NASA: "We're going back to the moon!"

M.A.R.S.!

Eyes full of sorrow, never wet
Hands full of money, all in debt
Sun coming out in the middle of June
Everyone's gone to the moon

You see a long time ago life had begun
Everyone went to the sun

Parks full of motors, painted green
Mouths full of chocolate-covered cream
Arms that can only lift a spoon

You see everyone's gone
Everybody's gone
Everyone's gone to the moon
Everyone's gone to the moon
What will happen now
Everyone's gone to the moon
There's nobody left
Everyone's gone to the moon

Take heart - maybe Bush will hire Edward Bass (of the Biosphere 2 debacle) to head the effort.

back to capsules for a while before we get better propulsion -> shuttlecraft.

we'll get off this planet, but it's gunna be the chinese who do it first.

but who cares; as long as we can get sustainable colonies elsewhere so when we finally nuke ourselves, we don't end our species.

As Discovery Magazine pointed out a coupla years ago, we can get to Mars _now_. It's just that the astronauts would probably go insane along the way.

And as long as Bush is dusting off old nuclear programs, he could resurrect the Orion project for this moon redux.

Huh? Does this mean Apollo will start growing more feminine man-tits???

-- Paunchy Stratego (fluxion2...), September 19th, 2005.

robble

"this is the moon blowing up, and this is me smiling...."

NASA is an acronym--na-sa

but I kind of agree

I don't know man. Chinatown NYC has trouble locating a building with a 4th wall...

We're whalers on the moon, we carry a harpoon...

NASA has scheduled a media teleconference to announce the discovery of an object in our Galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years.

http://www.nasa.gov/news/media/newsaudio/index.html

Huh.

Wonder what that could be.

loch ness monster>??

golf ball

predator ship

wait wait wait, that's in the future, and also is the intellectual property of 20th century fox, so i think you've go that wrong buddy

something that they sent out to space 50 years ago, and lost?

http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/theoryandpractice/monolith.jpg

http://www.marveldirectory.com/pictures/individuals/g_1d/galactus.gif

Laika!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/Laika.jpg

Hitler?

the uss eldridge !?

Major Tom? That's only about 40 years...

i'm guessing this will the most boring discovery, like "ooh a type-s-z system never seen before it has 0.0000000000000000000000001% less hydrogen than other systems blah blah"

black hole? or did we already stop believing in those?

Yeah saw that news the other day. Fucking ridiculous.

NASA: "We're not coming back from low Earth orbit!"

(in short, Boeing's spacecraft is doing about as well as their airliners)

NASA builds $450 million lunar rover/driller and then cancels it because it has no money to get it there
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02361-1

NASA OIG report is damming
https://nasawatch.com/artemis/nasa-oig-boeing-is-having-big-problems-with-sls-block-1b/

NASA OIG: “Quality control issues at Michoud are largely due to the lack of a sufficient number of trained and experienced aerospace workers at Boeing. To mitigate these challenges, Boeing provides training and work orders to its employees. Considering the significant quality control deficiencies at Michoud, we found these efforts to be inadequate. For example, during our visit to Michoud in April 2023, we observed a liquid oxygen fuel tank dome—a critical component of the SLS Core Stage 3—segregated and pending disposition on whether and how it can safely be used going forward due to welds that did not meet NASA specifications. According to NASA officials, the welding issues arose due to Boeing’s inexperienced technicians and inadequate work order planning and supervision. The lack of a trained and qualified workforce increases the risk that Boeing will continue to manufacture parts and components that do not adhere to NASA requirements and industry standards. We project SLS Block 1B costs will reach approximately $5.7 billion before the system is scheduled to launch in 2028. This is $700 million more than NASA’s 2023 Agency Baseline Commitment, which established a cost and schedule baseline at nearly $5 billion. EUS development accounts for more than half of this cost, which we estimate will increase from an initial cost of $962 million in 2017 to nearly $2.8 billion through 2028. Boeing’s delivery of the EUS to NASA has also been delayed from February 2021 to April 2027, and when combined with other factors, suggests the September 2028 Artemis IV launch date could be delayed as well. Factors contributing to these cost increases and schedule delays include redirection of EUS funds to the core stage during Artemis I production, changing Artemis mission assignments, maintaining an extended workforce 7 years more than planned, manufacturing issues, and supply chain challenges.”

what if they boeing starliner capsule returns to earth... but it's not actually empty

https://nasawatch.com/procurement/nas-report-cites-significant-issues-affecting-nasas-future-viability/

Core Finding 1: NASA’s ability to pursue high-risk, long-lead science and technology challenges and opportunities in aeronautics, space science, Earth science, and space operations and exploration has arguably been the agency’s greatest value to the nation. Pursuit of such potentially transformative opportunities requires constancy of purpose, consistent long-term funding commensurate with the tasks it has been asked to undertake, a technically skilled workforce able to devote sustained effort to address challenging problems, and leading-edge equipment and supporting infrastructure that enable work at the cutting edge of science and engineering.

