Too cool, finally up and running.







en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_II

Ha ha, yes, good point . This was also a political issue during the Apollo program. I would rather live in a country with a good health care system, than one that has a good space exploration system.

It's probably Musk driven. he wants to live on Mars

Brent, this is an amazing engineering feat. I just question it's value. The Apollo program revealed cosmic rays punching holes through space suit lids, and through astronaut's heads. They saw flashes of light when this happened. Apollo 11 was an 8 day journey. Imagine 6-9 months of cosmic radiation exposure at the rate these astronauts were exposed to, and completely out of the earth's and moon's magnetospheres ?

I did a basic calculation once to calculate the energies required to divert an typical cosmic ray away from a ship. My calcs were basic and assumed perfect conditions. The energies required were not outrageous, but what if a big bugger from a super nova was heading for the ship ?. What about other stuff like high speed dust ?. It's ok if you're Pioneer 10. That's not going to kill it.

Agreed Brent however I also give credit to the 'id rather spend the money on............' argument.



"The launch team loaded more than 2.6 million litres of fuel into the 32-story Space Launch System rocket on the pad, setting the stage for the Artemis II crew to board"



Hydrogen fuel, but for example.

(H) buses can transport the masses

(H) can generate power.

(H) biproduct is water.



Given our current environment?

I hear what you're saying Brett. Australia would not have been discovered with my attitude. But I bet the Apollo program had little knowledge of this radiation hazard, and just sent it. Where as the Artemis crew have lifted on minimum sol activity, and are gobbing down radiation sickness pills.

The news reports keep banging on about how this crew is going to see parts of the moon that no human has ever set eyes on. But missions from Apollo 10 to 17 all orbited the moon, so they saw at least some of the dark side.

I don't know how high their orbits were, or if they were lunar equatorial or inclined, so I don't know how truthful the claim about seeing cheese never before sighted by gourmets is.

I'd ask ChatGPT, but a few weeks ago I was trying to get rid of an old windsurfing board on this site and thought I should check what I had written about it for accuracy. ChatGPT came back with an answer citing my Seabreeze post as a primary source, so I've become a bit sceptical about what it might tell me.

Another thing about their view of the dark side is that it was full moon only a couple of days ago, so the dark side is facing away from the sun, mostly. It doesn't even have reflected light from the earth to light it up. The only radiation impinging on it is from deep space so it's going to be very dark in all wavelengths. From Artemis point of view it will look like a big patch of starless sky.

So they won't be able to see Macroscience's house then.

I'd assumed it was next door to the Clanger's soup crater.

Reading the blog on ABC news it looks like they do pass around the back of the moon when it is sun-earth-moon orientation, so yep, totally dark.

$100b and we saw nothing. But do agree with Brent that the mission is better than war. Maybe we get a photo from space of Iran getting nuked tomorrow.

Carantoc said..
So they won't be able to see Macroscience's house then.

I think we did. On ABC they showed shots of the dark side with a blue dot on it they described as earthshine. But we know it was Macro's porch light

Returning tomorrow. Artemis II is scheduled to splash down off the coast of San Diego at 8:07 AM WA time approx.