Artemis (NASA moon mission)

sts60 said:
I’m glad you were able to see it live, jadebox. There’s nothing like that sky-ripping rumble.

(So, is the Dixie Crossroads (seafood restaurant) still there?)
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It is. But, I'm not real familiar with Titusville in general. I feel a little guilty that we seldom spend time in Titusville other than to watch a launch then leave.

My wife and I were able to watch one of the last shuttle launches from the "Turn Basin" area next to the Vehicle Assembly Building. It's the closest anyone (except the astronauts in the orbiter) were allowed to the launch pad - about three miles away.

For the Artemis 1/SLS launch, we were about 12 miles away. Although it's a little hard to compare - one was a day launch, the other a night launch (with a decade in between) - I am pretty sure the Artemis launch viewed from much farther away was a spectacular as the shuttle launch.

I never saw an Apollo Saturn V launch in person, but they were surely more spectacular. The SLS is more powerful but weighs less. The thrust to weight ratio of the Artemis 1 SLS is about 1.8 while the thrust ratio of the Saturn V was about 1.2. So, the SLS almost jumps off the pad compared to the Saturn V which lumbered and stained to get moving. Film of Saturn V launchs often look like they are slow-motion even when they aren't.
 
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jadebox said:
I never saw an Apollo Saturn V launch in person, but they were surely more spectacular. The SLS is more powerful but weighs less. The thrust to weight ratio of the Artemis 1 SLS is about 1.8 while the thrust ratio of the Saturn V was about 1.2. So, the SLS almost jumps off the pad compared to the Saturn V which lumbered and stained to get moving. Film of Saturn V launchs often look like they are slow-motion even when they aren't.
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More accurately, the SLS has more thrust. Thrust is neither power nor capability. SLS gets off the ground quickly because of its solid boosters, but those same boosters have a high dry mass and short burn time.

Power isn't really a very useful metric for rockets. As for capability:
SLS Block 1 mass to LEO (including the upper stage and propellant required for TLI): 95 t
Saturn V mass to LEO (similarly including stage and propellant mass for TLI): 140 t
 
cjameshuff said:
More accurately, the SLS has more thrust. Thrust is neither power nor capability. SLS gets off the ground quickly because of its solid boosters, but those same boosters have a high dry mass and short burn time.
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Yep. I've been working on booster design validation on and off for almost 20 years. (It seems there's a new company sign out front every time I go out to the Promontory facility. :boggled:)

But this is exactly the idea. SRMs have a fairly unimpressive Isp. But they have high thrust-to-weight and thrust-to-volume ratios--always important in large-scale vehicle design. It's not always about the propellant; sometimes it's just as much about the container you keep the propellant in. The metric we often use here is Id, or density (specific) impulse. It's specific impulse scaled by the average specific gravity of the propellant(s).

Even knowing the numbers, I still heard a lot of, "Holy ******" at the watch party. It really did leap off the pad.
 
Using precise terminology didn't seem important in the context of a discussion on something as subjective as how impressive a live launch looks and feels. :-)

Even watching the replay later on YouTube made me say "Wow."

I hope the next launch is in the daytime so we can see more views of the rocket. After all we paid for it and deserve a good show!

BTW, I am really looking forward to "riding along" with the astronauts in the later missions. During Apollo we saw news commentators describing the mission along with crude animations and only occasional live broadcasts from the astronauts. In addition to much better animation, we will probably be hearing from the astronauts and seeing feeds from the spacecraft almost continuously.
 
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Puppycow said:
I believe that this rocket, the SLS, is now the largest rocket ever launched into space. It must have been intense. I had the pleasure last year of seeing a rocket launch when I visited family in California. It was the rocket that launched the DART mission that recently smacked into the asteroid. But I imagine that the rocket I saw was quite a bit smaller than the one you saw. It was a Falcon 9 rocket. You can see a visual comparison here. Still, it was quite loud even though we were miles away. Doesn't take long for it to get out of sight.
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Close, but the Saturn V still holds that title, for now...

https://www.al.com/news/2022/08/moo...em-vs-the-apollo-saturn-v-by-the-numbers.html
 
arthwollipot said:
I've got friends who were in Florida for the Falcon Heavy launch. I was sooo jelly.
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Watched that from the outside stairway of the Launch Control Center. I recorded it, including the booster flyback, but like a dummy stopped when they landed, and missed the sonic booms.

Attached is a photo of one on the Cape side afterwards.

One of the benefits of having been at CCAFS/KSC for work a lot was seeing Delta, Atlas, and Shuttle launches. Plus Shuttle landings, with their distinctive WHAM-WHAM double sonic boom.

Also saw an Antares launch from Wallops, from the visitor center.
 

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Here's a mission tracking website, for anyone that's interested.

NASA Artemis Mission Tracker

One nitpick with it is that it doesn't show the actual schedule. For example it shows steps like "Enter Lunar influence, where the moon's gravity has a greater effect craft than does the earth's gravity". But it does not show when that will occur, only where.

Beyond that it is pretty good. Almost halfway there.
 
Really interesting entry in the last mission blog. I didn’t know the array tip cameras used Wi-Fi to transfer data. There’s a lot more fun stuff we can do that’s not directly essential to the mission with the advance of reliable lightweight electronics and data transfer technology.

The optical navigation system is a case in point. The Apollo crews used similar measurements of the Earth for some optical position determination, but this was by no means a primary navigation tool.

I need to read more about it, but it seems like Orion is investigating this for a backup autonomous absolute position determination in cislunar and translunar space. I wonder if the idea is that a spacecraft could return to Earth without any RF assistance, i.e., updating its own inertial navigation with sufficient accuracy by observation of Earth and the Moon and comparing shapes and sizes. Does anyone here know about this?
 
Followed by a surprise $2.1b charge from Sperry/Rand for "Full Self Driving"? [emoji15]

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Fraser Cain covers the Artemis 1 launch (and about future Artemis missions), some stuff about the JWST as well as the Air Force's "Secret Space Plane" (it looks like a small version of the Space Shuttle). It is unmanned and whatever its mission is, is classified. (Not sure if it could be related to any recent UAP sightings.)



Best viewed full screen, imho.
 
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