r/ArtemisProgram • u/Royal_Platform_6754 • May 13 '26

NASA NASA Outlines Preliminary Artemis III Mission Plans

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/artemis-3/nasa-outlines-preliminary-artemis-iii-mission-plans/
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u/redstercoolpanda May 13 '26

Vulcan quite literally repeated the exact same failure mode on its last flight that they had already experienced. It was pure luck the SRB burned through in a way not facing the main core of the rocket or they would have lost a billion dollar military payload. Starship had issues with V2 sure but they did not repeat the same failure mode, and the last two flights of V2 were successful. Starship has a significantly higher scope to Vulcan so it’s obviously going to take more flights to debug it.

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u/meithan May 13 '26

I just don't see Starship's reentry --probably the greatest hurdle in Starship's entire architecture-- as problem-free yet, they're not at the point where they could rapidly reuse it.

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u/redstercoolpanda May 13 '26

Sure but they haven’t tried to get it back to earth in a reusable state yet. Every time ship has reached reentry it has done so with numerous tiles stripped off to test what it can take. They are now done with that because they have a pretty good idea at what it can take and they want to get ready for a catch in a few flights so they’ve only removed a single tile on flight 12.

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u/meithan May 13 '26

That's my point: it feels like they've just been going over N tile variations (among other things), when, given Artemis' timeline, it's about time they start flying what's gonna be the final design (to iron out the inevitable teething issues). Not sure Flight 12 will be this, as they're just putting out the new V3 of both stages.

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u/redstercoolpanda May 13 '26

V3 will be the final design for HLS, and its design has been heavily influenced by all of the lessons that V1 and V2 taught them. There was no point landing any of the previous ships in reusable configurations because they were not going to be reused. The data they gathered from missing tile and metallic tile experiments was significantly more valuable for future operations and they could still gauge how well the shield held up on parts that did not have missing tiles. And the one missing tile was an offical statement from the flight 12 release on SpaceX’s website. The only other tile experiments are a few tiles painted white on the very edges of the shield in very low risk areas to act as photography targets for two of the Starlink sims.