Artemis 2 Launch - Going Back to the Moon
- Thread starter Urbandale2013
- Start date
Daughter led the design team for the heat shield that protects the Orion astronauts on reentry. She is an ISU aerospace grad, and has a masters in aerospace and astronautical engineering from Georgia Tech. Proud dad; but ISU aerospace engineering ought to be equally proud of their graduate. She has worked for NASA since her days as a intern in the early 2000's at NASA
Last edited:
Cyclonepride
Thought Police
It highlights for me how utterly alone they are, and how normally pedestrian inconveniences can become a pretty damn big deal up there.
That's why it is so expensive to do space travel, they spent multi millions of dollars to test the heat shield in 2014, sending an atlas rocket up to its maximum altitude to simulate reentry for the Orion, it passed all criteria, but was a most expensive test of the theory and engineering of the project at that time.
Shows how long this project has been conceptualized! Each step has been analyzed within the hen current technological constraints.
Last edited:
I bet the aliens who've been watching us for decades or more are having a good chuckle over this mission.
We can only hope Vulcans are flying past and deem us worthy of contact.
I'm reading this thing runs on old space shuttle engines?
The Gemini:
1. The Literal Engines
This isn't just the same design; in many cases, it’s the same physical hardware. NASA had 16 remaining RS-25 engines from the Shuttle program. For the first four Artemis missions, they are using these "flight-proven" engines.
Artemis I used four engines that had a combined total of 25 previous Shuttle flights under their belts.
The Gemini:
1. The Literal Engines
This isn't just the same design; in many cases, it’s the same physical hardware. NASA had 16 remaining RS-25 engines from the Shuttle program. For the first four Artemis missions, they are using these "flight-proven" engines.
Artemis I used four engines that had a combined total of 25 previous Shuttle flights under their belts.
There's quite a few grads at JSC. I originally moved to Houston about 30 yrs ago and I spent 8 yrs or so in flight design. I know we have at least one grad from that time is currently a flight director.
My cool story for this mission is that my son went to school with the daughters of one of the crew members. It was a small private school, and the Canadian govt sponsored a French program as a way for them to speak French in addition to English. The school had a handful of other students who could elect to be part of it too, and the way they did it was by having the kids learning in French for half the day. My son was part of this so as a first grader, he spent half of his day learning French. He only did it that year, so he doesn't speak a lick of it today (he's in college now). Anyway, my son invited the class to our place for his birthday that year - so one of the guys on his way to the moon right now has been to my house.
Andy Griffith did the same thing 50 years ago with Salvage 1. He built a spaceship out of old Apollo parts and went to the moon. Anybody else remember that show? Child me remembers it being pretty good but adult me is guessing it probably wasn't.
Some cool artifacts along for the ride
www.skyatnightmagazine.com
US flag from the Apollo mission that never flew will make its first trip to the Moon on Artemis II | BBC Sky at Night Magazine
A flag from Apollo 18, a piece of the Wright Brothers' first flight and Moon tree soil are among legacy keepsakes in the Artemis II mission.
www.skyatnightmagazine.com
An unrelated space tidbit. Sometime around November of this year Voyager 1 will reach 1 light day from Earth. Only took 49 years. Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light years away.
In terms of space travel Voyager 1 hasn't even finished backing out of the driveway
In terms of space travel Voyager 1 hasn't even finished backing out of the driveway
Last edited:
Yea once SpaceX gets their system perfected then my understanding is they will switch to it.
I'm not sure the moon has the ability to keep a satellite in orbit.
My guess is there would still be blackouts. Kinda like the command module on the Apollo missions.
I can’t even hold SiriusXM driving thru Campustown on Lincoln Way…
The comms issue is a simple yet complicated answer at the same time. We don't have any satellites that are in orbit around the moon. We do have a network of comm satellites in orbit around earth that the ISS uses now and the shuttle used back in the day but, soon after the TLI burn the other day, Artemis 2 was out of range of those.
They switched to the DSN (Deep Space Network) Here is some info on it from google:
..... (DSN) is NASA's international array of giant radio antennas—located in California, Spain, and Australia—that provides 24/7, two-way communication, navigation, and tracking for solar system exploration spacecraft. Managed by JPL, these 70-meter and 34-meter antennas support missions like Artemis, Voyager, and Mars rovers, handling data across massive distances using radio and optical frequencies"
The problem is that these ground based antennas are all blocked by the moon when Artemis 2 is on the back side tomorrow. I believe the comms blackout lasts about 45 minutes.
NASA is working to solve this issue for our moon base and eventual trip to Mars. My guess is that the moon base will include one or more DSN type antenna locations built directly on the moon.
Some cool artifacts along for the ride
US flag from the Apollo mission that never flew will make its first trip to the Moon on Artemis II | BBC Sky at Night Magazine
A flag from Apollo 18, a piece of the Wright Brothers' first flight and Moon tree soil are among legacy keepsakes in the Artemis II mission.
We know the real reason we never went back....
