Coffee With Artemis: Failure To Launch

If you were having coffee with me, I would be happy to have you watch the time with me as we countdown the launch to the Artemis I.

Whats the big deal? You ask, well because while its unnamed flight, I signed up for some NASA offer to have my name put on hard drive that would be aboard the space craft. When I initially shared the news with others a very weird question I got asked was “What if extra terrestrials hack the drive steal my name and do some ghetto aviation rituals with it or even clone me and steal my identity” hmmm and honestly I had not considered that possibility.  

 Anyhoo, gotta hand it to NASA for finding creative ways to hype up their rather pricey space program… Look at me 9 thousand kilometers away and I am invested – plus they did keep sending me email alerts so I wouldn’t miss it… I woke up totally psyched up to watch the Artemis I launch. Its after all one of the most powerful rockets NASA has ever built and it come loaded with Alexa -well hello future.

Its been about 11 years since the last Nasa launch and fifty years since the last Nasa Expedition to the moon. You would think that after years, space travel would have become normal, when I was child I used to dream that by now we would be boldly going where no men had gone before –Space the final frontier.

I have to admit though watching the prelaunch tanking operations of a space-craft is about as exciting as watching paint dry… I kinda hoped something would blow up spectacularly, I love a good explosion… anyway its supposed to be uncrewed so no one would get hurt. NASA however seem to be going extra-cautious making sure everything checks out…

They will only do one test flight so they have to make sure they learn everything and iron out all kinks – Considering this project has gone way overbudget, doubling in cost to 20 Billion and the whole Artemis project expected to chew 90 billion of US taxpayers money by 2025…

Meanwhile Elon Musk and SpaceX are said to be developing Starship which will be a more powerful system with reusable boosters costing under 10 billion dollars…

If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that NASA stopped the countdown at 40 minutes to the launch and it eventually got scrubbed, apparently they had a problem with engine number 3.

During a process called engine bleeds, hydrogen is cycled through the engine to condition it for launch. Three of the four engines performed as expected, but engine number 3 experienced an issue which they could not reconfigure, which led to the launch being scrubbed.

So, spacecraft engine bleed… I say trying to sound like I know what I am talking about after watching a few hours of Nasa live streams. The next possible launch window is on 2 September but will NASA have figured their bleeding engine… “You don’t light the candle until its ready to go…” says NASA Administrator Bill Nelson

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that speaking about spacecrafts… Zimbabwe is supposed to have its satellite in space by now…. No updates have been given, no further details nothing…

Maybe the government of Zimbabwe is busy scratching their heads over the outstanding debt to China. Our finance Minister told parliament that as at August, 2022 our debt stands at  US$1.768 billion, yet we have borrowed close to a cumulative total of US $2.7 Billion and to date have only paid of US $152 million… Hopefully our satellites can get us into asteroid mining otherwise looks like more of our resources are just going to go to service foreign government debt.

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that come think about it as long as we still have the current mindsets going to the moon and space is not likely going to solve any of our problems…. See all this craziness follow us into space and beyond.

Whats been going on in your neck of the woods

~B