This seems like a pretty big deal, why am I only now finding out about this
Probably because all the horrible shit trump does takes up all the space.
I don’t know, we need to do a better job of advertising this stuff if a lot of people don’t know about it. This is one of the few decent things the U.S. is doing.
I caught it through NPR maybe a couple weeks before it happened, and some science YouTubers were hype about it, but other than that I caught very little coverage. Not a lot mentioned on here that I saw til the day of or the day before. Not that it wasn’t talked about here before that, but just what I noticed.
Soon we will be able to sing again “Whitey’s on the moon”
Hell yeah! Let’s go!
You’re too late, they already left.
Not again!
KEVIN!
Ooh I know this reference. It’s Wall-E, right?
Yeah, when the two immortal robbers try to steal Wall-E’s treasures and he deals gross bodily slapstick horrors to them for the sake of a gag.
They go in search of human rights
If I’ve learned anything from realistic space fiction, it’s that they won’t find any up there.
we can also just look at who are currently the faces of the private space race, and their beliefs and how they run their companies
most elaborate April fools prank this year
If they can fake the moon landing they can fake a launch.
If they can fake launch, can they fake dienner, too?
I don’t know what that is but I believe in them.
Bearing in mind that explaining jokes ruins them, “launch” can be pretend-read as a mispelling of “lunch”, so I mispelled “dinner” to make a stupid joke.
This is a terrible joke, and I love it.
You have terrible taste. :)
I don’t know you, but if you’re anything like my dog, you must think I’m awesome! Which I appreciate, but I question your judgement.
if you can fake a wrench, you can fake a ball!
Yeah, a little over the top in my opinion. More money than I’m willing to spend on a prank.
I was honestly considering that, even though it would have been strnge for AP. I opened the article and the latest update was about some toilet issue
America, fast going backwards, has today reached
19691968, assuming that this mission succeeds.(Edit: this is not even a moon landing so more Apolo 8 than Apolo 11).
A truly pointless waste of money. This is what we did with all the cancer research money cut from NIH.
While Whitey’s on the moon.
Terrible take. A lot of what we know in science is due to NASA research. NASA is <0.5% of the federal budget. There are plenty of egregious things we are wasting money on to be upset about - this is not one of them.
And a lot of the NASA science budget was cut because it was too boring for the toddler administration who want to play with their flashy toys.
the budget was moved over to SpaceX on the lie of private sector efficiency. But to the credit of SpaceX, they did blow up more rockets than the inefficient NASA ever did.
It was largely restored under the 2026 congressional budget at levels similar to 2025. The trump administration tried to punish centers in blue states by taking away their funding, the worst of which was Goddard with a 50% budget cut. Basically they tried to cancel nearly every earth observing science mission, which is Goddards bread and butter.
Not to mention the R&D that Nasa does provides a massive return on investment
40 years ago.
NASA is <0.5% of the federal budget
that’s <0.5% more than cancer research.
A lot of what we know in science is due to NASA research
Someone not in STEM would say this. NASA has some important projects, this is not one of them.
Sending up this rocket accomplishes NOTHING. This is an idiot project based on moon colony fantasy and a way to shovel more tax $ to Elon Musk and SpaceX while people clap and holler like idiots.
This poem from 1970 illustrates exactly how far the US has progressed in 55 years:
A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the Moon)
Her face and arms began to swell.
(and Whitey’s on the Moon)
I can’t pay no doctor bill.
(but Whitey’s on the Moon)
Ten years from now I’ll be paying still.
(while Whitey’s on the Moon)
Except we can update 10 years to 20 years.
Someone not in STEM would say this
So you then? Because anyone who has to work with grants to fund their research knows this isn’t how this works at all. Lmao go back to Reddit.
Right, it’s definitely this and not the 200 billion dollar budget of ICE, or all the resources going towards the war in Iran right now.
While Whitey’s on the moon
At least the crew for this mission includes a black guy and a woman, unlike the 24 white dudes who crewed the Apollo missions.
SLS has gotten a lot of well-deserved hate for being an expendable money pit. All that aside, damn, it lifted off with humans in it and off to the moon! There’s no other currently available rocket that can do that, including Starship.
