Space - The Final Frontier

[JoeWras]

I forgot just how fast the capsule hits. 19 mph. Quiet a splash!

 

[street]

What a journey and an accomplishment. Unreal what happened the last 10 day.

 

[Original Wally]

Agree with you all. It was wonderful!

 

[JoeWras]

I watched until they got on the raft front porch. Brought back memories of childhood. Back when TV was TV and there were events like this, it basically took over all the channels.

The process of securing the capsule seems a lot more deliberate than back then. Although they kept saying the water conditions were perfect, you could tell the Navy divers had to work hard in those conditions and currents.

 

[FIYes]

I watched the re entry and splash down yesterday. It brought back childhood memories for me. I was a first grader when Alan Shepard went up and a second grader when John Glenn circled the earth. I grew up following the space program. I remember the moon landing and what a thrill that was.

I felt a sense of pride in America and in humanity watching this accomplishment. We humans can do remarkable things when we work together.

 

[DuluthGA]

Wonder why they don’t use a recovery process similar to what SpaceX uses with the dragon crewed capsule? Seems like it took them a lot longer to get them out and when they did had to put on “porch” and lift to chopper, Seems like a lot more places for accidents than dragging it up on deck.

 

[mf15]

Was at Apollo 11 launch,in the stands on the Cape. Have 8mm movie,I should get digitized.
Was almost 21. LOL
oldmike

 

[JoeWras]

Wonder why they don’t use a recovery process similar to what SpaceX uses with the dragon crewed capsule? Seems like it took them a lot longer to get them out and when they did had to put on “porch” and lift to chopper, Seems like a lot more places for accidents than dragging it up on deck.

Good question. It is the size and weight. SpaceX has a much smaller and lighter capsule and heat shield that has much lower speeds at reentry. Artemis' heat shield is massive to handle the high speed, high mass reentry from the moon.

Plus, I just think NASA is comfortable doing it this way. Despite what was said way upthread, not every lesson from Apollo was lost. This recovery was nearly a carbon copy of what worked well for Apollo.

It also gives the Navy divers something to do. All that Seal training won't go to waste.

 

[JoeWras]

Other interesting stuff seen last night.

- They had great live pictures of ejecting away from the service module
- They knew when it would enter the atmosphere, and we got to see about 15 seconds of the ionization and burning occurring before losing the picture. Right on time.

Ever since Apollo, they use a "skip" entry whereby the capsule hits the atmosphere, then bounces up and cools a bit. There were problems with this on Artemis I. They chose to really hit the atmosphere hard this time with just a tiny bounce on Artemis II. This thing is coming in HOT. To calculate the trajectory, everything matters. Every placement of every item, every body. They had to account for and place the urine collection bags in the right place for the calculations of reentry.

Dumb tidbit: so they ejected some urine early on the way to the moon before it clogged. This urine doesn't just go out in space, it is also on a free return trajectory. So it followed nearby and reentered our atmosphere too.

 

[Koolau]

Many good memories being brought back by Artemis. Can it really be over 50 years ago I watched the Moon landings? Life goes fast.

 

[CaptTom]

I, too have memories of watching Apollo capsules bobbing in the ocean. Great to see it again!

I went back and looked at photos of those earlier recoveries. Just a couple of small rubber rafts, not a dozen high-speed RIBs packed with crew. Also their capsule flotation ring back then seemed a lot simpler, and much, much quicker to deploy. And, no "front porch." (Which was cute to hear the first hundred times, but got tiresome quickly.)

I'd have asked to be taken back to the ship in one of those go-fast boats. 2-3 minutes to go one nautical mile. No helicopter hoist. That was probably one of the most dangerous parts of their trip.

 

[JoeWras]

The changes in retrieval from the early Mercury missions to Apollo to now Artemis were extensive.

In Mercury, they just stuck a hook on the capsule, opened the hatch, the astronaut got in the water, and they put a sling on him (or I think he had to grab it!) and hoisted him away, while another helicopter snagged the capsule. It didn't go well for Gus Grissom, as his hatch blew prematurely, and recent evidence points to it not being his fault, but instead static electricity. He nearly drowned, and the capsule was on the bottom of the ocean for many decades.

By Apollo, they refined it, especially after that first experience. But remember, these guys were all test pilots and were treated practically like war time conditions, so it was a more sparse recovery.

I'm not saying the Artemis crew is not trained for this. They undergo all kinds of training for "what if" they end up in the water and so on. But with mission specialists who are not necessarily military, it is different.

Another big change from Mercury to Apollo to today is the TV coverage and recording of the events in general. Surprisingly, some of the pictures we got from Artemis were kind of bad. Probably just a sun angle thing.

 

[Chuckanut]

SpaceX uses their Starlink system to broadcast the re-entry of the upper stage Starship. No blackout period for the most part. We can watch as parts of the rocket overheat and get torn away. Hmm…. They gotta fix that.

 

[CaptTom]

SpaceX set the bar pretty high for real-time video. It's clear that NASA has a lot of catching up to do on that aspect. Apparently SpaceX understands that each mission is a propaganda opportunity, and stunning video keeps people interested. I hope NASA learns that lesson. They're doing great stuff, but it's all for nothing if there's not enough popular support to justify the funding.

