocketman 6mo agoApropos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG6NNnoNC80 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG6NNnoNC80
- java-man 6mo agoI noticed a delay between video and audio - the announcer on the NASA official live broadcast said splashdown before the the capsule splashed down on video. Was it intentional (in case something happened)? Also, what were these puffs on thermal camera after the main chutes were deployed? https://www.youtube.com/live/m3kR2KK8TEs https://www.youtube.com/live/m3kR2KK8TEs
- llbbdd 6mo agoI was wondering about that too, I assume maybe there was some additional adjustments needed to land in the right spot, but they didn't mention it on the stream.
- java-man 6mo agoYeah, they looked intentional - there are no reaction wheels on the capsule.
- shoghicp 6mo agoRCS (Reaction Control System) which you can see on Artemis I internal video as it falls down https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QbYrs5SZ5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QbYrs5SZ5M
- hydrogen7800 6mo agoMy suspicion was they were burning excess propellant, rather than attitude adjustment while under the parachutes. Though who knows how much propellant remained. It could be quite a bit more than it appears was used.
- devilbunny 6mo agoNot just excess - excess and toxic. Hydrazine derivatives and nitrogen tetroxide, IIRC. They are hypergolic, too, so the easiest way to vent them is just to run the engines until empty. However, to prevent moving the craft too much, you do short bursts.
- areoform 6mo agoGlad that they're safe and sound. It's worth pointing out that this is the first extremely public, widely acknowledged high risk mission NASA has done in over 50 years. The Shuttle was risky, but it wasn't thought of or acknowledged by NASA as being risky until very late in its lifecycle. According to NASA's OIG, Artemis acceptable crew mortality rate is 1 in 30. Roughly 3x riskier than the shuttle. There genuinely is a world where they don't make it back home. I am grateful that they did. And I'm grateful that we're going to go even further. I can't wait to see what Jared's cooking up (for those who don't know, he made his own version of the Gemini program in Polaris and funded it out of pocket).
- philistine 6mo agoI’d bet a million dollars that Orion will win every safety metric compared to the shuttle once it is retired. NASA deluded itself in thinking the Shuttle was safe. The reality is that the Shuttle was the most dangerous spaceship anyone ever built.
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- Waterluvian 6mo agoSpace flight safety is a function of culture and I don’t have any confidence that the culture has improved.
- gerdesj 6mo agoI think we are a long way along from digging out Dr Feynman to look into why a shuttle exploded. Unless you happen to have some deep links into NASA, in which case please elucidate us all, then why not celebrate a happy and safe return from a sodding dangerous mission that involved things like >25,000 mph relative velocity and some remarkable navigation. When you depart earth (close quarters gravity, air resistance, things in the way), everything moves really fast, really fast and any acceleration becomes an issue really ... fast! The moon moves, the earth moves: both famously in some sort of weird dance around each other and both orbit around the sun. Obviously the moon affects the earth way less than vice versa but it still complicates things. I think that NASA did a remarkable job of making Artemis II look almost routine and I don't think that was down to behaving as they did in the past.
- darepublic 6mo agoCheers! Looking forward to future space travel!!
- rvz 6mo agoNow this is actually for the benefit of humanity.
- jrmg 6mo ago…and this is how the America I thought I knew growing up projected its influence upon the world.
- BitsAndObjects 6mo agoNotwithstanding that this mission critically relied upon Canada, UK, EU, Japan, Taiwan, and contributions from many other countries.
- jrmg 6mo agoCollaboration like that is all a (positive!) part of projecting influence - in both directions.
- anon291 6mo agoAll those countries are essentially American vassals. No shade to them, just stating the reality, and not really sure why we need to keep pretending. There's no shame in that. It's often the smartest move to join forces with the big guy in the block!
- BitsAndObjects 6mo agoYou need to travel more.
