#don't even get me started on the lack of loc progression

[softerpixels]

justice for little black boy sims omg i am scouring the internet trying to give myself hair options why do y'all want me to put locs with undercuts on my toddlers fjgkdfdfkj

[jenakuns]

Posts like these are interesting to me. This ability to put together a small collection incorrectly used facts into a very opinionated piece and then it does really well. It reminds me of those tiktoks that talk about, well anything really.

Dunning krueger is obviously overused and even by using that term, in turn I am operating under the sphere of it. Idk, I personally like to imagine it as a graph, where you have a graph relating 2 variables.

Starting out in any topic area, people's knowledge of a subject looks something like this. Pretty rad right?

When you learn a couple facts or concepts, suddenly you're able to put together a trend. Bam you can form opinions and make tumblr posts about them. You don't even have to understand the data points.

The actual data scenario looks something like this. Getting a trend from it is cursed and requires basically ignoring segments under assumptions and rules.

NASA engineers considered the failure rate of some critical shuttle parts to be about 1 in 100

Appears to be a reference to the figure in this article (which if it is, would make it a misquote on a couple layers), although I really have no clue, half of what Shuttle engineers did was risk analysis (there's a lot of figures). Honestly it was a lot worse than that, those first missions were like a 1/10 on a LOC/V happening, which is utterly nuts.

Now what is the failure of Shuttle, given that we appear to be discussing this at length. Umm. There's a lot of context that I really can't bring to bear. Early Shuttle is easier I guess. It's a mixture of "operational vehicle" that didn't allow things to be fixed, budget restraints and programmatic launch fever.

Compromises occur in reality and failures will generally happen in those spaces, but that doesn't mean the compromise is at fault. It's just something you have to handle and manage. But anyways; this is history from 30 years ago; it's pertinence to NASA in 2024 doesn't seem that clear, given the learning in between those periods.

Do you know that NASA engineers currently have no idea how many rocket launches the next mission in the Artemis program (in 2 years!)

It's not no idea; it's a rough idea. Starship has a lot of engineering parameter's and challenge's to deal with and it's performance is a little bit varied. But ~18 launches is a number to b

The schedule has been a joke since before the lander was selected; no it's not 2026 or even like 2028; 2030 maybe. I wouldn't be worried about them flying before they're ready in regards to humans, so they'll push schedule way before they'll compromise on safety. This is a big difference from Shuttle era.

has never been attempted before on any spacecraft

How dare NASA fund efforts to attempt something that has never been done before. They should only stick to things that have been done. That's how we have always made progress as a society and in regards to technology.

because said vehicle does not actually exist at time of writing?

Yes and

no.

Obviously the vehicle which is capable of supporting and actually being the lunar lander isn't here yet. But there is clear progression to point to. We have another 2 launches in like the next 2 months. People tend to get caught up in the moment and argue about the technical trades of the second and ignore the trend upwards. Oh wow tents good, factories bad; nah bro, but the factory is here now anyways and producing hardware at a good rate.

SpaceX being contracted to deliver a supply of cryogenic fuel to the crewed Orion capsule in orbit

The fuck are you talking about. Ok that's a little harsh, but this is what I mean bro with the dunning. Saying this shows that you have a fundamental lack of knowledge about the architecture and in general the vehicle designs. Orion is launched by the SLS rocket to a lunar orbit (NRHO). It docks with the Starship lunar lander variant, but that is just to transfer crew from the capsule to the lander (and back after the landing). The propellant transfer is between Starship tankers and the lander (and the depot, dw about it), to give the lander full tanks so it can conduct the mission.

I mean Orion can't even be refuelled by Starship because it uses MON/MMH propellants and Starship supplies methalox. There's a really funny thing you/I could bring up, but it won't happen.

every single mechanism fails

It would take 1 to cause the issue as described. And that's not an issue for Starship, single stage baby; but there's a whole bunch of other things so it doesn't really matter.

swing-out crane as the only entry and egress point

This whole hating on cranes being complex and high risk as a technical is something I've always found hilarious. Like bro this is literally riding on rocket science where you have some of the most crazy compact mechanical engineering pushing the limits of material science and it's like; 'nah bro lunar gravity elevators are complicated.' Apparently SpaceX agrees because that's basically the only HLS hardware they've shown lol.

