This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on I Heart Radio. And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you. Good to be with you on a Friday night. Robert Zimmerman back with us. Historian Robert Zimmer has been chronic-alizing and putting the history of space exploration for almost four decades with books, articles and web pages. His website is behind the black.com. He is an expert in stories of astronauts and world events. And here he is back on Coast to Coast. Mr. Zimmerman, how are you? I'm just fine, George. I'm very glad to be here. Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure. And the timing is right. We're just before that on a misdemeanor. Kind of exciting in some ways and exciting, not so good in other ways. Yes, this delay because of weather. I guess they're wising up and realizing you can't keep pushing things but it'll get going, huh? This the delay on the- let me review what the mission is about. Just so the audience. I'm sure they know, but it's good to do a quick review. This mission is going to be the first manned mission in the Automus program. It's going to be using the SLS rocket that NASA has been building for about two decades, about a decade and a half. And it's cost is about $60 billion. This is only its second launch. And it's going to be using the Orion capsule, which Lockheed Martin has been building for about two decades. Cost about $25 billion to build about a half a dozen capsules. And they're going to put four astronauts on this mission. And it's going to take a very wide, sling shot orbit that will take it around the moon, not into orbit, and then come back to Earth. The overall mission is going to be about ten days. That's the plan. It's now so they're going to do a wet, what they call a wet dress rehearsal. They're going to do it on Saturday tomorrow. But they're not going to do that because the weather, it was very cold and there's winds. This is not this is not pretty standard. It's not a big surprise. They got a big rocket. They want to be safe. So they're going to do this. The wet dress and what they do is they they simulate a full countdown up until ten seconds before launch. They fuel the rocket. They do everything as if they can actually launch. And they were also going to do some, some make believe holes like something's wrong. And then cycle will count back again as if they had to do that sort of practice. And this is a good thing to do. They're going to do it on Friday. That's not where the danger is George. This comes down to NASA. NASA once again like in Challenger and in like Columbia, putting schedule above engineering. The challenger, they did what they wanted to prove the shuttle could launch regularly like an airplane. And so they were going to launch no matter what, even though engineers told them the cold weather in January was going to make those O-rings and solid rocket boosts freeze and not work. And they said, no, no, we got a shoot. We got a schedule. We got a launch. So launched and seven people died with Columbia for years. And this is literally true for years. They had evidence that foam was coming off the external tank and hitting the tiles and damaging them for years. NASA had that information, but they just dismissed it said, no, no, we got a schedule. We got to keep flying. And so once again, a whole crew died when Columbia was hit by foam. It's thermal protection system was damaged and it broke up upon reentry. So here we have, autumn is to going to launch and it's going to launch now because Donald Trump wants to have a lunar land and not just Donald Trump Ted Cruz and a lot of senators want to have a man lunar landing before the Chinese. Now I should point out that we don't have to beat the Chinese to the moon in case anyone hasn't noticed we did it already. That's right. A lot of times. Say again, a lot of times we beat them. That's right. We've been there already six times. So we don't have to beat them to prove we could we could do it. But they want to beat them. And so they want to have this mission go around the moon. So the next autumn is mission can land on the moon by 28. I will tell you the 28 days of fantasy, but that's put that aside for a minute. Let's talk about Artemis to the Orion capsule they're using with Artemis to when they launched it on an unmanned test flight around the moon back in 22. It came back through the atmosphere and when they recovered it in the ocean, they were shocked to find that the heat shield had not functioned as expected. Not it didn't just a blade off as it's supposed to, you know, very gently lay a man layer. That's how these heat shields always work as the heat. They take the heat away by ablating the layers off. No, what happened is large chunks broke off never happened before. NASA spent two years analyzing this. They think and port word. They think they have figured out why it happened. This particular heat shield on Orion is much larger than they've ever used before. It's got seams and they thought coming through the atmosphere, gas got into those seams and acted almost like like a chisel pulling the chunks out. All right, so you're dealing with a heat shield that's questionable. NASA has made the decision not to change the heat shield. They're going to change the