NASA Artemis II moon mission live launch broadcast

https://plus.nasa.gov/scheduled-video/nasas-artemis-ii-crew-launches-to-the-moon-official-broadcast/

121•apitman•1h ago

Comments

rpozarickij•1h ago

Direct livestream link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf_UjBMIzNo

dotancohen•1h ago

I tuned in for 60 seconds, the presenter got everything wrong, and I just tuned out until liftoff.

She called the top of the ET (well, it's no longer an ET, but it's the stage that was the STS ET) the "upper stage". She said that the propellents are stored at thousands of degrees below zero. And so on. This is a NASA presenter?

chasd00•1h ago

i'm sure the whole talk track was piped through an AI for clarity and excitement and the presenters were told to read the script.

rdevilla•50m ago

You are not the target audience for this sort of presentation. Media directed at the laity is more about being directionally than quantifiably correct, and is full of metaphor and embellishment to capture the imagination rather than communicate something with precision.

People who want the actual details and numbers will read.

robotresearcher•23m ago

I firmly believe you can have both exciting, inspiring, and factually correct communication if you make that a priority.

The experience of hearing factual things presented with passion and obvious expertise is in itself inspiring. Why settle for less?

jeffrallen•7m ago

[delayed]

tigerlily•6m ago

I am begging God that this is merely April fools all the way down.

erelong•1h ago

predicting malfunctioning systems (just a guess)

barbazoo•1h ago

polymarket or gtfo :)

chasd00•52m ago

My opinion is 60/40 in favor of launch today. It's not unusual at all for something to come up in the final 10-30 minutes.

Kalshi is more optimistic. https://kalshi.com/markets/kxartemisii/artemis-ii-launch-dat...

LorenDB•1h ago

It's been 54 years since humans last visited the Moon. Hopefully, in a few years we will get boots back on the surface.

CoastalCoder•1h ago

Out of curiosity, why do you see this as a worthwhile endeavor?

My personal perspective is that the resources are better used for other purposes, but it's possible that I just haven't encountered some compelling reason yet.

xattt•57m ago

The moonshot is a halo program that, when executed in a non-profit form, ends up benefiting society as a whole due to smart people being cornered and forced to solve hard problems that typically have applicability elsewhere on Earth.

Edit: remember the Kennedy speech — We choose to go to the moon not because it is easy, but because we thought it would be easy.

chasd00•48m ago

> Out of curiosity, why do you see this as a worthwhile endeavor?

to me it's inspiring and gives people something to cheer for. It also keeps a lot of people employed, productive, and at least has the possibility for new innovation. When looking at the mountains and mountains of wasted taxpayer dollars I dislike these the least.

nancyminusone•46m ago

Do you watch sports, football, the Olympics? If not I'm sure you know someone who does. Same category as this. Each of the 32 NFL team is worth about the cost of 1-2 Artemis launches. The entire league could fund the whole Artemis program nearly twice. Hosting the Olympics is worth about 3-10 launches.

Like sports, the objective is ultimately useless except as a showcase of what humanity has to offer, and people like to see that.

runarberg•28m ago

I think there is a major difference though. Sports events are not pretending to be anything else. The Artemis mission claims to be advancing science and claims to be a stepping stone for an eventual moon base and a manned mission to Mars. I personally have serious questions about all of these.

bee_rider•15m ago

I don’t have any questions about a mission to Mars, it is a stupid and pointless trip that I don’t want to ask any questions about.

The Moon, I dunno, it’s at least in Earth’s gravity well so it isn’t like we’re going totally the wrong direction when we go there, right?

At best it could be a gas station on the trip to somewhere interesting like the Asteroid belt, though.

ApolloFortyNine•9m ago

Even if you think Space travel is worth the money (which I personally do), adding humans to the mix makes projects incredibly more expensive. Even in the realm of space travel and research, sending humans is a questionable use of the money.

hatmanstack•46m ago

Think of all that cheese.

floxy•41m ago

I want humanity to continue to be explorers. The Moon is a good next thing, then asteroid mining, humans on Mars and Venus, and eventually colonizing the Milky Way.

_moof•40m ago

Go take a look at how much this costs compared to the rest of the federal budget. I think you'll be surprised by how little money NASA gets.

Now, the military...

LogicFailsMe•11m ago

Because inevitably the Earth will have yet another ELE. And it's a better use of tax dollars than warmongering, YMMV.

anon291•7m ago

Because it is good for humans to have a thing to do. Not sure why this is not considered a valid reason. A lot of these 'it would be better to do X' assumes everyone has the same psychological profile as you. They don't. Many people are driven to explore and would go mad otherwise.