Long as we have to depend on chemical propellants, the moon is as far as we’ll ever get
Well the solar panels all deployed and are charging, but yeah using chemical burns isn’t good for much beyond orbital movement
Still need a reliable method to convert the power gained from solar into propulsion with enough force so that it won’t take a decade to get anywhere
The nuclear reflection engine is still our best bet, I feel like it may take actual zero G experiments to solve but I think we can achieve fusion
I have now seen 2 moon launches live. Will I live to see them actually set foot back on the moon again. Who knows.
Only if you have a really good telescope
I Fuckin hope so Louie.
They went to hide the Epstein files on the far side of the Moon.
Very often, I was like “I don’t think I need to watch this shuttle launch, they might have to scrub it” and then they’d actually launch and I was was like “damn, I should have watched that shuttle launch”.
So I was like “naaah, I don’t think I need to watch this launch, they might scrub it” and now it looks like they’ve launched and I was like “shit, I fell for that again, I’m really stupid”
The shuttle is Lucy holding the football and you live in a Charlie Brown world. ✌
I watched the live stream of the launch. You never know what happens until the rocket has reached space. From significant past launches was the launch of JWST, that was truly nerve racking and exciting, although no people were on the board.
Hopefully nothing will break, and we perhaps get a moon base in this century. (we do have more urgent things to research, but space research tends to produce more eye-opening and unexpected results.)
In 1969, the cold war filled the hearts of the world with dread. Today, we live in times that echo this sentiment.
The launch of 1969 was made with the hope of a better future, and though we cocked it up a drainpipe the first time, maybe we’ll take the right path and echo the sentiment “for all mankind”.
This launch included a bunch of “American superiority” drivel, and was done on a rocket that is unsustainable and uses leftover parts from the last millennium.
I wish they’d gone with “for all mankind” — instead they went with “America America” even though one of the mission specialists is Canadian and the module was made in cooperation with the ESA.
Yeah I kinda cringed on that “god bless america” speech before the launch. Isn’t there 2 Canadians on board and a big part of the Orion was made/designed by ESA? All they got “and our partners around the world” in that speech.
I’m happy that “we” are going back there but this propaganda sillyness is disappointing. I know its always been a part of governments doing space projects, after all I think the only reason “we” are going back there is because the Chinese are going back there. The disappointing thing is that when I was a kid I really thought we would be over ourselves by now, but turns out that seems to be impossible and we are just going back to throwing rocks at each others. Plaaargh.
Anyway. Cool launch, that thing jumped off the pad as if someone kicked it in the nuts. Impressive stuff.
It could be worse. It could be Trump claiming all the glory for himself and jinxing it to miserably fail like everything else that orange pedophile clown touches.
Jesus, the shudder this comment just elicited gave me a crick in my neck… Someone distract the mango before he gets the astronauts killed…
that is a terrible insult and you should be ashamed of yourself! Mangos have never done anything to deserve being compared to our pedophile in chief
I mean, how exactly do you create a “sustainable” rocket? Genuinely curious, as the sheer amount of energy it takes to escape the earth’s gravity well would render this an almost impossible feat.
Sustainable rocket program.
Like SpaceX does it.
The current launch used supplies and technology that can no longer be produced, is single use, and has enough potential points of failure that it’s taken them months beyond the original launch date to achieve conditions for a reliable launch.
At least Isaacman has them on a path to achieve something repeatable in the future.
SpaceX’s only current launch capability is to LEO and it took them 20 years to make it ‘sustainable’. This rocket is going to the moon today.
Falcon Heavy is quite a capable rocket, with about 60% of the SLS’s payload capacity to LEO when the side boosters are reused (although it’s almost never used for LEO, since no one actually needs that large of a payload there…).
New Glenn can reuse it’s whole first stage, but currently has only 47% of the SLS’s payload capacity to LEO. (with plans for a larger variant)
Starship… has been kind of a mess. At least with how their timeline has compared to their goals. They have demonstrated several successful launches, but with the reliability of their past few, I doubt anyone will trust them anytime soon.