Artemis' proposed lander, on the other hand, is planned to be a vehicle whose design didn't even include heatshields until it was realised it would obviously need heatshields

This is a bizarre, blatantly wrong and an utterly hilarious point because I think I understand how you came to this misunderstanding. See the early SN5-SN11 flights didn't have full heatshields and I think you saw that and assumed that it was the vehicle as intended. But no, it was always intended to have heatshields, just for those early prototypes that wasn't the priority; developing propulsion, avionics and fluid systems was.

And more to the point, the lander doesn't use/need a heatshield . Again showing your lack of understanding.

are ceramic tiles bolted after-the-fact directly through the steel hull

They are bolted to, not through, but the attachment is a weak point right now so you can keep this.

decided to mass-produce the original-design hull sections all at once for all the 'starships' first, before doing any integrated testing.

No. Running out of energy to explain, but like half of the complaints with the program is too much integrated testing.

The Accords came after Artemis; the program does not exist just to shove these new space operation rules down peoples throats to enable commercial exploitation of the Moon. Rather, the ideas set out in the Accords are for enabling/streamlining the ops on and around the Moon for Artemis. If you hate the concept of cities on the Moon this is bad, but I see it as an absolute win.

Artemis Accords not being signed by Russia/China is unsurprising and not the slam dunk people think it is(?); US is funding a war against one and the other one is it's geopolitical rival. Every single other relevant space power has signed it, so it's obviously doing something right. Outer Space Treaty was written in the 1960s, the expectation that legislation from then would still be entirely accurate after 60 years of development and geopolitical change is unreasonable. Utilisation of space resources is important for the future of space and I don't think it's unreasonable to set up principles to allow for it.

Something bad is going to happen, and it's going to happen for the sake of SpaceX and the military-industrial complex at large.

Look I'm not going to say that something bad is not going to happen, because landing on the Moon is hard and very dangerous.

And it's happening because human exploration of Moon good; well that's not convincing, but I've never been good at doing HSF justifications.

Idk, this is kinda just an elaborate tangent for me ay.

Did you know that NASA engineers considered the failure rate of some critical shuttle parts to be about 1 in 100 (significantly greater than what NASA upper-management considered the failure rate to be, and what was considered at all acceptable by the certification process)?

Do you know that NASA engineers currently have no idea how many rocket launches the next mission in the Artemis program (in 2 years!) is meant to involve, because the mission plan relies on SpaceX being contracted to deliver a supply of cryogenic fuel to the crewed Orion (™ Lockheed-Martin) capsule in orbit - a procedure that 1: has never been attempted before on any spacecraft, let alone the Orion™ capsule, not even in uncrewed technology demonstration flights; and 2: would require an as-of-yet unknown number of SpaceX 'Starship' launches, because said vehicle does not actually exist at time of writing?

Did you know they're planning on using this 'starship' as the crewed lander? A design for a lunar ascent vehicle, that is, that does not use hypergolic fuel, that relies on a swing-out crane as the only entry and egress point? During the original moon landings, the LEM had so many redundant methods to make sure it got astronauts off the surface of the moon, that in the most absurd, extreme case, where every single mechanism fails, there's a procedure trained into the astronauts to climb around the outside of the capsule, take a pair of bolt-cutters from the equipment box, physically cut the couplings holding the capsule to the lander stage, and take off to get home. Artemis' proposed lander, on the other hand, is planned to be a vehicle whose design didn't even include heatshields until it was realised it would obviously need heatshields, which are ceramic tiles bolted after-the-fact directly through the steel hull, because SpaceX had decided to mass-produce the original-design hull sections all at once for all the 'starships' first, before doing any integrated testing.

We're seeing the exact attitude that led to the shuttle disasters not being prevented now expressing itself in (and even through) the Artemis program, a project pushed harder and faster through the gates than it should be, by a government (and NASA administration thereby) desperate to advance the eponymous Artemis Accords (that goes unsigned by China, Russia, and much of the world) and reneg on all previous space charters that onsidered ownership, commercial exploitation, and military usage of space forbidden. Something bad is going to happen, and it's going to happen for the sake of SpaceX and the military-industrial complex at large.