Core Finding 2: NASA faces internal and external pressures to prioritize short-term measures without adequate consideration of longer-term needs and implications. This produces adverse impacts on contracting, budgeting, funding, infrastructure, R&D, and execution of NASA’s mission portfolio. If left unchecked, these pressures are likely to result in a NASA that is incapable of satisfying national objectives in the longer term.

Core Finding 3: NASA’s budget is often incompatible with the scope, complexity, and difficulty of its mission work. The long-term impacts of this mismatch include erosion of capabilities in workforce, critical infrastructure, and advanced technology development. The current relative allocations of funding to mission work as compared with that allocated to institutional support has degraded NASA’s capabilities to the point where agency sustainability is in question.

Core Finding 4: NASA’s shift to milestone-based purchase-of-service contracts for first-of-a- kind, low-technology-readiness-level mission work can, if misused, erode the agency’s in-house capabilities, degrade the agency’s ability to provide creative and experienced insight and oversight of programs, and put the agency and the United States at increased risk of program failure.

Core Finding 5: Mission effectiveness across NASA is compromised by slow and cumbersome business operations that have been a consequence of legitimate efforts to increase efficiency and better coordinate complex tasks.

Core Finding 6: Over the past decade, significant responsibilities and authorities for major programs previously delegated to the NASA center level have been shifting to the mission directorates. This may have potentially compromised checks and balances for a clear and independent technical oversight. While the optimum allocation of checks and balances can depend on the needs of a particular organization and mission, incorrectly establishing this balance can have extreme impacts.

Core Finding 7: Although NASA has successfully carried out many extraordinarily challenging missions over its lifetime, the agency has had a continuing failing in conveying to external stakeholders accurate cost, schedule, and technology readiness estimates, as well as estimated levels of budgetary reserves needed for complex major development projects. The profound negative consequences of this are felt far beyond the specific projects producing the delays and unanticipated funding demands.

pinboard guy is a bit of a weirdo, but i don't think he's wrong: https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm

You could reword those core findings to refer to a lot of organizations that do R&D and have long-running goals. Kind of depressing that producing product and hitting milestones has eroded long-term thinking

this thing could land in your yard! Like TONITE

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/may/09/part-of-soviet-era-spacecraft-to-crash-to-earth-this-weekend

I remember reading about the Venera probes when I was young - this was just as the Shuttle was about to take off, so the most recent space news was Skylab, Viking, Voyager, and Venera. They were really sturdy probes. From what I remember they had surprisingly weak parachutes, because the atmosphere of Venus is so dense that probes can almost swim down to the surface. I learn from the internet that they detached the parachute at an altitude of thirty miles and just floated down the rest of the way. The conditions on Venus are horrendous - there's no mobile phone reception at all - and only two or three probes have survived long enough after landing to transmit data.

The Soviets concentrated had a run of really bad luck. Veneras 11 and 12 landed but couldn't transmit photos because the lens caps got stuck. Veneras 9 and 10 could only transmit from one camera, because the other lens cap got stuck. Venera 14 dropped its lens cap just below the soil sensor, so the sensor didn't work. The probes were all designed to survive on the surface for just half an hour at a time, although some of them lasted longer.

It's a shame we haven't been back, although the surface of Venus has been mapped with radar. It'll be interesting to see if the probe survives intact enough to show in a museum, although it'll probably just plunge into the sea.

That could be the plot of a sci-fi comedy. Imagine if the Soviets had sent a cosmonaut up in the probe in the 1970s, frozen in suspended animation, and he comes down to Earth in 2025 and has hilarious misadventures whereby he asks people in the United States about universal healthcare, state-funded housing, and a decent standard of state-supplied education! It would be... hilarious.

As in Good-bye Lenin, which I wanted to watch recently but it doesn't seem to be available on any streaming platform in the UK.

I remember seeing that grainy photo from the surface... it wasn't much but it was cool to see, probably some book from the school library

there's been talk of sending a probe to Venus that would act like a dirigible or balloon, floating high up in the atmosphere rather than on the crushing surface.. it's even speculated that there could be microbes living up in the clouds

NASA being cagey about the 'illness' on the ISS so we have to assume it's some kind of lovecraftian space madness, an unspeakable cosmic horror... I hope to god they don't bring it back down to earth whatever it is, or we're all doomed

...or maybe it's an STD

space rabies

chrono-synclastic infundibulum type flu

space measles

they just never did any research into the long term effects of space-wanking

100 years ago today

Robert Hutchings Goddard (October 5, 1882 – August 10, 1945) was an American physicist, inventor, and engineer credited with creating and building the world's first liquid-fueled rocket, which was successfully launched on March 16, 1926

And since then only 0.0003%* of all rockets launched have been for peaceful purposes.

*this number was arrived at for the purposes of irony and cannot be relied upon as factual.