- anon291 6mo agoI've been to many of them and, unlike most Americans, when I say I've traveled the world, that also includes countries that are not in the American sphere of influence. The difference in how that plays out is obvious. I would recommend you travel more. Ideally to a country where if anything happens, uncle sams pressure won't do anything. In countries like China, Russia, or even India, you won't find as many American products. The influence of Hollywood is much less. American styles of doing things are not necessarily the ones chosen for civic institutions. American agencies don't work as closely with their scientific enterprises as the American allies. On the other hand, they have strong armies that are not beholden to what America dictates, as evidenced by how often they end up in conflict. As an example, the world sanctioned Russia and... nothing happened... because Russia is a real country able to build its own things. It has industrial capacity, mining capacity, and the organization to do that independently of what others think. It also has an army willing to defend it. The countries you listed do not have these things. Their 'army' to defend the nation is a vague promise that they'll think about while they ask America to carry out their interests. American magnanimity usually means this is a safe bet. Then we can talk
- echoangle 6mo agoWild that they manage to fly to the moon but still seem to be having those comms problems. Asking the astronauts if they’re really pressing the PTT button is wild.
- java-man 6mo agoGood thing they have redundant systems.
- wewewedxfgdf 6mo agoCellphone coverage notoriously flaky in the Pacific.
- nodesocket 6mo agoUmm it's a satellite phone.
- shermantanktop 6mo ago...and informing them which button was the PTT button. She had to say it, but it'd be hard not to react to that.
- BuyMyBitcoins 6mo agoIt’s to the right of SCE to AUX…
- spike021 6mo agoi was thinking maybe astronauts can be disoriented when splashing down and that's why they figured they should ask if the right buttons were being pushed?
- allenrb 6mo agoMy friends and I have been deriving much amusement from the comms issues. We can fly people around the moon, talk with them, send back high res video, but talk to the boat that’s close enough to swim to? Forget about it! Note: next time, pack a walkie talkie. ;-)
- carefree-bob 6mo ago"NASA reporting four green crew members. That is not their complexion, it is that they are in good condition. That's what that means." LOL
- sdoering 6mo agoThe humor was what really made my day today. Or in my case my night here in Germany.
- em-bee 6mo agoalso astronauts: "the moon is quite a bit smaller than it was yesterday" control: "i guess we'll have to go back". (paraphrased from memory)
- lysace 6mo agoThat speaker voice was a bit odd. Everything was perfect! At least one superlative every 5 seconds or so. I think that audio stream was designed to be POTUS safe.
- rogerrogerr 6mo agoIf we're going to have a surveillance state, let's use it for superlative control - one dollar in taxes for every superlative you use in personal life; $0.01/viewer for each one you use in any live televised event. It's becoming a public hazard, we must act!
- lysace 6mo agoAgreed in principle. Let’s make things norminal, not superlative.
- Metacelsus 6mo agoI guess they're not Kerbals :)
- qrush 6mo agoApparently there's more work than just clicking "Recover Vessel" after splashdown!
- dingaling 6mo ago1 hour 29 minutes seems excessive to extract the astronauts; if any of them _did_ have a medical issue they'd be in for a long wait. The commentary said that the initial problems with the boats approaching Integrity was due to an unexpected swell. Unexpected, in the Pacific? Edit: all of the Apollo missions, except 8, had their stabilization collars inflated in under 20 minutes. With Integrity today it took nearly an hour more.
- jiggawatts 6mo agoI also like how they waffled on about how winching them up to a helicopter was the fastest option, when they obviously could have shaved an hour off the recovery time by simply having them step out onto the waiting boats! Having worked for various government agencies for a while I've learned to recognise the signs of the "We're following the procedure whether it makes sense or not, dammit!" attitude you get with large bureaucracies.
- TheOtherHobbes 6mo agoI wondered about that. Winching someone who can barely walk and is wearing a spacesuit into a helicopter over choppy water is safer and quicker than parking them on a motor boat and sailing back to the mothership? What was the real reason? Tradition? Lack of imagination? Photo opportunities? The rest was great tho.
