Comment by areoform
5 hours ago
It's interesting to me how cautious NASA is being with Artemis II. I wrote about the risk / mortality calculation behind this, but everything from the trajectory, the decision not to do an orbital insertion, the checkout in high-Earth orbit is very cautious.
I wish this mission took greater risks. Or, just at least go as far as Apollo 8, but stay for a bit longer, and try out new things. It would be fun to take a finicky low mass radio telescope experiment to the far side of the moon.
> I wish this mission took greater risks
It's already risky enough: https://idlewords.com/2026/03/artemis_ii_is_not_safe_to_fly....
Yes, and that's part of what spaceflight is. https://1517.substack.com/p/1-in-30-artemis-greatness-and-ri...
It has always been a touch-and-go affair
It is not possible for them to say a bit longer because Orion doesn’t have the deltaV necessary to go into LLO and orbit the Moon like Apollo 8. Orion is like HlS in that it is the worst possible craft for a mission to the Moon, but it’s the one we have. At least Starship has a potential future for further missions.
I don't think they'd or any other space mission will take that much risk anymore. Atleast without the pressure/tension of cold war space race.
Did you miss "Artemis 2 is not safe to fly" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47582043 ?