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It’s the natural color of the insulation foam. Painting it would add lots of weight with no functional benefit.
NASA readies Artemis II for a manned launch
- Thread starter Snagglefoot
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Depends on how you define budget. Medicare and Medicaid were not “ on budget” back then. And we’re tiny anyway where now there on budget and half of it.
I don’t have a problem funding NASA. However circling the moon seems like a waste of time given we did it years ago.
That’s a matter of opinion
For me, this should have been at the top of the to do list for the last few decades and it’s about time we got back to it
~600 pounds for the first shuttle ET's, and Artemis is even taller. Doesn't sound like much, but it takes a pile of fuel to get 600 pounds up there.
NASA's peak budget was in 1965 and the agency then got 5.25 billion dollars which represented 6.5% of federal discretionary spending, so not nearly 10%.
You are right that NASA is now budgeted at around .5% (down to .35% as of 2026) of the federal budget and had a hair over 1% in the peak funding years for the shuttle.
That is an angle I had not considered and explains NASA's lack of visible programs over the past couple of decades.
Whenever someone uses some non traditional measure my spidy senses tingle. Lies, dam lies and statistics so said Twain.
In the 60’s adjusted for inflation NASA budget was 2X current, peaking at 2.5X for a couple years. So yes a lot less now but back then they were doing everything for the first time, on a fast timeline, and as mentioned they did everything by hand calculation.
NASA has done some amazing things since, like voyager and Hubbell. If we need to learn more about the moon it seems a AI empowered robot is the answer. One way trip. No expensive “ circle the moon” test flights. They can roam around for months and see what they find.
That much we agree on .
Hal?
I wonder if the Artemis crew felt a little weird climbing into the rocket with AI onboard.
4wd
$50 site donor 2026
How do you think AI felt about those Serfs ?Hal?
I wonder if the Artemis crew felt a little weird climbing into the rocket with AI onboard.
The AI robots of the future will wonder why humans were sent into space in the first place.
Regarding the need for human test pilots (and later astronauts), this quotation from the 1950s (when a mainframe computer was a massive thing that filled a room) is generally attributed to legendary test pilot Scott Crossfield:
"Where can you find another non-linear servo-mechanism weighing only 150 pounds and having great adaptability, that can be produced so cheaply by completely unskilled labor?”
"Where can you find another non-linear servo-mechanism weighing only 150 pounds and having great adaptability, that can be produced so cheaply by completely unskilled labor?”
The moon is a stepping stone to Mars.
Those who rule space travel are the most powerful nations on earth as evidenced by the last almost 70 years. Lose that edge and someone else will take its place. (China or ___)
I say don't kid yourself, hiding in a corner thinking the world is safe. Technology has kept us safe and much of it born out of space exploration.
Future wars will be fought in space. Satellites in Space will protect us from intercontinental ballastic missiles. One day, the future of mankind might hinge on being able to move to another planet should something happen on earth.
It's easy to leave things to the younger generations, waste money on stupid stuff to make their lives easier. Stuff they think they are getting for free, too ignorant to realize they are paying the price for it. We need to return to space in a big way, huge way.
Those who rule space travel are the most powerful nations on earth as evidenced by the last almost 70 years. Lose that edge and someone else will take its place. (China or ___)
I say don't kid yourself, hiding in a corner thinking the world is safe. Technology has kept us safe and much of it born out of space exploration.
Future wars will be fought in space. Satellites in Space will protect us from intercontinental ballastic missiles. One day, the future of mankind might hinge on being able to move to another planet should something happen on earth.
It's easy to leave things to the younger generations, waste money on stupid stuff to make their lives easier. Stuff they think they are getting for free, too ignorant to realize they are paying the price for it. We need to return to space in a big way, huge way.
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There is nothing nontraditional about the means by which I characterized national Will. And that’s the real issue, there was a clear national Will to accomplish something and they put resourcing behind it as a percentage of federal budget.
A simple dollar comparison is specious and over simplified. A dollar today, whether we’re talking about commodity prices in the form of aluminum, or any other good or service has really literally nothing to do in the highly specialized world of Aerospace.
Dollar to dollar is a complete red herring. It misrepresents the difference.
