5656

“Hey, it’s back! All done!”
“Done doing what?”
“Never mind.”

I like that at least they mention some of the experiments they were conducting, like interesting research on how space radiation can fuck up seeds, even if they can’t talk about the poor Space Force Spc3 they stuck up in there with an oxygen tank and a paid subscription to PornHub.

5657

The X-37B is uncrewed. Not saying the spacecraft didn’t need its own PornHub sub, but no blacklight needed to inspect the service module after landing.

5658

We’re pretty sure we heard it return around here. Sonic boom ~6AM.

5659

Oh, sure, they say it’s uncrewed. That’s what they say. That’s all I’ll say.

5660

If it were crewed, it’d be rather cramped…

5661

Updated Artemis Launch Schedule

5662

It should be launching at 1:47:44 EST, they are past 10 min hold

5663

Thing just flew, about to bring the kids to school. We watched till booster seperation. All looks nominal.

Bally good show NASA, bravo!

5664

Lunar Injection Burn successfully completed, Artemis spacecraft has successfully detached. It’s on its way to the moon!

5665

Watched it, and found that I have been spoiled by the SpaceX coverage of their launches… where is the camera on the rocket??? Still, good to see it fly at last, and I can’t wait for people to land on the moon again!

5666

Make the moon great again!

5667

That was exactly my feeling as well! My first thought was “Is this a 25 year old re-run of a Space Shuttle Launch?”

SpaceX certainly does launch coverage 10x better than NASA. The telemetry on screen, the slick production values, the cameras on every stage, etc is all superior to what NASA just did. It’s 2022 and NASA couldn’t figure out how to stick a cheap disposable webcam on each stage?

I realize the quality of the PR has nothing to do with the quality of the product, but if NASA wants to wow and inspire the public to keep support for their budgets they need to invest a bit more in this area.

5668

I sadly missed the SLS launch. I still think we will eventually end up with the much simpler system of a Starship taking off, then getting orbitally refueled and then landing on the moon and returning, rather than the convoluted system involving a non-reusable SLS system. But, I’m also happy to be going back to the moon.

In the beginning, SpaceX coverage wasn’t all that good. What’s so impressive about SpaceX is they are an incredible learning organization and there coverage continually improved.

5669

I also noticed a lot of cutting in and out with the NASA videocast. Seemed like their microphone would cut out when the sound level got a bit low (and wasn’t well adjusted) and their connection wasn’t very good, because the audio would drop for what felt like a minute at a time (but was probably more like 10-15 seconds) when the announcer was clearly still talking.

That would be understandable if we were receiving a transmission from orbit, but there’s really no excuse I can think of why a broadcast from Kennedy Space Center wouldn’t have a good audio connection and give us a quality broadcast.

They did actually have a camera on the Orion somewhere, because we did see live views when it separated from the booster that sent it into its Lunar trajectory. There might have been another one on the stage sending it into Lunar trajectory as I’m pretty sure they showed the burn start with a camera pointed down at the nozzle although I might be misremembering on that one.

5670

I don’t know if I’d call a technology that’s never been used simpler. We know how to launch non-reusable rockets to the moon. To date we’ve never established an orbital fuel depot nor done any orbital refueling beyond tech demos.

5671

Well a version of Starship is the lander no matter what since SpaceX won the lander contract. I thought it was going to be refueled in space before the astronaut transferred to it.

5672

Yeah, that is the plan that NASA selected. It’s just never been done and there are still some technological challenges.

5673

Definitely challenges. I think ultimately it will be cheaper and easier just to put the astronauts in Starship, put it in orbit refuel it and the send them to the moon and back. Rather than the convoluted scheme where the transfer from Aatemis to the starship lander, and then I belief transfer back.

5674

It sounds like there were various cameras on the core booster which weren’t broadcast for whatever reason. From what I heard, they were going to download the video from them during the booster’s hour and a half before it re-entered over the Pacific. So maybe we’ll still see it?

It’s too bad, I feel like I remember some of the later shuttle missions having more live cameras broadcast out during early launch than this launch had.

5675

I don’t disagree, but keep in mind that SLS was a job creation project primarily and space exploration was only a secondary concern.