I believe I mentioned this before but I briefly worked as a project engineer on the Orion program and it was - by far - the worst job I've ever had. Whatever excitement of "working for NASA" was washed away in a sclerotic bureaucracy that throttled any real progress. There were regular newsletters circulated that heralded how NASA programs were spread over every state in the Union which should tell you what you need to know: this is a jobs program, not a space program.
The SLS/Orion program is still dependent upon Space Shuttle technology from over 40 years ago. Why? Because some Congressman didn't want to see a NASA subcontractor in his/her district lose that sweet federal money. This is all part of the grift along with the endless delays. There are never any consequences for delay so why not keep your job going? These programs achieve a kind of half-life behavior where progress slows the closer you get to the finish line.
I hope and pray I'm wrong, but I fear this Artemis launch will result in cataclysm.
6 comments:
Still not as risky as Apollo 8 was, there will never be that kind of peacetime risk taken again.
That was dark side of the moon, right?
That was the first manned test of the Saturn Five, the first time leaving low earth orbit, first time going to moon and orbiting 10 times. The previous unmanned Saturn 5 launch (Apollo 6) was nearly a disaster itself with multiple issues with the various stages that caused the original mission to be changed. First time doing the burn to the moon, first time going into lunar orbit and leaving lunar orbit using the command module engine that was a single point of failure. All done without a lunar module so there was no backup to get home if an Apollo 13 incident had occurred.
Privately, NASA figured there was a 50/50 chance of it failing, all prompted by a CIA report that the Russians were getting ready to do something similar, and not wanting to get beaten again.
https://youtu.be/jrIvjw0LREA?si=rfC4ytnVAC_zrsIB
That video is wild. I had no idea about the risk. Well, they had to beat the Rooskies.
It's a miracle that James Lovell died of natural causes at 97, given the amount of risks he took on both Apollo 8 and 13, plus Gemini 7 and 12.
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