heat shield on the next Orion mission, the next Artemis mission, but they didn't have time to put it on this particular capsule. And so instead they're going to launch it with this capsule with a heat shield that is questionable. But they're not entirely sure they understand those some things they do. And they've decided that the way to solve the problem is they changed the trajectory of the capsule as it comes into the atmosphere to reduce the stress on the heat shield. Is Artemis a NASA spacecraft or a private? Yes, this is all NASA. These are all NASA. This is not private enterprise. Though Lockheed Mountain make the capsule. This is a NASA design, NASA project. This is all NASA. This is not private enterprise. And so they're doing that. That's one. Now I will point out that if SpaceX wanted to put people on a dragon capsule with this kind of heat shield problem, I guarantee you that NASA would say no way, Jose, you do an unmissing mission test it first before you do so. NASA is not doing that because schedule they got to get this up so they can launch the man mission by 28. Once again, that schedule is a fantasy. We'll get to that later. But that's one issue. That's one. It's not the only one. This particular Orion capsule lead the first capsule to have a life support system on it. The Orion capsule life support system was not tested in 22. There were no people on the capsule. They didn't meet it, but they should have tested it. So instead they're going to put four people on a capsule with an untested life support system in space. And they're going to try to use them as guinea pigs to test this cat this life support system. NASA has planned to keep the capsule in Earth orbit for about a day at a high Earth orbit before about a day to test the life support system out. So there if there are any issues they could come back to Earth safely. You don't sound too confident. Apollo era they flew a 10 day mission in Earth orbit to test the Apollo systems with humans on board for 10 days to duplicate a lunar mission to make sure the lives of everything would work for the length of time needed to go to and from the moon. They're not doing that here. So that's a second issue. And once again if any private company wanted to put astronauts on a capsule finesse with an untested life support system, I guarantee you and that's what you'd say no. But once again they got to meet the schedule and so they're going to launch and that's what they're going to do. This is a very foolish situation. I will point out to be fair to NASA. They tested the heat shield on the ground extensively. They even tested it in the worst possible circumstance. They tested it to see what happens if the heat shield completely fails and the hull of the Orion capsule gets exposed to the heat of reentry. And they came away from those tests reassured it appeared to them that the hull would survive that circumstance. So they're reassured and that is reassuring. But I repeat they do not know if this change trajectory will really work modeling said so but as we all know with modeling that can be raw. And in good engineering rocketry you don't test with people until you've tested it on man. And this is the problem with NASA. It's the same problem with challenger and with Columbia. And I had an op ed on per dramas media about three weeks ago where I begged I little as my headline I begged Trump and Jared Isaacman and the head of NASA to take the people off this mission and I outlined if they did this as an unmanned mission. It really would not delay this whole program significantly. It wouldn't delay it enough to not beat the Chinese to the moon because I'm not I'm sure the Chinese are not going to land on the moon with people before 2030 based on everything I've seen of their program. And and and the White House knows this they have nothing information to know this. So there's time to spare. And this gets back to once again that 28 date getting men humans on the moon by 28. That's not a real number anyway they're not going to do it by 28 because they got too many things they've got to get built first. First of all the starship that they starship that they want to use as the land of war is is very unlikely to be ready by that time. It might be operational enough for unmanned missions but NASA wants space X to do an unmanned test mission to the moon. I got to get this done by 28 almost certainly so they have time and there's no reason to push this but gun hole go fever here we go again. I am praying the mission works and nothing goes wrong I think the actually odds are reasonably good that will happen but if nothing bad happens this is just going to continue NASA with the bad culture it's had for 40 years. George this gets back to your question the reason it's a NASA government rocket it's a NASA government capsule it's a NASA government program and these are always filled with these kind of kind of poor management decisions for political reasons private enterprise generally doesn't do this they have too many risks they don't get their money from tax dollars they get it from customers who have faith in them. Listen to more coast to coast AM every weeknight at 1 a.m. Eastern and go to coast to coast AM dot com for more this is an I heart podcast guaranteed human.
