Artemis II is competency porn

daymanstep

I can't stop thinking about this article while reading this: https://idlewords.com/2026/03/artemis_ii_is_not_safe_to_fly....

newsclues

They didn’t even land the rockets for recovery. Regressing :(

rbanffy

I will still wait for the heat shield analysis. Doing a crewed flight was not what I would have done - I’d use a Falcon Heavy to put one or more dummies through different trajectories to make sure we have enough experimental data to extensively model the shield behaviour, especially in non-nominal entries.

HPsquared

Are there any big technological advances from this program?

sweetheart

I didn’t follow the mission much as it occurred, but it’s striking to me how much I understand what the author means. Feels like the first event in many, many years that doesn’t amplify the feeling of being in the absurdist nightmare timeline. Artemis II felt like a 2013 event, not a 2026 event!

ArcHound

I can't believe the comments here. "I could have done it better, it's not a big deal, oh, they had women and non white people on board, what even is the shareholder value of this mission, oh it was almost done 50 years ago..." These people went literally to the moon and back. Furthest anyone has ever been. That's an achievement. I know things suck right now. Even more reasons to appreciate what is possible with technology. I agree with the premise of this article. This achievement is inspiring and re-assuring that competency brings results. The alternative is way too depressing AND it mostly is our reality right know.

PaulHoule

Yeah, but they still don’t have a realistic plan to land astronauts there. Like the space shuttle before it, Artemis proves that nobody can beat the US at spending money on boondoggles. Lunar missions are inconsequential to problems here on Earth like we can’t afford to build high-speed rail and transit, that we can’t build housing affordable or otherwise, that we already lost the next war to Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, won’t build affordable electric cars, etc. What we need is affordability porn!

ArtRichards

This article was a really uplifing take... Happy to see more about how awesome we can be, when we care.

Chance-Device

I haven’t paid any attention to the mission, and there’s something about the framing of this article that I don’t like, as if it’s talking about a soap opera or reality TV or something. It just rubs me up the wrong way.

Simulacra

I'm just glad they made it back alive.. Now let's build a moon base!

jFriedensreich

As a german, seeing you go to the moon under trump feels like celebrating the olympics in the dawn of the german reich, it cannot be taken for what it is. It does not matter what we feel, what we want to feel, we can enjoy it for a second and then swallow it down and not write an article like that.

b0rtb0rt

i hate this “____ porn” terminology