China seems extremely close to having a partially reusable heavy lift rocket, they have said that they’ll test it in the first half of this year (LEO payload a little bit higher than Falcon Heavy, but they plan to go to the moon with something very similar). India has some looser long-term plans.
As a spaceflight nerd, I was thinking today about why I (and everyone else) don’t care that much about the Artemis launch. I think it’s largely because it’s not demonstrating anything new; they already did basically the same mission but without the people in it, and even more advanced missions with people in them were done in the 1960s. The rocket itself though isn’t helping, the only things it has going for it compared to other modern rockets are that it’s large and probably reliable. The technology is basically just re-used space shuttle parts, there’s nothing that seems particularly innovative, and reusing old technology hasn’t prevented it from being extremely expensive compared to basically everything else (~20x the cost of New Glenn, Falcon Heavy, or Starship per launch…). It’s also worse for the environment in basically every way (expendable, and has solid fuel boosters).
I kind of agree with what some other people have been saying about NASA for a while now. They should probably just stick to the satellites, rovers, and technology tests, making their own launch vehicle is not really helping anyone. The usefulness of being a government funded thing is that they can do the type of science to help humanity that doesn’t turn a profit. They don’t really need their own launch vehicle to do their science, and the vehicle itself is so conservative that I’m sure they aren’t really learning anything from it. If they were actually capable of producing something economical and better than the corporations then it wouldn’t be a problem, but that will never happen with Congress pushing rocket designs that “seem like they would be cheaper” and forcing NASA to route all work through insanely inefficient military contractors.
Your thoughts seem like they make sense in the current system, and it kinda does, I see where’s you’re coming from. But what you’re basically saying is “privatize spaceflight and let open scientific research and the progress of humanity be dependent on the whims of billionaires”.
Obviously, with all the problems the US government has, this thought of yours might even be kinda good in this current situation. But if you actually go to implement it, you’re doing a really bad thing for the far future of spaceflight. What should actually happen is that the US government should be changed to let NASA be effective and efficient without dumb political constraints.
And SpaceX and other private actors should only be allowed to continue what they’re doing if they share their technology/expertise with NASA.
That would have the same good effect as what you propose, just without this shitty system staying like it is.
Starship has been a mess because they’re constantly changing things and experimenting. They got v1 working then moved to v2 which had some issues, they get v2 working and they immediately move to v3. There are so many changes in v3 I imagine its going to have its own teething problems as well.
Until they decide they are happy with something and commit to that as a launch vehicle and test other variations separately from their launch version, its probably going to keep happening and keep people wary of wanting to use it.
Edit: they’re already talking about making changes so it can do 200t to orbit. But if they just get v3 working then switch to that, it’ll be the same problem all over again.
Edit: working excluding rentry heat shield anyway, they haven’t proven they can make starship reusable yet.
Yeah, just the 2 identical failures on Starship V2 I think destroyed a lot of trust
and afaik they still haven’t had a reentry that hasn’t seemed at least somewhat like a miraculous survival… I know they were testing out different types of heatshield tiles on the last launch though which was where a lot of the weirdness was from
What I was referring to though was the very… optimistic timelines they’ve had in the past. HLS was supposed to be ready last year.
If SpaceX realllllllly wanted to, Falcon Heavy could likely pull off a lunar return trip like this (edit: with modifications), but ya, SpaceX designed their existing rockets around reusability in LEO.
When you don’t have to think about reusability, it’s a lot easier to do things, as so many problems become a lot simpler and weight savings are substantial.
Everything you say is correct, and it’s great that the mission is actually in progress.
But that is neither here nor there with the point I was making.
I’m just glad that things have the potential to turn around at NASA now. I’d love to see them back at the forefront of space exploration and technology.
I’ll take a delayed success over a rushed failure every day of the week
Having re-usable parts is the obvious bit. But actually the worst part for the environment from a lot of rockets is the solid fuel boosters, those leave a ton of weird stuff in the atmosphere that a liquid fueled thing wouldn’t (like the Falcon Heavy, Starship, Delta 4 Heavy, New Glenn, Long March 9 and 10…)
Even Starship is going to leave a lot of CO2 behind, but they could technically make their own methane and be carbon neutral, but they aren’t as they can’t make enough of it fast enough for their plans, even if they do make some.
