The new “news” about the Artemis 2 mission is that it is going to be delayed, it was scheduled to be launched in February and it is possible that it will not be launched in March either due to an incident, as far as possible it is fine because since there will be humans inside that ship, it is not like the previous Artemis 1 mission, where no one went, only some mannequins went and a few things went to do tests on how the ship worked, but in this case there are going to be humans, so everything has to work well.
There are a million things that can go wrong and those million things have to work perfectly because there is also no plan B, if something happens to them out there, only they will be there to react and solve the problem with assistance, obviously from Earth, if possible, as happened with the Apollo XIII mission, let's hope that nothing bad happens.
In science you should not depend on luck, but in this case, the luck factor matters, there are a lot of things, new technologies, new elements, everything has to work perfectly. And what went wrong this time? It was a problem with the helium supply for the cryonicization system, it is basically the cooling of the ship, it was during a test that was carried out during the night of February 21.
The helium flow switch on the rocket's temporary cryogenic propulsion stage failed and at this point it is unknown what is happening, there is a good chance that they will end up sending the entire structure, that is, the rocket and the ship back to the hangar for a thorough inspection. The Artemis 2 mission will last approximately 10 days, its objective is to reach the orbit of the Moon and return to Earth, but without landing on the Moon.
Its purpose is to test the ship and all the life support equipment, it will be the next mission, Artemis 3, the one that will carry American humans, in this case the lunar surface, it will be the first time in this century, in principle it was announced for 2026, then for 2027, but NASA recently updated the schedule due to various technical challenges and now it would be in 2028 and I am not so clear that it will be in 2028 because the eh would have to be ready StarShip HLS, the landing Starship, a version of the StarShip to land on the moon and things are not going very well.
It is possible that it will not be in 2028, but in 2029 and it may more or less coincide with the date on which China plans to take its astronauts to the lunar surface in 2030.
I personally do not believe that the SLS rocket is going to take humans or Americans again to the lunar surface, but I do not believe that it will be the rocket with which the international Artemis program builds its lunar base and periodically takes astronauts, thus scientists to the moon, not at all, that rocket is hyper expensive, it is a black hole of dollars, they will surely move on to another model of rocket or something else, but it does not make sense, this rocket is not going to be used to build a base on the moon, it would be a ruin and I am not exaggerating about the expenses that It would mean, at least how they have it designed, a lunar base with rotating teams of people entering, leaving, etc., it would be brutal expenses and I don't think this is the rocket.
Now it is going to be the rocket that takes astronauts from the United States to the lunar surface in the Artemis 3 program, that is clear and it has to go well, it has to work well, but in any case there is a question, but the fact is that 2030 is going to be a crucial year, it is going to be a very important year in the history of this century, because in 2030 the following may happen, China may be ahead and of course, it is not just a space race. Here we return again to the theme of political propaganda, the propaganda of civilization, the clash of civilizations and the change of world powers.
How do you think the citizens of the United States would react if after all the money spent, about 100 billion dollars in total, I am talking about since 2004, because in 2004 George Bush proposed the constellation program, which was exactly this, returning to the Moon and establishing a permanent base there, that was the constellation program, then Obama suspended it due to the economic crisis and then Donald Trump recycled what there was of that constellation program and created the program Artemis opening it to other nations.
But after all this time and those around 100,000 million dollars that are going to be spent with the arrival of the Artemis 3 together, dollars that come from public money and lately also from the public money of Europeans, Japanese, Canadians, etc. What would happen if in the end they saw that China reached the Moon first in this century and also for much less than half the money of that investment? What do you think can happen? Will there be a political reaction? There will be a request for financial responsibilities, a review of accounts, the entire space and technology industry will be rethought, I really have serious doubts and it could be a tremendous turnaround.
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