Space is hard. Aside from the heat shield, there are a million things that could go the wrong with loss of life as the result.

With the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, by the time Apollo 11 launched, they had done a pretty good shakedown of the systems, and lost three astronauts during that shakedown. If this were SpaceX, there would have been at least two, maybe more, unmanned flights testing all of the changes between iterations. Here there was no iterations. Artemis I flew just over 3 years ago. There were anomalies noted in the heat shield, they did root cause analysis, came up with a fix, and that fix is now flying with humans on board. In SpaceX's world, there would have been one or two (or more) flights in-between Artemis I and Artemis II to validate the fix, rinse and repeat.

The whole Artemis stack is a one-off rocket using 1970's technology (Shuttle type engines, tank, solid boosters) and it takes a very long time to put one Artemis stack together. This will be the second flight for the Artemis stack. Granted it is based off of old technology that has been mostly proven from the Shuttle era, but it isn't a stack that has been a workhorse like Falcon 9 has been. So there are lots of things that can go wrong with things that are not in the forefront of anyone's thinking.

Space is hard. This is rocket science.

The real concern here is if anything does happen that either leads to an Apollo-13 like situation where the crew barely makes it back alive or the crew not coming back alive at all, it could lead to the US not being the next nation to land people on the moon. It would take years to recover from a catastrophic failure, which will leave the US far behind China in the race to put a new set of boots on the moon. Apollo 1 and Apollo 13 incidents happened due to causes that no one was really thinking about, until the incident actually happened.

At the end of the day the risk will never be 0. The astronauts and NASA both know this. We can reduce the risks we know about to a point where people are willing to take the risk. But its more the unseen risks that, IMHO, pose the greater risk for failure.

A few things come to mind:

If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, swims like a duck, it is a duck, even if everyone tells you its not a duck.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result.

Gambling odds are always in favor of the house, not the gambler. Eventually the piper will need to be paid.

The AI gold rush reminds me of the late 1990s where everyone and their dog could start a company that did nothing of value and yet walk away with hundreds of millions selling the "success is just around the corner, if only we could find someone to throw more money on the fire" to the next sucker, until the music stops and someone ends up holding a bag full of nothing but air.

Seriously? A dataset that is close to a PetaByte is too big to backup?

I've been doing business continuity planning for a couple of decades along with many other hats. Nothing is ever too large to backup.

However, the other side of the coin is to make sure backups finish and can be recovered. I've been in situations where I wasn't involved the the company's backups, but saw first hand what happens when backups take too long to run where they eventually fail, day in and day out, but was assured that the backups were good. Purged some old data, and sure enough, not a month goes by that someone needs some of that old data that was purged but was backed up, only to discover that the backups were failing due to a number of factors including that they would never finish, and no one bothered to look into why or verify backup integrity.

I keep redundant, and sometimes double redundant backups of most everything. I try to have backups in different geographical locations.

I know personally of 9 people who have Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Prior to the change with DSM-5 in 2013, these 9 people would be classified as follows: 1 with PDD-NOS, 2 with Aspergers or High Functioning Autism, and 6 with Autism. Today they are all classified as having a single "thing". I am one of those 9 people. I've never been clinically diagnosed, but after going through this with two of my sons (2 of the 9 people), who have what used to be called Autism, I know pretty well what I have. My sister has Aspergers.

All 9 of the persons mentioned are different from each other. I cannot look at all of them and say they have the same "disorder". Some of them are able to live on their own, others not so much. Some need 24/7 supervision that are 20+ years old. In a previous story I used the analogy of broken bone disorder, where you have to have a broken bone somewhere in your body to have "broken bone disorder". Could be any bone in the body, broken in any way. There isn't a single treatment for "broken bone disorder". Treatment depends on what bone is broken, how it was broken, what its used for, and so forth. You cannot apply the same treatment to everyone with "broken bone disorder", nor is everyone who has the disorder impaired in the same way. Some may be not impaired at all.

