Comment by GaryBluto
4 days ago
It is very disconcerting to see so many completely disregarding incredible technological innovation because other problems exist, especially on HN.
If we were not allowed to progress technology until everybody is 100% free of suffering, we'd never be able to create technological that may potentially lead to the alleviation of suffering. It all feels very crabs in a bucket - "I don't feel happy so nobody else should, and nothing should happen unless it is things that directly, immediately do things I want and solve problems I care about."
There is no technological innovation in the Artemis stack.
Three of the main engines are refurbished Shuttle engines. The fourth is a clone that cost more than the entire SpaceX Starship stack.
The boosters are derived from the Shuttle SRBs.
It's a late-60s technology rocket stack with a 2000s-era flight computer.
It's such a travesty.
Its true that innovation isn't clearly shown in this mission; we also haven't flown humans out that far in more than 50 years either and while we have memories of it, our ability to even execute something like this must be built again. I'd rather see us doing this and 'pick up from where we were last time', than giving up on it or just using a stack that's not currently set to do this.
What Artemis is doing is not impeding innovation: its building our muscle back to work on such things; the discipline, rigor, scale, and attitude needed to execute such missions is unimaginable and orthogonal to the technical innovation and stack used. I also believe that its completely fine to use a 2000s-era flight computer, if that suffices for this purpose. Somehow, for such critical missions, my mental model is to use at least 10 year old technology that has stood the test of time, before going into space. If there's a need for the latest technology - then yes, it should be leveraged.
Not impending innovation is IMHO debatable - Artemis has definitely potential to motivate a lot of lay population & young people to go do space stuff and tech in general.
On the other hand SLS and Orion have gobbled insane amount of money that could have been invested to other science missions or even more efficient human space flight.
> our ability to even execute something like this must be built again
Why? Because "dreams"? "Reach for the stars"?
You know what I remember from the shuttle launches as a kid? I remember my school not being able to afford textbooks but apparently we had enough to spend billions on putting people in space for no reason.
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> is no technological innovation in the Artemis stack
Scaling is still engineering.
And the environmental control system, laser-optical communication systems and block-construction heat shields are new. For Artemis III, in-obit propellant transfer will be new and transformational.
The block construction heat shield was new on Artemis I. Now we just know that it is an unfixed problem that will be done differently on future missions.
And Artemis III has nothing to do with in-orbit propellant transfer, that will be SpaceX and Blue Origin testing independently of Artemis III.
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It isn't moving forward. It's an ill-conceived Apollo 1.5 with the MIC calling all the shots and a lander that is MIA. China is doing Apollo 2.0 which is fine considering this is their first attempt. The US needs a modular launch system with orbital booster tugs that can be mixed in various combinations for different mission profiles. One big booster with all of the risk stacked onto billion dollar launches is not the future we should be working toward.
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> in-obit propellant transfer
I'm hoping they can do it in-orbit. We've had enough NASA obits
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All of this stuff is really great but it's not worth the cost that was spent on it.
The thing you have to keep asking yourself is "what could 100 billion dollars of non-pork barrel spending have bought instead of what we ended up with?"
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It's silly to say there's no innovation here. These aren't legos that you just snap together. I'm sure there are innovations up and down the whole thing, using the old technology they have easily available to them.
No, it's not the most modern Rocket Lab or SpaceX project but they have immense drag on their process that those companies don't have and they still got the dang thing up and headed toward the moon.
That old technology wasn't remotely "easy" and the reason the top minds aren't going to NASA is because nobody wants to work on tech selected for maximum pork.
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It's not about the Orion unit specifically but the fact that this is happening in the first place. This is simply a precursor to future missions and the construction of the Artemis Base Camp.
This read like one of those "I could've done this in a weekend" replies to app launches.
IIRC there are some hydrogen powered APUs on the SLS core stage, replacing the Hydrazine powered ones used on Shuttle (both on orbiter & SRBs). The solar panel control on the Orion also seems coo and useful, not to mention having cameras on the arrays for self-inspections.
I am sure there are more subtle innovations like this that would hopefully be useful on more sensible rockets and space vehicles in the future. :)
While that might be true, it is on course to the moon now. Starship hasn't really done anything close. So while cheaper might be on the way, it doesn't exist now. When Starship can do now, we can talk about if the Shuttle Leftover System is ready to be retired
Starship is not designed for high-orbit deep-space missions; it is more like a cargo truck for low Earth orbit.
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We'll be sure to give you a ring when the Moon base needs food delivery apps in the year 2347.
I believe the fourth is actually built from left over STS engine parts and they haven’t gotten to the clones yet.
Well what are they suppose to do other than continue where they left it? As far I understand purpose of Artemis mission it is to build a pernamently occupied base on the moon not to build better and better rockets now. I mean, it's not the best solution but it is proven to work and they perceive it as enough for now. I think it's very similar to some critical systems still running code written in cobol sixty years ago.
It's in orbit. I for one love the fact they recycled some well-designed engines and made this mission a success (so far).
