Tim Pearce

the main purpose is to check out the orion spacecraft really exercise the life support systems thermal control systems com systems with astronauts on board three years earlier there was the launch of artemis one and it was a similar flight but with no astronauts on board the biggest thing to come back from that mission was uh heavy damage to the heat shield much more than we expected and so that's why it's taken three years for

all the smart engineers at NASA and the contractors get their arms around what was going on and get confidence that the changes that they've made will make it safe for the astronauts to fly this one.

it's gonna take them on what's called a free return trajectory around the moon.

That is the trajectory is designed such that the vehicle will travel to the moon, go past it, and then the gravity of the moon will kind of swing it back around towards the earth.

So one interesting aspect of this is that the astronauts will be the farthest humans ever from the earth on any flight.

And the current plan is Artemis IV will actually touch down once we gain confidence that the landers that we've tested in orbit are going to work.

So we'll keep our fingers crossed and see how quickly that can get done.

The priority is to get some pieces on the ground on the moon in the South Pole area, which is the area of interest.

And starting with probably, you know, just putting some basic elements down.

And then a big goal is to launch a nuclear reactor and land it on the moon.

Now, why do you want a nuclear reactor on the moon?

Number one, you're going to get a lot of power out of there, which is what you're going to need for a lunar base.

Number two, the moon, by treaty, of which all the major powers are signatories, nobody can own the moon.

We're only now about to launch the first astronauts.

To put that in perspective, consider the Apollo missions.

I mean, we went from no NASA, no rockets, no astronauts, and then the creation of NASA to landing humans on the moon in just under 11 years, right?

Pretty incredible.

We invented all that stuff, launch pads, rockets, astronauts, spacecraft, and now here we are

22 years into the current exploration program and we're just launching the first astronauts.

So hopefully under this administration and this administrator, Jared Isaacman, I'm a fan of his, I think he's what's been needed to shake this agency up.