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[Iduno]

"We didn't make it, but we definitely tried"

Fuck it, this is the kind of quote that belongs in a frame on the wall.

Toss that on a picture of the NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter, and you've got art.

[Starver]

Surprised I've not seen mention of NASA's choices for moonlanders anywhere round here.

(Chose BBC site, because their particular sample images looked more like KSP than some others I saw write this up. Though Musk seems to be channelling Hergé more than the others.)

[LordBaal]

To be honest, I kinda expect these missions to not actually happen. Call it a gut feeling but it seems like uplifting propaganda and nothing else. Even more so if Orange Trump fails to get reelected.

On the mission itself theres some info already on wikipedia Artemis program page.

This at least makes much more sense than trying to get to Mars rigth away. The Moon should be our tutorial level.

[Reelya]

Orange Trump is kind of over-specifying it.

It's better to say it obliquely such as "if The Big Orange Baby fails to get reelected".

[Starver]

So, next week we're scheduled to get the SpaceX Dragon capsule, with crew, to the ISS.  And this weekend there may be a Virgin Orbit trial (LauncherOne being wing-launched from a converted Virgin Atlantic jumbo).

Watch this (or that) space?

[martinuzz]

Inb4 corona outbreak in the ISS

[Strife26]

To be honest, I kinda expect these missions to not actually happen. Call it a gut feeling but it seems like uplifting propaganda and nothing else. Even more so if Orange Trump fails to get reelected.

On the mission itself theres some info already on wikipedia Artemis program page.

This at least makes much more sense than trying to get to Mars rigth away. The Moon should be our tutorial level.

That's making an assumption that there's sufficient political will to do both and that the moon program isn't largely born of NASA's desire to build another largely useless space station instead of working towards exploration, colonization, and development on other celestial bodies.

[Starver]

Debatedly, we need some sort of Neo-Apollo (literal) moonshot project, in the face of a Great Competitor (these days, China?) also striving to get a manned Lunar-orbiter station/whatever.

Also a personality such as JFK to do the "we do these things..." speech to motivate us (not gonna be Trump; he's given that sort of speech on space stuff and all those many other things and a majority of people are "I'll believe it when I see it" at best) to fire up the nation.


Ok, so that's maybe how we'd repeat history (and by being so obviously a repeat, it might blunt the edge it might have had if completely new, but probably no more than modern cynicism and Armchair Expertise over social media would poison such an effort) and the futurologist might suggest something else like a crowd-funded investment into more corporate vanguards, perhaps linked to the Asgardia community or something along the same lines. But even that's probably not Futurologistic enough and still too much anchored upon the building blocks we can plainly see already existing, that are likely to be superceded by some other paradigm shifts in the relevent fields.


When I attended Space School, more than three decades ago, I remember many of the ideas that were being floated around (in the early age of the Shuttle) such as the possibility of developing solar-sailing missions to other planets (it was more than a decade before the Cubesat idea was formalised, but we were talking of (with the vague idea that we might actually do it, perhaps with Beagle-like funding/sponsorship) putting something up there that fit into the 'ballast' space of a regular launch's satellite shroud/fairing or a spare corner of the Shuttle/Buran/HOTOL cabin- or hold-space. That never happened. Neither did we (humanity) get back on the Moon by 2019, an arbitrary but humanly-meaningful 50 years after the first footfall, that I genuinely thought might be a driving schedule to work to in the 2010s (if only it weren't for the global crash at the end of the '00s?).

So I have a track record for not being very good at futurology, is what I'm saying, plus many other people who have played this game seriously or otherwise. Perhaps you could find that a useful thing in what I predict, but probably even this would not be a profitable pursuit.

[LordBaal]

The moon shall rise again!

[Starver]

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a chinese rabbit Supermoon!

[delphonso]

If in twenty years, I can't take an overpriced holiday to the moon and catch a virus on the ship, what are we really doing as a species?

[Bralbaard]

There have been many promises for a moon landings during my lifetime, but it was all just talk. The moon landings remain something from our parents or grand parents time, almost ancient history. 
At best, the Chinese are likely to try a landing in maybe a decade from now, and the US is likely on a similar time schedule, despite all talk of landing there in 2024. (Just look at all the delays the SLS has suffered, to see what kind of schedule dilution you can expect at a minimum, the 2024 date is just there so that Trump can believe he may be able to reap the rewards of investing in this.)
I have some optimism spacex may be able to give things a boost, but their super heavy/starship looks like a huge gamble, and the failure ratio on their prototypes is not helping to build confidence for a vehicle that, like shuttle, will have no crew escape options for much of it's flight profile. However, moon missions might be possible with a couple of Falcon heavy launches if compatible harware is developed, if other options fail.   

Anyhow, today will be the first launch attempt for launcherone, from a converted 747. Plane is expected to take of at 16:30 UTC, with the launch window opening half an hour later. There is no live broadcast, as far as I'm aware, and as the launch will take place off-shore, there is unlikely to be amateur footage.
This forum topic at nasaspaceflight is likely to have the most up to date information:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=45925.0

[Bralbaard]

 
Anyhow, today will be the first launch attempt for launcherone, from a converted 747. Plane is expected to take of at 16:30 UTC, with the launch window opening half an hour later.

Launch scrubbed for today.

[Cthulhu]

I'm not super confident in Artemis, it feels like they've been slowly scaling it back, lower your expectations until they're already met.  First there was the deep space gateway which would enable manned flights to Mars etc. Then it became LOP-G/Lunar Gateway and I haven't heard anything about a staging point for further than the Moon in a long time.  The whole idea of this huge 8+ year mission to build an ISS in lunar orbit doesn't make much sense if it's not intended to launch us further.  And it's been taken off the critical path for the actual landing, so what's the point?

I'm all for trying, but I'm not a fan of the current way they're going about it.

[Bralbaard]

I never understood why we need a new space station as a gateway for either the moon or mars in the first place. Assembling and maintaining the thing will gobble up all the money that is needed for the moon and mars missions before they can even get started. That could be the point though, having the station there would mean a fixed amount of work/income that can't be easily cancelled.

I doubt the station has any real benefits for moon/mars exploration. What would those benefits be, and can't that be done more efficiently?