The Artemis Program

this video is brought to you by squarespace from websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics squarespaces the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business check out squarespace through the link in the description below more about them in a bit [Music] for 4.5 billion years the moon stood silent and watchful over the earth then on the 20th of july 1969 neil armstrong took his legendary first step onto the lunar surface and broke that silence by uttering those immortal words that's one small step for men one giant leap for mankind then on december 14th 1971 eugene cernan spoke the last word ever said by a man on the moon let's get this mother out of here far less poetic and only slightly more grammatically correct once again the moon fell silent unburdened by the politics of those that inhabit the planet 1.3 light seconds away but not for long you see just over 60 years later not even a blink of the eye to the moon another rocket sets off once again to return humans to the moon and this time put them there to stay the greek goddess artemis according to greek mythology was the daughter of zeus and leto born on the island of ortega following a birth she is said to have assisted her mother with giving birth to her brother apollo because well of course she did spending her childhood in the mountains she became a prodigious honduran archer while her brother apollo would go on to become the god associated with the sun among many other things she would come to represent the hunt wilderness wildlife and relating to today's video the moon the naming of missions after mythological deities began with the mercury program the united states his first step into manned space flight following this was gemini and after that apollo this all seemed a little confusing considering apollo was the gods of the sun not the moon however the apollo missions were first and foremost about surpassing the bounds of earth and traveling further than anyone had ever done before and also about beating the russians but you know that other stuff too the day was first proposed by abe silverstein a manager at nasa who is quoted as saying that he felt that apollo riding his chariot across the sun was appropriate to the grand scale of the proposed program it just seems rather appropriate that our next mission to the moon would be named after his sister and that is where we'll begin today at the artemis program precisely what it is and how it differs from the apollo program it wouldn't be hyperbole to say that in many ways the artemis program is man's first true attempt at the moon and the rest of the solar system no i'm not saying that the apollo moon landings were faked carved out what i mean is that while yes we have physically put men on the moon before that achievement brought us no closer to being an interplanetary species in fact it maybe took us further away considering that it was done purely as an antagonistic move against a nuclear-capable enemy and that is in fact the biggest shortcoming of the apollo program while it was a truly amazing achievement it was fundamentally a flawed program when you look back at the lengths that scientists at nasa went to in order to put people on the moon it's difficult not to pick up on the sense of urgency and even desperation that seemed to permeate the whole project the goal was to simply get to the moon and get back and that's what they did however it's pretty clear that they had little time to dedicate to matters such as sustainability or even finesse we're really as a species just not ready to go to the moon we didn't know how to live in space we didn't know how to live outside the earth's magnetic field and we were just barely technologically advanced enough to make something capable of even making the journey to and from it let alone with three men on board again this is not a criticism of the amazing things that those scientists achieved it's just a criticism of the program itself and more than that it's an illustration of the fact that just because we can do something it doesn't necessarily mean that we should today however things are very different artemis is going to exemplify just how much we can achieve when we all work together and when we do it for the right reasons it's going to be sustainable safer for all of those involved using the best minds from across the world to truly bring humanity into the space age this is an enormous project that will likely take well over a decade to complete construction on it would really take 10 videos for us to cover every facet of this program in detail so in order to make it possible to save this video becoming 15 hours long we've cut it down to just some of the most interesting and radical things that hope to be achieved by the end of the project and we'll start with how they plan to get there [Music] the first step to getting to the moon is obviously leaving earth there are several methods of doing this big guns nuclear bombs and those alien spacecraft parked at area 51 to name a few on this occasion however nasa has decided to opt for a chemical rocket the sls otherwise known as the space launch system is nasa's modern solution to earth's gravity problem in development since 2011 the sls is pretty much just a redeveloped version of the space shuttle's launch system if you look at the durham side by side you would probably be able to see the similarities that's not to say that the sls is cutting corners equipped with two five-segment solid rocket boosters collectively capable of producing 32 mega newtons of thrust in a vacuum the main body split into three stages the first second and upper stage the first stage is the stage we'll see on the launch pad and it makes up 65 meters of the entire 111 meter long body this is by far the most powerful and dramatic stage with four rs-25d e-rocket engines producing a total of 9.1 meganewtons of thrust in a vacuum combined with those two booster rockets you've got the most powerful rocket to ever launch this stage will carry the payload out of the atmosphere and into low earth orbit the second stage uses a single rl10b engine which produces a relatively small 110 kilonewtons of thrust not a lot when compared to the monstrous amount of thrust produced by the first stage but this is still more than enough to put this module on a trajectory