Again, we were talking about the difference between the space program then and the space program now as a matter of national Will. Let’s look at the number of people that worked on the Apollo program. It was over 400,000 across NASA itself and the various contractors that were building the sub assembly.
Now, NASA is 18,000 people. Sure, there are contractors, but the “2 to 2.5 times the dollars” again fails to capture the magnitude of the contrast of level of effort and desire to go the moon between 1965 and 2026.
Look at the size of NASA itself, look at the size of NASA as a percentage of the federal budget. Those are meaningful comparisons, not dollars.
The meaningful comparison is not in pure dollars, when those dollars actually purchase very different things between 1965 and 2026 given the radical changes in aerospace design, capability, manufacturing, and materials across those years
Owen Lucas
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FYI, the space toilet broke but is back online.
"An Artemis II astronaut became a “space plumber” for the day, after the spacecraft encountered toilet trouble.
On the first day of the historic mission, the crew reported the $30m (£22.6m) Universal Waste Management System (UWMS) onboard the rocket was not working due to an issue with the toilet fan.
After mission control teams on the ground assessed data, they were able to fix the problem with the help of the Artemis II crew, notably Christina Koch.
Commenting on the malfunction, Koch said: “I’m proud to call myself the space plumber”, adding the whole crew breathed a sigh of relief when the “most important piece of equipment” began functioning as normal."
https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/artemis-ii-toilet-broken-christina-koch-video-b2951457.html
"An Artemis II astronaut became a “space plumber” for the day, after the spacecraft encountered toilet trouble.
On the first day of the historic mission, the crew reported the $30m (£22.6m) Universal Waste Management System (UWMS) onboard the rocket was not working due to an issue with the toilet fan.
After mission control teams on the ground assessed data, they were able to fix the problem with the help of the Artemis II crew, notably Christina Koch.
Commenting on the malfunction, Koch said: “I’m proud to call myself the space plumber”, adding the whole crew breathed a sigh of relief when the “most important piece of equipment” began functioning as normal."
https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/artemis-ii-toilet-broken-christina-koch-video-b2951457.html
NASA had the backing of the people because It was a national objective. Now it’s sort of a headline for a minute because it’s not the first time. Same as the Apollo program. After the landing the later projects were cancelled.
As for the dollar numbers your way out there. Those are BLS numbers. Also relative cost of special materials and equipment is way cheaper. NASA outsources most stuff now to a whole ton of contractors around the space coast vs doing everything in house hence the employment numbers are no longer relevant.
We can disagree on the relative current benefit but your characterization on dollars is way off.
Go to Kennedy and look at the Mercury capsules. It looks like something you and I would build in our garage using only stuff we found in the dumpster. If you put 4 wheels on it they would deem it unsafe or the bike path.
There was one disaster, and some close calls in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs.
In July 1961 the hatch on Gus Grissom's Mercury capsule blew off prematurely after splashdown, before the recovery helicopter had hooked on. The capsule was lost, and Grissom could have drowned.
In May 1962 Scott Carpenter's Mercury capsule was not lined-up properly for re-entry, and the retro rockets fired a few seconds late. He landed about 250 miles downrange of the intended landing site, and was thought to be lost.
In 1966, a thruster on the Gemini 8 spacecraft opened up full thrust while the capsule was docked to the Agenda target vehicle. Only Neil Armstrong's superb piloting got them oriented properly and allowed them to return safely.
In January 1967 the Apollo 1 capsule burned on the pad, killing astronauts Grissom, White, and Chaffee.
In July 1969 the Apollo 11 lunar module, Eagle, was down to less than 30 seconds of fuel in the descent stage. Neil Armstrong flew over a boulder field before finding a good landing spot.
In November 1969 the Apollo 12 booster was struck by lightning, knocking out the computers until a fast-thinking tech reset them from Mission Control.
It's probably superfluous for me to mention Apollo 13 in April 1970.
The remaining Apollo missions, 14 through 17, went relatively smoothly.
The Skylab missions went well, as did Apollo-Soyuz.
Later on, there were the two Space Shuttle disasters - Challenger in January 1986, and Columbia in February 2003.
So yes, there were six successful moon landings, but a lot of hard-earned experience along the way.
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