Heinlein was probably right...

I watched a video about the Artemis II manned flight around the Moon that might launch this week, as (along with many people, I assume), I just didn't know all that much about how the entire Artemis project was going.  (Musk's explodey Starship has sort of sucked all of the oxygen out of new space ventures.)  

For those who haven't read about it, the New York Times has a graphics filled article explaining.

My overall impressions are these:

*    The four main engines really are just shuttle era engines?   While I know nothing about how the shuttle engines performed, seems questionable to be sticking to such an old design.

*   That command module really looks small and claustrophobic for missions of "up to" 21 days.  Not that much above Apollo standards, to be honest, although this one does have enough space for the astronauts to hide in a storage locker in the event of a major solar storm causing dangerous radiation levels.   (That's where the claustrophobia could really set in.)

*   This is my main point:   the coming complexity of lunar missions to get significant weight on the ground there really gives me the impression that the solar system is never going to be significantly colonised with chemical rockets.   If anyone remembers Robert Heinlein's "young adult" novel (when they were called "juvenile" titles) The Rolling Stones, it opens with a chapter in which the main characters are having an in depth discussion of the used nuclear rocket models available for purchase on the Moon (where they live.)     And I am pretty sure that nuclear powered rockets were a standard feature in his future universe.   

I see that The Rolling Stones was written in 1952 - making it pretty prescient given that the actual development of potential nuclear rockets wasn't started then - Wikipedia says the NERVA progam didn't get underway til 1955.   (Although Wikipedia also says that papers circulated in the late 1940's proposing nuclear powered rockets, and I presume this is how Heinlein knew about it.)

As a child and teenager who was very keen and excited by the then manned space program, it feels odd to now feel pessimistic about its development because it feels like it has followed something of a technological dead end for significant further advance.  But that is how it seems to have gone...