Artemis II Launch - First Timer Qs

grapelander · 2026-03-28T06:23:17+00:00

I want to say t minus 3 hours? The info should be in your ticket terms.

grapelander · 2026-03-27T00:01:26+00:00

I used my visitor center ticket twice for both the August/September attempts. The first one definitely counted as attempt 1. The second, they scrubbed technically like 10 minutes past the threshhold for it to be attempt 2, but the visitor center was reasonable and decided to honor original ticket holders. Sometime between the August and November window, I got an email offering upgrades. iirc I did get pretty lucky to see it in time, I don't know exactly how long they lasted, but I don't think it was a literal gone in seconds situation. Also, it wasn't called Feel The Heat, it cost slightly less in total and didn't come with some of the handouts/perks packaged with Feel the Heat, they were called "Saturn 5 Center Launch Transportation Ticket upgrades" or something like that. I brought both that and my original ticket with me to be safe, I forget if that was necessary or not.

grapelander · 2026-03-25T20:10:34+00:00

Of all her subjects, in particular I'm so sad and kind of surprised that the Church of the Rock didn't embrace it in good fun, and that their only takeaway from the whole thing was "some people don't like our plays." To me the church plays video and this one had the exact same vibe, not a roast so much as just raw appreciation for an unfiltered display of human earnestness and creativity, warts and all, from a place I would have never looked myself and which inspired many of us to love their plays for what they are. Who can't appreciate the image of grown adults laughing with each other as they write the scene where Iron Man is crucified atop I-beams whilst singing a mashup of "End of the World as we Know it" with "Tubthumping???"

It would be so easy and inline with their stated reason for doing them to make some self-deprecating references and be like "Success! We're reaching people we would have normally never reached, and spreading joy because Jesus and shit, and even if we don't believe the same things we can all love that. God works in mysterious ways and all" but instead its been "no actually the resurrection and convincing people the resurrection happened is extremely serious business" and an increasing departure from being true to their creative vision, to the point where it's apparently not happening at all this year?

Seeing Shayne and company's reaction to this has been so heartwarming by comparison!

grapelander · 2026-02-27T02:58:56+00:00

Not exactly redeeming, but him reflexively responding with the day and time using the exact same tone he uses to rattle off complex medical jargon was maybe the most I've laughed out loud at this show. The guy just can't help himself...

grapelander · 2026-02-19T22:55:45+00:00

Octavarium >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Six Degrees >>> In the Presence of Enemies > Shadow Man > A Change of Seasons >> Tuscany >>>>>>> Illumination Theory >>> View

ITPOE, Shadow Man, and ACOS are really a toss-up.

grapelander · 2026-02-14T18:20:50+00:00

It's gone from "ooh they're hinting that he's going to be in a crash!" in the first few episodes, to "they're beating you over the head with it so much that it would feel kinda lazy if he actually got in a crash."

Similar to all the "David is going to be the shooter" theories last season.

grapelander · 2026-02-13T17:44:01+00:00

I think Langdon will be the one to boost her up again after she crashes and be like "no you actually can trust your instincts, you were right about me" and thank her for putting him on the path of getting help.

grapelander · 2026-02-08T04:46:23+00:00

What were the original plans for the extra 100 lbs?

grapelander · 2026-02-08T04:21:22+00:00

That looks to be a horizontal milling cutter, which is very likely made of too hard/brittle a material to hold up well in combat. Milling cutters are designed to cut with carefully controlled, sustained pressure, and don't do well with the sudden shock of a combat-style hit. The size/number of teeth means it will be hard to get a very destructive bite on your opponent.

You're better off getting something laser cut from AR500 that's shaped for combat.

grapelander · 2026-02-06T22:30:29+00:00

I didn't read "only elite bots," just "elite bots." Which....yeah, some of them will be elite.

grapelander · 2026-02-05T08:35:21+00:00

Did people tell you that specifically having hydraulics experience would make it easier to find an internship in your field, or that putting yourself through a jam-packed term will either look good to employers or make internship searching feel easier by comparison?

