Back to the Moon

April 3, 2023 10:38 AM

NASA has announced the four astronauts that will fly by the Moon on the Artemis 2 mission. It's been nearly 50 years since humans have traveled beyond low earth orbit during the Apollo 17 mission.

The crew are:
Commander
Gregory R. Wiseman, NASA
Second spaceflight

Pilot
Victor J. Glover, NASA
Second spaceflight

Mission Specialist 1
Christina Koch, NASA
Second spaceflight

Mission Specialist 2
Jeremy Hansen, CSA
First spaceflight

posted by Brandon Blatcher (59 comments total)

This image of the crew is particularly striking.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:40 AM on April 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

has the first link been metafiltered to death (that used to be a thing, right?)
posted by alex_skazat at 10:51 AM on April 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Spoiler alert: none of these d00ds actually get to land on the moon. Bummer.
posted by Meatbomb at 10:51 AM on April 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

This the Apollo 8 of the Artemis program, yes.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:55 AM on April 3, 2023 [18 favorites]

At one point there was talk of an all-female crew, but maybe that's for when they actually go for landing.
posted by briank at 10:57 AM on April 3, 2023

Spoiler alert: none of these d00ds actually get to land on the moon. Bummer.

Neither did the crews of Apollo mission 8-10.

The crew of Apollo 10 flew the LEM to within 15 km of the lunar surface but never returned, and while Jim Lovell both got the opportunity to orbit the moon in Apollo 8 and return for a landing in Apollo 13, the latter's famous mishap prevented the landing.
posted by Gelatin at 10:58 AM on April 3, 2023

Damn it. They've overlooked me. Not even on a waitlist. This is the MacArthur Genius Grants all over again.
posted by Naberius at 10:58 AM on April 3, 2023 [53 favorites]

sic itur ad astra
posted by chavenet at 10:59 AM on April 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

The Apollo 10 lunar lander was under fueled to stop them from landing.
posted by Splunge at 11:02 AM on April 3, 2023 [8 favorites]

thought and prayer to the lost Apollo 1 astronauts.

great news.
posted by clavdivs at 11:06 AM on April 3, 2023

I can't help but keep feeling like Artemis is just flying under the radar for so many people. We're talking about people back on the moon - the first steps to a moon base, etc

And it feels all snoozy to me.
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:08 AM on April 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

I think this is great news. My hope is that there are four men still alive who walked on the Moon: Buzz Aldrin, David Scott, Charles Duke, and Harrison Schmitt. None of the surviving Apollo astronauts are younger than 87 and Aldrin is the oldest at 93. It is my sincere hope that at least one of them lives to see someone else set foot on the Moon, and I am sure NASA will find a way to invite them to link the Apollo and Artemis landing crews. It sounds like the Artemis III mission will be no earlier than December 2025, so fingers crossed.
posted by fortitude25 at 11:21 AM on April 3, 2023 [6 favorites]

30 years ago I worked with a guy whose father had been an Apollo astronaut. I never got to meet the guy, though.
posted by neuron at 11:24 AM on April 3, 2023

Obligatory XKCD ; here’s hoping it needs to be updated soon
posted by TedW at 11:28 AM on April 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

And it feels all snoozy to me.

Especially after you watch For All Mankind. We're SO sad and behind.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:30 AM on April 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

I barely got to see Artemis 1 launch (it was cloudy as hell, I saw maybe one second while she was just above the horizon) but you can bet your ass I'm not gonna miss this one. Living in Florida can be so fucking stupid in so many ways but getting to just casually watch launches all the time absolutely rules.
posted by saladin at 11:31 AM on April 3, 2023 [13 favorites]

And it feels all snoozy to me.
I think it'll feel like less of an Apollo retread if/when Starship starts flying. Picking that 160 foot monster as the Artemis lander was bold, but if it works out it'll be quite a statement of intent. With Shotwell running the program, and El*n distracted by Twitter, maybe they'll make better progress this year.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 11:44 AM on April 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

A rat done bit my sister Nell
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:50 AM on April 3, 2023 [29 favorites]

Fun story: Frank Borman, who commanded the first mission to fly around the moon, later became the CEO of Eastern Airlines. When he took on that job, he moved to Miami, and lived down the street from my grandparents. My grandfather was habitually thrifty, and would grab interesting items out of other people's trash. That's how my grandparents came to own a bunch of cool midcentury-modern Eastern Airlines stainless steel knives, forks, and spoons (like the set in this eBay auction). And when I went to college, they gave me a bunch of kitchen items, including several sets of the Eastern Airlines utensils. That's why, to this day, I have silverware in my kitchen drawer that used to belong to one of the first humans to fly to the moon.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:50 AM on April 3, 2023 [53 favorites]

"The crew of Apollo 10 flew the LEM to within 15 km of the lunar surface but never returned..."