- jiggawatts 6mo agoTo play devil's advocate against my own argument: The nearest ship was about 5 km away, which is a decently long boat ride. In choppy waters with a small boat that could be less than ideal for someone who may be injured, weak from an extended stay in microgravity, etc. I assume the plan -- written months or years before the landing -- also had to factor in the possibility that the ships wouldn't have been so close. They did mention several times that the landing was unusually accurate, so it is entirely possible that their pre-planned helicopter ride would have made a lot more sense if they were, say, 20+ km away instead. You don't want dozens of people improvising the procedure in the middle of choppy waters with bad comms, so the best thing to do is to just follow the plan, even if it looks a bit absurd on camera.
- kethinov 6mo agoFor All Mankind aired an episode today that movingly commemorated the fictional lead character Ed Baldwin's Apollo 10-like in-universe mission on the same day that the real world Artemis II mission which also strongly resembles Apollo 10 landed safely. A strange and moving coincidence.
- credit_guy 6mo agoThis almost brought tears to my eyes. I can only imagine how people felt when the first astronauts got to the Moon, and then when they got back to Earth in one piece.
- jrmg 6mo agoIt’s been amazing - and inspirational - watching the live stream of Mission Control and the capsule over the last ten days. Or at least having it as background audio. I’m going to miss all these folks I’ve grown to know. Bring on Artemis III and IV!
- elcapitan 6mo agoThis whole mission was amazing, and the most positive and hopeful thing I have seen as a global event in the last 5 years at least. Bravo and cheers to everyone involved :)
- BoredPositron 6mo agoI don't know how to describe the feeling but it feels like a bad movie remake. Maybe I am just a sucker for practical effects and not 2020s CGI to stick with the metaphor and conspiracy...
- rvnx 6mo agoIn 2028, so only 2 years from now. They will be able to bring 4K pictures and videos of the walk on the moon and they promised not to delete them this time. They will have Nikon cameras, GoPros, and iPhones with them. Very different from the videos taken with the Gameboy Camera.
- Gagarin1917 6mo agoWatching that capsule fall out of the sky at high speed from the teaching cameras was nerve wracking! Awesome footage, exciting to watch it live in such detail.
- palata 6mo agoAgreed. I have been repeating how much I think this is all useless (sending humans in space, that is), but I will admit: watching the reentry was something. Because it's useless doesn't mean it is not cool. Sport and art are "useless", too.
- pwndByDeath 6mo agoAs a long time space nerd, I'm not sure what this accomplishes by repeating the previous stunts that failed to usher in the promised space frontier. Apollo was, IMO, not successful at changing the course of human history. A really cool footnote, sure, but everything else that was to follow, nope, just a bunch of neat, interesting but ultimately meh science missions. An exciting change would be more like Delta-V/Critical Mass, but NASA is not going to deliver that, at least not in any form it has taken thus far.
- brcmthrowaway 6mo agoWhat is delta v/critical mass?
- pitched 6mo agoFictional books about asteroid mining, from what my Google searches are returning. I would love to learn that it was a real thing though
- pwndByDeath 6mo agoSuarez is, IMO, very good at researching current/near tech and mixing it into a good story about what is possible with what we have right now. Nothing in the books is really out of our reach except the will and perhaps strategic discipline to make and execute the plan.
- adamsb6 6mo agoThey can't just build Apollo 18 and resume the program as if there weren't a 50 year hiatus. Imagine if your employer wanted to start using a software system it retired in 1972. What would you do?
- m4rtink 6mo agoJust another monday in any big old company adjecent to finance or airline industry ? ;-)
- ggm 6mo agoDear NASA. Please dial back the poetics and rhetoric. Be more like ATC than Shakspear.
- nodesocket 6mo agoWhat a curmudgeon. You must be great dinner company.
- mgfist 6mo agoI think we've all become to numb and jaded. This is the first moon mission in 50 years and the furthest any human has ever been from Earth.