The Artemis was a pork barrel project to feed federal tax money to all the states that had huge space shuttle contracts.
That and NASA is pathologically terrified of anything resembling innovation.
So, are you suggesting we should not misunderstand “just business” as “glorious human achievement”?
Yeah, fuck the engineers who worked full time and ran many simulations tirelessly and worked out the best stack for this mission, right?
Most of the combustion engines in your car are still from designs late 60s - 80s (Eg. Renault). Does that mean it's a travesty too?
Let me guess, a bunch of dudes sitting in SF in a garage could have made a better rocket that runs on ReactJS, right? Because NASA BAD.
Give me a break.
It’s interesting to compare to Apollo 8 (circumlunar Apollo mission). That mission culminated a year that saw escalation of the Vietnam War and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
The Apollo 8 book I read once ended with a letter to NASA thanking them and saying “You saved 1968.”
It was a telegram, not a letter. As also immortalised at the end of the 1968 episode of ‘From The Earth To The Moon’, attributed there to an apparently fictitious person.
It's much more popular to be doomer and a critic on the internet. Virtue signalling etc.
> It's much more popular to be doomer and a critic on the internet
Is it more popular? Or is it just easy? Dismissive “reads” are done by the picosecond; there is just much more to choose from than constructive thinking, which takes work.
That's true, most of these comments are just drive by pessimism by people who just skim headlines and don't really care to deeply understand the topics being discussed.
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Why is pessimism, virtue signalling, doomerism, etc. so prevalent on the internet these days?
It wasn't always this way, was it? Am I misremembering "the golden years"?
Is it the failing economy? The K-shaped economy? The political and news cycle?
I'm excited for all of this stuff, and I can't imagine being downtrodden and pessimistic about our outlook. The only thing I'm down about are authoritarianism and monopolies, but those are outside of my control. Modern science and engineering rock.
Going to the moon is amazing. All this AI stuff is amazing. It feels like the future again.
This is such a strawman argument because nobody expects nobody expects all wealth to be redistributed absolutely equally. What many of us would like however is a sufficient baseline.
I've recently seen a seris of Tiktoks from a 50 year old woman who lives in rural China on ~$1/day. She works in a shoe factory and makes ~$11/day. Her husband is a truck driver. Thing is, she has a house, a phone, an electric scooter, enough to eat, electricity and overall all her basic needs are met.
That's the baseline for modern China.
In the US, you'd end up homeless, eventually lose your car, find it impossible to keep your car, probably end up self-medicating with drugs, get harassed by police and ultimately your status will be criminalized and you'll end up being convict labor.
I don't need Jeff Bezos to have the same amount of money as everyone else but I do want, in the wealthiest country on Earth in particular, everyone to have secure housing health insurance, food, clothing and utilities.
There are other reasons too to criticize the SLS program: it's incredibly wasteful and is just another welfare program for defense contractors. The Artemis/SLS programs have cost ~$100 billion in the last 2 decades. That's staggeringly inefficient. Likewise, each Artemis mission costs ~$4 billion. That's ridiculous.
I, for one, would be much happier seeing these Moon missions if it wasn't such a giant scam to steal $100 billion from the government coffers.
Well said. I find it interesting that a single proton-m total cost per launch is about 70 million. Of course its lift capacity is much smaller, but if the 4 billion figure is correct, it does seem like a ridiculous amount. But then again things are no different from the defense expenses.
I agree entirely. HN tends to be incredibly nitpicky and dystopian. I think it's because so many HNers work in dystopian software-only companies, not doing much in the physical world, away from the algorithms.
Incredible technological innovation is on the horizon. That's why we are not doomed this century. We can make it.
*hits 'reply', knowing there will be nitpicky comments because of course on HN these days, no positive point shall be left standing.
How dare we want to fix the existential threats on the planet before we spend billions on a publicity stunt.
No, there's no possible way we "save humanity" with space exploration. The whole "eggs in more than one basket" thing is insane.
The resources required to establish a colony, get it self-sufficient, then able to grow, and then put enough people on it will take half a century and the planet is burning up today.
Do you think that had this not launched that it would have been spent on something else that would have "saved humanity" better?
US spends 4x as much on just nuclear bombs as the NASA budget for some perspective. Nuclear bombs are only 10% of the military budget, and as big as the military spending is, all of that is still only 15% of the federal budget.
It seems a bit ridiculous to be thinking NASA spending is in any way meaningfully holding us back from whatever "save humanity" spending we could be doing.
why pick on space exploration which has such a small budget and provides with a lot of hard science, technology, boosts the economy, etc and not pick on many other things we do that make no sense? why not pick on the military? or fossil fuel subsidies? or the entertainment/sports industry? or ads? why not pick on bureaucracy or war or billionaires? ... all of those have way bigger budgets and ain't fixing any "existential threats", arguably making them worse
It's so easy to pick on the few remaining industries and science that invest on a future that is not the next quarter and doesn't just make the same people richer. Make no mistake, the little money spent on space exploration (or science in general) is not what's causing or keeping us from solving existential threats.