Subject: ?All eyes on Orion?s heat shield: Artemis 2 astronauts will hit Earth's atmosphere at nearly 24,000 mph on April 10?

?All eyes on Orion?s heat shield: Artemis 2 astronauts will hit Earth's atmosphere at nearly 24,000 mph on April 10?

https://www.space.com/space-exploration/artemis/all-eyes-on-orions-heat-shield-artemis-2-astronauts-will-hit-earths-atmosphere-at-a-record-breaking-25-000-mph-on-april-10

?Now that NASA Artemis 2 mission has rounded the moon, taking astronauts
Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen farther
from the Earth than any astronauts before them, the journey home is
underway. What awaits them when they reenter Earth's atmosphere??

"The final 100 or so miles of their 695,081-mile (1,118,624 kilometers) journey are potentially the most dangerous. At about 75 miles (120 km)
above Earth, Artemis 2's Orion capsule will enter our atmosphere at an estimated 23,840 mph (38,367 kph). That's fast enough to fly from New
York to Tokyo in less than 20 minutes, were the capsule heading in that direction. Instead, it will be on target for a splashdown Friday evening (April 10), in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego."

"What follows once it enters the atmosphere are eight dramatic minutes."

?These main parachutes will slow the capsule's descent to less than 20
mph (32 kph), gentle enough for a successful splashdown in the Pacific
Ocean off the coast of San Diego on Friday at 8:07 p.m. EDT (5:07 p.m.
local time; 1207 GMT on April 11).?

Lynn


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Subject: Re: ?All eyes on Orion?s heat shield: Artemis 2 astronauts will hit Earth's atmosphere at nearly 24,000 mph on April 10?

So they made it. (Sigh of relief.)

My worry is, the Artemis flights are extremely expensive. Is there any
plan for what happens after Artemis IV?

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Subject: Re: ?All eyes on Orion?s heat shield: Artemis 2 astronauts will hit Earth's atmosphere at nearly 24,000 mph on April 10?

On 4/10/2026 9:17 PM, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

So they made it. (Sigh of relief.)

My worry is, the Artemis flights are extremely expensive. Is there any
plan for what happens after Artemis IV?

Turn the Artemis money over to SpaceX.

Lynn


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Subject: Re: ?All eyes on Orion?s heat shield: Artemis 2 astronauts will hit Earth's atmosphere at nearly 24,000 mph on April 10?

On 2026-04-11, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

So they made it. (Sigh of relief.)

My worry is, the Artemis flights are extremely expensive. Is there any
plan for what happens after Artemis IV?

Human spaceflight *is* expensive.

Last time, the decision was to go with a reusable design in a project
(STS) that was then IIRC narrowed down to include just the subset
allowing launch to orbit and return (STS' Space Shuttle), as opposed to
the whole collection including a space station, and which ended up also
being expensive to operate, making it so that expendable equipment may
look not so comparatively prohibitive.

--
Nuno Silva

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Subject: Re: Re: ?All eyes on Orion?s heat shield: Artemis 2 astronauts will hit Earth's atmosphere at nearly 24,000 mph on April 10?

Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:

On 4/10/2026 9:17 PM, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

So they made it. (Sigh of relief.)

My worry is, the Artemis flights are extremely expensive. Is there any
plan for what happens after Artemis IV?

Turn the Artemis money over to SpaceX.

Then you're stuck with a single-source dependency again. But it would be
good to see the government getting out of the operations business and being able to put money into more fundamental development work.

Turning everything over to a single contractor not only gives you the single-source issue, but it's also a recipe for regulatory capture. Doing
at least some work in-house means an opportunity to develop in-house
expertise so you have people qualified to manage contractors.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

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Subject: Re: ?All eyes on Orion?s heat shield: Artemis 2 astronauts will hit Earth's atmosphere at nearly 24,000 mph on April 10?

Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Last time, the decision was to go with a reusable design in a project
(STS) that was then IIRC narrowed down to include just the subset
allowing launch to orbit and return (STS' Space Shuttle), as opposed to
the whole collection including a space station, and which ended up also
being expensive to operate, making it so that expendable equipment may
look not so comparatively prohibitive.

