> I think that NASA did a remarkable job of making Artemis II look almost routine and I don't think that was down to behaving as they did in the past.

I have been excited for Artemis--yes it's big and expensive and late, but look how it has brought out the best of what humans can be--but, despite all that, the heat shield situation was textbook "normalization of deviance." Just as the O-rings were not designed to have any damage but they retroactively justified it was okay, just as there was not supposed to be any foam or tile damage but they retroactively justified it was okay, so too was the Artemis I heat shield not supposed to come back with damage, but they...

I'm not trying to be negative, and risks are inevitable, but the resemblance to me was uncanny. The lesson with normalization of deviance is that a successful result does not inherently mean a safe decision. After all, most of the time that you play Russian Roulette you will escape unharmed.

There will always be issues on something a mad as putting some people on a firework and shooting them at a moving target 100,000 miles away from a moving platform.

The heat shield failure was a test and the result was a working heat shield, when it counted. That's the point of tests. NASA already had several working heat shields from the old missions but the new one needed testing - for the shape of the craft etc. They already had a lot of data from the old efforts (that worked).

I think that exit and re-entry are almost routine now, provided your rocket doesn't explode. The tricky bit is out there in space and trying to make the moon a resource of some sort.