Comment by dingaling
4 days ago
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.
I really resonate with this. I remember watching Comic Relief with Whoopie Goldberg as a kid, the whole show focused on homelessness in America, andshe said somthing like "why are we spending billions launching shuttles when people are sleeping on the streets?" That hit me hard. Especially because I was also the kid who was obsessed with space. It felt like a contradiction I couldn't square - I wasn't homeless, I think my school had books, but who remembers...
What shifted my thinking over tim was the actual numbers. NASA's entire budget during the shuttle era was roughly 1% of federal spending [1]. We chose to de-institutionalize heathcare which really impacted homelessness. We didn't have to, but it was choice. And we could of done both. The failure was our leaders choosing not to, and that choice had nothing to do with NASA.
And the shuttle era, for all its problems, gave us Hubble. That single telescope showed us the universe is 13.8 billion years old, that expansion is accelerating, that nearly every galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center. The shuttle crews serviced it five times to keep it running. I think it's hard to overstate what that one instrument did for our understanding of the universe.
I don't think the instinct you had as a kid was wrong at all! - And thanks for helping me re-activate some neurons- Whoopi made a real impession on me came from a real place. But I think we're lucky enough to live in a world where people fight to fix things on the ground and also point telescopes at the sky.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA
Developing something like this would push the frontiers of human technology. Without the Apollo program, not to mention anything else, the personal computer boom in the 1970s might have been delayed by a long time.
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Have you looked at US per pupil K-12 spending growth & absolute comparisons vs. peer nations?
The problem with US public schools is not funding.
If we're going to be idealists and say that the money that'd come out of space exploration would go into education, there is an awful lot more money being spent on the business of killing people that you could also say should go elsewhere.
Do you honestly believe that by repurposing money from missions like these would suddenly free up money for text books? That’s not how it works. Especially not in 2026.
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I guess probably we should stop spaceflight until we can go back in time and buy you a textbook.
Spaceflight is cool. Its a awesome thing that people can exist outside our gravitational well. We don't need to solve every possible problem before we do anything cool.
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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.
> block construction heat shield was new on Artemis I. Now we just know that it is an unfixed problem
Unfixed problems on a new technology mean it’s still new.
> Artemis III has nothing to do with in-orbit propellant transfer
I may have fucked this up—isn’t the depot supposed to be up for III? Or is that punted to IV?
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.
> US needs a modular launch system with orbital booster tugs that can be mixed in various combinations for different mission profiles
This is what the propellant depot is building towards.
> in-obit propellant transfer
I'm hoping they can do it in-orbit. We've had enough NASA obits
Hehe. Obits to be avoided in obisular orbits.
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?"
A month of war in the middle east.
> All of this stuff is really great but it's not worth the cost that was spent on it
It’s building towards a system. If we get Starship and in-orbit propellant depots and a lunar nuclear reactor and then kill the programme, it will probably be judged by history as a success.
> what could 100 billion dollars of non-pork barrel spending have bought instead of what we ended up with?
Rien. This is the system we have, and it’s unclear such a program could have survived sans pork.
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What a simultaneously cynical and boring and completely useless attitude. Is it your position that if this hadn't happened 100b of otherwise more important spending would have happened?
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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.
That’s incorrect — it is both. That’s why orbital refueling is so important to Starship’s future.
Fine, but you're dodging the actual point here I think
So you agree that SLS provides useful functionality and that Musk lied about Starship being a Mars bus.
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.