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This is the part I think a lot of people miss when they estimate life in the universe.

Our planetary system has been exceptionally stable thanks to a calm main sequence star and a giant planet as protector. Yet even with the ideal scenario, and single celled "life" starting on Earth almost immediately after the late heavy bombardment allowed, it still took nearly 4 BILLION years for multi-celled life to evolve and flourish in the Cambrian explosion 500 million years ago.

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I was an engineer for Rockwell on the B1 and was working in the facility just across Plant 42 from where the shuttles were built. Still remember the moment the news hit.

"...beautiful...photo...hot, young..."

Yeah, this new A.I. knows how to push all our buttons.

It's just gonna get worse.

You mean Apollo 1?

There's a lot that goes into whether or not a life can harbor life. We don't know much about the composition of the planet, how old the solar system was before the planet developed, we don't know of it core or if it has a magnetic field. Not many people realize that jupiter is a major reason why life is supported on earth. Jupiter is so massive that it "catches" a lot of massive asteroids that could otherwise hit earth and cause a mass extinction event

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You and OP are still wrong, and I am not arguing semantics. There are two things I corrected with my original comment, and they are not interchangeable.

The OP said the speed of expansion is different for something farther away. That is just plain wrong. The speed of expansion does not change just because something is farther away.

The correct thing to say would be the velocity (observation) of a distant object is faster than a closer object. That is what I said to OP in my original comment.

The rate or speed of expansion is the same no matter the distance.

A more distant object's velocity is faster than a closer object.

The velocity of a distant object is not the same thing as rate of expansion.

Velocity increases with distance, but the rate/speed of expansion stays the same.

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5th grade math class for me. Mrs. Thompson, can’t remember what she looked like, but remember the shock on her face still today.

It would probably only serve to motivate everyone involved. The next mission would be dedicated to the dead and the journey continues.

It was a jobs program, and it remains a jobs program. I'm excited for Artemis, for sure, but just because SLS flew ONCE doesn't mean it is justified in terms of cost, tech strategy, and design. SLS can fly 10 more times and the budget isn't justified, in part because it's another $2B a pop.

I was in 5th grade watching with my class. I hardly understood what was happening until the teacher started crying. They opened a new middle school in my town shortly after named Challenger. My class was the first class to go. Everyone talked about a curse on our class claiming that 6 students from our class and one teacher would die before high school graduation. It was a pretty big school, so of course the curse came true.

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Naw. Space exploration is a worldwide thing. There have been dozens of mission failures (and probably hundreds more that we haven't heard about), and space exploration is still going strong. The space sector has brought many technological advances that help humanity, so it's in a rich country's best interest to maintain their space industry.

We are talking about NASA, since this is a thread about NASA's SLS. We're talking about alternatives that NASA could have funded to the SLS. NASA could have paid to human-rate the Falcon Heavy, NASA could have paid to radiation harden Crew Dragon. That would have been a viable alternative to the SLS + Orion, at a far lower cost.

SpaceX absolutely decided to focus on Starship. But it doesn't change that Dragon + Falcon Heavy could have been used as a cheaper alternative to Orion + SLS.

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So it's a water world. It is still located in the habitatable zone, unlike Gliese 1214b. If it has an ozone, it would have the same surface temp as Earth, and its orbit around its sun is almost as long as ours. There is no way to tell if there is life in that water, but I would put money on it.

If they did the NASA would have given up after the challenger disaster

Absolutely not. They're might be a slowdown while they investigate causes and find ways to mitigate risk but deaths don't stop space programs.

SLS and Orion could be replaced by a second HLS Starship and a couple of Dragons or Starliners for ferrying astronauts to and from LEO. All are under contract to NASA right now, and unlike even Orion, Dragon (and hopefully soon Starliner) have actually caried astronauts to dock with another spacecraft. Any argument to the effect of "Starship/HLS hasn't been demonstrated yet" is as irrelevant as SLS/Orion are without a lander.

If we are talking in hind sight, there is no maybe about it. 15-20 years ago, distributed lift with the Atlas V and Delta IV (with Ariane 5 cooperation and an on-ramp for the future Falcon 9/Heavy) could have been used with distributed lift. No new launch vehicle needed to have been developed, let alone SLS or Ares.

Thing that got me at the time, as someone who vividly remembers the Apollo missions is that Shuttle missions had become so routine by the time of the Challenger explosion There had been ten missions in 85 and early 86 so everyone thought the kinks had been worked out of the system. I was in a college at the time and when word first came out no one believed it.