Apollo VS Artemis script! (It’s LONG)

But what might be surprising is each vehicle’s mass. The Orion "capsule and its service module are 26,520 kg fully fueled which is actually lighter than the Apollo Capsule and Service Module which are 28,800 kg." - Apollo reference should be past tense - "which were"

Mark Gray

One very minor writing style point - Moon, as in Earth's Moon or the Moon, is a proper noun, so it gets a capital M. Other moons don't.

Mark Gray

can we get a patreon livestream please please

Note that in all your mentioned cases on Apollo 11, 12, 13 and 15, redundancy saved the day. It's often better have many of something (engines, power circuits, parachutes, CO2 scrubbers) so that there is a solution if one fails. Of course, redundancy usually introduces complexity, but if part of the design from the beginning, in some cases it can mean the total system is simpler (e.g. Falcon 9's engines, which usually allow a failure or 1 or 2 of them, and their size allows relatively easy replacement).

Dang. If you ever go back to college those 5 page reports will be child's play now.

Greg

Good Script!!!

Lunar Starship could stay as habitat or return to Lunar Gateway, refuel and repeat. there is nothing intrinsicly preventing Starship tankers from going to Lunar Gateway.

Can you add percentages ass well as statistics when comparing systems? e.g. Artemis @ 9 m^3 is almost 50 % larger than Appollo. Artemis crew @ 4 is 1/3 larger than apollo. Crew to Moon soubles under Artemis compared to Apollo.

Tim, Several Comments and notes.

”if Artemis fully pans out and utilizes its full potential, it could be over 10 times cheaper human dollar per hour on the surface of the moon than the Apollo program.” Suggestion: ”if Artemis fully pans out and utilizes its full potential, the cost per hour on the surface of the moon could be 10 times cheaper than for the Apollo program”

Hi Tim & team, here are some notes on another terrify and enthusiastic script. Hope the length of notes isn’t intimidating – they just reflect the length of script! P3, para 10 to P4 para 1+2 “This means the Orion capsule and service module have much less dV, or the ability to change its velocity than the Apollo Command and Service module. In fact the Orion Capsule and service module doesn’t have enough dV to get into and out of low lunar orbit with only around 1,200 m/s of dV vs the Apollo capsule and service module which had over twice as much, around 2,800 m/s of dV. Delta V is how much a spacecraft can change its velocity. It’s a combination of the mass of the vehicle, payload and the propellant, mixed with the amount of fuel available and the efficiency of the engine. Think of it like the range of a car which factors in the efficiency of the engine, the size of the fuel tank and how much the car needs to push around.” Suggestion (explain dV before using it in sentence): In practice this means the Orion capsule and service module have much less ability to change its velocity than the Apollo Command and Service module. This velocity is measured as Delta V. It’s a combination of the mass of the vehicle, payload and the propellant, mixed with the amount of fuel available and the efficiency of the engine. Think of it like the range of a car which factors in the efficiency of the engine, the size of the fuel tank and how much the car needs to push around. In fact the Orion Capsule and service module doesn’t have enough dV to get into and out of low lunar orbit with only around 1,200 m/s of dV vs the Apollo capsule and service module which had over twice as much, around 2,800 m/s of dV. P6, para 10 “Now we should note, we’re going to show you approximately what the eventual standard flight profile of SLS getting into Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit. But as of right now, the first two and maybe 3 missions to the moon will either be fly-bys or slightly different orbits until the Lunar Gateway is parked there.” Suggestion (avoid saying Halo orbit until ready to explain): As of right now, the first two and maybe 3 missions to the moon will either be fly-bys or slightly different orbits until the Lunar Gateway is parked there. But we’re going to show you approximately what the eventual standard flight profile of SLS will be, called a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit. P8, para 2 “As those of you that have played Kerbal Space Program know, you actually raise your orbit at a ahead of where the moon is currently, specifically 67 degrees ahead, and thanks to orbital mechanics, your spacecraft will get to the moon at the same time as when the moon gets there.” Suggestion (missing word, and precis): As those of you that have played Kerbal Space Program know, you actually raise your orbit aiming at a point ahead of where the moon is currently, specifically 67 degrees ahead, and thanks to orbital mechanics, your spacecraft will get there at the same time as the moon. P9, paras 10-11 “Because the Apollo missions generally aimed for a free return trajectory, their initial apogee around Earth was higher, which although that means a longer total orbital period, it means they got to the moon quicker than Artemis will. This is pretty different from the Artemis missions which again will take a few more days to get to the moon, because it’s apogee will exactly match the height of the moon’s orbit around Earth, as opposed to going beyond it which counter intuitively makes Artemis a slower trip to the moon.” Note: this yellow highlighted section in the script probably shows you’re still working on it, as the para 11 doubles up the “Artemis is different” line. I just wanted to comment that I don’t understand why a higher apogee in Apollo would mean a different orbit around the moon. Isn’t it just a matter of where they aim to rendezvous with the moon? Orbital mechanics rabbit hole? P12, para 2 “After Apollo 1 a pure oxygen environment was reconsidered after a complete loss of crew before it even flew, which really changed the pace and safety considerations of NASA.” Suggestion (I know most people know this, but maybe add the word “fire”) After Apollo 1 a pure oxygen environment was reconsidered after a fire led to the complete loss of the crew before it even flew, which really changed the pace and safety considerations of NASA. P12, para 10 “But as the Space Shuttle program was being laid out, NASA changed the way they certified and calculated risk.” Suggestion (“laid out” suggests the design stage, is this correct or did you mean as the Space Shuttle program was progressing?) Hope this was helpful! Simon.

