Zimmerman Op-Ed at PJ Media
Damage to Orion heat shield caused during re-entry in 2022,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”
PJ Media this evening published an op-ed I prepared this week in a last desperate effort to convince both President Trump and NASA administrator Jared Isaacman to rethink the manned nature of the Artemis-2 mission scheduled to launch sometime in the next three months.
President Trump and NASA Administrator Isaacman: Please Take the Crew Off of Artemis II
Nothing I say in this op-ed will be unfamiliar to my readers. I choose to farm it to PJ Media because I wanted it to get as much exposure as possible. As big as my audience is becoming, from 4 to 6 million hits per month, PJ Media has a wider reach.
I also decided in the op-ed to make no general arguments against SLS or Orion. Though my opposition to them is long standing and well known, this is not the time to fight that battle. My goal was simply to get NASA to put engineering ahead of schedule, so as to avoid the possibility of it repeating another Apollo 1 fire or Challenger accident.
I doubt at this point this op-ed will make a difference, but to paraphrase a quote written by Gordon Dickson in his wonderful science fiction book Way of the Pilgrim, there was a hand pushing me from behind, forcing me forward. I had no choice. The image of Orion’s heat shield to the right, after the 2022 return from the Moon, required action.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Damage to Orion heat shield caused during re-entry in 2022,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”
PJ Media this evening published an op-ed I prepared this week in a last desperate effort to convince both President Trump and NASA administrator Jared Isaacman to rethink the manned nature of the Artemis-2 mission scheduled to launch sometime in the next three months.
President Trump and NASA Administrator Isaacman: Please Take the Crew Off of Artemis II
Nothing I say in this op-ed will be unfamiliar to my readers. I choose to farm it to PJ Media because I wanted it to get as much exposure as possible. As big as my audience is becoming, from 4 to 6 million hits per month, PJ Media has a wider reach.
I also decided in the op-ed to make no general arguments against SLS or Orion. Though my opposition to them is long standing and well known, this is not the time to fight that battle. My goal was simply to get NASA to put engineering ahead of schedule, so as to avoid the possibility of it repeating another Apollo 1 fire or Challenger accident.
I doubt at this point this op-ed will make a difference, but to paraphrase a quote written by Gordon Dickson in his wonderful science fiction book Way of the Pilgrim, there was a hand pushing me from behind, forcing me forward. I had no choice. The image of Orion’s heat shield to the right, after the 2022 return from the Moon, required action.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
How about we let the astronauts choose?
Some libertarian you are
Jeff Wright: Except I am not a libertarian, and have never claimed to be. In fact, that you somehow repeatedly claim me and many of my readers are just indicates your ignorance of what the word means.
This is a NASA mission, paid for by tax dollars. I have ever right to demand my money be used wisely. And its flight is public policy. The astronauts didn’t pay for it. They are not tourists but government employees.
And finally, the astronauts have chosen: They choose to fly. It just isn’t their decision.
My first thought, was after circling the moon, and returning to earth orbit – couldn’t the Orion capsule dock at ISS? This would allow time to inspect the capsule and have it return to earth with cargo. The astronauts could return aboard a flight proven SpaceX capsule. This would seem a much safer and incremental method of moving forward, now that we have a space station versus the early Apollo days.
Surely they do have a docking capability built into the Orion capsule as a contingency plan?!? Just in case?……
I like jburns idea.
Read the Op-Ed. I know the Artemis schedule is familiar to many here, but I had not known that NASA was planning on two years between Lunar missions. Two years? Let’s see: Apollo 8 in 1968. By 1970, five additional missions, four to the Moon, two on the surface, landing four people. Now, NASA for sure dodged major bullets with it’s accelerated schedule, and Apollo was tremendously lucky that Apollo 13 was the worst in-flight incident, but, come on.
Liked that you used the term ChiCom. Blood pressure will be raised among those most deserving.
I’ve had several positions where we were mandated reporters. We had to report to either Adult Protective Services (APS) or Child Protective Services (CPS). The abuse could take many forms: physical, financial, neglect, etc.
Allowing breathing humans to travel in an untested vehicle (life support system) with a problematic safety system (heat shield) would automatically trigger an APS report.
jburns: The orbital mechanics prevent docking. More significant, even after almost two decades of development and more than $20 billion, Lockheed Martin has not yet installed docking equipment on Orion. It can’t dock to anything.
