View Single Post
  #9  
Old July 26th 19, 12:37 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Jeff Findley[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,307
Default Artemis 3 Mission in 2024

In article m,
says...

Anyone want to predict whether this will actually happen in 2024?
It would be interesting for sure.


It won't happen until China has a man on the moon.

Artemis 3 (previously the Exploration Mission-3 or EM-3), is a planned 2024 flight of NASA's Orion spacecraft to be launched on the Space Launch System. It is planned to be the second crewed mission of the Artemis program and the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972.
The landing zone would be in the south polar region. It is planned to have two astronauts on the surface of the Moon for about one week.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_3

If weren't for thea Russian Sputnik, would US have a space program?


Yes, but it would have surely been much slower and more methodical. The
original plan for a lunar mission would have used Earth Orbit Rendezvous
(EOR) to assemble (by docking) all of the bits you needed in a low earth
orbit before firing the engines on the earth departure stage. This
would have been much more sustainable because you wouldn't have needed
such a large (expensive) launch vehicle.

Plus such an approach nicely dovetails with building earth orbiting
space stations and the like.

The actual Space Race was short and sweet and sent us down the dead end
of large expendable launch vehicles. Unfortunately, NASA has gone down
that same dead end yet again with Ares/SLS. It's simply not
sustainable.

I write this on the morning after Starhopper made its first successful
hop. This was the first flight of a full flow staged combustion liquid
fueled rocket engine. That is a sustainable, reusable, approach to
spaceflight. I'm glad SpaceX is pursuing this, because NASA dropped the
ball long ago on reusabilty.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.