alt Hacker NewsHilarious the the intellectual forum downvoted you for being absolutely right.
Artemis II never escaped Earth’s pull.
That video that NASA put out where the craft did a sling shop around the moon is extremely deceptive. The pull of the moon had very little effect.
If they had missed, they would have eventually crashed back to earth in the worst case, and best case just re-adjusted and returned a little bummed.
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"Artemis II never escaped Earth’s pull."
Hmm. Maximum speed attained by Artemis II when they left their initial orbit was about 11.1 km/s IIRC. While this is somewhat less than true escape velocity from Earth (11.2 km/s) and you are technically correct, it is also enough of a speed that if you fly away in any random direction (and not a carefully calculated one), perturbances from the Sun and other massive objects will probably prevent you from reaching any sort of stable orbit around the Earth, and you will start bouncing around the inner Solar System in an erratic way.
I certainly wouldn't like to model that trajectory for months or years.
> The pull of the moon had very little effect.
No, it had a very significant effect: it's what made possible the free return trajectory while observing the far side of the moon.