Last week, NASA announced that its Artemis II mission will be pushed to April at the earliest, due to issues with its helium tanks. Now, it’s broken the news that the Artemis III follow-up mission will totally cancel its original goal of landing astronauts on the Moon.
Instead, Artemis III—now scheduled to take place in 2027—will be another crewed flight without a landing phase, followed by Artemis IV, a crewed lander mission, hopefully in 2028.
I can’t believe NASA stuck with LH2 propellant. That shit can sneak out of anything, including metal tanks. Same reason your birthday ballon is inflated but on the floor after a few days, the helium scadoodled and left the O2 behind.
Oh sure, LH2 has more lifting power but SpaceX launches 10x as many ships with their methaLOX engines. Even Saturn V ran on LOX in the 60’s.
At what point is it a sunk cost and NASA builds a more reliable fuel system? These delays can’t be cheap or productive.
Did they ever have this much trouble with the space shuttles lh2 though? Also with the Saturn V 2nd and 3rd stages.
Yep. Both Apollo and STS had similar issues with LH2.
Most tragically STS-107. A cryo failure weakened the heat shielding on Columbia’s belly that cracked on launch, and then failed catastrophically on re-entry. All seven souls were lost.
Now, three programs have had the same issue and it’s like I’m the one taking crazy pills. It’s the gaskets, plumbing, and shit that shouldn’t have a freezing, highly flammable gas leaking almost ~(I said almost)~ sub atomic gas into every crevasse… then light the torch.
I know why NASA is being cautious but like, you did this to yourself, man. Say you fucked up and stop wasting what little government funding you’re getting.