- rootusrootus 6mo agoIndeed, the world is so grim these days that I welcome even a little bit of relief, a little bit of hope for a better future.
- k33n 6mo agoOnly the internet is grim. The actual world is better than its ever been.
- da_chicken 6mo agoMore than that, people today seem to be saturated with sarcasm. It's especially tragic with younger people who seem to have no experience with handling genuine sincerity. They laugh nervously at it, as if they're unfamiliar with how to handle someone saying what they actually think and feel.
- latchkey 6mo agoWent out to the beach hoping to hear/see something, but sadly grey skies and no boom. Tons of other people out there doing the same thing too.
- nodesocket 6mo agoAmazing live video of the descent and splash down. Really awesome to watch!
- christophilus 6mo agoAnnouncer just said “we just reenacted” the last Apollo mission. So, yep. That’ll be used as proof-text that this was all staged.
- decimalenough 6mo agoI get that there are people who think the moon landing was staged, but are there really people who think rocket launches are staged? Because it's pretty easy to go witness one yourself.
- unethical_ban 6mo agoThe fools who would believe that wouldn't believe Apollo happened either. No need to dignify their existence.
- cube00 6mo agoDealing with the typical Excel foot guns during the last few hours before re-entry felt like an unnecessary risk. Missaved their version 2 Excel spreadsheet using the wrong file name causing confusion about this version was the latest. Nearly missed a cell in their burn sheet had multiple lines of text until mission control reminded them to resize the cell.
- Animats 6mo agoBuzz Aldrin is reported to be watching this on TV.
- collinmcnulty 6mo agoWatching this, I can only describe it as holy. An incredible reminder of what humanity can do, and the beauty of our curiosity and the universe around us. I grew up learning that my great uncle was in Mission Control for Apollo; missions like this are what inspired me to pursue engineering in the first place.
- palata 6mo ago> An incredible reminder of what humanity can do Yep, while we are measurably destroying the Earth's biodiversity orders of magnitudes faster than the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs. And this is without global warming, which is another great thing we are doing. Arguably, the biggest thing humanity is doing is killing the Earth. Great that we have some comfort in doing fun things on the side.
- collinmcnulty 6mo agoMy encouragement would be to take this and point to it to make those problems seem tractable, which they are with political will. “We went to the moon! Surely we can …” Hope is powerful, cynicism is an opiate.
- brianjlogan 6mo agoAs an American I feel like I've been going through a bit of an identity crisis from what I remember growing up. Probably the rose tinted glasses of being a child but being from Florida I always had a sense of amazement and wonder as I heard the sonic boom of the shuttle returning to earth. Really felt like I was coexisting in this incredible scientific powerhouse of a country full of bright and enabled peoples that knew how to prioritize curiosity and innovation. Feeling like a bit of a "vibe" post which is everything wrong lately but I can't help but feel some satisfaction that we're still able to accomplish something like this in our space endeavors.
- llbbdd 6mo agoI think especially online there's a lot of emphasis on "everything is wrong". A mission like this is hard to ignore and highlights the bias. On the whole, despite setbacks, we continue.
- bombcar 6mo agoThere's a lot of money/hay/political power/etc to be made from "everything is wrong" - it's hard for "good news" to really get into your bones. Not to say it's the best of times, nor to say it's the worst of times, mind you. Just that it's really hard to objectively compare.
- SV_BubbleTime 6mo agoObjectively never a better point in history, subjectively never more people miserable and misled. Wild stuff really. There is a book about it, using an Abe Lincoln quote he said hoping that the civil war wouldn’t happen, “better angels of our nature”.
- simplyluke 6mo agoIf you want to dispel a bit more of the ever-pervasive online pessimism bias, read up on global rates of hunger the last time we flew to the moon (1972) vs now. The reality is, for all the problems we face today, there's no sane answer other than today to the question "when would you prefer to be born as a random person on earth"
- rmunn 6mo agoBest comment exchange from a thread on a different site: OP: "I'm happy they didn't die." Response: "You're going to be less happy when they turn into the Fantastic Four and Dr. Doom shows up."