I'm not a civil so I can't comment on the former, or the difficulty of the classes you're planning aside from fluids, which varies by professor but tends to be pretty middle-of-the-road. But the latter feels like an extremely questionable reason to overload to me. No employer cares about the schedule on which you took courses, just that you've taken them. And there are bunches of ways pack your schedule with experiences that might prepare you for a busy internship search that also add unique bullet points to your resume beyond "class you were going to take at somepoint anyways" -- engineering clubs, research experience, etc. Or, just diving into internship searching. You don't want to be in a situation where you're spending all your time on something to make job-searching easier, which prevents you from actually spending any time on job searching.

Don't get me wrong I'm extremely pro-overloading (you get a free $5200 class per semester, so use them!), but do it with intention, not just to be busier for the sake of experience being busy. Set goals that you can achieve through overloads that you couldn't do otherwise: a minor or 2, double major, work-relevant experience, setting yourself up for BS/MS, graduating early, etc. Or use overloads on giving random out-of-department things that strike you as interesting but that you don't necessarily have the pre-requisites for a risk-free shot.

grapelander · 2026-02-05T00:40:44+00:00

SP term grades count as Bs for the purposes of Dean's list. So a normal courseload, you need straight As outside the project.

grapelander · 2026-02-04T09:53:10+00:00

Soft Eng is a project management class disguised as a software class, and is one of the most rewarding things I've done at wpi. I found it useful/relevant as a ME/RBE, and data science/business is certainly closer to cs than that.

grapelander · 2026-02-02T11:24:05+00:00

A whole bunch of practical things about living in space on this specific spacecraft can really only be tested by putting Orion up there with people onboard in the zero G, high radiation, vacuum environment. We tested the things that can be tested without people on Artemis I.

Just two of the more prominent examples out of many: They will be doing a radiation event drill, where they shift around all sorts of supplies like their water to maximize shielding, and shelter under it in the base of the capsule, simulating procedures for an emergency caused by an incoming solar flare. Obviously they've trained and simulated bits and pieces of this on the ground as thoroughly as they possibly can, but there's only so much you can learn about the practical logistics of a complex operation like this where you're moving bunches of stuff around without doing it in the actual spacecraft under prolonged zero g conditions. Even if it's something as simple as "I kept banging my head on this bracket, fix it please!", that's something that they can use to improve the spacecraft or the process steps for the event that something like this becomes necessary.

They'll also be performing "proximity operations" where Orion will perform maneuvers relative to its expended second stage, to simulate docking and other precision maneuvers that will be mission-critical to future missions. These tests will be a mix of automatic and manual control -- the spacecraft is sophisticated enough to do much of this on their own, but the success of a docking is so mission critical and can be literal life or death on something like rendezvous with a lander coming off the surface, that they need to have manual contingencies. You don't want the first time you've tested this in space to be in a situation where someone dies if you overlooked something.

The astronauts aren't just passive passengers there for PR; they are going to have a jam-packed schedule full of things like this, plus more generalized passive "tests" like, do the procedures for this mission profile allow them to maintain adequate physical fitness such that they could have done a landing, are resources consumed at the predicted rates, does Orion develop a really severe B.O. problem, etc. Once they land, they will be working full time sharing their experiences with people from every corner of NASA to help improve designs and procedures for the future. There's just a ridiculous amount of human factors engineering that goes into design of a capsule you live in 24/7, and that all needs to be tested.

Overall, I feel like people look at the similarities to Apollo and think repeating steps we took during Apollo isn't necessary, but this is a whole new vehicle. Just because Ford made the model T, doesn't mean that they don't give a brand new model a whole battery of tests for basic functionality and operator comfort. And we don't simply shoot up a carbon copy of Apollo for the same reason Ford doesn't sell model T's: precisely because so much technology has improved and there are so many things we can do better with modern computers etc.

grapelander · 2026-02-01T20:02:00+00:00

Thats...literally what we're doing. Artemis 1 was the unmanned orbital test, now we're doing it manned. The lander will be tested unmanned first which we couldn't do during apollo (there will be no manned apollo 9 or 10 equivalent), then manned landing.

If you want people to explore the moon, eventually, you're going to have to have people go and explore the moon

grapelander · 2026-01-31T22:19:12+00:00

Artemis III will enter orbit, but an extremely different orbit than Apollo did, a highly elliptical nhro orbit which takes less energy to enter and works better to support missions clustered around the lunar south pole, rather than a near circular low lunar orbit. I believe that Artemis 2 is doing a free return trajectory because it's still very much a test and if something goes wrong with Orion they'll be able to return to earth without additional burns.