pretty good!

Just finished reading the script. It is a very impressive analysis of the programs and players. I am not qualified to judge the technical aspects, but your presentation is clear, logically presented and easily understandable for those of us who are not engineers. You did a great job.

Could Δv be used on the text instead of dV?

if I'm not mistaken this: "There’s three main vehicles for Apollo and Artemis." Should be: "There are three..."

I'd suggest removing this bit: "At best, SLS’s costs are irresponsible and frustrating, at worst it’s a blatant misuse of taxpayer money and feels borderline criminal." NASA is a discretionary government program and this creates perverse incentives such that all senators want to spend some of that budget in their state. This isn't NASA's fault. It's just the way the government spends its money. You already pointed out that the real difference comes from the style of contract management, from the cost-plus military-style contacts to fixed-price contacts that are working well today. Ultimately, though, it's the senators who decide how much to spend and NASA is a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the federal budget.

Thomas Maufer

Minor typo: "Aeroject" should be "Aerojet", right?

Thomas Maufer

Suggestion: consider changing "human dollar per hour" to "dollars per human*hour".

Thomas Maufer

Minor typo: "costs over runs" should be "cost overruns".

Thomas Maufer

One more typo: "sleak" should be "sleek".

Thomas Maufer

Found a typo: "line of site" should be "line of sight" (this only makes a difference for the article version of the video, obviously!).

Thomas Maufer

This looks great so far! One comment: At "equatorial-ish" you might want to take a minute to explain the reason for the very different orbits. tl;dr: AIUI, the goal with Artemis is to explore and eventually occupy the polar regions which seem to have lots of water ice. As an aside, while water ice is a great source of rocket fuel (solar energy is available almost continuously for the whole lunar day, which we call a month) can break up water into Hydrogen and Oxygen, which can be used as rocket fuel. Big question: This doesn't help methalox rockets. I presume they will have to build local methane storage at the moon base, like the Boca Chica tank farm. Right? This alone might need to be it's own video: Lunar Base Operations.

Thomas Maufer

Be careful between 'its and it's' They mean different things.