I've heard rumblings that ADHD was being considered to be put under the Autism Spectrum. Someone even mentioned putting Obsessive Compulsive Disorder under there as well. I kid you not. At that point we might as well change the name from Autism Spectrum Disorder to Some Kind Of Mental Health Disorder or something.

As someone else pointed out, DSM-5 was and is not universally liked among mental health professionals. There was a lot of push back on DSM-5. And yet here we are.

The type of people who like DSM-5 seem to be the media and politicians, not those who are in the trenches dealing with ASD such as myself.

The DSM-5 manual specifically states the following, which is where the rollup of Aspergers and PDD NOS into Autisim Spectrum Disorder comes from. Again this is from 2013, so its been this way for 12 years.

"Note: Individuals with a well-established DSM-IV diagnosis of autistic disorder, Asperger’s disorder, or pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified should be given the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. Individuals who have marked deficits in social communication, but whose symptoms do not otherwise meet criteria for autism spectrum disorder, should be evaluated for social (pragmatic) communication disorder."

Maybe that is why with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fifth edition (DSM-5), Autism was re-labeled as Autism Spectrum Disorder. Emphasis on Spectrum. It isn't just one thing. Not sure why this is news today. Its been this way since at least 2013 when DSM-5 came out.

It encompasses what used to be Aspergers and Pervasive Development Disorder Not Otherwise Specified.

I have higher functioning ASD and have two sons who have ASD - one mild and the other one more severe. While all three of us have some behaviors in common, we are also very different. I also have a sister who has Aspergers (now part of the ASD umbrella).

There are also several people in my neighborhood who have ASD, and they are all different from each other. There isn't a single definition of ASD that would describe all of us in our neighborhood. And it is very unlikely there is a single cause for the entire spectrum. Its a whole spectrum of things that are similar enough that they were put under an umbrella called Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Kinda like coming up with something like "broken bone spectrum disorder" where it encompasses all broken bones (arms, femurs, etc...) where although they are all similar in that all things in the spectrum requires a bone to be broken, how they got broken, where the bone is located, and how its treated can vary widely.

I'll second the fake news thing. I sleep with a CPAP (and have for 25 years), and the one I have now is nearly silent. I have to sometimes pull my mask off slightly to check that it is even on.

I'm sure there are some that are noisy, but that hasn't been my experience. If my mask leaks because it isn't on quite right that makes a lot more noise than my machine does.

This.

I'm having a sleep lap study in the coming weeks. It will be my third. Going on my 3rd CPAP (may be a BiPAP this time) in 25 years. So yes they still do them - sleep overnight in a lap with a bunch of sensors on you with someone watching your sleeping and adjusting your CPAP/BiPAP settings throughout the night to come up with the correct settings for the individual.

I took a at-home sleep study weeks ago to look into getting a MAD device (through a company not affiliated with my sleep doctor), but as my sleep doctor told me earlier this week, in my case it probably wouldn't help as at my last sleep study 15 years ago I had 144 episodes per hour. That isn't a typeoo. Thats nearly 3 a minute. That at-home study, which I did without my CPAP, was the worst night I've had in over 20 years. But I wanted to do it to see if the numbers aligned with the range where a MAD has been seen to be effective. Sadly probably not.

My CPAP is my best friend at night and has been for nearly 25 years. I even have a battery/inverter that I use when the power goes out or I go camping.

I do know of people where a MAD device was able to completely replace their CPAP. But all of those cases were mild compared to mine - having 30-50 episodes an hour versus my 144.

Yes being overweight is a contributing factor for my sleep apnea, but when i was diagnosed 25 years ago that was much less so, and I was still having about 120 episodes an hour back then. So it isn't all about weight.

Bottom line: it isn't a one size fits all thing. I'm sure the pill will work with some people as the trials are showing, not so much with others, in the same way that MAD devices do not always work. As for CPAP/BiPAP, my setting is currently a 14, and I hardly notice it. But I've heard plenty of stories of people who simply can't get used to or tolerate a CPAP. For me, I can't live without it.

