Artemis Launch

[DonR]

Huge Artemis 1 moon rocket blew the doors off NASA's launch tower elevators (video)

'The environment ... is not the friendliest when when you have the world's most powerful rocket lifting off.'

www.space.com

 

[DonR]

Lunar Lander Released by NASA’s Artemis 1 Mission Has Died

The OMOTENASHI (Outstanding MOon exploration TEchnologies demonstrated by NAno Semi-Hard Impactor), a JAXA CubeSat that launched with Artemis I, has failed.

futurism.com

 

[Marc v E]

I see it is going pretty slow in the 900+ mph range. I think Elon Musk will offer them a "Ludicrous" mode to speed it up. Elon is nice that way. Cost to be negotiated but I'm sure it will be very high. Elon is not going to work for free!

I'm under the impression by falcon 9 and dragon that SpaceX will be undercutting rivals by a significant margin.

Iirc Artemis costs in the region of 1 bilion a launch. Starship was projected to be in the region of 3 or 4 million iirc. Current launches to orbit are about 60 million with falcon 9.

 

[JSmith]

Nasa's Orion spacecraft is homeward-bound

The ship fires its main engine near the Moon, committing itself to a return to Earth on Sunday.

www.bbc.com

The vehicle conducted a big engine burn on Monday in the vicinity of the Moon that now commits it to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday.

JSmith

 

[DonR]

tl;dw the ejecta acted like a rocket nozzle... it works!