Recent content by jan.wolitzky

"Wilmore said the whole mission could be flown 'with no communication at all' with Mission Control if truly necessary": Of course it could. The whole mission could be flown with no astronauts at all, as it was on Orbital Flight Test 2, two years ago.

Care to stand behind your reporting? I'm willing to bet that Artemis astronauts will NOT carry plants to the moon in 2026, because Artemis 3 (or, at least, its lander) won't be ready to fly by then. Even the Government Accountability Office says so.

Just pointing out the huge gap between SpaceX's (and NASA's) hype about their plans for Starship to be landing astronauts on the moon in a couple of years (and Mars soon after), and the reality of Musk's toy. SpaceX never fails to describe Starship and its booster as "fully reusable", yet by...

"Water landing" is the term SpaceX uses in their own description of the mission (<https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-3>). And they say that Starship will "land" in the Indian Ocean, not off Hawaii. 85 m/s is 190 mph, well over the terminal velocity of a human...

So, again, a suborbital flight, even shorter than the mission planned for the previous tests. I like the term "water landing" to describe dumping both booster and Starship in the ocean. Like calling a car crash "tree parking".

The trajectory you describe is ballistic, suborbital, not "complete 1 orbit". Starship will not fire retro rockets to deorbit. Anyway, Texas-to-Hawaii wouldn't be 1 complete orbit even if it did.

"Starship and Super Heavy are designed to be fully reusable." Yet, on neither of the first two test flights was it planned for Starship to be recovered. On this third flight, will Starship again be dropped uselessly into the sea? Will this again be just a suborbital flight, or will SpaceX...

Artemis would no doubt provide great entertainment. That's not what it's for. If you want a thrill, pay for it yourself.

Sorry, that was not my intent. Just trying to narrow down how much of NASA's and Musk's hype you're buying. When do you think NASA's next landing on the moon, and do you think Musk's cockamamie Starship HLS will do it?

So, you think Artemis 3 will land on the moon in 2026, as NASA says it will?

Artemis 2 is not an exhilarating spaceflight mission. It is planned to be a much less ambitious mission than Artemis 1 was years earlier, and less ambitious even than Apollo 8 over half a century before. Unlike those, Artemis 2 will not enter lunar orbit, Artemis 1 already demonstrated the...