> What? The first comment I replied to, I was replying to this

I know, but you’re vasilating between two phraseologies, which are both different from mine. You’ve said “to show the safety is the same as air travel.” And now you’ve said “the risk of space travel and air travel are similar?” I said “nearing.”

“Nearing” ≠ “the same as.”

“The same as” ≠ “similar.”

Your first use was an absolute comparison that I never made. Your recent phrasing of “similar” is a more fair representation of what I said, but still not right:

Spacefaring is in its tween years and is only nearing commercial travel, as it is so vastly more expensive and technologically difficult. The developmental progress of one does however parallel the other, even if spacefaring is behind the curve for the reasons stated. It took ~a decade after the Wright Flyer for the first airlines to come around. But airlines didn’t get big until ~50 years later. The first “spaceline” is yet to be, 60+ years after the first manned space flight. But we can see how the two modes of travel do relate in terms of “ability to cost” ratio.

We are only now beginning to see mass space travel as a theoretical possibility on the horizon. As the systems improve and the volume of space passengers looks to skyrocket in the mid-term, we can see that spacefaring is on a trajectory to have numbers close to where commercial air was in its tween years. That’s the “nearing“ part.

It’s not there now, but 20 years without a fatality is a good place to be to match commercial airs’ safety rating and the space passenger capacity looks like it will dwarf the current number of those that have been to space.

You can’t remember what you said.

You said “Starship has literally years of testing to go before NASA will consider it human safe for launch and return”

I then explained that NASA is not the sole arbiter of ‘human safe.’ Then you flipped and said Artemis was. Then you flipped and said Starship will have to comply.

> Artemis 2 is going to be doing that.

But hasn’t. It’s not yet mission capable.

> You’re the one talking about NASA using Starship. You said:

As NASA currently expects Starship to work, Starship can replace Artemis entirely.

Which is an incontrovertible fact that NASA currently expects to Starship to work. That’s why they contracted for the Starship HLS.

A series of non HLS models can replace the rest of the Artemis program. If NASA wanted to be timely and on budget.

> I said Artemis is capable of launching and returning humans.

Well then you sure confused the issue by saying:

> The vehicle is already mission capable.

Because the implication is that it is capable of launching and returning humans during a mission. It is not. Artemis is far from being able to get a person to the Moon and back again.

> Yes, what are you confused about?

Nothing, I’m just pointing out that after talking about Starship not meeting NASA specs, you flipped to saying that Artemis is meeting NASA specs, and now you’ve flopped to talking about Starship again.

You’re not sticking to one topic.

But Starship doesn’t have to meet NASA specs to take people, only if NASA wants their staff to catch a ride. Starship is not beholden to NASA. They don’t even have to launch from the US. It’s quite reasonable to expect Starship to get to lunar orbit from wherever they care to launch from, hem have Starship HLS come get the passengers for the trip to the Moon, and reverse process to get everyone home.

NASA can’t say the same without Starship HLS and Falcon Heavy. And why? Because NASA thought Starship HLS was the best option. Finally, they’ve picked a system not from their cronies and it might actually work in the longterm. NASA needs to get out of the spacecraft game and just pay for rides to where they want to go.

> to show the safety is the same as air travel.

Which I never said was the case. Try again.

> will be

Do you know what those words mean?

“Will be” ≠ “is.”

Claiming a system designed to carry humans to the the lunar surface is mission capable when it’s lunar space station isn’t built, it’s lander isn’t ready…. systems haven’t been approved for humans space flight. Calling it mission capable seems a bit of a stretch, when it isn’t actually capable of getting human or even a bot to the the lunar surface.

> NASA is absolutely the sole arbiter of human safety for the Artemis program.

Lol. Nice try. Flip flopping from Starship to Artemis.

You were talking about Starship when you spoke of NASA’s human safety analysis, remember? But who cares? Artemis is another monument to the failures of NASA. It is grossly over budget. Grossly behind schedule. It is a national shame and should be canned.

So, the question is if Artemis will, in NASA tradition, kill its crew on launch AND by burning up in the atmosphere upon reentry, NASA being the only entity to do both. NASA having been so incompetent that they caused both the Challenger and Columbia catastrophes.

Even with different population sizes, you can still draw conclusions. We can still conclude that they are developing along similar paths. The two development timelines parallel each other.

Both suffered from bureaucracy and hubris and bad engineering. They both have seen significant drops in the death rates as the tech progressed and the admin debacles were cut down. We can see that airlines suffered from death rates linked to untrained passengers and spacecraft have not. Comparisons and contrasts can be seen.

We can still see that 0 deaths in decades are 0 deaths.

They are a self described “rage baiting” troll and not going to say anything of any relevance.

It’s just childishness, not any intellectually honest discussion.

That’s all I’m saying!

It’s fanboy absurdity to think anything else.

> Artemis 2 is slated for next year, what are you even talking about?

So not mission capable then. Like I said.

> Starship has literally years of testing to go before NASA will consider it human safe

So not mission capable then. Like I said.

1. NASA won’t be going to the Moon or Mars without Starship, because their own eval was that it was the best option.
2. NASA is not the sole arbiter of what is human safe. We are in an era surpassing the bureaucratic largess and technical incompetence of NASA that has gotten people killed and results in running grossly over budget (again) and running years late (again) and wasting so many repair parts that died on the shelf.

When was the last death in spacefaring?

As aircraft had major accidents from incompetent admins, incompetent engineers and institutional hubris, and only got better from lessons learned; the spacecraft have gotten better and survived NASA’s and the Soviet’s incompetent admins, incompetent engineers and institutional hubris.

Most of the deaths are blood on NASA’s hands for preventable reasons and is not a recommendation of them, it’s an indictment. The admins and engineers killed Komarov with their incompetence.

Maybe having spacefaring institutions that are not beholden to political pressures is the safest thing.

Integrating? More like replacing.

As NASA currently expects Starship to work, Starship can replace Artemis entirely. Not that either are yet mission capable.

So criticize Starship on that point. That’s fair.

But the cost to risk ratio is absurd. The risk is nearing commercial airlines and they take the masses who are untrained in emergency anything, and doing so with crews that are nearly equally unable to actually pilot the craft without the computer. Or the back up computer. Or the back up to the back up computer. A trained crew with better systems will handle any issue better, and the reuse of Raptors (it appears so far) increases the assurance of safety, while keeping costs low.

The NASA requirement for escape comes directly from NASA’s own incompetence and bureaucratic inertia leading to multiple fatal errors, one of which at least was likely criminal.

Crew Dragon isn’t meant for moon flight and Starliner hasn’t really done a convincing job of staying in orbit, so let’s not start making assumptions it’s going to keep a high rate while Starship fails.

Certainly with cost factored, Starliner and SLS don’t look to be economically viable. Just like Shuttle. Partially because of Shuttle parts they just can’t rid themselves of, culturally at least. Nothing about Shuttle should be repeated. It was a failure in many of its core design concepts and never was inexpensive nor very reusable, with thousands of parts needing refurb in the boosters, the tank being lost and the shuttle providing no capability that a capsule and a supply rocket couldn’t provide; and a lot less expensively.

The cost is going to kill SLS eventually.

I think the entire premise of the current mission design shows that Starship will pick up the ball if SLS drops anything and when SLS is inevitably retired. There will be no landing on the moon without Starship and that fact they plan on Starship getting itself to lunar orbit, it seems NASA is pretty convinced it can do the entire thing itself, you just need to increase stores aboard for a longer period of crew residence.