Am I misreading something? Both John Young and Gene Cernan walked on the Moon after Apollo 10.
posted by Capt. Renault at 11:53 AM on April 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Artifice Eternity, I am absolutely green with envy!!!
posted by kitten kaboodle at 12:34 PM on April 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think it'll feel like less of an Apollo retread if/when Starship starts flying. Picking that 160 foot monster as the Artemis lander was bold, but if it works out it'll be quite a statement of intent. With Shotwell running the program, and El*n distracted by Twitter, maybe they'll make better progress this year.

Starship will fly but it'll be many years before they'll attempt to land it on the moon. It's not even entirely clear if the orbital refueling scheme will work and that is a necessity before Starship goes beyond LEO. Additionally, before they trust humans on Starship it'll have to fly into space and land safely dozens upon dozens of times without mishap.
posted by drstrangelove at 12:35 PM on April 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Additionally, before they trust humans on Starship it'll have to fly into space and land safely dozens upon dozens of times without mishap.

How many times will Artemis fly to space and return without mishap before they trust humans to it? It has been done once, and the mission announced today will be flight #2.

The space shuttle flew to space zero times before we trusted humans to it.
posted by Hatashran at 12:57 PM on April 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I’m not sure if casting a bunch of unknowns to be in the next fake moon landing will capture the same magic as the original. If they are going with the original formula they need to add some some Mercury and Gemini style launches to give each astronaut their own intro MCU style. Also who do they got directing it this time. Who will fill Kubrick’s shoes. Maybe Christopher Nolan, but I suspect he’d want a big name actor attached lime Matt Daemon.
posted by interogative mood at 1:11 PM on April 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

Living in Florida can be so fucking stupid in so many ways but getting to just casually watch launches all the time absolutely rules.

I feel the same about Akron and blimps.
posted by slogger at 1:11 PM on April 3, 2023 [15 favorites]

How many times will Artemis fly to space and return without mishap before they trust humans to it? It has been done once, and the mission announced today will be flight #2.

The space shuttle flew to space zero times before we trusted humans to it.

Not even remotely comparable.

Starship has to prove it can return from space and land vertically over and over again. So far it had some low altitude fights, none of which had a successful landing if your definition of "success" is it that it should be able to land without catching on fire.

Artemis used existing technology which was tested over and over again on the ground before ever flying, which is part of the reason it was delayed so many times. SpaceX has a totally different iterative design process which means that it's not even close to being a man-rated launch system. And it seems really unlikely that "Dear Moon" will fly before 2030.
posted by drstrangelove at 1:12 PM on April 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

This is one insanely experienced crew.

Every one of the Artemis II crew (aside from the rookie) have probably logged more time in space than the entire US astronaut corps prior to Apollo 11. (Two of them with six months, one with twelve months.)

Christina Koch has logged more hours of EVA time than the entire US and Soviet astronaut corps combined prior to Apollo 11. And probably more time in orbit than both the US and USSR space programs combined prior to 1970.

As for Starship: the HLS program requires on-orbit refueling. And on-orbit refueling is out of the question until they've got Starship to land safely and fly again (both the booster and the orbiter). Once that happens, though, all bets against the moon landing are off.
posted by cstross at 1:13 PM on April 3, 2023 [18 favorites]

President John F. Kennedy, "Moon speech" on September 12, 1962, in Rice Stadium

But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

JFK's moon speech at Rice Stadium was 60 years ago. Has the U.S. lived up to it?