for the moon in fact the difference between these two stages serves as a good way of illustrating just how much energy is required to get out of earth's gravity well to give you an idea getting the object from the launch pad to lower earth orbit burns roughly 890 tons of liquid rocket fuel and a thousand tons of booster fuel and that takes it to a height of about 350 kilometers the second stage takes the module from low earth orbit to the moon a distance of 384 000 kilometers and it does it with just 25 tons of fuel and this is a fairly good illustration of just how difficult it is for us to leave the bloody earth and we'll say just hold on to that idea because it's going to become relevant in a moment now moving on once activated the second stage will carry out an orbital insertion burn before then carrying out a translunar injection burn putting the spacecraft on a trajectory for the moon this is known as the hochman transfer orbit it's the most efficient way that something can transfer from one orbit to another this will involve going through the infamous van allen belts which if you've not heard of them are a build of highly charged solar particles that are held by the earth's magnetic field it was originally thought that these would be too dangerous for humans to pass through a fact that apollo 11 conspiracy theorists regularly point to however there is a route through these belts that minimizes the exposure to high energy particles and well this brings us neatly to the third stage otherwise known as the exploration stage this stage contains the orion module which will be responsible for housing and protecting the astronauts from the vacuum of space and those aforementioned high-energy particles now just before we continue with today's video let me tell you about today's fantastic sponsor squarespace look it's a brand new year and maybe your new year's resolution is to take action on that big web project you've been dreaming about well squarespace is the place to do it you want to do a website a blog an online store a podcast whatever if it involves the web you do it with squarespace maybe the hands-on type lots of opinions and ideas about what exactly your website should look like if so very cool squarespace gives you tons of customization options you could ever want with no patches no technical bs to worry about or maybe you need something functional just something that works with minimal thoughts so you can stay focused on the content and not the coat of paint well just use one of their quick beautiful templates to make a website that 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mission longevity in a few words the orion will be the main method of burying humans to and from the moon for the foreseeable future it fits four to six astronauts into 20 cubic meters of space if that sounds like rather cramped conditions just remember that the apollo module fit three astronauts in just 6.2 cubic meters the orion capture will consist of three constituent parts the crew module the european service module and the launch abort system the crew module is predictably the place where the crew will be spending most of their time and is the only part of the three that will be returning to earth at the end of the mission this means it must be capable of re-entry which calls for a heat shield for this nasa has decided upon an ab code ablator system but same system used on the apollo missions and early iterations of the space shuttle during the days of the constellation program the program that preceded artemis nasa released a request for proposal for what was to become the iran capsule several proposals were put forward by the likes of boeing lockheed martin and northrop grumman with lockheed martin ultimately winning out following several years of development the constellation program was canceled and the orion capsule was shelved despite this development continued on the iran and by the time the artemis missions came around the crew module had been almost completely redesigned nasa set the bar high early on in the development process by making it a requirement that the module be capable of supporting a manned mission of a minimum 21 days which for reference the apollo missions were just seven to nine days it will also be capable once the time comes of staying in space for upwards of six months in sort of a hibernation state this would become necessary when we get lobji into orbit around the moon and we've got more on that coming later as for the internals of the crew module the cockpit has been designed to be very similar to that of a boeing 787 using all digital instruments which is something known as a glass cockpit it's also got a computing system that's orders of magnitude more powerful than the one apollo had further it comes with an auto docking feature that will allow the computer to take over the highly complicated task of docking with other spacecraft although there will be an override system should the need arise we're not saying hal 9000 but maybe hal 9000. i'm sorry dave i'm afraid i can't do that self-aware ai aside venturing outside of our protective rocky bubble has always been a dangerous undertaking this was one of the reasons why the apollo missions were carried out with such haste as spending too much time outside the earth's magnetic field would expose the astronauts to radiation levels up to 700 times greater than that on earth and as we begin to set our sides on the moon and mars our timelines for mission go from several days to at a minimum 21 days for the moon and nine months for simply getting to mars a full mars mission would call for a maximum of 18 months outside of any kind of planetary protection it is for this reason that one of the most pressing issues is how we create an environment with radiation levels low enough for extended human habitation your first thought might just be to cover the spacecraft with some kind of heavy metal shielding this kind of lead shielding though would simply be so heavy that even a couple of centimeters wrapped around the hull of the ship would add hundreds of tons of extra mass to the spacecraft and even if you were able to get all of that into orbit it would actually end up inflicting more damage to the crew than it would help prevent this is because lead is an extremely heavy element with approximately 125 neutrons