When Apollo 8 returned from humanities first trip to the moon in 1968, they didn’t waste any time about it: there were two more complete Apollo missions to fly before Apollo 11, a mere seven and a half months later. Artemis II is finally headed to the moon — and that truly is wonderful! — almost three and a half YEARS after Artemis I. Even the trajectory of Artemis II — let alone the entire program — seems a little too chill.
Listen here on Soundcloud:
Bill, Steve, and Scott– I always enjoy your perspectives, especially about space issues since that was my first career (liquid & solid rocket propulsion) back in the day. While it is great to FINALLY be sending astronauts to Jim Lovell’s “old neighborhood” I remain deeply concerned about the adequacy of the Orion heat shield. It has not performed up to spec, and NASA’s answer is to alter the return trajectory to lessen the spalling Artemis I experienced. I hope this isn’t a repeat of similar flight critical issues we saw on Shuttle (SRB O-rings showed erosion from STS-2 on) and… Read more »
While Walter Cronkite may have been called “the fourth astronaut,” ABCs Jules Bergman was the sine qua non of space commentators.
I agree that Bergman seemed so, but when I met him in 1975 and had a brief conversation, he turned out to be an ignorant arrogant little *rick. He wanted to be the first “journalist” in space, but apart from being a private pilot, he had zero qualifications.
Elon Musk has spoiled us soooooo much with his multitudes of cool video content.
One difference between the Artemis mission and Apollo is that with the Apollo missions were directly competing with Russia which created an urgency to “git er done” as quickly as possible. There is less urgency this time around.
We shouldn’t be taking our time as China is trying very hard to put up a moon base before we do. We don’t have time to d*ck around.
For those who haven’t seen it the Backstage from 4/2/26 is posted to the Members Blog
I always check the blog first, but thank you anyway.
This is the second time in recent memory. Bill needs to get his act together.
I agree on the “act-getting-together” thing. It’s a bit insulting that we provide support for this enterprise, most of us for many years, many of us for even more years than I’ve been here and I’ve been here a while now — And someone can’t even be bothered to put the freakin’ video uploads in the right damned place.
That’s pretty pathetic and not at all “steely-eyed missileman” grade performance. It’s just shoddy work.
Perhaps the tempo is defined to be as slow as it is so that their Chinese masters have a chance to land first. Nah … its just a preponderance of caution bordering upon Chamberlain-type fear — except that fear is one of burning too much fuel too fast … cuz … well … too much CO2 and green house.
To all those ignorant and foolish flat earthers … suck it! For the life of me I cannot fathom the willful ignorance of so many people about so many things, but leftists and flat earthers are tied for the top of the list of foolishness.