Interestingly apparently water vapor from rocket launches can be similarly harmful to CO2. Water vapor doesn’t usually get into the upper atmosphere, and has a hard time exiting, but still acts as a greenhouse gas.
Wow, we really cant catch a break on getting off this rock without consequences.
Define “sustainable rocket”. There are greener fuels, like hydrogen peroxide, but I don’t think they give enough push to get to orbit.
But if you’re willing to drop the “rocket” part, you can remove the propellant entirely, and use a railgun or spinlaunch system. (Strictly speaking you’ll still need some kind of propellant for corrections and orbital maneuvering, but you’re not burning a fuckton of propellant just to beat gravity.)
There is also the question of the reusability of the rocket itself, but SpaceX and others have fairly well proven that by now.
railgun or spinlaunch system.
Not for manned launches though. Unless the goal is to send 280kg of meat paste to orbit.
hydrogen peroxide
The fuel is the least concern. They’re using H2+O2, which burns to water and can be completely created by using the excess solar energy during peak times of the day. The costly/unsustainable thing is the huge rocket that is destroyed each launch and must be completely rebuilt from scratch each time.
No one but SpaceX has proven they can do it so far, Blue Origin has only landed one, but hasn’t reused it yet. They’re close, but not quite there yet.
Unfortunately NASA is always tied up with politics. I would not be surprised if the whole ego stroking speech was a mandate by the current American administration.
Or, if not a mandate, pandering. Because if the politicians in charge of giving NASA its funding don’t like what’s being said, they will likely cut their funding, even in the middle of a long-term successful project.
“Canadian” is actually an American DEI category.
Sadly, NASA has to appeal to the Trump admin for funding.
The cost of the Artemis II mission is estimated to be $4.1 billion
Each day of the Iran war is estimated to cost $2 billion.
There is plenty of money, just not the will.
And this is not just a Trump thing: all US Administrations in the last couple of decades spent many, many times more in war than space exploration - for example the Iraq War was estimated to cost in total $1100 billion, whilst the one in Afghanistan was $2300 billion, which would be a lot more money in today’s terms.
Just not going to Iraq would, directly (so, not counting indirect costs due to increased terrorist threats as result of the growth of ISIS that happenned due to Iraqi military being put in the same prisions as Islamic extremists) have financed 275 Artemis II missions and that’s without taking in account Inflation (if done back then Artemis II would’ve been cheaper)
You: complains rocket isn’t reusing enough stuff
Also you: complains rocket is reusing stuff.
Theres a difference between reusing parts and reusing technology.
You’re not wrong… that’s what happens when you reduce a situation past meaningful statements.
Oh what’s next, will Spain send three wooden boats to the New World, take a few pictures, and come back?
Moon spices must flow
Greetings Moon Men! We mean you no harm. We simply come in search of delicious herbs and spices. And to help you run your own longstanding society, about which we clearly know best. Cough, cough. Sorry, we are a bit under the weather with some Earth pathogens - you ARE immune, are you not?
“If I told you once, Chris, I told you a thousand times: slaves go in the other direction.”
I wonder how Flatearthers are going to explain this one.
I would guess they’d explain it the same way they explain other rocket launches.
I’ve already seen “it’s AI generated”.
Same way moon landing deniers do.
“The whole thing is staged! Nobody actually flew anywhere! They just put some guys in costumes and filmed them on a sound stage in Hollywood!”
Yet another legacy sequel.
Frog lenses
I had a guy come into my shop yesterday and we started talking about the launch, and he said the exact same thing to me. We ended up having a good laugh about flat earthers and having a good ol fashioned space chat. Good bloke!
Can’t we get a single article without mentioning how shitty the U.S is right now? Half of the comments here aren’t even ontopic.
Going back to the moon is still an engineering feat, even if we’ve done it before. That was a generation ago, and all of those engineers are retired or about to.
AFAIK, the service module is European, built by the ESA, so this is not 100% an American accomplishment.
I mean I kinda see manned missions as pointless. I would like us to remotely create destinations before going through the added expense of people and I think the technology gains would be bigger.