Slightly more info on the medical emergency that caused the early return
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/28/science/nasa-astronaut-medical-evaluation.html

Mr. Fincke said he was eating dinner on Jan. 7 when he suddenly couldn’t talk, he told The Associated Press.

“It was completely out of the blue,” he told The A.P. “It was just wonderfully quick.”

He said he had no pain but his crewmates realized something was wrong and jumped into action.

“The doctors are still scratching their heads,” Mr. Fincke told NBC News. Testing ruled out a heart attack or stroke, he said. “We’re almost 100 percent sure that this is a space-related thing.”

Also, Artemis II Is Not Safe to Fly

On Wednesday, NASA will attempt to send four astronauts around the moon on a mission called Artemis II. This will be second flight of NASA’s SLS rocket, and the first time the 20-year-old Orion capsule flies with people on board.

The trouble is that the heat shield on Orion blows chunks. Not in some figurative, pejorative sense, but in the sense that when NASA flew this exact mission in 2022, large pieces of material blew out of Orion’s heat shield during re-entry, leaving divots. Large bolts embedded in the heat shield also partially eroded and melted through.

NASA’s initial instinct was to cover up the problem. In early press releases, they stressed that both rocket and spacecraft had performed exceptionally, while declining to publish the post-flight assessment review. The first mention of heat shield damage came from Orion program manager Howard Hu on a call with reporters in March of 2023. Hu said: “we observed there were more variations across the heat shield than we expected; some of the expected char material that we would expect coming back home ablated away differently than what our computer models and what our ground testing predicted.”

Asked by a journalist to quantify the char loss in a January 2024 phone call, Moon-to-Mars Deputy Administrator Amit Kshatriya said: “it was very small localized areas. Interestingly, it would be much easier for us to analyze if we had larger chunks and it was more defined”. A Lockheed Martin representative on the same call added that "there was a healthy margin remaining of that virgin Avcoat. So it wasn’t like there were large, large chunks.”

It wasn’t until May 2024, when the Office of the Inspector General released photographs of the heat shield, that the extent of the damage became clear. The problem wasn’t char loss or excessive ablation, but deep gouges and holes in many of the Avcoat blocks that comprise the heat shield.

article continues at link. I don't want to see folks die in space, but I won't be surprised at all if something happens.

What could go wrong.

is the canadian guy the first ai astronaut they should have told ai to not make him look so much like buzz lightyear

This was good.

lol I genuinely completely forgot this was happening

I did not watch i have seen 2 shuttles explode in my lifetime

Not sure I fully understand the point of a mission *around* the moon, unless they're launching two rockets, with Vin Diesel in one and Ludacris in the other, and it's a race.

Similar to Apollo. Flights were sent around the moon first before attempting a landing.

took a little break to watch... it was somewhat boring as they should be

there was no MTV astronaut orbiting a red Tesla

Anyway I'm happy to report that per the 24/7 mission coverage they've turned on the power for the toilet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3kR2KK8TEs

do you have to poo in front of the other astronauts?

lol I genuinely completely forgot this was happening

Did not even know this was happening! I'd heard a bit of talk about the first woman on the moon, but I thought this was at the least 2-3 years away. I mean, I've seen a lot more anticipation of The Drama than this.

Well not ON the moon, as noted this is a circling of it.

do you have to poo in front of the other astronauts?

No wonder Heywood Floyd looks so nervous in the 2001 zero gravity toilet scene.

Bluesky Misspelling Enjoyer‬
✧@dsng✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
· 1h
In 5 days, the crew will be further away from Elon Musk than anyone else has ever been.

Goosebumps!

xxp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3fKYMYM01Y

I don't want it to fail but for the price of this thing we could have robots orbiting all the planets and a couple of asteroids, a Mars sample return, and maybe another space telescope or two.

indeed

https://scorpinc.social/@az/116345653530848124

50 years on and space travel has become the techno utopia we have always wanted, as summed up in this quote from NASA's Artemis II livestream

"No joy seeing the device in the list of available devices when I attempt to re-pair it after doing the Bluetooth forget."

ET OTM

Space Toilet
Space Toilet 2: the leakening
Space Toilet 3: the blockening

pic.twitter.com/2lV0iFHAms

— THE-VIRTUOSO (@MusindoKudzayi) April 4, 2026

So excited about this because I think we're getting so close to putting a man on the moon. And maybe in 30-40 years we will know how to successfully bring such a man back to earth.

Classic

looking forward to Trump’s eloquent solemn speech to the nation when they burn up on reentry

"Biden did this!"

Moon moon moon.

The amount of people I come across on line proclaiming this is all fake is disturbing. We are cooked as a society

I suspect it’s upthread, but I just saw this trailer link and damn i never got to see it when I was nine (of since) and it looked sooooo sick— I mean, the Juice is in it, biplane with wingwalker vs helicopter- whoa
i’m ready for yer review of it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QuOJwI0aVQ

making it back only for the satphones to not work rig right was a moment. but it was a good time getting the gang back to earth