Plus NASA wants the fastest return speed possible so the capsule doesn’t need any extra fuel to slow down, which would give it a chance of docking.
ISS 17150 mph
Orion 24600 mph
Apollo 25000 mph
It would need to carry enough extra fuel to slow down 7000 mph.
Neither can Lunar Starship because it doesn’t exist. And Orion has an escape tower and is safe.
You just can’t stand the fact that Old Space is going to get humans in cis-lunar space before two tech-bros with nearly a trillion apiece.
To trot out that old heat-shield pic–that’s something MSNBC would do.
That $20 billion went to American workers… that is a good thing. It didn’t require five thousand American kids to die–some of whom didn’t have a choice due to stop-loss.
Right now, broke socialist DPRK has ICBMs that fly higher and faster than fight-jocks in NGAD…but it is SLS/Orion you want to attack?
To jburns.
This mission is much more energetic, though it will be a bit different than Artemis I
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MlhgjxlxKy8&pp=ygUWQXBvbGxvIDggdnMgQXJ0ZW1pcyBJSQ%3D%3D
Arty II is about to be rolled out, and it has NewSpace apologists scared –that’s what is really going on here.
This is our team. We are about to get on the bus and put a hobnail boot to negativity:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke6XX8FHOHM&pp=ygUWQXBvbGxvIDggdnMgQXJ0ZW1pcyBJSQ%3D%3D
I told you before…if folks can’t be at us on the field–they will try to slash the bus tires and hide it behind “safety.”
America needs this moment of can-do victory what with recent events. Don’t let anyone take this victory away.
WE ARE GOING
Jeff Wright wrote, “To trot out that old heat-shield pic–that’s something MSNBC would do.”
Except that NASA has done NOTHING to correct the problems shown in that heat shield pic. It still applies. That it embarrasses you and you wish it would be forgotten and when it isn’t throw out insults to try to discourage people from seeing it is even more reason to show it to people.
You appear to be a guy at Marshall, working for NASA. Everything you have written on my webpage relating to engineering and safety and efficiency and practical design has illustrated why no one in their right mind should hire anyone from Marshall, especially you, to design or build anything, and includes things as simple as a toaster.
It was someone like you who demanded Challenger fly, despite the o-ring issues, and that no one should look close at the foam on Columbia while it was in orbit. You would have said, inc CAPS, “WE ARE GOING”. And so people die.
Great work, Bob.
Perhaps it won’t avail. But someone needs to keep saying it.
Hello Jeff,
“And Orion has an escape tower and is safe.”
That escape tower gets ejected long before the Orion comes in for atmospheric reentry, I’m afraid.
Jeff Wright observed:
“America needs this moment of can-do victory what with recent events. Don’t let anyone take this victory away.
WE ARE GOING”
My friend, we have already been, and well on the way to return. I would see American presence on the Moon established with the force of the Allied Fleet off Normandy, rather than a few prospectors. America is well-positioned for the future Manifest Destiny, hell, we’ve laid the groundwork. Established LEO economy, the cheapest orbital access around, a space station (soon to have our choice), some experience building on-orbit, and boots-on-the-ground experience on the Moon. Can-do? We have can-done, and looking for more.
The heat shield is the big concern. I’m not so worried about the ECLSS. On Artemis II Orion launches into an elliptical orbit, spends 24 hours doing systems checkouts, then does an apogee raising burn, and then another 24 hours of systems checkouts before trans-lunar injection. They will have enough residual air to abort to Earth if the ECLSS fails in this phase.
Now, if the ECLSS fails on day three, however, I think the astronauts might be screwed.
”My first thought, was after circling the moon, and returning to earth orbit…”
Orion does not — cannot — return to Earth orbit from the moon.
”Surely they do have a docking capability built into the Orion capsule as a contingency plan?”
No. Orion doesn’t receive a docking port until Artemis III. There’s no need. There is nothing for it to dock to where it is going.
”I had not known that NASA was planning on two years between Lunar missions.”
Only at the start. NASA is planning annual missions from 2030 on.
”If both work this spring…Artemis III can do the manned lunar fly-around in 2028, and Artemis IV can do the landing a year or two later.”
