So we're re-creating the Apollo 8 Mission 60 years later. 60 years after swinging around the moon, we are going to attempt the feat again. I'm having a hard time getting excited... Especially when some say it may not survive reentry because of politics (https://idlewords.com/2026/03/artemis_ii_is_not_safe_to_fly....)
> So we're re-creating the Apollo 8 Mission 60 years later.
Not even: Apollo 8[0] went into orbit around the moon (orbited 10 times), then left lunar orbit to return to Earth. This required mission-critical rocket burns both to enter (LOI) and exit (TEI) lunar orbit. Artemis II[1] is merely doing a "fly-by"; it'll never enter lunar orbit, a much less challenging/risky mission.
Sure, you may look at it from that perspective. Or, you could look into it as restoring a capability that we used to have, and potentially enable further, more interesting missions.
I am not _too excited_ about the SLS itself as it looks like a political compromise, just as the shuttle was.
> and potentially enable further, more interesting missions.
The further we go as humans is Mars, and it's useless. The next star is so, so, so far away that even considering reaching it with "something" requires a revolution in fundamental physics. No need to build rockets for that, just a whiteboard and physicists, I guess.
And saying that we go to Mars is extremely generous. The engineering of the rocket going there is fun, but if you want to send humans there, they have to survive the trip. Including, for instance, eating and drinking and breathing air for the duration of the trip. Those are not solved problems. Chances are that we as a society collapse long before we get to send humans to Mars.
I'm just not that jazzed on what we could possibly learn. I can go on a big road trip and eat, sleep (but probably not poop) in my minivan; what does that teach me about moving to a new city or country? I can drive across the country and do a loop around Houston's ring road; that tells me nothing about what it's like to live there.
We could have sent the ship without astronauts to test all the systems and learn the only real valuable question: does this thing work? Instead we get drama & politics, and a much more expensive mission.
> 60 years after swinging around the moon, we are going to attempt the feat again. I'm having a hard time getting excited...
There was a comedian that had the observation a few years back that we've lost our saw of awe and wonder: he was on a plane when Internet was just being introduced, and it was announced on the flight, but after a little bit it stopped working and they announced 'technical difficulties' and it wouldn't be available.
The guy next to him was like "this is bullshit": how quickly the world owed this guy something that he knew existed only a few minutes before.
As he goes on: often whenever people complain about their flights, it was like a 1940s German cattle car: X happened, then Y happened. And his response is: And then what happened? Did you fly in the air? Did you sit on a chair in the sky? Like a bird, like humans have been imaging since the tail of Icarus (and before)?
Hedonic adaptation is real (which is "fine" as far as it goes, as striving for better isn't a bad thing):
But given you're invoking history, it's easy how it is to forget the woe that humans lived in just a few decades before Apollo 8, and the incredible strides that happened (and that many people on the planet, even now, have yet to fully experience):
I thought I'd heard they'd already made changes to the heat shield after the last failure. Hopefully whatever they learn from this trip will be useful for their next one.
So they made a first real test with Artemis I, and it was deemed unsafe because of the heat shield. So they modified the heat shield and didn't bother making a real test with it. "Move fast and break things", I guess?
Sure, they tested it on the ground. But that's what they did for Artemis I, and we know how successful that was.
According to the article [0] that's been making the rounds, NASA didn't make any changes to Artemis 2's heat shield after getting data from 1's re-entry. NASA did change the trajectory for 2, and they made the compound "less permeable" but that change was made before 1 flew.
Not even: Apollo 8[0] went into orbit around the moon (orbited 10 times), then left lunar orbit to return to Earth. This required mission-critical rocket burns both to enter (LOI) and exit (TEI) lunar orbit. Artemis II[1] is merely doing a "fly-by"; it'll never enter lunar orbit, a much less challenging/risky mission.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8#Lunar_orbit
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_II#Lunar_flyby