I also know a pediatric "airway" dentist personally who told me last year that the goal was to get people off of CPAP with newer treatments, such as MAD devices. And I would tend to agree because its much easier to lug around a MAD device than a CPAP when traveling or being outdoors, and you don't have to worry about having power. But I don't think the shoe will fit for everyone.

That was all PR coming from Musk in March 2018 of what Musk wanted to do by 2022, not what actually happened in 2022. If there had been any such launches in 2022, it would have been all over the Internet. Given that its not, there were no SpaceX cargo launches towards Mars in 2022. The vehicle that will be used to do this just completed its not-so-successful 8th test flight last week. Hasn't even made it to Earth orbit yet, let alone a transit orbit to Mars.

Sigh. The two astronauts who traveled to the ISS back in June of 2024 have had the ability and means to return to Earth since September 2024, with no further launches from Earth required. The Dragon capsule that will bring them home next week has been docked at the ISS since September 2024.

The delay on returning them to Earth is due to how long its taken to get a replacement crew up to the ISS. And apparently that is important because if Butch and Suni and the other two astronauts, all part of crew 9, came home before their replacements arrived, it would leave the US side of the ISS unoccupied and with no one to tend to any experiments that that are running, or maintenance, etc... Thats the risk with all of this. There is no reason why the already docked Dragon capsule couldn't have left the station months ago to bring crew 9 back to Earth, except it would leave a staffing gap at the ISS. There would be three astronauts remaining on the ISS that flew up on Soyuz, but removing over half of the staff for a time will certainly cause issues on the ISS simply due to not enough hands available to maintain the station.

If the risk of an astronaut having a major medical issue in Space outweighed the risk of removing 4 of 7 astronauts from the ISS for a period of time, Butch and Suni would be on the ground already.

The launch was scrubbed for today's launch attempt. The countdown displayed on the live feed got down to about 15 minutes or so, and then it was scrubbed.

And one more reference. The new (well, 8 years since opening) Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland took 7 years to excavate at a cost of about $10 billion USD, The boring machines started from both ends and the middle, otherwise it could have taken 10+ years. And this is a 35.5 mile tunnel, the longest railway tunnel in the world. One crossing the Atlantic would be about 85 times longer than this one.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So, no, this will never be built.

Discovery Channel had a series called "Extreme Engineering" about 10-15 years back and one of the episodes explored this idea, except the tunnel would not be the entire way but be under the surface of the water, tethered to the seafloor so it doesn't surface.

It would take time to get up to speed on the way out and then to slow down on the other end, and would add time onto the total travel time. A 10 minute acceleration to 3000 MPH from 0 would impart about 0.23g on the passengers. A 20 minute acceleration would impart about 0.11g, but would reduce the distance you'll be going at 3000 MPH. That acceleration/deceleration shouldn't be too uncomfortable for passengers ( see https://rechneronline.de/g-acc... ).

The biggest hurdle after the massive cost of construction and maintenance, is what happens if there is an accident with a train going 3000 MPH in a tube that is in vacuum. That is a whole lot of kinetic energy that would need to go somewhere. The over-engineering required to handle just about any kind of accident, not to mention handling a leak somewhere, would be massive and expensive. Have an accident 1500 miles in, under the seafloor (assuming its buried)? Whats the contingency for something like that? Cannot evacuate to the tunnel because its a tube in vacuum. Pressurize the tunnel so passengers can transfer to some other train, and then you'll need to depressurize the tube when done. Could segment the tunnel into chunks that could be pressurized and depressurized in a reasonable time frame, but that adds complexity of airtight doors between segments that need to open/shut as trains pass through, and so forth.

And it won't be built because it will never recoup its cost. How long would it take to recoup the 20+ trillion price tag? How expensive will be the tickets? It will be competing with $1000 airline tickets from New York to London. At $1000 a ticket, that would be 20 billion tickets to make up the $20 trillion cost. Even at $2000 a ticket, that is still 10 billion tickets.

The Channel is about 24 miles long. This would be 120 times longer.