If the heat shield works, the new Artemis III should be ready to fly about a year from now. The SLS core stage for Artemis III has begun final assembly and should be delivered by the end of the year. The rest of the SLS is already complete, and the Orion for Artemis III has had its initial power-on and appears to be able to meet this schedule. The suits should be ready as well, though they wouldn’t be needed. NASA’s really only waiting on a lander.
Given the go-ahead now, I’m pretty sure the SLS for the new Artemis IV could be delivered by mid-2028, in time to meet the date for the current Artemis III. I’m less sure about Orion, but I still suspect the biggest hold-up would still be the lander.
Meaning: I think making Artemis II unmanned would have no effect on the date of the landing if all goes well.
I just now read the article. Your strategy is sound: sticking with the mission and astro safety and not getting into just how awful Orion is.
It is a very good article – I hope it has an impact.
Putting astros on that thing is lunacy. Dead or injured astros will halt the program: even if you were determined to beat the Chinese, this is too risky. Also politically risky for NASA and for Trump, and Isaacman.
Jeff Wright: Generally I ignore your writing as it is the result of a severe case of TDS, Musk-hate, and just plain idiocy. But what you’ve written here is either the maunderings of a lunatic or you write just to agitate people whether you believe what you write or not. Maybe you write your tripe just to get responses so that you know you exist….so that SOMEONE will pay attention to you
Either way, you’re a fool and anything you write in the future will be utterly ignored by me.
I wish people like Jeff would acknowledge that safety isn’t a binary, and that it’s best demonstrated by experience versus simulations. We can do a lot with computers, and we should, but it’s no replacement for flight testing. Simulations only show you whatever you were smart enough to put in. The real world will show you all that and what you didn’t anticipate. To adapt a phrase, reality cannot be fooled. Technologies like a launch abort system are not awful, but neither are they foolproof. They’re a stopgap measure until we have truly reliable spacecraft. Partial reuse is only a start towards getting there-full reuse (unlike Shuttle, which was refurbishable rather than reusable) is what we need.
I hope Artemis II flies successfully, I don’t want anything to happen to the astronauts. But I also hope that the diehard defenders recognize the system’s shortcomings and limits, and how insuperable they are. If you care about civilian spaceflight (versus private or military), you should focus less on ego, “winning,” and tribal thinking, and more on what goals are worth spending other people’s money on, and what roles the government can legitimately have. In my opinion, such roles are narrower than SLS advocates desire.
Here’s the thing.
If NASA did keep the crew from flying–SLS/Orion haters would then turn around and use that against NASA too.
Saville who?
I don’t hate Musk. I am glad that Greens don’t have a friend in this White House. And while I don’t think Starship will EVER be safe for humans–I don’t want a win by sabotaging HIS chances under the aegis of safety.
He and NASA both deserve a free hand.
But go right on and keep trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
I understand Mr. Zimmerman wrote for AP.
A good reporter might want to make public which vehicle survived the longest during burst tests. SLS survived for hours at 260% times flight loads.
Starship?
Armageddon
“You guys are NASA” scene
https://youtu.be/_B7MzBmjaJ8
0:32
“Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.”
(attributed to Wyatt Earp)
As Nate says:
“We can do a lot with computers, and we should, but it’s no replacement for flight testing. Simulations only show you whatever you were smart enough to put in. The real world will show you all that and what you didn’t anticipate.”
It is worth recalling that the Apollo program — despite its brutal time constraints — managed to do 16 test launches of Saturn rockets (I, II, IB, and V) and five orbital test flights of the Apollo command and service module before it put human beings on a crewed Apollo Saturn flight (Apollo 7) in October 1968.
That’s not as hardware rich of a program as SpaceX has been doing, let alone how new aircraft development programs typically work. But it’s far more than NASA is doing with SLS and Orion. And we all know why that is.
Overall it seems like the worst outcome would destroy the credibility of everyone: NASA, Lockheed, Trump, Isaacman, and the American space program in general, while the best outcome will see us continue our wasting of titanic amounts of money on dead-end technology.
So who seeded NASA with CCP moles? Bizarre? Okay, let’s say just they were really there, what would be different?!
Yeah. They didn’t have near the hubris NASA has today when it comes to safety. I recall on some other websites people who should know better (being in aviation) praising NASA’s development approach, while impugning SpaceX’s. I get the idea that they believe that once a rocket is fully stacked, development is over, and no real refinement or improvement is possible.
