Not sure what your referring to LocalFluff.

Apollo 8 entered performed a braking burn to Lunar orbit and performed 10 laps, and then performed the TEI (Trans Earth Injection).

Apollo 13 went around the moon in a Free Return Trajectory, and never performed a braking burn to enter Lunar Orbit.

Actually, it is a bold move. One would expect that this shakedown cruise would occur in Earth Orbit, but the plan laid out shows that only two orbits will be in Earth orbit before they perform the translunar injection burn.

Page 15 of the PDF link (“NASA’s Lunar Exploration Program Overview”) in Robert’s post says that NASA plans unmanned tests of the landers during the time frame of the first manned flight:

Human exploration under the Artemis program will begin with the crewed flight test of SLS and Orion on Artemis II in 2023. In this same time frame, NASA and its commercial HLS partners also plan to conduct in-space flight testing of the lander system, including potential tests to the lunar surface.

This means that there won’t be any landers available until the second manned flight. Apollo 8 had originally been planned as the flight to check out the Apollo lunar lander, but the lander was not ready in time. Apollo 8 came after the Apollo 7 checkout flight, so there was confidence that the Apollo Command and Service Modules were capable of a lunar flight.

In my eye, NASA is back on track to being bold.

But now those poor astronauts, if they survive the SLS fraud, will be asked:
“- Where did you go?
– Nowhere!
– Okay… hooray not so much.”

Are they afraid that they have forgotten how to do it in the last 50 years?

Send the first one into Lunar orbit as a both a relay station and maybe an emergency supply depot.

Solids can do that better than liquid fueled. SRB is 2.8 million lbs of thrust (EACH!) That is, as they say, a crap load of thrust.

F-9 is only 1.8 million lbs of thrust or so and that uses 9 engines. The largest thrust engines were probably the F-1 (1.5 going to 1.8 million lbs thrust) and mayeb the RD-170 (1.8 million lbs).

So to replace an SRB you need either a new liquid engine (since F-1 is long since out ofo service and RD-170’s I suppose are technically available, not sure they are actually being manufactured, but the 180, 190, and 171 are all variants) on the scale of the F-1 or a cluster of smaller ones.

Also, the military likes Solid boosters for ICBM’s and they like to keep the companies in business since you don’t really use up yur ICBM’s all that often (Thank G-d!). In some ways, Vega using a solid is to help keep the missile manufacturers open in Europe…

Just thinking that if SRB is/could be superior technology, it is worthwhile for NASA to spend what it takes to get such a system operational.

( eager to read a Bob review of the Challenger documentary. )