...60 years after the president took the lectern at Rice, no politician has succeeded in taking up his mantle on space — and America hasn’t chased its planetary ambitions at the same rate or with the same fervor Kennedy first demanded, several policy experts said.

posted by kirkaracha at 1:31 PM on April 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

The space shuttle did not have a full auto landing sequence whereas Artemus is both a crewed and robotic spacecraft.
posted by clavdivs at 1:57 PM on April 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

clavdivs: Buran (the Soviet shuttle) did have auto-land -- the one time it flew to orbit it was uncrewed. Indeed, the US shuttle lacked autoland specifically so it would provide employment for astronauts.

It's not rocket science; it's politics.
posted by cstross at 2:04 PM on April 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

So good to see this. Another step on the way back to human exploration of space.
posted by doctornemo at 2:17 PM on April 3, 2023

Artemis and Starship, yes. But don't forget the Chinese lunar program.
posted by doctornemo at 2:18 PM on April 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

that is interesting. The Buran was destroyed by a collapsed building. The shuttle is in a museum. A testement to the worker and musuem science. I was never a fan of the space bus but it worth noting:

Afterwards, it was decided to discontinue testing of the autoland system, although the implementation was eventually completed.

Development of an automatic approach and landing system was terminated indefinitely due to the inability to implement an FAA [Federal Aviation Administration]-like powered aircraft certification program for an unpowered glider like the Space Shuttle. That is, an automatic system cannot be reasonably certified for an aircraft without a go-around capability in the event of an autoland system failure, because the only recourse in the Shuttle is to land rather than to execute a wave-off maneuver as in a powered aircraft. The practice of having to salvage a good landing out of a poor approach is not professionally accepted airmanship.

Further, the STS-3 experience was classified as a “late-takeover” action in which a failure of the autoland system in even closer proximity to touchdown could result in an upset too late in the landing phase to be reasonably recoverable. "Monitoring" the approach versus actually "controlling" it induces a time lapse in the mental-to-physical control conversion process which increases in criticality for manual takeover as the aircraft approaches touchdown. An automatic failure on the IGS, with no recourse for a wave-off, would be unsafe compared to a totally manual- controlled approach

Armstrong's x-1 flight, Gemini 8, testing lander and Apollo 11 should have resulted in loss of crew and craft or an abort but it was training, knowledge and skill that made him most likely the best pilot who ever lived.
but that was a different time and this crew was pretty much my pick.

Everything is politics, space is no different.
posted by clavdivs at 2:33 PM on April 3, 2023 [12 favorites]

Apollo 10 flew the LEM to within 15 km of the lunar surface but never returned

That sounds very ominous.
posted by hanov3r at 2:38 PM on April 3, 2023 [10 favorites]

'Fight for Space' is very good doc about politics and space and much more.
posted by clavdivs at 2:44 PM on April 3, 2023

Especially after you watch For All Mankind. We're SO sad and behind.

Fuck you, Richard M. Nixon. You took a man-rated Saturn V and Apollo Capsule and set them down on their side to rot in Houston because you hated Kennedy and everything he did. Then we got the never-met-expectations "Space Shuttle", which killed 4 times the people than the entire manned-space program before it.

Burn in Hell, forever, asshole.
posted by mikelieman at 2:46 PM on April 3, 2023 [19 favorites]

The Apollo 10 lunar lander was under fueled to stop them from landing.

The Lunar Module on Apollo 10 was LM-4 and it was deemed too heavy. Later models were able to shave off some of the weight to make a landing and ascent a possibility.

The Apollo 10 crew probably could have landed on the Moon, but getting off of it wasn't possible. Nobody wanted to be the first dead person on the Moon!

This the Apollo 8 of the Artemis program, yes.

Oddly enough, Artemis II isn't even that. It'll simply fly by the Moon on what's called a Free-return trajectory, which guarantees that the spacecraft will return to Earth. I'm curious why they've chosen not to orbit the Moon on Artemis II, seems like it would be a major testing aka can a crewed spacecraft get into and out of Lunar orbit?

Anyway, it looks like it'll be an interesting ride and I like the inclusive nature of the crew.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:01 PM on April 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

There are a variety of tests to be done and the only space craft to use free return was Apollo 13 for obvious reasons. A good reason to use it now. Apollo 10 was not with out a Son of a bitch!” moment. Perhaps navigation and automation have lesened the need for an orbital test. The lunar Gateway sounds cool and will be the most expensive storage locker ever.
posted by clavdivs at 3:27 PM on April 3, 2023

Oh and the REAL question now is who will be on Artemis III aka, who's walking on the Moon? Current plans call for a crew of two, with one being a woman and one being a non-white person, though obviously those two criteria could be combined in one person, such as Nicole Mann for example. Oh and she's already commanded a mission? That's ticking so many boxes.