and 82 protons which makes it very good at cutting out high-energy rays like x-rays and gamma rays but well terrible at dealing with charged particles and solar radiation is mostly made up of highly charged particles traveling very near the speed of light when that kind of particle hits a lead atom it causes many of these nutrients to break apart and scatter straight into the spacecraft cabin imagine it's sort of like trying to protect yourself from a barrage of arrows by building a wall of shotgun shells sure it's absolutely going to stop those arrows but you're still going to get hit with a buckshot god knows we don't want that the solution was to use materials known as low z materials these are elements with low levels of nucleons the fewer the better with hydrogen being possibly the best low z material however hydrogen is also highly flammable it hasn't been used since apollo because a spark caused the polypropylene lining around the capsule to catch on fire tragically killing three men on board as far as we're aware there are currently only three methods incorporated into the orion capsule to mitigate the risk of solar radiation first is the use of a lithium aluminium alloy to build the majority of the structure of the capsule this alloy is a bit of a wonder material for space flight being super light stronger than titanium excellent at absorbing high energy particles and highly elastic the exterior is designed with several different layers of material placed one on top of each other the material with the heaviest atoms on the outside and then the lighter ones within the module this configuration acts to efficiently absorb some of those loose nucleons entering the cabin without adding too much weight second is a special protective clothing for the astronauts to wear there isn't a massive amount of information on this however it is thought that the astronauts won't be wearing it at all times just whenever there are raised levels of radiation such as when they're traveling through the van allen belts the third bit of protection is kind of like a storm bunker within the capsule and that is because space weather is absolutely a thing and inclement space weather is far more dangerous than the kind of weather that we get here on earth because it comes in the form of solar storms this is when massive amounts of radiation and highly charged particles are ejected from the sun very high speeds in something called a coronal mass ejection or cme and you absolutely don't want to be around when one of these comes rolling through they're pretty rare events and it's unlikely that one would occur during an artemis mission and even more unlikely that it would be directed at earth but nasa has planned for it nonetheless unfortunately if one does occur and a mission is underway unless the astronauts are on their final approach to earth there would simply not be enough time to avoid it however we do have warning systems in place and should something happen the astronauts will have anything from 3 to 12 hours warning in effect what they would do is gather all the supplies food and pretty much everything that is movable and place it in a kind of shell in the center of the cabin the astronauts would then get inside this shell this would put the maximum amount of material in between the astronauts and the oncoming storm they would then be able to pilot the craft from inside the bunker and wait it out now you might be wondering well why is this an issue we have astronauts in space all the time on the iss well the iss is in the location called lower earth orbits and this does count as space but it is still well within the vast majority of the earth's magnetic fields in fact the iss is so close to earth that despite their apparent weightlessness the gravity that they are experiencing is still pretty much exactly equal to what we experience at sea level the only reason it appears as though they're weightless is because they're traveling so fast in a horizontal direction that the ground is falling away as far as they're approaching it okay so returning to the other constituent parts of the orion capsule we have the launch board system which is attached to the top of the crew module and does exactly what it says on the tin that is should something go wrong during the launch the system will activate pulling the module away from the rocket and there is something kind of funny about a rocket being used to escape another rocket however nasa didn't see the comedy in the situation and in their drive to ensure the safety of the crew nasa actually built a rocket with this system attached to it and then intentionally blew the rocket up mid-flight just to make sure that the escape system worked and it could outrun the sls which it did assuming that nothing goes wrong with the launch the launch ejection system will be jettisoned shortly after the rocket reaches orbit finally we have the european service module designed by airbus this is pretty much the utility closet of the orion module it contains the majority of the life support systems much of the food storage the water reclamation system the electrical systems navigation systems as well as the external solar array this module has also been equipped with four rl10c engines which will produce a combined 440 kilonewtons of thrust easily enough to allow for landing and return to earth this system will be detached from the crew module upon final approach to earth where it will burn up in earth's atmosphere the sls is a highly impressive bit of engineering but it was mostly designed and created by nasa with little input from other nations and companies much like the saturn v rocket the orion on the other hand was the result of a collaboration among many different contractors and space agencies from around the world okay so we're ready to land on the moon we have the y now all we need is the where and the how first things first we have to decide on a landing zone during the apollo era nasa decided to land on the equator of the moon for many reasons the primary one being that it's the easiest place to place a spaceship the second time around we're looking for something to call home rather than a landing site this has led nasa to focus on areas with qualities as similar to earth as possible now owing to the fact that the moon provides only a tenth of the earth's gravity and