Hey Tim, Well done on the 'stack the 1b x $1 bills and reach space' - I'm getting ~109km assuming a sigle one to be .0043in in thickness (Kármán line = 100km). Can't wait for the episode 👍

A couple of other thoughts: While "rebuilding the Saturn V" seems like it would have been a better alternative to the SLS in many ways, that wouldn't have been successful either. Just because we have access to the Saturn V blueprints doesn't mean we have access to the Saturn V supply chain: if the blueprints call for widget X from company Y, if company Y has been out of business for decades, there's no way to get exactly the same part. Plus, the manufacturing techniques are also lost to history, to a much greater extent than with the SLS. If SLS wasn't the right answer, rebuilding the Saturn V wouldn't have been either: only a clean-sheet design could have avoided these issues. But as you outlined in your previous video, there were very strong political reasons for NASA to not make that choice (and the history of failed clean-sheet designs, like VentureStar, demonstrates that political risk can kill a project just as easily as technical risk). Also, you didn't touch on the Gateway that much, which I think is probably for the best: I have very little understanding of what the Gateway does that increases safety or sustainability of lunar expeditions. I guess the Gateway could force the SLS to continue to be used long after it's outshined by Starship, and thus bring the cost-per-mission of each SLS launch down, but "forcing the use of the older, more expensive launcher instead of the newer launcher" sounds like the opposite of sustainability, to me. Emphasizing the commercial nature of the HLS component, and maybe hinting at how the HLS part is actually completely disconnected from the SLS and thus could still be an important part of a post-SLS Artemis program (I'm sure the third part of this series will dive into that in more depth), was a good editorial decision. Oh, and speaking of your third video, I'm sure you've seen Eric Berger's article (which mostly comments on Robert Zubrin's editorial) on the topic, but some in this thread may not have: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/could-a-dragon-spacecraft-fly-humans-to-the-moon-its-complicated/ The challenges discussed in that article are very real, and for political reasons I doubt that NASA would just give everything to SpaceX to create an Earth-to-NRHO craft (although I have fantasies about Northrup Grumman and Thales Alenia building a craft which launches on a Vulcan and rendezvous with a Crew Dragon in orbit to become the full lunar transfer vehicle...maybe that would spread the contracts around enough), but it's an interesting read nonetheless.

Randall Wald

And to follow-up, great script. Looking forward to seeing this.

"Not to mention you can’t really have scrubs, delays because of weather and lots of other considerations when your propellant can boil off it the refueling isn’t done in a timely manner." I don't have sources to back this up offhand, but I recall reading that methalox has like 5% boiloff per month. So you don't want to be putting these things up years in advance, and the shear number of refueling tankers needed might mean that a week or two of bad weather throws off your whole schedule, but I don't think boiloff per se is going to be the biggest problem.

Randall Wald

“And Artemis can potentially take up to 4 astronauts to the moon at a time for up to two weeks per mission, if Artemis fully pans out and utilizes its full potential, it could be over 10 times cheaper human dollar per hour on the surface of the moon than the Apollo program. “ Did you mean “...cheaper in terms of dollars per human hour...”? Maybe I am reading wrong but double-check.

Make sure everyone realizes where the lander rode, a lot of graphics don’t show that. Also It took something like over 80 separate engines to make the Apollo 11 mission successful. What’s that number look like vs Artemis? I just skimmed I don’t know if that was in there for sure are.

"And yeah, of course the computers on Orion are substantially upgraded from computers from 50 years ago, as you would expect. Orion’s computer is around 1,000 times more powerful and more redundant than the Apollo computers." If that's true, that's actually really disappointing. Moore's Law says that computing power doubles every two years, so over the course of 50 years, you'd expect 2^25, or 33,554,432 times as much computing power, not just 1,000 times. Even if you observe that Moore's Law hasn't been so effective the past few years, and that Orion isn't using the absolute most cutting-edge computing hardware, it should still be around 40 "Moore's Law years," or 1,048,576x, ahead of the Apollo era computers.

Randall Wald

In the Price of Progress section, you mention the SRB's connection to the Omega program. Is it worth a mention that that program looks like it's about to be canceled, so the 2.4B is literally for refurbishing some cans, bolting on a 5th segment, and putting new rubber in them?

Cool! And I have a voice to go with it. First impression is needs some commas, then I realize you'll be doing this awesomely. But great research and info

That’s a lot LOL