- Ifkaluva 6mo agoCan somebody help me understand why this does a water landing, like the old Apollo missions, instead of like the space shuttle that lands like a plane?
- JumpCrisscross 6mo agoBuoyancy is an easier equation to solve than lift.
- BitsAndObjects 6mo agoSo why do they need to use helicopters and a risky airlift to return the astronauts to the main vessel? Why not just use the speedboats to take them back? Seems really odd and I can’t find any reasonable explanation.
- stackghost 6mo ago>Why not just use the speedboats to take them back? They actually covered this in the broadcast: Helicopters are faster to get the astronauts to medical, smoother in rough seas, and there's less risk of being swamped by a rogue wave. Plus, since the astronauts might have fatigue/muscle atrophy/whatever, it complicates potential boat transfers.
- Brybry 6mo agoThe public information sheet implies that in poor weather/rough seas they would do crew recovery in the well deck, sort of like how Dragon works. [1] From the broadcast, they made it sound like a big factor is the 2 hour program requirement to get the crew out of the capsule. Maybe they can't reliably hit that mark with a well deck recovery? [1] https://www3.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/orion-recovery.pdf https://www3.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/orion-recove...
- tedd4u 6mo agoThe other reason is that the capsule can splashdown far away from the ship. In this case it was close (3km or so). It can possibly fall much farther away. In which case boats would be much slower. Add in the possibility of rough seas & bad weather the helos make sense. And just to keep things simple I think they just use them no matter what. Prevent errors. Also gives a chance to rehearse and debug the full recovery process in case it’s actually really needed the next time.
- lenerdenator 6mo agoBeen a long time since I've felt any amount of national pride like this. Welcome home.
- atonse 6mo agoI had to explain to my wife and kids (not that I'm in this field, but I also have to remind myself) that we are able to pinpoint where the craft will land, when it will land down to the minute, because of ... just ... math. And we're able to get them there and back because of science. It all boils down to equations that describe the world accurately, and a way of experimentation, iteration, thinking that gets us all the way to do something this unbelievably complex.
- bombcar 6mo agoThe analogies for these things like "hitting a golf ball into a hole in one 5,000 miles away" are always fun. I like starting from the fact that Ptolemy was able to get the accuracy of the "motions of the heavens" down so well that it took more than a thousand years to get observations that showed discrepancies. The math, it maths.
- Gigachad 6mo agoI feel like it’s “easier” with space math because there’s so little to interfere with the course. With a golf ball, the basic math is easy, but the slightest bit of wind throws it off way beyond the acceptable error, and you can’t model all the wind perfectly.
- chris_va 6mo agoAgreed. Fun info: The NASA orbital codes include things like photon pressure... from sunlight reflected off of other planets in the solar system. At some point, I think they are just showing off :)
- _moof 6mo agoThe first-order approximations are easy. When you start adding up all the other factors, it gets complicated fast. The solar wind, which isn't constant, affects trajectories. Earth's atmosphere is neither homogenous nor perfectly predictable along many dimensions: upper-level wind speeds and directions, air density, and temperatures, to name a few. The Moon's gravitational field is very lumpy. Earth's gravitational field, while relatively smooth compared to the Moon, also isn't perfectly uniform. Propulsion systems have tolerances. Same with parachutes. The location of the vehicle's center of gravity affects everything. All of these factors and more have to be taken into account if you want your predictions to be accurate. Aside from telemetry processing, most of the computing power on the ground during a space mission is used for churning out navigation solutions.
- 1970-01-01 6mo agoSo the new heat shield works just fine, and NASA still knows things better than arm-chair aerospace engineers? Safety third.
- dibujaron 6mo agoIt's hard to know who was right. All of these things can be true: it made it back ok; it had a high chance of making it back ok; it should've had a much higher chance of making it back ok. Most of the concerned people were stressing this last point, that it should've been safer than it was. They still thought it had a quite high chance of making it back ok. It took a lot of shuttle missions before Columbia failed.
