Former NASA scientists warn of possible Artemis II spacecraft safety issue - ABC News

[TexasTowelie]

ABC News’ Elizabeth Schulze spoke with two former NASA scientists who say they are concerned about a potential safety issue with the Artemis II spacecraft ahead of its highly-anticipated launch.

[hunter]

1. And wait, there's more...

Former astronaut on lunar spacesuits: “I don’t think they’re great right now”


Crew members traveling to the lunar surface on NASA’s Artemis missions should be gearing up for a grind. They will wear heavier spacesuits than those worn by the Apollo astronauts, and NASA will ask them to do more than the first Moonwalkers did more than 50 years ago.

The Moonwalking experience will amount to an “extreme physical event” for crews selected for the Artemis program’s first lunar landings, a former NASA astronaut told a panel of researchers, physicians, and engineers convened by the National Academies.

Kate Rubins, who retired from the space agency last year, presented the committee with her views on the health risks for astronauts on lunar missions. She outlined the concerns NASA officials often talk about: radiation exposure, muscle and bone atrophy, reduced cardiovascular and immune function, and other adverse medical effects of spaceflight.

--more--

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/01/former-astronaut-on-lunar-spacesuits-i-dont-think-theyre-great-right-now/

This all seems pointless to me. Any science humans can do on the moon machines can do better.

I hope everyone makes it home safely but I'm not going to watch.

[Layzeebeaver]

2. Hunting for a story where there is none.

Of course it’s going to be more work on the moon vs orbit. Different environment, different forces, different work, different suits, different equipment.

Also you don’t take an orbital spacewalker and send them to the surface of the moon without extensive training and prep.

Everything said is NORMAL. These are engineering or me s that are in the process of being solved.

The entire article is just click bait.

[PJMcK]

3. I guess we'll see

The Apollo program was incremental. Artemis seems somewhat haphazard.

I’m hoping for the best but I don’t have much confidence in this program.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

4. These four astronauts are about to travel farther from Earth than anyone before them

In just over a week, four astronauts could launch toward the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.

The crew, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen are set to fly on NASA’s Artemis II mission, a 10-day journey that will take them swinging around the moon. Their path through space will take the group farther from Earth than humanity has ever gone, surpassing the Apollo 13 record of 248,655 miles set in 1970.

The group will not land on the moon’s surface, but the flight is meant to kick-start a new era of lunar exploration, paving the way for a moon landing in the coming years. It will be the first time that NASA’s next-generation Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule carry human passengers.

If that’s cause for any trepidation, the astronauts haven’t let it show.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/four-astronauts-travel-farther-earth-113000301.html

[hunter]

5. When Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay climbed Everest in 1953 it was a grand adventure.

These days it's just an extreme sport with a disturbing fatality rate.

My grandfather was an Apollo Project engineer and I've got some of his memorabilia including his Apollo 8 medallion, which this upcoming Artemis mission will replicate.

Humans are fragile. It's incredibly difficult and expensive to keep them alive in space, even more so beyond low earth orbit. There haven't been any great technical advances in the last fifty years that make this significantly less difficult.

The technologies that have advanced very significantly are computers and robotics. Sending humans into space only gets in the way of scientific research that could be accomplished by increasingly sophisticated robots. If I was Emperor of the United States of America I'd have let China celebrate the next human visit to the moon. There's no military value in the feat.

I doubt natural-born humans will ever have a significant presence in space. Cities on Mars are fantasy. Asteroid miners are fantasy. Star Trek is fantasy.

In this universe I'm fairly certain faster-than-light travel is impossible and that only an infinitesimal fraction of simple lifeforms or machines survive interstellar distances, thus explaining the Fermi Paradox.

It doesn't bother me too much. Just as I, a mortal human being, exist for only a brief moment in this universe, so will the human species.

[Layzeebeaver]

6. Well spoken.

Wish more folks were so well centred.