Evidence The sad scene from where NASA launches astronauts to the moon

“If you’re scared of heights, don’t look down.”

That’s the cheery advice offered in a recent YouTube video created by NASA to showcase the giant launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida where it plans to launch a Space Launch System rocket soft for moon missions.

The view is quite bleak, and the video allows you to move around to get a good view of your surroundings from hundreds of feet in the sky. I had always wondered how Apollo astronauts felt in the 1960s and 1970s in their final hours on the starting plate before they took off, and now I can see the scene for myself. . Lots of ocean, lots of greenery and of course, huge infrastructure supporting the huge rocket that was about to take them off Earth.

The 2024 date for landing on the moon is not yet a clincher. NASA is in the process of completing a difficult series of “green run” certifications on the giant rocket and has been working through a number of delays in getting this far. A hot stage fire is planned in Mississippi by mid-January, at the earliest. Only if that goes as expected will Boeing and NASA contractor launch the rocket down to Florida, where it will be assembled for an earlier launch of an unrelated test moon mission called Artemis I. of November.

So why not reuse the Saturn V rocket to send astronauts to the moon? Well, we are 50 years more advanced in computer technology and rocket technology. Back in 1969, we didn’t have self-propelled rockets. We didn’t have 3D printing and less powerful complementary technology. We didn’t have cell phones or computer watches.

SLS is not landing on its own, but it has improvements on the previous one. Boeing contractor advanced avionics software controls the vehicle during flight. It reuses technology from the shuttle space program, such as the RS-25 engines on which the shuttle is used, to make the manufacturing process as efficient as possible. It also has a more flexible set of destinations, such as (possibly) sending an unmanned spacecraft to Jupiter faster and more directly than we currently do (which, as is necessary) often, weave around a few planets first to build speed.)

NASA needs a stable budget commitment to make the 2024 date, and observers are still waiting to see if the Biden administration is on board to send astronauts to the moon before then. In the meantime, however, NASA has active memoranda with Europe and Canada regarding the Artemis program.

Remember too, just because NASA is talking about lunar missions, it has not yet missed the International Space Station. The orbiting center is asked to fly to at least 2024, with the 2028 extension preferred by many of its international partners. In 2020, NASA and SpaceX sent the first two commercial missions to the space station, and more commercial activity is expected in the coming years. The ISS will also be needed to test lunar spacecraft and some Artemis hardware in space, before landing heavily.