- GMoromisato 6mo agoWhile I agree with your main point (it's hard to know who was right), the people who agreed to proceed were NASA engineers/astronauts who had actual numbers to analyze, while the doubters (even Camarda) only had theories.
- pixl97 6mo agoWe'll need a post mortem to know what the margin of failure was. This said they had made changes since the first flight so we'd expect less to no damage this time.
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- incompatible 6mo ago[flagged]
- laichzeit0 6mo agoAnd that is why no one will remember your name.
- incompatible 6mo agoTrue, if I was introduced to Trump, the resulting scene would be memorable.
- gwbennett 6mo agoBravo Zulu, Integrity crew, NASA, and USA!
- anon291 6mo agoAs I've said before. This is a huge achievement. And also is the most effective political propaganda ever. Bravo to everyone involved . This is not sarcastic. This is very much meant. I love that America does this. We still get to evoke an awe which previous empires awesome as they may be, could never match. American superlatives are amazing. God bless America
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- make_it_sure 6mo agoWhy this was such a big deal? Haven't people reach the moon so many years ago? By this time we should have lunar bases, not cheer so much that we got past the moon at a few thousands miles away.
- freeone3000 6mo agoBecause we haven’t had translunar manned flight in fifty years, and this is the precursor to start it up again
- wumms 6mo agoWhat is coming into view from the top center at 08:26:25 [0], right after the commentator says, "the weather conditions remain go"? It stays visible for more than seven minutes before disappearing behind the horizon. [0] https://youtu.be/X9Miy8ngusQ?t=30382 https://youtu.be/X9Miy8ngusQ?t=30382
- trvrprkr 6mo agoThe Moon.
- rationalist 6mo agoInteresting.
- brcmthrowaway 6mo agoHas anyone collated the best space based footage?
- rationalist 6mo agoAwesome! I can't wait to watch the moon landing whenever that happens.
- matt_daemon 6mo agoI had this in the back of my mind today https://idlewords.com/2026/03/artemis_ii_is_not_safe_to_fly.htm https://idlewords.com/2026/03/artemis_ii_is_not_safe_to_fly.... Glad they got home safe and sound!
- sph 6mo agoNot for the same reason as you, the whole time I was thinking "I'm pretty sure NASA can assess the risk of their mission better than an Internet famous blogger", despite the sentiment on HN at the time being very negative after reading these words [1]. These days the only qualification required for people believing anything you say is to have a blog and strong critical opinions about $AUTHORITY. Software engineers somehow believe they are knowledgeable in any topic just because they spend a lot of time reading on the Internet. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47582043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47582043
- zellyn 6mo agoAnd really well-reasoned arguments. And a decades-long sterling reputation for cantankerous but insightful contrarian takes. And references in the article to astonishingly well researched articles by people who have talked to NASA engineers and read non-public documentation. It’s like anyone can be taken seriously these days…
- anant_who 6mo agoWoke up at 5:00 am to watch this live Regret no part of it
- throwaway290 6mo agoWith 1 in 30 chance of death can somebody help me understand why this had to be a manned mission?
- k33n 6mo agoIt was essentially a dress rehearsal for next year's mission, which will result in an actual moonwalk. And then in 2028 we will go back for a second moonwalk and foundation delivery to start building an actual moon base. Artemis is a really cool and systematic set of missions that ultimately will result in a permanent human presence on the moon.
- fleroviumna 6mo ago[dead]
- nQQKTz7dm27oZ 6mo ago[dead]
- whatisthismovie 6mo agogood, But how did you build it?
- small_model 6mo agoImpressive mission but I feel it's not capturing the public attention because it's actually a step back from the mission 50 years ago when they actually landed men on the moon with tech that was orders or magnitude simpler and less powerful.