The Shuttle had too many missions. It was going to be a research platform
to test out the latest technology but it was also going to be a reliable
craft for scheduled weekly missions ("the DC-3 of space"). The cargo bay
was going to be configured one way for Air Force satellite collection
missions but it had to be configured a different way for the ESA Spacelab.

In the end the Air Force and the ESA couldn't really use it, so there went
two major funding sources. It was too much of a research project to ever
be the DC-3 of space, but the need for reliability made engine research impossible. Nobody was happy.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
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Subject: Re: ?All eyes on Orion?s heat shield: Artemis 2 astronauts will hit Earth's atmosphere at nearly 24,000 mph on April 10?

On 2026-04-11, Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

My worry is, the Artemis flights are extremely expensive. Is there any
plan for what happens after Artemis IV?

Depends. Are the Chinese going to the moon? If not, well, you
know what happened when it became clear that the Soviets weren't
going there.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

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Subject: Re: ?All eyes on Orion?s heat shield: Artemis 2 astronauts will hit Earth's atmosphere at nearly 24,000 mph on April 10?

On 4/10/26 10:17 PM, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

So they made it. (Sigh of relief.)

My worry is, the Artemis flights are extremely expensive. Is there any
plan for what happens after Artemis IV?

There is a plan, and as always, such things are subject to political
oversight and decision making.

The plan is to transition to having a sustained presence on the moon, culminating in long-duration surface stays at a lunar base at the south
pole, projected to be completed by 2032. In late 2028, Artemis V would
start this transition by delivering habitat components, lunar terrain
vehicles (rovers), and power systems.

Much longer term, the living experiences and related technologies tested
at the lunar base are intended to pave the way for human missions to Mars.


Tony

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Subject: Re: ?All eyes on Orion?s heat shield: Artemis 2 astronauts will hit Earth's atmosphere at nearly 24,000 mph on April 10?

On Sat, 11 Apr 2026 10:57:27 -0400 (EDT), Scott Dorsey wrote:

The Shuttle had too many missions. It was going to be a research
platform to test out the latest technology but it was also going to
be a reliable craft for scheduled weekly missions ("the DC-3 of
space"). The cargo bay was going to be configured one way for Air
Force satellite collection missions but it had to be configured a
different way for the ESA Spacelab.

I can distinctly recall, as a child hearing about the early proposals
for the Shuttle, that it would cost as little as $30-something million
per launch.

In reality, it was more like 10 times that. And after the Challenger
disaster, and all the extra protocols put in place as a result, I
think it doubled again, to about three-quarters of a billion dollars
per launch.

I also recall that it had wings (or at least, large wings) as a direct
result of the agreement to get the military to support the project.
Those wings gave it the ability to maneouvre across a broader range
during re-entry, which was an important requirement for carrying
classified payloads: so if one landing strip where the payload could
be safely returned was not available because of weather conditions or
whatever, there would still likely be others accessible within range.

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Subject: Re: ?All eyes on Orion?s heat shield: Artemis 2 astronauts will hit Earth's atmosphere at nearly 24,000 mph on April 10?

On Sat, 11 Apr 2026 16:18:12 -0000 (UTC), Christian Weisgerber wrote:

On 2026-04-11, Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

My worry is, the Artemis flights are extremely expensive. Is there
any plan for what happens after Artemis IV?

Depends. Are the Chinese going to the moon?

They?ve made it quite clear they are.

Are you saying the US will only go to the Moon just to (try to) beat
out anybody else wanting to go there?

Sure, that worked before, when a (relatively) sane Government was in
charge. Not sure about now, though.

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Subject: Re: ?All eyes on Orion?s heat shield: Artemis 2 astronauts will hit Earth's atmosphere at nearly 24,000 mph on April 10?

Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?= <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

I also recall that it had wings (or at least, large wings) as a direct
result of the agreement to get the military to support the project.
Those wings gave it the ability to maneouvre across a broader range
during re-entry, which was an important requirement for carrying
classified payloads: so if one landing strip where the payload could
be safely returned was not available because of weather conditions or >whatever, there would still likely be others accessible within range.

Yes, but unfortunately the USAF guys who laid on that requirement decided
that the long time to get the thing launched made it useless for their application. So no USAF funding, and not even a single launch ever made
from Vandenburg in spite of a lot of money putting into upgrading their facilities to accomodate it.

The USAF guys got fed up with working with NASA at all and commissioned
the X-37 for themselves.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

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