>Buoyancy is an easier equation to solve than lift.

That's a snappy one-liner but it doesn't address the real concerns.

First of all, subsonic lift is well understood and has been for decades. The answer is much more mundane: The Artemis mission profile does not require payload doors that open, no Canadarm, no requirement to service, launch, and/or capture satellites in orbit, and so like good engineers they designed the minimum vehicle that satisfies the requirements.

Also, the Shuttle was actually much more expensive to reuse than originally predicted.

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JumpCrisscross 15 hours ago | parent [-]

> subsonic lift is well understood and has been for decades

I said easy. Not well understood. I can fly planes. It’s hard, and has limited room for fucking up. (It’s also hyperbole to suggest we understand lift. We don’t.)

Piloting a boat is easier and more forgiving. Hence, splashdown. You don’t need direction. You don’t need lift. Parachute physics is a backbreaker, but it’s symmetrical. Same for splash.

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_moof 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You're a VC arguing with an aerospace engineer about aerospace engineering.

I'm also a pilot (CFI). My day job is space operations. And I can tell you've had too many hangar arguments about how wings work.

Pilots don't understand lift. Aero engineers understand it just fine.

	▲	JumpCrisscross 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I love this comment. Thank you. For what it’s worth, I’m not a CFI but I did study actual astronautical engineering. Not much good once we’re in an atmosphere, which, granted, is where the boats and planes go. But I’ll stand by my statement that nobody—apart from interplanetary reëntry and drone teams—fundamentally understands lift. (I certainly didn’t when I was solving analytic solutions by hand.)

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stackghost 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>Piloting a boat is easier and more forgiving. Hence, splashdown.

At no point were the astronauts piloting a boat. The reasons they splash down into the ocean has nothing to do with buoyancy being easier to solve, and even less to do with the ease of piloting a boat.

>It’s also hyperbole to suggest we understand lift. We don’t.

Maybe you personally do not understand lift, but "we" do in fact understand it. Please educate yourself before continuing this discussion any further.

	▲	WalterBright 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There are multiple mathematical and physical approaches to understand lift, but they have the same results and are correct.