- globular-toast 6mo agoI think it you ask the average person they're more surprised that people haven't been going to the moon for the past 50 years. In people's minds it's a solved problem and it's been boring for decades now. If supersonic air travel came back it would only interest people because of reduced journey times. But this doesn't even have anything that directly benefits people so they don't care.
- hermannj314 6mo agoA diverse and inclusive crew, a publically-funded mission, an emphasis on science and discovery, and government investment in a long-term strategy, not a quick politcal win. This current administration has made sure these things never happen again, Artemis is very much the swan song of an America that has died. I am not interested in watching our corpse twitch and calling it life.
- palata 6mo ago> an emphasis on science and discovery Sorry, what science and discovery is that bringing? I mean it's technically really cool, but I fail to see the science and discovery there.
- hermannj314 6mo agoFrom NASA >> Under Artemis, NASA will send astronauts on increasingly difficult missions to explore more of the Moon for *scientific discovery*, economic benefits, and to build on our foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars. Yeah fuck me for thinking this was about that that.
- 6mo ago
- thenthenthen 6mo agoAmazing, congrats! Why where they hoisted by heli and not ‘just’ sail to the mother ship (and hoisted there)?
- throw533 6mo agoMillions of people are going to bed hungry and yet here we are spending billions on stuff like this to please elites ego
- Xiaoher-C 6mo ago[dead]
- gcanyon 6mo agoHas NASA (or anyone) said anything about how the heat shield performed?
- tedd4u 6mo agoStill waiting to see comparison to A1’s used heat shield. Obviously it worked at least just well enough. They have a new formulation apparently for use with subsequent missions. New might be better but obviously it has not been tested in a real re-entry scenario so also kinda concerning for the next flight.
- moominpapa 6mo agoMore than 50 years since the first lunar landing, and there's excitement over this?
- Leomuck 6mo agoFake news?? I've heard a radio item today where they informed that the internet has a lot of conspiracy theories that Artemis isn't real, images are AI fakes and reports are completely made up. They then proceeded to post a "prove" image which was definitely AI since one of the people only had one arm. lol. Anyway, glad it worked out. I do think that somehow we have more important issues to solve than discovering the moon, but whatever.
- mvkel 6mo agoI am trying hard to keep a positive attitude about this mission but I keep feeling like it's vanity marketing for America, more than science, or pushing the frontier. "Hey everyone, remember when we got to the moon FIRST? Good times." Ultimately, we did all of this a half century ago. The lasting impression is a reminder of how underfunded the space program has been all these decades. Why go to the moon again? The answer in the 60s was: because it's there. And that was enough. But now? Is it -really- a training ground for Mars?
- atonse 6mo agoJudging by the fact that almost nobody in the mainstream talked about this until a week leading up to the mission, and that it’s been 10+ years in the making, I doubt it’s some vanity thing. I don’t see how anything as substantive like this can be seen as “vanity” (unless you mean to count that as a bonus). It’s amazing to see NASA doing newer great things (Webb, Mars probes, all have been incredibly cool too, but manned stuff always hits a different note). Yes they’re way more expensive than SpaceX, I get all that. But it’s nice to see something so overwhelmingly positive and a true example of human ingenuity, collaboration, and bravery, that we need a lot more of that to remind us these days of the positive times we live in. And the fact that we did this 50 years ago, at least to me, means I appreciate even more how we got it done with that age’s technology and knowledge the first time.
- palata 6mo agoI totally agree on the fact that it is very cool and very impressive. But it doesn't mean that it is useful. It's mostly cool.
- GMoromisato 6mo agoThe answer in the 60s was "to beat the Soviets". Today, we are partially doing it to beat China, but we really are gearing up for Mars. You can't just start from zero and fly to Mars. You need to build an entire workforce able to produce and operate fantastically complicated machines. And you need to fly regular missions, each more ambitious than the last, until finally we can land people on the Red Planet. Artemis II is the beginning.
- atlasagentsuite 6mo ago[dead]
- motbus3 6mo agoI wish these were more peaceful times so these brave people could get the glories they deserve