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SpaceInMyBrain t1_iypihxb wrote

The Hill makes an article out of an offhand remark, gets the crew capacity of Orion wrong, then misses that Gateway won't be used till probably Artemis 5. It's painful how little regular media knows about our space programs.

Anyway, M. Macron should contract directly with Axiom and SpaceX for a couple of missions for their astronauts and then contract with SpaceX for a Starship ride to the Moon. They won't beat Artemis 3 but they will beat Artemis 4. Macron spoke to Elon just a couple of days ago, I'm guessing he has his email.

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H-K_47 t1_iyqalr1 wrote

As epic it would be to see something like that happen, I don't think it's likely as France is an a Artemis signatory and SpaceX doesn't wanna show up their biggest partner and patron.

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SpaceInMyBrain t1_iyrllkq wrote

I still occasionally forget that text on the internet is taken at face value, I forgot to elaborate. Yes, this will never happen, I was trying to illustrate how much of a dead-end it is for France to rely on the Artemis program to get a meaningful number of their astronauts to the Moon.

>SpaceX doesn't wanna show up their biggest partner and patron.

Totally agree. It's expected that in late 2025 SpaceX will be ready to make the test landing of HLS, as contracted for with NASA. The Dear Moon Starship could also be ready. SpaceX could coordinate the missions and have Dear Moon transiting around the Moon at the same time HLS is landing and taking off. This will be at least a year before SLS/Orion is ready for Artemis 3 and would be a great demonstration of why NASA should turn all of Artemis over to SpaceX. But it's very likely Elon won't want to embarrass NASA, their partnership is valuable to him and his goals. (He's also well aware of how deeply Artemis is entwined with politics, of course.) I expect the flights will be made months apart - the potential to take over Artemis will be plain to see but it won't have the look of dunking on NASA. (Of course there's no guarantee Dear Moon will be ready, i.e. crew-rated by SpaceX, in 2025, but it's a real possibility.)

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Real_Affect39 t1_iyqc4xm wrote

In the article they weren’t saying 3 astronauts would ride in Orion, they were saying that ESA wants to send 3 astronauts total on the currently planned Artemis missions

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1buzer t1_iypr8p3 wrote

10 billion $’s is what they should charge them.

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jivatman t1_iysrewm wrote

Interesting, I did not know Pesquet is from Rouen. There's a certain poetry in that given Rouen was the initial land grant to the Norman Vikings.

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Pharisaeus t1_iyt6yx2 wrote

It's not unheard of, there were already Italian ESA astronauts on the ISS outside of ESA allocation, based on some additional deals between ASI and NASA.

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Decronym t1_iytn0dd wrote

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

|Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |ESA|European Space Agency| |EVA|Extra-Vehicular Activity| |HLS|Human Landing System (Artemis)| |SLS|Space Launch System heavy-lift|

^([Thread #8386 for this sub, first seen 4th Dec 2022, 01:49]) ^[FAQ] ^([Full list]) ^[Contact] ^([Source code])

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FriedmanMkIII t1_iypbul1 wrote

Heaven forbid the position goes to the people who have proven they can do the best job humanly possible regardless of irrelevant social or political puffery.

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Ryermeke t1_iypcmot wrote

I mean, I get the sentiment, but the astronaut in question is Thomas Pesquet, who is more than qualified having spent well over a year's time in space on multiple missions, and with just shy of 40 hours EVA time. He even brought a saxophone to the ISS. Fuck it, send him to the moon.

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eskaps t1_iypgfxi wrote

All this makes him the most experienced ESA astronaut, both in terms of total time in space and of total EVA time. He's also one of the very few Europeans to ever be ISS commander. If you need to pick an ESA astronaut to go to the moon he's not only the best pick, he's actually already at the top of the list. The original plan was to take an ESA astronaut on a later Artemis mission. What Macron is actually lobbying for is that this happens on the first crewed landing instead. Thomas is the most qualified astronaut (both current and ever) outside of the USA and Russia, and if my data is correct, the 8th most experienced currently active astronaut worldwide, and of the 7 in front of him, only 1 is not Russian. I'd say that makes him objectively very fit for the job, not just from ESA but from the whole pool of western astronauts.

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ktv13 t1_iyq7qhv wrote

Alexander Gerst has also been commander if I remember correctly but not sure how his experience compares to Pesquets.

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FriedmanMkIII t1_iyqeec3 wrote

That all makes sense as criteria for serious consideration. I am more agitated by the article than the reality of the situation, honestly.

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toodroot t1_iyt2rsj wrote

There are a bunch of candidates who are roughly equally qualified for the job.

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[deleted] t1_iyrm15n wrote

[removed]

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toodroot t1_iyt2gdq wrote

"insane cackling" is a sexist "joke", in case you've been asleep for the past 50 years.

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