I don't know how I missed this until just now. We're sending up several missions to the moon with the express purpose of landing BIPOC women on a dead rock by 2025, I shit you not. How many billions of dollars are being wasted just so we can drop a LGBLT flag to erase Buzz Aldrin from history?
Some day I'm gonna be looking at the moon through a telescope with my son just to show him that we can't even escape this faggotry in space. God I hate everything right now.
The two biggest proponents of this program were Republican senators Richard Shelby (AL) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX). Alabama is the home of the Marshall Space Flight Center and Texas is the home of the Johnson Space Center. The main goal is not to send people to the moon, it is a white collar jobs program so that the NASA personnel and contractors don't all lose their jobs when the Space Shuttle shut down. The first iteration of this program was called Constellation and cooked up under W when shuttle was first ended. Then Obama cancelled it because it was a massive boondoggle, but the Senate insisted that it continue, so it was resurrected as Artemis/SLS.
This program was billed as a cheap and easy program because it was supposed to use 50 year old shuttle tech. The solid rocket boosters are shuttle SRBs with an extra segment stacked on. The four main engines are reused shuttle engines that have flown before. Despite all that, it has taken 17 years and $40 billion to get this first rocket to the pad. This is just another example of when the unlimited government money tap is opened, bloat and sloth inevitably follows shortly thereafter.
Compare this to SpaceX's Starship program. It has been in development since 2016 and around $2 billion to develop, all on SpaceX's own dime. In 2021, NASA contracted with SpaceX to spend $2.89 billion to create a lunar lander version of Starship. The first Starship prototype should launch later this year.
My prediction is that this Artemis rocket will launch and hopefully not blow up or anything. Then SpaceX will fly. Then Artemis II will be built and probably fly in May 2024. By that point Starship will probably be operational and flying on a regular basis. Then it will be hard to justify continuing flying the SLS rocket and Artemis will just move over to the Starship rocket.
Ah, I see you know what's up. A lot of government work has similar reasons. "Experts" tend to advance a discourses that stresses the importance of lining their pockets.
Wait, so, pardon my ignorance, but did they rip those four rockets of one of the shuttles, or did they have le spares..?? 🤔
Because that is damn close to sacrilege, if they did!!
Yes, each of the four SSMEs have flown on previous space shuttles. There's a pool of about 36 of them because when a shuttle would come back after a mission, they'd take some time to inspect and refurbish them before putting them on the next orbiter that's ready to fly.
Part of the outcry of the wastefulness of SLS is that for every rocket that flies, four SSMEs will be dropped into the ocean. Same with the solid rocket boosters. Instead of parachuting down and being refurbished, SLS is just going to drop them into the ocean too.
Of course, that number is n-8 for, well, Columbia and Challenger, sadly…
RIP both of those crews…
NASA would seemingly rather we all forgot that ever happened, unfortunately… Particularly Columbia, I would say…