Once Again, A "Dress Rehearsal" -- At Loading The Liquid Hydrogen And Oxygen Tanks, For Artemis II... But, Why Even Go?

There are collected and sealed sample tubes, resting in and around the Perseverance rover out there, 40 million miles off -- on Mars. Or Barsoom, if you prefer. NASA's Trump appointed Administrator recently canceled all funding -- for the 2030 mission to robotically reurn them to Earth.

That is an extremely important astro-biology science program -- it may definitively establish that there was prior life -- on Mars. But instead of spending that money -- with no risk to human crews, Tangerine 2.0's priority is to showboat "boots on the moon" -- near the Fourth of July. For nearly no real scienctific purpose. Ask Armstrong. Ask the Apollo teams -- we've learned what we can there. No need to risk life and limb, at all. Here's the latest -- but this is not the fault of NASA -- this is politico-hacks' fault:

. . .11:11 a.m. EST

Teams in the firing room at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center are experiencing an issue with ground communications and have moved to backup communication methods to maintain safe audio command and control. The launch director has decided to maintain the current vehicle state, continuing the liquid oxygen fast fill, but delaying moving into liquid hydrogen fast fill, while engineers troubleshoot the issue. . . .

11:45 a.m. EST

Normal communications have been restored, and NASA teams have made the decision to transition to fast fill of the SLS rocket’s core stage with super-cold liquid hydrogen. Core stage liquid oxygen remains in fast fill.

Fast fill rapidly loads hundreds of thousands of gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into their core stage tanks. During this process, teams also monitor for leaks and conduct engine bleed procedures to thermally condition the RS-25 engines for launch. Once fast fill is complete, operations will move to topping and replenish phases.

Up next, teams will start chilling down the liquid hydrogen tank on the interim cryogenic propulsion stage – or the upper stage – of SLS. . . .

So -- there is an argument we ought to do both -- in the near term (Moon; and Mars) as a stepping stone to boots on Mars. But we haven't solved the radiation shielding issue -- for humans to go to Mars. So we cannot use humans to collect these tubes, safely.

Yes, this is a very stupid time, in US administration / public policy toward (and in many cases, opposing). . . real science. Damn.

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