Yes. The small, remotely operated robotic probes with limited fuel. I’m not saying SpaceX/NASA will perfectly land the Starship (or if it will reach the moon at all) but they will have a heck of a lot more fuel for manuvering a landing very precisely to a carefully chosen location from high resolution images.
isn’t moondust a huge issue here (hi-res = optical) ???
An issue how?
Regolith on the moon hasn’t been sorted by size by wind or water, so the particles are random sizes. It is like dust and sand and gravel, like an extremely dry concrete mix. Except the dust and sand has never been rounded off by wind or water, either, meaning it is more jagged and more likely to grind against nearby grains, not slide past each other. But it doesn’t even need all those unearthlike conditions: a volume of small rocks anywhere is going to act more like a solid than a liquid under compression. It is like expecting to sink into the sand of the beach while wearing snowshoes.
As for “high resolution”, look at the link I posted earlier. Those black “threads” across the photos are the trails of footprints left by walking astronauts. That’s plenty high resolution to see anything that would be a risk for a large spacecraft with large landing gears.
There’s the possibility that the exhaust from the rocket will blow away surface regolith to expose an irregular surface below. Now maybe the jagged grains will largely prevent this, but the Starship is much bigger than previous landers, so it’ll have lots more exhaust.
This is a look at what the lunar surface is like. Those meteorites (on Earth) are regolith that has been melted and fused by meteorite impacts (on the moon). Note the random sized, jagged particles.
Yes, as extrapolated by what was surveyed by 12 people. The question arises, how many degrees off top dead center can the rocket sustain before it falls over.
Tell me, what part of looking at lots of photos of lunar meteorites made you think that it had anything to do with being “surveyed by 12 people”? Did you even glance at the link before writing something so completely wrong?
Those are literally samples of lunar regolith that have been shock-fused. And lunar meteorites represent not only more areas sampled than the Apollo specimens but also more total weight than all Apollo samples.
Pictures are not surveys of what is actually there. They’re visual representations of what is actually there.
No fooling! NASA says Artemis 2 could launch as early as April 1st
I reread the OP from August of '22, and it seems very few goals have been met over the intervening 3 1/2 years. It seems to me that, because our AI and robotics technology has advanced so dramatically, the incredible cost, complexity, and danger of human exploration isn’t that attractive. Also, a failed unmanned mission has a fraction of the blowback that a failed, fatal manned mission would have.
Researching my original question, the moon rocket seems to be able to compensate for some level of tilt. Recent (and much shorter height landers) have tipped over so the possibility exists. Im-1 tipped over in 2024. IM-2 tipped over in 2025. I’ve seen reference to the HLS (Human Landing System) handling 8 degrees of tilt but I can’t find a good quote.
The 32-story Space Launch System rocket is poised to blast off Wednesday evening with four astronauts. After a day in orbit around Earth, their Orion capsule will propel them to the moon and back. There are no stops — just a quick U-turn around the moon. The nearly 10-day flight will end with a splashdown in the Pacific.
I am surprised at the lack of discussion here. Is no one excited this is about to happen?
I was just reading an article:
Any thoughts?
I hope this succeeds, and I’ll try to watch the liftoff. But I’m afraid of the political capital that will be minted from it.
The new administrator at NASA seems to be willing to change things up in pursuit of the lofty goal of “getting there before the Chinese”. Although I find that goal silly and unsustainable, at least it should allow some elements to be accomplished before they get killed off by politicians.
In the past month or two, the Artemis mission timeline has been reshuffled, the SLS Block II rocket has been cancelled (including its ridiculously-expensive Mobile Launcher). Also, the Lunar Gateway station has been cancelled (and its hardware repurposed for a… nuclear propulsion project ???), and a lunar surface base has been proposed, though that’s still just a few cute pictures at this point.
Not really, no. The launch platform is something of a boondoggle, and it’s just a flyby, not a landing. And that’s not even bringing up the current political environment…
I’m excited because: SPACE.
But the political and technical caveats others mention are valid and do affect me.
(Never mind, draft got published)
To be fair, I never understood the purpose of the Lunar Gateway Station. The hard part is getting off the Earth; shuttling to the moon’s orbit from Earth orbit and back is trivial by comparison.
But aside from all that, yes, I’m super excited.
I don’t know. A station in lunar orbit could enable some interesting mission profiles, with a reusable lander shuttling between Lunar Gateway and the surface, refueling, etc. On the safety front, it may have provided a safe harbour in some contexts. Though I’m pretty sure this was mostly a make-work project for NASA, ESA and CSA.
Discussion of the Orion heat shield issue and decision process, which at least gives the impression that there are still professionals at NASA:
(and the criticism in the second link in PastTense ‘s post 512 above was subsequent / a reaction to this presentation, including Charles Camarda not being convinced at all.)
My thoughts are that though only NASA has all the facts, I tend to be skeptical of any article that declares flatly and without qualification that “Artemis is not safe to fly”. The article immediately above, from Ars Technica and quoting NASA, seems more balanced.
It’s slightly concerning that there was no opportunity to consider any sort of redesign or modification to the Orion heat shield, and to the best of my understanding NASA is going with the original design, the heat shield having been attached to the Orion capsule a long time ago. The only thing different is that NASA is planning a slightly different re-entry trajectory.
The most persuasive argument I’ve seen is that Artemis II shouldn’t be a manned mission at all, as Artemis III will provide a low-risk test of manned flight in near-earth orbit as well as a test of docking procedures.
It’s sad to think of the real science – as opposed to just engineering – that could have been done with the $100 billion-plus that’s been squandered on Artemis so far. We could have sent landers to Europa for a tiny fraction of the cost!