Lucky for you, we have sent probes to the moon.
Unluckily, the next probe is set for Uranus…
I’m going to ignore the obvious Kindergarten joke (which I’ve made myself).
I would be happy to send a probe to Uranus. We know a lot less about the outer planets bcz we’ve really only done a few flybys of them.
The kindergarten joke was the entire point of the comment.
In your rush to get mean dig in on the previous commenter, you willfully misunderstood or misinterpreted their point.
What is mean about actually wanting to send probes to Uranus?
It’s funny, because things I’ve watched recently have been pronouncing it YOUR-uh-nus, versus your-A-nus. Dunno when we made the change, but 25-30 years ago, it was butthole.
But jokes aside, I want to see something like the Parker Solar Probe, but out. Fastest thing ever created, by a large margin, and second place is the goddamn manhole cover. I’m assuming the science can’t exactly slingshot something straight out like that, wave to Voyager Uno and Voyager Dos, and see what’s happening.
I’m no scientist though, but let’s go.
now we just need the construction of destinations. we are well on our way tom completing the initial preliminary work before we start what should be the main effort.
This gives mission me hope. A diamond in the rough.
I’m surprised that Trump didn’t sign an EO declaring that it was now the Trump space mission rather than Artemis II.
I don’t care what we call it, as long as we keep funding the science and engineering. The amount of people who don’t understand why we should do this stuff is astounding. And I’m honestly not the best at articulating why we should do it.
I don’t see the point of sending people to the moon or Mars. It will always be insanely expensive to do anything there, always. What is there to discover that can’t be done with robots? Doing it for the poetic sake of doing it--“going where no man has gone before”-- seems impractical and wasteful.
Yes, we’ve done it in the past, exploring, that doesn’t mean we must keep doing it as it becomes more impractical, and with what benefits, exactly? Exploiting whatever resources are there? Is that really what we should be doing?
Yeah, why do things! Let’s just sit on our ass and stagnate!
Stop trying, idiots, things are hard!
Yeah, why do things! Let’s just sit on our ass and stagnate!
Let’s do the same thing over and over again and call it progress! Next time you are in a hospital watching a loved one dying of cancer, you can tell them how many times we flew around the moon!
We can’t breathe, the earth is on fire…let’s do another moon victory lap!
The world doesn’t have enough supply of organs for transplant
We cannot grow synthetic organs on earth because complex tissue collapses under its own weight during the growing process on earth
Space has much lower gravity. We might be able to grow synthetic organs there.
When I’m old and my Grandkids can get full organ transplants with kidneys grown on the moon, I just might thank the Artemis missions.
Those things are not mutually exclusive. Why are you so angry about this when the military budget request this year was over 892 billion dollars?
NASA’s budget is less than 0.35% of the what was spent the previous year, which was over 7 trillion dollars.
If you want to be angry at something, you should direct it toward the asshats in charge who refuse to fund our Healthcare, infrastructure, and yes, cancer research.
You’re right to be upset, but you are directing it a the wrong stuff.
The moon is a good stopping off point for the rest of the solar system. Launching interplanetary missions from the moon is much easier assuming a moon base exists
Why waste billions when we can waste trillions!
you guys realize NASA probes have already gone beyond the solar system?
Im on the same page. I feel we should concentrate on discovery with probes or rovers and such and automation. trying to mine something robotically on an asteroid. if we can do that then see if we can smelt it. See if we can create fuel in space and such. I don’t think we will progress at all till we can be sourcing and manufacturing in space.
Asteroid mining is ridiculous. Ignorance of both asteroids and mining.
if thats the case then going into space is rediculous because if we at some point can’t source and build our there then there is no future out there.
Can’t we get a single article without mentioning how shitty the U.S is right now? Half of the comments here aren’t even on topic.
My friend, the toilet was clogged on the rocket.
Toilet= shitty
Seems on topic to me
I hope it goes smoothly. I read some troubling things about it, but time will tell.
Can’t we get a single article without mentioning how shitty the U.S is right now?
So you concede this is all about distraction.
Let’s discover antibiotics again!
I’m talking about the comments section here, not the content of the article.
