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Witness (lemmy.nz)
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[-] kbobabob@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 months ago

Does anyone know why the rocket needed to be "the most powerful" when it only got them out of Earths atmosphere? Is the crew module just that heavy that it needed it?

[-] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Partially, yeah. Crewed spacecraft by necessity weigh significantly more than uncrewed, because life support is very heavy. But they also want to take that very heavy spacecraft further away from Earth than any crewed spacecraft has ever been before, which means they need to take a lot of fuel; yes, it's a gravity-assisted free-return trajectory, but it still needs fuel for course corrections and other orbital dynamics. Plus, it's a two-stage spacecraft, while the Saturn V was three-stage, so it's got to carry a lot more dead weight a lot further than before.

All of that together means they needed the most powerful rocket ever. The lander mission will almost certainly be even more powerful than that, because while it won't need to go as far, it'll be carrying another spacecraft.

EDIT: Actually, to correct my last statement, potentially not! Turns out the current plan for Artemis IV is to send the lander on ahead and have it waiting in lunar orbit for the astronauts to get there. So potentially all of the Artemis missions could be launched on this same configuration of rocket.

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[-] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 months ago

Obviously fake launch picture. Have you ever noticed that our images of rocket launches increase in quality at nearly the exact same rate that our ability to simulate smoke on graphics cards increases?

It's like they're not even trying.

[-] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 months ago

Yeah but Trump said these astronauts are going "farther from earth than anyone ever has before," tacitly admitting that we never sent astronauts to the moon in the 60's and 70's

[-] Teppa@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

It doesnt matter whether you win by an inch or win by a mile.

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[-] percent@infosec.pub 1 points 4 months ago

I assume they're aware that rockets get launched on a regular basis

[-] Zron@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

That rocket is going to the moon tho

[-] percent@infosec.pub 1 points 4 months ago

Does that matter to them? I assumed not, but I don't really know what they think about rocket launches, so maybe I shouldn't assume

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this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
675 points (97.1% liked)

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