There's nothing preventing NASA from recycling astronauts from Artemis II to be on Artemis III. But it's generally not done. I imagine the not chosen astronauts would scream bloody murder, understandably.

The total crew will be four people, with two remaining at the Lunar Gateway station while the other two land. It sucks that NASA is going back to only sending part of the crew tot the surface. Earlier plans involved sending everyone on the crew and with the Starship's capabilities, it's possible to send everyone, plus a whole bunch of stuff to the lunar surface.

Any other layperson freaked out by the idea of landing a Starship on the Moon? It looks like it might easily topple in the lower lunar gravity, especially on no doubt uneven ground, with the tricky gravity . It looks like it asking for trouble, but if they engineers are signing off on it, then fine.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:00 PM on April 3, 2023

I guess now that we're committed to Cold War II, someone had to take notice of China's lunar program.
posted by rodlymight at 6:07 PM on April 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Who will fill Kubrick’s shoes.

I nominate Wes Anderson. The lighting will be impeccable -- no more quibbling about shadow angles -- and he already knows how to do lots of charts in Futura.
posted by traveler_ at 7:46 PM on April 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

If you still haven't seen it, the Apollo 11 doc is pretty great. No interviews. Lots of cool footage and a few animated diagrams - giving the barest bit of perspective on all the daisy-chained engineering hurdles that had to be overcome...any of them don’t go to plan and everyone dies. There's a shot of someone in the launch control sending a message by pneumatic tube.
posted by brachiopod at 7:57 PM on April 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

who's walking on the Moon?

Astronauts Copeland, Summers, and Sumner.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:46 PM on April 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

Am I misreading something? Both John Young and Gene Cernan walked on the Moon after Apollo 10.

But was it the same moon that they returned to?

Or the armored battle station which replaced it?

Kinda makes you think.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:45 AM on April 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's too late for me. I am permanently embittered by the half century gap after the promise of the 1960's. Perhaps the young 'uns can cling to their space optimism better than I did.
posted by fairmettle at 9:01 AM on April 4, 2023

You people are getting the director all wrong. It's James Cameron of course. He's ready to go right after his private trip to the moon to get the details just right.

He is following in Kubrick's footsteps of course, who famously faked the original moon landing but insisted on filming on location.
posted by jclarkin at 9:15 AM on April 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

WaPo: How NASA’s astronauts learned they’d been assigned to the moon mission: The head of the astronaut corps scheduled a secret meeting to let them know, but the astronauts were all late

This is so comedy of errors. They were assuming it was a Zoom meeting, one guy was at lunch, one guy was at the doctor...and then the article finishes with razzing them about how they were told to be on time.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:29 AM on April 4, 2023

I'm curious why they've chosen not to orbit the Moon on Artemis II…

According to discussion on Ars Technica it’s because it doesn’t have the fuel (delta-V?) to put itself into orbit and then get itself out and back to earth again.

The free return is essentially an extremely elliptical orbit around the earth which takes it out to the moon, around the back, and then returns it to earth.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 10:51 AM on April 4, 2023

And I should add, the ability to enter and leave lunar orbit depends on the completion of a new second stage called the Exloration Upper Stage, which according to this wiki article won’t be ready until 2027, when Artemis IV is currently scheduled to fly.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 10:59 AM on April 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

A rat done bit my sister Nell

At least on this flight, they're not all Whitey.
posted by Furnace of Doubt at 11:30 AM on April 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

My apologies for quibbling, but this has been eating at me since this post went up:

Apollo 17 flew from December 7–19, 1972 - so it's been slightly MORE than fifty years since humans have set foot on the Moon (OR traveled beyond low Earth orbit)....
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 5:03 PM on April 4, 2023

According to discussion on Ars Technica it’s because it doesn’t have the fuel (delta-V?) to put itself into orbit and then get itself out and back to earth again.

What the hell NASA, why are we making ships less powerful than they were over 50 years ago?!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:32 PM on April 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

A rat done bit my sister Nell

Folks did like that comment, as MeFites do like to criticize human spaceflight, but I wonder how Scott-Heron's 1970 piece plays now, especially in this Artemis context.