_DeadFred_•7m ago

I do much better with things to look forward to, or when I have a feeling that progress can be made. An interesting movie coming out, new music coming out. Or even better reminding me what humans are capable of above just grinding to get by or grinding to exploit others. Haven't been many moments of feeling progress lately.

dotancohen•1h ago

Hopefully, in a few years we will figure out that hydrogen rockets can not reliably launch on time and we'll switch to less leaky fuels. Then maybe we won't need to pull 40 year old engines out of museums to dump in the ocean.

I'm all for human spaceflight, but the Senate Launch System seems the best argument for shutting down human spaceflight programs.

_moof•43m ago

Oh, don't worry, we did figure that out. What we haven't figured out yet is how to stop Congress from involving themselves in engineering decisions.

dotancohen•17m ago

Well, we should have figured that out with the STS. That's what the STS was for - figuring out what technologies made for inexpensive, rapid spaceflight and which technologies don't.

Then the senate mandates the new rocket to use specifically the most expensive, problematic, least reliable technology. Completely designed to fail.

Have such hopes for the Starship.

hghid•1h ago

Even though you could question the whole Artemis concept, it's still extremely exciting watching the countdown with my son. I just missed the original Apollo flights and had assumed I would never see a moon landing in my lifetime. We may well not have a landing for quite some time yet, but it's still cool to see a Moon bound rocket standing on the launchpad...

pjmorris•1h ago

We lived ~60 miles North of the Cape when I was a young boy, and watching the Saturn V's go on the way to the moon was a forming experience.

chasd00•1h ago

I lived in Port Orange FL until i was 12, during night launches my dad would take the family to New Smyrna Beach or some where a short drive South where we watched the shuttles come up over the water somehow. I can't remember the details it was a lonnnng time ago haha. I do remember the launches sounding like popcorn popping.

I live in Dallas now and will be turning 50 soon, i want to catch the next Starship launch live but would have to time it perfectly to get time off of work ahead of time.

lp0_on_fire•32m ago

It's even more exciting when you realize that the last crewed mission beyond Low Earth Orbit was 1972 and each person on that spacecraft today are younger than that.

qingcharles•19m ago

I don't know if it's feasible for you, but if you can, try to take your kid to see a live rocket launch. The TV is grossly unable to display how awesome these things are in person.

ludjer•17m ago

Its going to be a first for me and my son as well. Looking forward to tonight to make an even over it.

markus_zhang•1h ago

Gonna watch with my son if it doesn’t get postponed.

duped•1h ago

This opinion may be unpopular here but it's hard to get excited about a colossal waste of taxpayer money after all the damage DOGE did. I don't understand how these NASA missions with questionable scientific value and obscene budgets get off the ground.

I mean I do understand, NASA funding is important to oligarchs. But still.

lp0_on_fire•29m ago

Artemis was already set in stone well before DOGE came about and IMO if the federal government is going to set mountains of cash on fire I'd rather it be to NASA than half the crap the government wastes every year.

instagib•1h ago

4.5hrs to go

jcon321•54m ago

too windy outside for this to happen imo

rogerrogerr•41m ago

What is your opinion based on?

jcon321•9m ago

walking outside, and the surf report... they cancel all the time for less wind shear

_moof•39m ago

You better run over there and let them know.

iamkonstantin•45m ago

There is also a stream on ESA Web TV https://watch.esa.int/

adamsb6•32m ago

It is a bit chilling to watch these astronaut profiles having just read yesterday about the heat shield issues observed on the prior mission, and that this will be the first time we can test the heat shield in the actual pressures and temperatures that it will have to endure.

Godspeed crew of Artemis II.

willis936•11m ago

That was the intent of the piece. It is impossible to assess the true intent of such a piece when it so blatantly is asking for attention.

propagandist•6m ago

Some people are great at self promotion.

amykhar•31m ago

Fingers crossed that this https://idlewords.com/2026/03/artemis_ii_is_not_safe_to_fly.... doesn't have any effect.

proee•16m ago

There is a LOC (Loss of Crew) number that is typically calculated for these missions. I'm curious what that is? Early Apollo missions were on the order of 4%.

malfist•14m ago

The official minimum standard is 1:270

WalterBright•9m ago

After the moon landing, Armstrong allowed that he had estimated the survivability at 50%.

WalterBright•7m ago

Before the Apollo launch, von Braun was asked what the reliability of the rocket was. He asked 6 of his lieutenants if it was ready to fly. Each replied "nein". Von Braun reported that it had six nines of reliability.

glimshe•31m ago

I'm just SO HAPPY we can talk about something that doesn't involve the Iran war, ICE etc. This is a really historic moment, I hope that the current and future administrations continue investing in space exploration. I've waited my whole life for this as the entire "action" happened before I was born. Hubble/James Webb/ISS are cool but Artemis is something else!

jeffrallen•10m ago

[delayed]