Artemis II is not safe to fly

https://idlewords.com/2026/03/artemis_ii_is_not_safe_to_fly.htm

43•idlewords•1h ago

Comments

johng•44m ago

Great read and interesting article. Hard to believe that NASA would risk astronauts lives simply to save face, but that appears to be what's going to happen.

jojobas•32m ago

Was there ever a risk-free spaceflight? Pretty sure even with this finding this flight would be safer than any Apollo.

everyone•23m ago

Saturn 5 had a flawless record. The leftover space shuttle parts which SLS is cobbled together from, not so much. SRBs are inherently dangerous, theyre designed to quickly launch nukes from silos, not people. And Orion is just a typical modern Boeing project. So far its fallen at every hurdle right?

evan_a_a•16m ago

Orion is a Lockheed (CM) and Airbus (ESM) project.

everyone•11m ago

Yeah, I thought it was Starliner on top. I dont know anything about Orion then. SLS is very crappy and disappointing, its using shitty old space shuttle tech, + its ridiculously expensive in terms of payload to orbit, but it will probably work.

I didnt know, cus I just dont give a shit about this stupid project.

saghm•20m ago

You seem to be ignoring the "just to save face" part. I'd argue it would be a worse thing for our bar for how safe it should be to be raised significantly from when we had been in space as a species less than a decade to now that it's been 65 years.

cr125rider•24m ago

But that’s exactly what happened with Challenger

jaggederest•18m ago

And Columbia, too, when they made the decision to reenter without inspection, and reenter instead of waiting for rescue.

steve-atx-7600•11m ago

Astronauts are smart folks. They can vote with their feet.

bch•6m ago

What a horrible (preventable) position to be in, though.

anitil•42m ago

This is a concerning read, I'm not quite sure what the driving motivation is for Artemis, but the following answered at least part of my question -

> That context is a moon program that has spent close to $100 billion and 25 years with nothing to show for itself, at an agency that has just experienced mass firings and been through a near-death experience with its science budget

EA-3167•28m ago

The author seems to have a pretty extensive history of… strong disdain for Artemis II. While has mentioned concerns about the heat shield before it was in the context of a laundry list of complaints, and it was nowhere close to the top.

I’m not a rocket scientist, but then neither is the author.

themafia•16m ago

> if a commercial crew capsule (SpaceX Dragon or Boeing Starliner) returned to Earth with the kind of damage seen on Orion, NASA would insist on a redesign and an unmanned test flight to validate it.

Are you sure about that?

https://spaceflightnow.com/2022/05/24/spacex-swapping-heat-s...

CoastalCoder•8m ago

The article seems compelling, but experience tells me to get both sides of a story before judging.

Anyone know if there's a detailed response from NASA to the article?

floxy•4m ago

https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/missions/2026/03/30/nasas-artemis...

"countdown clock started ticking down" "to a targeted launch time of 6:24 p.m. on Wednesday, April 1."

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