The Space Thread - Launches, Events, Live Streams, Governments, Corporations, drama in Spaaaaaaaaaaaace

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It's Little Alex Horne said:
Much as I would love to see mankind begin taking steps to become the rightful masters of the Solar System again, I keep hearing shit like this that makes me worry NASA has gone so woke and manager-pilled that this is going to be a Challenger 2.0.
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Again, not an expert by any stretch but I believe this has less to do with "woke" ideology and more to the problems that naturally occur in large organizations conducting complex projects...fifedoms, budgets, and self interested parties on timelines. I don't think, but could be wrong, that "less woke", "less DEI" NASA would solve those problems. I think Camarda's comments suggest the same systemic issues.

There are likely many many books on this in particular, but two books which highlight the sheer complexity of the Apollo project are David Woods How Apollo Flew to the Moon and NASA's own detailed history called Moonport. Wood's book is more about the technology but does a great job summarizing the project choices which had to be made. Moonport is a boring grind but provides massive internal detail of the pushing and shoving and empire-building which lay the groundwork for the organizational problems that NASA has today, imo.

I would also offer that NASA faced many of the same issues with Apollo...best guess of risk. Sometimes, I think we think these problems are new problems, but they aren't new. That is not to excuse them but the amount of educated guesswork which went into the original space program, the delays, the problems, the risks are not new. but NASA doesn't seem to have learned from them...they are using some of the same shortcuts I guess? Organizations of scale always seem to fail.
 
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Slow fill working per the NASA updates. Transitioning to fast fill and have begun prepping the liquid hydrogen. It seems to be going well. No visible leaks on the live stream anyway.

*edit*

Upper and core stage fueled with hydrogen. Pressure test commencing soon.

If all is good, they will prepare to start loading the Oxygen.

*edit edit*

Core stage is fully fueled and ready to go! Upper stage conducting pressure test now.

 
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mindlessobserver said:
Slow fill working per the NASA updates. Transitioning to fast fill and have begun prepping the liquid hydrogen. It seems to be going well. No visible leaks on the live stream anyway.

*edit*

Upper and core stage fueled with hydrogen. Pressure test commencing soon.

If all is good, they will prepare to start loading the Oxygen.

*edit edit*

Core stage is fully fueled and ready to go! Upper stage conducting pressure test now.

Click to expand...
Wooo LFG!!!!!

~6 hours to launch and no scrub.... So far so good
 
ZipDisk said:
I wonder how you live a Collins.
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Collins' repeated remarks on not landing on the moon made it clear he was disappointed (he never said this openly but you didn't have to read between the lines very far), but he was satisfied with getting to go to space, be in command of and fly the CM, etc.

He could have stayed at NASA and most likely would have been made mission commander and got to step on the moon on one of the later landings, but he said the training would have taken more time away from him to spend with his family that he didn't want to lose (his training as the CM guy was much different from Armstrong's and Aldrin's as the LM guys), and he didn't want to deal with the pressure in general of being an astronaut in the Apollo program anymore. So he quit NASA basically as soon as possible after 11
 
One thing that hasn't changed since the Apollo program: how cramped that spacecraft is. At best, it's something like being stuck in an SUV for around a week-long round trip.

(And yes, I'm well aware it's because of the limits of ∆v = Ve * ln (M), or "the tyranny of the rocket equation".)
 
I even got a phone notification from YouTube about this, I think that's the first time that's ever happened to me. Everyone's hyped about this, and so am I.

I was born shortly after the last Apollo missions wrapped up so there's never been a moon landing or even a manned lunar flight in my lifetime. I've been waiting a LONG fucking time for this, even moreso for the landing in the next year or so.

When I was a little kid, I expected there to be a moon colony and at least a base on Mars by now along with a thriving spaceflight program. I literally expected to be a space cadet when I grew up. The computers grew in orders of magnitude of power, but space engineering never did. Even today, the only ways we're ahead of Apollo IS in computer flight automation so astronauts are even more 'Spam in a can' then they were over 50 years ago. Still excited though. Maybe my grandkids will have the chance to be space cadets.
 
Gurney Halleck said:
This is best viewed as an Apollo 8 reboot, not Apollo 11.
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Apollo 4 + 6 + 7 is a better fit given it's a full on test for all subsystems. Apollo 8 only orbited the moon because it was believed the Soviets were close to launch a crew around the Moon as part of the Zond program. - Which was launched via a Proton rocket, and would send a crew of 2 around the moon in a cramped Soyuz capsule.
 
TL:DR Of Mission:
The crew will spend their first 24 hours or so in orbit around the Earth doing checks of the spacecraft. Then, if everything is in good working order, an engine firing called the "trans-lunar injection," or TLI, will boost them on a path to the moon.
From that point, it's roughly a four-day journey to the far side of the moon and another four days back to Earth.
From launch the evening of April 1 to splashdown on April 10, the mission is slated to last about nine and a half days.
 
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