 

[MuirWannabe]

Proud of the Artemis mission success. All the really important stuff was great. But yes, the coverage was bad imo. They should definitely outsource to SpaceX. And yes I think the marketing also really matters. A lesson NASA must learn.

 

[Chuckanut]

It seems NASA may be onto to a way to reduce the overall cost of going back to the moon. And it’s all thanks to a video that went viral.

As it turns out, the people who spread Nutella to every corner of the Earth were more surprised than anyone to see it near the moon. They only found out about the most famous jar of gooey stuff in the galaxy when they followed a link in the chat to a social-media post: “Dang! How much did Nutella pay for this product placement?”

And why not. A few years ago Mr. Musk transported a huge wheel of cheese into Earth orbit as the main cargo in the first test of an earlier version of the Dragon spacecraft. Bites of the cheese were shared with the people who helped put it into orbit.

I can see it now. Slices of Moon Maiden Cheese returned to Earth and sold to billionaires at an outrageous price. All to help defray the cost of the first Moon base.

 

[Fermion]

The only private sale of actual lunar rock went for something like $4 million a gram. Imagine what a private sale of the very first Mars rock returned to earth would go for. It could pay for a small but significant part of the mission. $200 million?

 

[Chuckanut]

Today is also the 65th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first manned spaceflight.

 

[Koolau]

Today is also the 65th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first manned spaceflight.

I've often thought about the world my mom grew up in. She was born just a few years after the Wright Brothers' first flight. She knew a time as a little girl when there were no aircraft over head - ever. When she was perhaps 7 or 8, the occasional Barn Stormer would fly over or land near by. Mom's big sis (my aunt) went up with such a pilot and wing-walked. She was just a teen.

FF to 1969. Mom and her family together watched the first moon landing on TV. What a time to be alive.

Of course we all could say the same, I suppose. But by the time I was a small child, jet aircraft were a reality. I still recall watching B-36 squadrons buzzing over on training missions. Then, of course, in '69 I watched the moon landing with the family. And now it's been 50+ years in between moon shots - the SAME amount of time between when my mom would have likely seen her first airplane and watched the moon landing.

I honestly thought in 1969 that we would be on Mars by now. I'm not complaining. I understand the "issues" in such an endeavor and our technology has marched on but simply taken a different path than I would have guessed. Voyager 1 and 2 (and many subsequent interplanetary craft) have done our exploring for us.

I do recall the Mariner 4 probe to Mars and watching the pixels being "deposited" one by one as the telemetry arrived at NASA. Now, we get something close to "TV" transmission from Mars rovers in near real time (delayed by distance, of course).

What a time to be alive!

 

[Chuckanut]

Here’s a new rocket engine that promises more efficient use of fuel. A Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine is being developed. It promises up to a 15% increase in power from the same amount of fuel.

Astrobotic Breaks Records for Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine Hot Fire | Astrobotic

Pittsburgh, PA — Astrobotic today announced the successful hot fire test of its Chakram rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) at NASA’s Marshall

www.astrobotic.com

RDREs are an emerging propulsion technology with game-changing potential to improve engine performance. Unlike conventional rocket engines, RDREs combust propellants using supersonic detonation waves that rotate around the engine’s ring-shaped outer body. This detonation process allows the engine to extract more useful work from the same amount of fuel, offering the potential to increase specific impulse (engine efficiency) by as much as 15%, increase thrust-to-weight ratio, and improve engine packaging by reducing its size and weight.

 

[Chuckanut]

From the latest Rocket Report - Edition 8.40

SpaceX has set a record for consecutive successful booster landings at 268

 

[ERD50]

From the latest Rocket Report - Edition 8.40

SpaceX has set a record for consecutive successful booster landings at 268

Wow! I had NO idea they repeated this so many times, and consecutive to boot! Amazing accomplishment.

If you would have asked me to guess, I'd probably think about how I've seen a few of them, and there's a few more I didn't see or hear about. I'd probably say ~ a dozen? But 268 - no way!

 

[Koolau]

Wow! I had NO idea they repeated this so many times, and consecutive to boot! Amazing accomplishment.

If you would have asked me to guess, I'd probably think about how I've seen a few of them, and there's a few more I didn't see or hear about. I'd probably say ~ a dozen? But 268 - no way!

Yeah, totally new news to me!!

 

[CaptTom]

It is very impressive. But to be honest it's only a "record" in the sense that for every landing, they are beating their own record. It's not like there's any real competition in reusing rockets...yet.

 

[Chuckanut]

It is very impressive. But to be honest it's only a "record" in the sense that for every landing, they are beating their own record. It's not like there's any real competition in reusing rockets...yet.

There will be. Blue Origin has landed a booster and the Chinese are working on it. The Europeans seem out to lunch, worrying more about the jobs lost when they don’t have to crank out a new booster for every launch. The Russians? They need to get new trampolines.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin suggested in 2014 that American astronauts use a trampoline to reach the International Space Station (ISS) as a sarcastic response to U.S. sanctions imposed over the Ukraine crisis