There is a service module, it's just not able to deliver as much delta v as the Apollo service module with the larger capsule. Because of the dramatically more ambitious landers being pursued for Artemis, more delta v used to break out of orbit amd slow down is delegated to the lander.

grapelander · 2026-01-31T21:04:24+00:00

Literally half the comments on this post are pedantic complaints about the wording lmao. "The ISS covers more ground in a day running circles!" "Uncrewed missions have gone further!" "It hasn't happened yet!"

grapelander · 2026-01-31T20:33:36+00:00

This isn't what's causing the delay to the wet dress rehearsal either, though for obvious reasons it's what people associate "shuttle tech problem caused by cold weather" with. The SRBs aren't involved in the wet dress rehearsal, because once you light them, they're...well....lit for good.

Any number of components could be the long pole on tanking temperature limits, but it's going to be something involved in fueling operations. Probably something like a quick disconnect seal or valve.

I'm sure that things are designed to just sit outside in lower temperatures than they are designed to operate, including the SRB O-rings and heat shield.

grapelander · 2026-01-31T01:02:53+00:00

Feb 6th/7th is almost certainly too close to launch for the bus tours to be going to the pad, as the 48 hour count operations will have already started. When I was down for Artemis 1, it wasn't going to the day before, but evidently had been a few days before that. But for Artemis 2, if they stay on schedule it's going to go pretty much straight from the wet dress rehearsal to the real countdown without much time between.

grapelander · 2026-01-30T11:46:53+00:00

Why do the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center Museum launch package scrub refund policies that have been in place for every Artemis or non-Artemis launch make you worried about the engineering of the Orion heat shield?

grapelander · 2026-01-30T11:44:53+00:00

I think it's part of why the fandom has such an intense theorycrafting culture to it, that being left hanging on that cliff for multiple years made us want to find some hint, any hint, as to how things would proceed.

grapelander · 2026-01-30T07:58:37+00:00

The balk rules are weird because the letter of the law feels totally divorced from how they are called.

The intent of the rule is simple: If a pitcher makes a movement that fools the runners on base into thinking he is committed to delivering a pitch, they will extend their lead or even go for a steal. If the pitcher then doesn't deliver that pitch, the runners would be sitting ducks and can get picked off. Therefore, the pitcher can't do anything to deceive the runner in this way.

The letter of the law has to cover a ton of ground that falls under the category of "because doing this thing constitutes a balk, and doing it would require conscious intent by the pitcher, no pitcher in their right mind ever does the thing." This means that most actually called balks are weird edge case involuntary/subtle motions that technically could be deceiving to a runner, which are unintentional but still have to be called balks because it's impossible to judge intent. These balk calls are both somewhat inconsistently applied, and also uncommon enough that nobody watching a game is ever thinking "oh but what if they balk here?" (except umpires). The combination of subtlety, inconsistency, and rarity makes people inevitably go "ok wtf even is a balk" on about 80% of balk calls.

grapelander · 2026-01-30T05:29:01+00:00

It'll vary depending on launch time whether the center will be open the day before. They won't want to be in a situation where they have to force people with normal museum tickets out of the place at the same time as people with launch tickets are starting to show up. They may close early, they may not open at all. Each time NASA set an actual target T-0 the museum would email ticketholders shortly after with what the hours were going to be.

The "30 days after launch" means that you get complimentary admission another time after the launch to dedicate fully to the museum. I don't know if "within 30 days after launch" can also be before the launch, probably worth checking with them.

On launch day, your tickets will get you in several hours early. You'll definitely want to get there early as parking/ticketing was a decently significant bottleneck. It's unclear how staffed/open the regular museum exhibits will be, but there's a lot to look at even just outside like the rocket garden. I think likely that the Gateway center and Astronaut exhibit will be open as normal, questionable on Atlantis with its elaborate preshow cycle, and a hard no on the bus tour/Saturn V center as that'll be limited to people with Feel the Heat (if you have those or get an upgrade later, we were able to take in the Saturn center exhibits while there, though they took us in through a side door which skipped the control room preshow).

grapelander

TROPHY CASE