Anyone else staying up to watch tonight's Moon mission launch?

[Nuffpills]

Anyone else staying up to watch the launch to navigate the moon? I didn’t realise until this evening it’s the first launch in 5 decades!

They definitely aren't in a rush. Not sure I can wait it out any longer 🥱😴

It’s amazing to think that that thing bobbing around in the ocean has been round the back of the moon..it must be so exciting to see it in real life.

I need to pee but I don’t want to miss anything

@nevernotmaybe

We haven’t sent people to the moon, even to orbit it, in over 50 years!

The resuseable shuttle was not capable of going that far, was expensive, flawed in a way they were unable to fix and retired 15 years ago.

NASA has been concentrating mainly on manned flight focusing on science in earth orbit (International Space Station), and unmanned missions to explore planets in our solar system.

This trip was not marketing. It was largely testing the new space ship design for manned flight before a landing (just as we sent several Apollo missions around the moon before the first landing). The mission is part of a truly ambitious plan to get people on Mars. The moon is just a staging post.

The distance and trajectory was what made it different and allowed them to see quite a lot of the Moon that hasn’t ever been seen before, I think. Certainly different enough to excite some of the NASA science team during the lunar flyby and I guess they would know what is new and what isn’t.

My guess is that’s what’s captured everyone else’s imagination is the access to the crew/mission control etc. during the mission. Not sure what people would have got during the last Apollo mission but I doubt that the general public could follow along as easily as they have been able to do this time.

It looks so chaotic. And two divers. Something looks wrong. Why are they taking so lomg?

@marmite123456 apparently NASA has said that the ocean currents are hindering efforts to attach and inflate the raft thingy.

(NASA may have used a more technical term than raft thingy 😂)

I was thinking it looks very well organised

Which obviously it would be 😂

They've got to finish their porch!

So in this timeframe, they've got to use their space legs, their sea legs and then their land legs. Even that is amazing to me. I guess I'm easily pleased.

Of course. And it looks like Integrity is safely down and the team fit and well. Fabulous

This crew have travelled the furthest distance from the earth.

That thing looks like it’s moving around a lot. Doesn’t like easy to get off of even if you haven’t been in microgravity for days.

As to why it’s exciting, it’s also notable that this is a first for a lot of people. I was very young when the Colombia disaster happened. I was nowhere near alive for Challenger or the Apollos or anything else. Aside from the ISS, space exploration hasn’t been a tangible thing in my lifetime.

They’re coming out now. The Pacific off of California is freezing cold and often pretty rough in terms of current so it’s not surprising that they struggled even on a relatively calm day.

I remember Challenger as a youngish child and it was horrific. I was so nervous watching the launch. But now they’re all out I can go to bed!

I’m sure when I watched the astronauts returning from the ISS the capsule got hoiked out before the astronauts left it - anyone know why this is different? The other way looked easier.

I was thinking this too! I am interested to know why it is different this time.

I did some research! Apparently, modern spacecrafts are designed to be safer to exit quickly, which enables the crew to be medically assessed quicker than if they had to wait to be lifted on to a ship. The risk of toxic fuel fumes/lunar contamination delayed the astronauts leaving the capsule previously.

No but I woke at 330 and went to check they loaded safely

just imagining how appreciative they must feel about Planet Earth right now. Like coming back to your own home after a camping holiday, times a million.

Imagine seeing Earth as you’re all the way out by the moon surrounded by the vastness of space and knowing that that place is the only place in all this vastness we can survive and live our lives.

Things like this do remind me how grateful we should be for our lovely planet and all the life forms that have evolved on it through the ages. Even if there are billions of other planets with life out there we aren’t likely to ever reach them from here just because of the distances involved.

Takes a lot longer if they have to pull the capsule out first and that’s bad for the astronauts. Apparently under the force of gravity after being in space, means being cooped up as they are is particularly bad for them physically. Also faster exit better because of a risk of prolonged exposure to hazardous chemicals that may be volatile because of the re-entry process (or something - I’ve never totally understood this because if the capsule protects them from re-entry and the vacuum of space - how are these chemicals getting in? But what do I know!)

I wondered that too @RawBloomers

I wonder if it depends on how quickly they can get them out - these astronauts were definitely lifted out of the water still in their capsule. But then they were also in space a lot longer, so perhaps there were different concerns.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0mw221z2yyo

I was having a bit of read. That’s a Space X Dragon capsule which, apparently, was designed to be retrieved quickly and the astronauts extracted on a ship. It is unique in this regard (at least for an American spaceship) but it’s so long since all the water landings from the 60s and 70s that we’ve forgotten they used to be designed to be extracted while still in the water, so on ship extraction is all we’ve seen for the last decade.

Aww bless them all at the press conference. I don’t think any of them are going to make it through without crying.