Since today is April Fools day is it ok to say that the 1969 moon 'landing' was a psyop?
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Orion is not Apollo, it's a new spacecraft. Always safer to do a shakedown mission before landing. Remember that with Apollo there were several missions before the landing, including a mission which resembles (kindof) Artemis 2 which was Apollo 8. Artemis 2 is not orbiting because it lacks the EUS required to capture in lunar orbit. The "service module" that this spacecraft has only has enough power to TLI, not enough to orbit and then deorbit from the moon. Later service modules, or maybe just Starship when it is online, will have this capability. And finally, the launch vehicle SLS has only about half of the capability to lunar surface that Apollo had. It is a much less capable system all around. Once Starship is a thing, SLS will no longer be a thing. Starship at $100M for a launch with several times the capability compared to a $4B launch of SLS? That's when we'll see some magic.
“ including a mission which resembles (kindof) Artemis 2”
My point, Apollo’s first moon mission was to prove out the ability to get to the moon, orbit the moon as if the lander had been deployed, and return to the earth. Orion is only doing a fast fly by, looping the moon and only spending a few hours hours at that, and what looks like a gravity “sling shot” to return to earth. Only 1 of 3 maneuvers. Seems lame to me compared to 60’s tech, if it wasn’t all faked. I still cling to the belief that what I saw back then was real, I was in high school at the time, but it’s tough when we can’t do better 50+ years later.
I agree 100%. Orion/SLS is very much lacking in capability in its current iteration when compared to Apollo and we don't even have a lander yet.