Is citing it just another way of repeating the old argument that NASA's human spaceflight work is an unjust diversion of federal money away from social services? (I mean, it's a tiny amount of the budget, proportionally, but it is an old argument)

Does the racial charge of the piece play differently when 25% of the lunar orbital crew is black?

And how do NASA's changed politics change the citation, when the agency is now committed to social justice in many ways (racial, gender, climate), certainly as compared to the 1960s?
posted by doctornemo at 9:19 AM on April 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

I think it's a vital piece of art and still relevant today. But ultimately it's use of NASA and human spaceflight is as a symbol, not the villain. I don't know that Scott-Heron would agree with that, of course, and that's fine. I think it's historical fact at this point that cutting the funding for NASA in the 70s did nothing to fund social services, so it's not a very interesting argument.

That said, space flight remains a symbol of what we can do as a society, if we choose to do it. So it's useful to contrast with things we're not doing, and use it to point out that we it's because we choose not to do them, not because we can't do them.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 3:34 PM on April 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

A rat done bit my sister Nell

The scene in First Man using 'Whitey on the Moon' was powerful and relevant in the billionaire space launch's of the last few years.
The Main engines are actually 15% more powerful the the Saturn 5, at the time, the most complicated machine ever built.

will the moon landing be automated or will the pilot land the craft. I do think a Chinese base is cool and perhaps it will improve relations.
posted by clavdivs at 4:47 PM on April 6, 2023

Just be ready for the disappointment when Congress inevitably kills the program via budget cuts just before they actually land. They've done it so many times before that it seems inevitable now. Even if we do make it, there are {explicatives deleted) politicians who will wet themselves in their haste and excitement at cutting yet another space program as soon as the minimum level of achievement is accomplished.

The only thing that could save it is if Russia, China, or some other country actually makes political hay by establishing a permanent base there and claiming territory ala Antarctica. Then they'll probably make it a military mission, move the funding from NASA to the space cadets, er, Space Force.

Prove me wrong, future history, please, I'm begging you. I'd list all the cancelled moon-shot programs, but there's a limit to the size of posts.
posted by Blackanvil at 10:59 AM on April 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

NYT: Houston, We Have a Problem: Where Are the Astronauts?
NASA officials found it more difficult than they expected to surprise the astronauts of the Artemis II mission with the news that they were going to the moon.

“You wanted to find a way to get all those individuals in the same room without them knowing what it is — to make it special for them,” Mr. Acaba said.

He first checked when they would all be around that day at Johnson Space Center, the headquarters of NASA astronauts. Then, because the three might have become suspicious if they knew they were all being summoned to the same place at the same time, he concocted separate fake meetings for each of them.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:32 PM on April 8, 2023

Does the racial charge of the piece play differently when 25% of the lunar orbital crew is black?

Well it's not just that, but also decades have passed and things have generally gotten better within NASA for women and minorities.

Add in the fact that the song, while powerful and deeply meaningful, was not based on fact with, at least when it comes to NASA, The overall point it was making about how money was spent in the American society and that the minorities repeatedly get the short end of the stick when it comes to funding is very true and powerful.

But yeah, shutting down NASA and spending all that money for social programs would not have as large as an impact that some might think. The song also ignores or is unaware of the minorities who were at NASA at the time and starting to break through some of the barriers within the agency.

Songs and stories and art don't have to have to strictly true to have impact or deep meaning. It's probably better when they don't. Whitey On Moon wasn't about NASA directly, but the how much minorities suffer in system that at best ignores and at worst...well, we know what that is how far it can go.

I'm an unashamed NASA and space exploration fan and nerd, no question. If it truly and honestly meant that shutting down much of space activities would help the poor and disenfranchised, I'd be all for doing that. But it won't and never would have, no matter what color the person is that's on the Moon.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:25 AM on April 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

The only thing that could save it is if Russia, China, or some other country actually makes political hay by establishing a permanent base there and claiming territory ala Antarctica.

These days, the other thing that keeps stuff funded is international commitments like those that have kept the ISS flying. That's what the Artemis Accords are for, and it's why the Orion service module is European.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 8:49 AM on April 15, 2023 [1 favorite]