Artemis

I’m actually hoping the upcoming mission slips not just to March, but into April. Not a detailed post, but here are a few highlights.

First, Congress mandated out-of-date tech and other delights to keep certain companies and production lines open (and donations to politicians flowing). Old tech is not necessarily bad: I almost got to co-pilot a Ford Tri-Motor once (lost out to someone with a bit more seniority) and it was a fun and amazing flight. It works, but no one is trying to repurpose the Ford into a hypersonic aircraft, which is not a bad analogy for all the Shuttle-derived tech required by Congress for Artemis.

Second, there have been issues identified — and fixed in record time. Sorry, having worked at NASA as a contractor I’m not fully buying it. If I haven’t already done so, remind me to tell you about how a NASA safety fix that wasn’t tested ended the first tethered satellite system mission pretty much at the start. Short version is that I wouldn’t ride in that capsule. Your mileage may vary.

Third, the tech involved does not do well with cold weather launches. Challenger. That really should be a period dot thing, but…

Fourth, even if you fixed every issue above, Artemis is unsustainable. The price per launch is beyond ridiculous and is a good example why America would be much better off with NASA out of the launch business. Heck, out of the manned space flight business period. NASA needs to focus on it’s stated mission, which is advancing aerospace technology, not trying to do and control everything related to space (and they and certain political leadership seem to like to ignore the whole aviation side of the picture).

I am very concerned that if Artemis launches this month, that there are going to be significant issues potentially up to the loss of vehicle and crew. I hope I’m wrong, and would love to eat crow on this one. That said, there are echoes of Apollo 1 and Challenger for me, and that makes me very concerned.

UPDATE I: Since I wrote this, a fuel leak has pushed the launch into March. A fuel leak in the same area as the first mission. I suspect that April may be optimistic as fuel leaks have been an ongoing issue for three or so years. See this article for more info. More than ever I think Artemis and the decisions behind it by Congress are going to give us another space disaster. One that could easily have been avoided.

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