Did anyone post why the lunar trip is so much longer with Artemis than Apollo?
Looks like they were trying some daring orbits around the moon, including a “distant retrograde orbit” that took 6 days alone. But I’ll wait for someone more knowledgeable to comment.
I just want to know why why the SLS boosters were orange 
, a feature shared with other boosters I’ve seen in photos, like Delta IV Heavy.
SLS:
Delta IV Heavy:
Is the orange paint like the red paint on a muscle car, makes it go faster? 
Is that primer, to save the weight of white paint?
The only thing I could find googling about the path some time ago, was that it used less fuel.
After posting, I eventually googled up with some difficulty that the orange is the color of the spray-on insulation they put on the cryo stages
Yep. And in this case, “cryo” means “liquid hydrogen”. Liquid oxygen is relatively warm and doesn’t typically demand extra insulation. But liquid hydrogen kinda needs it. The Shuttle external tank, SLS, the Delta IV, Japan’s H3 (above), and some others all use this orange spray-on insulation.
Thanks. Any comment on @carnivorousplant’s question about the Artemis mission profile? Nudging because I’d bet you know offhand. Thanks.
ETA: the wiki article isn’t helpful really.
It doesn’t really say why it was doing all those things for three weeks. I’m curious too.
Cool.
I’m not sure I have a much better answer than that they were supposed to be different.
The Apollo missions started with a “free return trajectory”, which basically meant that if there was some later failure, the craft would swing around the moon and head back to Earth. That was famously used by Apollo 13 to return the astronauts to Earth. It’s a quick there-and-back again trajectory that just swings around the Moon once. The whole point is to return the astronauts as quickly as possible given a total propulsion failure.
Artemis I was intended to prove out its systems in a long-duration flight, so it used a different orbit with some wide and slow manuvers. I don’t have the details on exactly what it was doing, but Orion is supposed to handle much longer-duration missions than Apollo was capable of, so I anticipate that they were just trying to test its systems for longer than a free-return trajectory would provide.
Fair enough, and thanks for the detailed reply
Relativity Space trying again shortly (~5 min):
Wayward boat caused a range violation at T-1:09.
Soooo close. Abort at 0:00 after ignition. That’s almost certainly a scrub, right?
Seems likely, but I think their launch window is open for a while longer, so it’s not impossible that they could recycle. I don’t know enough details about their ground support systems to say if that’s possible.
Announcer just implied that it wasn’t impossible.
ETA: Still, not a bad looking static fire, if that’s all it proves to be. The methane engines looked clean. Probably just didn’t ramp up their thrust to acceptable levels (within the expected time, etc.).
Annnd the countdown is running again, with an updated estimated launch time of 15:55 EST.
Did anybody catch the reason for that last-second abort?
Sorry, didn’t hear anything specific about the abort. They did say something but I forget what it was exactly–it was vague.
Just about 2 minutes to launch!
Ahh, scrub for today. I think this was the end of their launch window for today, so no chance for a recycle.
Lots of news coming from the Satellite 2023 conference. A few tidbits:
Another SpaceXer thinks Starship is going to fly real soon now:
They’re already at 15+, so I’d guess this means 30+ is not unreasonable:
This does not sound good for Virgin Orbit, but is also unsurprising:
Also unsurprising. I wonder what their insurance has to say about it:
Some more info on Virgin Orbit shutdown:
Active volcanoes on Venus!
Brian
That’s pretty cool (or hot). Amazing that 30 years later scientists are still making new discoveries from Magellan data.