about one five thousandth of the air pressure scientists had to be pretty abstract with what they deem to be earth-like conditions to start with the temperature on the surface of the moon can vary wildly in science units it can be anywhere from 95 degrees kelvin and 390 degrees kelvin or in normal units that's -178 celsius to 116 celsius or in freedom units that's minus 240 fahrenheit to positive 290 fahrenheit fortunately there are places where temperatures remain consistent and within reasonable levels namely the lunar poles in a rather fortuitous turn of events ice has also been found at said poles which is a requirement of humans ever to establish any long-term settlements on the moon nasa has said that shackleton crater on the south pole of the moon is currently our top pick for a lunar landing site this crater was formed roughly 3.8 billion years ago and has a diameter of about 21 kilometers these ridges of the crater are illuminated for about 80 to 90 percent of the lunar cycle meaning that solar panels installed on the ridge could provide a plentiful and stable flow of electricity the peaks of the crater rim are near constant light and have received the rather incredible name peaks of eternal light we don't know who decided on this name but well hats off to you the center of the crater which is around 4.8 kilometers deep is in near constant darkness putting the temperature at around minus 180 celsius and i know we just said that cold is a bad thing but not here because it means that any water carried to the crater on a comet will have remained frozen assuming what goes to plan will be landing there by optimus 3. that gives us the where now we just have to figure out the how which is precisely the question that nasa asked in a request for a proposal sent out to several u.s aerospace manufacturing companies after receiving their proposals they selected three to progress to the design stage those being proposals from spacex dynamics and a collaborative proposal from blue origin lockheed martin and northrop grumman ultimately spacex won out with their starship hls proposal which is pretty much a highly modified version of spacex's basic starship rockets this is the whole mega project in itself and if you'd like to see a video about that well leave a comment below for now we're going to focus on the second part of that title the hls which stands for human landing system originally the starship was produced with the goal of getting humans to and from mars in a reusable ship unfortunately due to the fact that the moon and mars aren't the same place some significant changes had to be made to the design of the spaceship as of yet there isn't a lot of information pertaining to the differences that spacex has made to account for these differences the primary source of information seems to be elon musk's twitter account and promotional rendered images of the design that being said what we do know is that as the starship will not have to deal with re-entry of any kind owing to the fact that once launched it will not be returning to earth until it's decommissioned this has eliminated the need for a heat shield or air brakes this barium will also have methylox boosters placed midway up the ship's body rather than at the bottom of the ship these engines will be reserved for landing on and leaving the lunar surface their placement is to reduce the risk of any lunar regolith getting kicked up during landing and damaging the spaceship and its engines as far as we know these are the majority of the changes that have been made to the starship however we expect to hear more about this in due course the easiest way to describe how nasa intends to use this ship is to simply describe what a mission involving the starship hls would look like to start with the crew would launch using the sls and orion capsule they would coast from lower earth orbit into their near rectilinear lunar orbit where they would meet the starship already in orbit around the moon the crew for the lunar descent would transfer onto the starship where they would descend to the lunar surface do their thing and then return to the orion capsule and then they'd return to earth there was conflicting information as to whether the starship would be in lunar orbit prior to orion's arrival or whether they would meet in orbit i'm sure i don't have to tell you this but this is very much an ongoing part of the project there is sure to be more information to come but this is the majority of what we know as of the making of this video elon musk has made some intimations that once it has reached the end of its service life it will be guided to the lunar surface where it will act as part of the first lunar base however there's little to confirm this like i say this is very much an ongoing part of the project and there are sure to be changes as the timelines and requirements become more and more clear however there is one part of this mega project that we're yet to cover easily one of the most ambitious parts the gateway which well you can look forward to in our follow-up video to this one the artemis program is intended to return humans to the moon for the first time since 1971. and many have drawn similarities between the artemis and apollo programs but the closer you look at the two the more you see that these similarities are pretty superficial when we went to the moon it had little to do with scientific research and everything to do without innovating the soviet union as a result looking back at the first moon landing it comes across as a burst of thinly veiled innovation surrounded by a sea of political posturing it was done to prove that as a nation the united states was simply more capable and more powerful than the ussr no one's saying that the apollo missions weren't a truly amazing achievement they were all we're saying is that perhaps we should use apollo as a lesson as to what happens when we allow conflict to drive innovation as opposed to our curiosity so i really hope you found this video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe stay tuned for the next part of this series and i'll see you next time [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 690,829

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Id: E_jFN26_1A8

Length: 24min 46sec (1486 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 19 2022