NASA does not deserve a free hand. It has to be responsible to the citizenry, and part of that isn’t taking foolish risks when their programs are so hardware-poor. Setbacks risks program cancelation, or at the very least multiyear delays, meaning many additional billions of dollars would be thrown away trying to improve a program that will never give us a reward equal to our expenditure of time, people, and resources. Starship, conversely, has plenty of room for error without it being devastating to program health, thanks to how it was designed, how it’s being manufactured, and its flight rate. SpaceX can find its real limits through testing, which is precisely what they’re doing.
Jeff Wright: can you defend your position that Starship will never be safe for manned flight? Such a significant claim should be backed by a rigorous argument.
To expand on Richard M’s comment:
Apollo 7 – was an test of Apollo’s CSM systems – in Earth orbit. If anything went wrong with any major systems, like the life support system, they could abort to Earth.
Apollo 8 – A huge audacious risk – because the Apollo LM wasn’t ready yet. Lunar orbit mission after a single, successful test of the CSM.
Apollo 9 – Earth orbit test of Apollo CSM and LM, undocking, flight and docking. Successful. If any major sytems on either CSM or LM had problems they could abort & return to Earth.
Apollo 10 – Lunar orbit dress rehearsal for Apollo 11. To make sure that the CSM & LM worked in deep space/lunar orbit.
Apollo 11 – Successful lunar landing.
Now:
Artemis 1 – Lunar retrograde orbit test of Orion spacecraft & service module. Did not have fully capable life support system. Heat shield did not fail, but had major problems. Even after FOIA requests, the report on the heat shield was fully redacted. If this were Apollo, the people at NASA would insist on another Earth orbit test – of a fully capable life support system and the heat shield.
If Atremis 2 fails because of faults in either life support or the heat shield, and lives are lost, the investigation will take months and any redesigns and new sytems will take a couple of years at least. They’ve already wasted 3 years not making any redesign/manufacture of a new heat shield. It is simply not worth risking the lives of four astronauts no matter how gung-ho they and others are. I don’t want to see 4 more names added to the Astronaut Memorial at KSC.
Jeff Wright,
“Neither can Lunar Starship because it doesn’t exist.”
It is under construction as we speak. Which you should know as you’ve been reminded of this often enough.
“And Orion has an escape tower and is safe.”
Well, it does have an escape tower. Said tower is there mainly to compensate for any anomaly involving the SLS SRBs. It departs while the core stage is still boosting and, thus, provides no protection at all during the majority of core stage burn and all of 2nd stage burn. In that respect it is exactly as safe as Starship will be during its entire ascent – or would be if the whole SLS-Orion stack could be tested to the same degree. Starship needs no giant firework to drag it away from misbehaving SRBs because it doesn’t have any SRBs.
“You just can’t stand the fact that Old Space is going to get humans in cis-lunar space before two tech-bros with nearly a trillion apiece.”
The two tech bros in question have about a trillion in combo, not apiece. But, hey, by the time they’ve each gotten Americans to the Moon, they might well have a trillion apiece. Elon will probably get there – and beyond – sometime this year.
Getting humans to cis-lunar space – very loosely defined – is not really the name of the game. That would be landing on the Moon. OldSpace did that six times before it got old, but isn’t going to do it even once – or ever – in its currently decrepit condition.
“That $20 billion went to American workers… that is a good thing.”
It would have been a lot better if those workers had produced something remotely worth what they were paid. Someone who works at SpaceX pushing humanity to the stars is more worthy of his pay than someone at MSFC who gets paid for the equivalent of digging holes then filling them up again.
“It didn’t require five thousand American kids to die–some of whom didn’t have a choice due to stop-loss.”
What, pray tell, do the past idiocies of American foreign policy have to do with going to the Moon? Or is it your belief that Elon is somehow responsible for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars?
“Arty II is about to be rolled out, and it has NewSpace apologists scared –that’s what is really going on here.”
Yes, it has us scared that we’re going to needlessly lose four more astronauts on a vehicle that hasn’t remotely been tested sufficiently. I would be glad to see it fly ASAP so long as it flies without a crew aboard.
Outsider: That looks dangerous.
SLS: CLICK. See Russian roulette is perfectly safe’
Outsider: I must have blinked, show me again.
SLS: BANG