Artemis 1 LOI Live stream.

[wiggy]

..or "Powered flyby" in 21st century speak now up and running, actual burn due at 1244 UTC, 0744 Eastern.

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/#public

[India Four Two]

Imminent splashdown Sunday 1740Z.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63907649

[NineEighteen]

Those views of the Earth from the capsule are stunning! Fingers crossed all goes smoothly and an emboldened NASA pushes forward for a crewed mission as soon as logistically possible!

0918

[wiggy]

Those views of the Earth from the capsule are stunning! Fingers crossed all goes smoothly and an emboldened NASA pushes forward for a crewed mission as soon as logistically possible!

0918

I think unfortunately the main pacing item remains costs/budget, rather than logistics...

(BTW coincidence or not today marks the 50th anniversary of the last manned Moon landing).

[meleagertoo]

So Orion is back after a flawless mission and NASA's abilities are clearly right back to where they ought to be. Hurrah!

But what slayed me - and why should it not have done, I might have expected it? - was that NASA's high altitude eyes on the event in the stratosphere were no more than a Canberra! An old English Electric pre-cold-war Canberra! Oooh-bloody-rah and then some!

OK, a much developed YB57 variant but recognisably and fundamentally a Canberra nonetheless, Britain's first ever jet bomber who's first flight was within 5 years of the end of WW2, a design that obliterated all US contemporaries (as Uncle Sam gratefully - and unprecedentedly - acknowleged by buying fleets of them) and was only retired from the RAF some 20 years ago so unique was its capabilities. Unique and essential capabilities the RAF thus lost altogether to this day, I hasten to add...

Von Braun and the V2 were a great and fundamental part of NASA's legacy but in the early '50s, contemporary with the Canberra you were still shooting V2s for test - and who'd ever have guessed that the same basic barely-post-WW2 pioneering first-generation jet airframe would still be at the cutting edge of NASA's inventory seventy years later. Rather unlike the V2...Imagine that being in any way a part of the new lunar or mars programmes?

I'm not crowing (much) about British technology, but you have to marvel that an airframe that was no spring chicken even at the time of Apollo is still, today, a vital player an entire lifetime later and still doing cutting-edge service in the most technologically advanced field known to mankind.

And like the Buff, being flown by guys whose grandfathers, almost great grandfathers could have flown the early models...

In the new Lunar progrmme! Just wow!

Feel free to correct me if my timescale is wrong, but this is roughly equivalent to Wrights, Bleriots, Deperdussins and Glenn Curtis's earliest efforts supporting the Apollo programme! Presumably the Sopwith Camel was being kept for the next decade for Mars landings? And as for the Vimy...maybe assisting some Saturn moon mission?
Imagine a Wright Flyer circling pad 39A or loitering at flight-level nosebleed over Hornet that momentous day in 1969 passing data back to Mission Control?...

We've just seen the exact equivalent today!

Just bloody WOW!

[HOVIS]

That could be the most enthusiastic and positive thing I've ever read on PPRUNE. 😁 👍
Agree 100% by the way.

[ChrisVJ]

Isn't anyone a little surprised by the Hoo-Ha and delight of the pundits? Basically, although the tech might be updated, haven't we just repeated what we managed over fifty years ago? Doesn't seem like much to crow about.
The shuttle might have been not quite the direction for easiest exploration but at least it seemed like progress. I'd think by now it would be shuttling modules the size of double deck buses to the moon/
The pictures of the splash down could have been straight from the sixties. Maybe Artemis is a conspiracy and never went round the moon? Anybody?

[NineEighteen]

Isn't anyone a little surprised by the Hoo-Ha and delight of the pundits? Basically, although the tech might be updated, haven't we just repeated what we managed over fifty years ago? Doesn't seem like much to crow about.

Yes. Precisely because NASA didn’t push forward fifty years ago. Lack of political support, rather than lack of ambition, I’m sure. There is little choice other than to repeat the process as a potential step towards further human exploration of the Solar System.

0918

[treadigraph]

I think unfortunately the main pacing item remains costs/budget, rather than logistics...

(BTW coincidence or not today marks the 50th anniversary of the last manned Moon landing).
Coincidentally just started watching "The Last Man on the Moon" last night, hadn't realised it was the 50th this week. Watch the rest tonight.

[Jhieminga]

Isn't anyone a little surprised by the Hoo-Ha and delight of the pundits? Basically, although the tech might be updated, haven't we just repeated what we managed over fifty years ago? Doesn't seem like much to crow about.
The shuttle might have been not quite the direction for easiest exploration but at least it seemed like progress. I'd think by now it would be shuttling modules the size of double deck buses to the moon/
The pictures of the splash down could have been straight from the sixties. Maybe Artemis is a conspiracy and never went round the moon? Anybody?
Yes, we repeated what we managed over fifty years ago but we did it with a mostly new rocket, a new capsule and unmanned. Also, a lot of the knowledge we gained over fifty years ago has been forgotten, in a sense we're rediscovering that knowledge.

The shuttle was way too heavy to get beyond low earth orbit. It was also a flawed design in that several risks were accepted for years until they showed up in dramatic fashion.

[wiggy]

The shuttle was way too heavy to get beyond low earth orbit.

True, the original idea (late sixties) was that the Shuttle was just one component in a Space Transport System that would allow return to the Moon and flight beyond...

Space Transport System (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Transportation_System)

[averow]

Absolutely a magnificent airframe!!! Speaks well to the solid design and build of the original airplanes. I have never seen one in person, and perhaps never will. Not too many left and one thinks that they take off and land most of the time at remote, large airfields.