By all rights, this should be something I am deeply passionate about. I’ve been in tech/engineering my entire adult life and was obsessed with NASA as a kid. I even live on the east coast of Florida and can sometimes see the launches/landings over the ocean. But I just… don’t care at all. I’m not suffering from depression or any other malaise, and generally things are fine. But I haven’t clicked on a single link or looked at a single image. I know this has not been the case for many, many people, so I’m wondering what might be different about this launch (or really the whole program in general), and curious if anyone else has found themselves feeling the same.
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It’s been overshadowed by other current events. Quite a shame, really
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That goddamn scandal. The persecution of minorities and the warmongering. The socio-political climate now is far worse compared to the Apollo missions then conducted at the time the US government was unpopular mainly because of the Vietnam War.
The arguments against Artemis aren’t surprising as these also mirror the skepticism towards the Apollo program.
I’m finding it hard to be happy about any of the positives coming from the US government these days. A couple of bright spots don’t really outshine the depressing everything else.
The “positives” don’t usually translate to any sort of benefit for the average person. Yes, I am aware that there are exceptions to this.
Spaceflight creates jobs.
Jobs that keep supporting and propping up the system we live in.
oddly enough i had a discussion with somebody just today that AI is bad because it reduces jobs. now you’re telling me that spaceflight is bad because it creates jobs?
It’s almost as if you’re speaking with different people with different views.
I for example would have told you that AI reducing jobs is amazing and ideally all jobs should be automated, so that everyone can choose to do exactly what they like at all times.
In red states. In some of the worst red states
It also wasnt even really a bright spot because it was being actively used as a propaganda story for Trump.
It’s hard to be excited about going to space when you can’t afford to exist on earth.
I should be way more excited, but the current administration has ruined everything. NASA is too focused on creating a moon base which is dumb as shit. Let’s try and save earth before jumping ship to another planet.
NASA is too focused on creating a moon base which is dumb as shit.
Why dumb?
Even if you want a Mars base eventually, it seems like a good idea to get some practice building a similar moon base first. Many of the problems will be the same, but it will be much easier, cheaper, and safer to learn them in a place which is only days away from resupply.
Yeah I’d argue time is actually the most expensive thing for a mars mission. And that’s going to require a hell of a lot of mission time nobody knows how to do yet. We get a head start on it now, getting a working lifter series in production and a functioning commercial lander and habitation scene and you’ll have a much better mars mission. I think the view of mars or bust asap asap comes from a lack of understanding of how big the technical leap is from doing a moon to doing a mars mission.
On the other hand Artemis’ 2 year lag between missions is just about right for optimal windows to mars. /s
same, i think thats why its not interesting, the WHITE house has created so many distractions that the nasa isnt even that noticable, just a temporarly headlines that would be instantly forgotten in a few days.
Advancements in space can advance humanity on Earth. Like practical solar panels were first created for a satellite. There are experiments that need to be done in low G or zero G like for material science, a permanent moon base could accelerate those advancements. Also experiments on bio printing living cells have been done on the ISS, zero G makes it easier to scaffold the cells into a structure. Maybe a moon base makes it easier to grow organs on an industrial scale.
I feel oddly similar. I think it’s that I can’t cheer for America.
We should have gone to mars by now, but all the funds went to child raping fascists and bombs apparently
i dont think we are technologically there to get to the mars even with money, probably a few more decades of funding and research.
Yep. But that’s the thing, we could’ve been there if we didn’t spend the resources necessary for it on stupid things the last ~5 decades.
that is true, largely everyone forgot about space exploration, and focused on WAR economy instead.
We can with enough money. We already established we can build stuff in orbit and send stuff to orbit. All you need to get to mars is a larger rocket. So assemble it in space and go to mars. It’s the same problem of going to the moon just with more delta v.
It’s a lot more than that, starting with transit time - take a few week lunar mission and scale it up to years
- after such a long trip out in microgravity, will astronauts even be functional when they get there? ISS astronauts in space that long have a hard time standing, walking, etc, and now they need to assemble their habitat for the next couple years?
- by the time they get back they will have been in space longer than ISS limits
- while nasa has very detailed planning, anything that messes up and an “emergency” supply or rescue takes nine months or more?
- so much more fuel needed to deal with trying to get there fast then Mars’s gravity well
- imagine any medical emergency
- there is no short mission where they can try something then head back after a few days. The shortest mission is over 2 years
I love space and discovery. I also dont super care about this because what is even the point of it? We did a fly around of a rock in our backyard we know super well already. Give me more JWST, not this
Yeah, but the point is to test the technology which will eventually get people back onto the moon, set up permanent off-Earth habitation, etc. Which in turn will/could be part of future steps for further-reaching exploration. I still think it has value as a building block.
But we already had the technology to get to the moon, take pictures, and get off it. Nothing against the crew, im glad they got this once in a life experience, but theres nothing new to this.
We had it, yes, but we lost it - I believe that many of the technical plans from Apollo have been lost over the years, so some of this is pretty much reinventing the wheel to get us back to where we were before.
Not so much lost but, its an entirely new tech stack. So any solutions we might have had in the past are no longer appropriate solutions.
What part of reinventing the wheel is slashing NASA’s budget to shreds? This is just the last public test flight before space is walled off as a playground for the rich. They’ll get their tourist flights and luxury colonies and nice vacations from the boiling toxic hell they turned earth into.
If you think any resources are going to trickle down to us earth peasants, I’ve got a moon base to sell you.
Thats a weird take.
Literally everything that just went to the moon and back is “new”.
Yes, we have been to the moon before but that doesn’t mean that all the cool stuff we just did is not an amazing achievement.
They’re testing entirely new everything. Just because it’s the same shape as Apollo doesn’t mean there’s anything in common
Are you not excited by the high resolution pictures sent while they were still out there ? Apollo would have brought back film to be developed on earth?
120Mb laser data link!!!
what is even the point of it?
No one’s been on this spacecraft design while it’s in space before, and it’s got some kinks that need to be worked out (like the issues with the toilet); it’s a shakedown flight to figure out what goes wrong when people are actually on board. That’s not really all that sexy compared to a moon landing, but testing your support systems in practice really needs to happen before you do more ambitious things with the craft.
Yeah I’ve been thinking maybe this is it – it’s still technically impressive and I have nothing but admiration for the teams who have pored their sweat and tears into making sure it’s safe and reliable, but it’s kind of a ‘so what?’ moment.
Telescopes and geology have always been the cool part of space, not that humans are in it.
Yep, I am definitely more excited by space science news. I’d say I’m just more mature now and interested in more grounded “pure” science, but it wasn’t too long ago that I was giggling like an idiot as we watched the 2 falcon heavy boosters landing back on their dual pads at KSC, so I don’t think it’s entirely just a loss of child-like wonder (though it’s wearing thin these days, gotta admit).
It’s impressive in the sense that it’s the second time they launched a mostly clean sheet heavy-lift rocket. It took spaceX dozens of exploding rockets before they could even think about putting humans on one. Just getting something that insanely complex working the first time is kind of incredible, and I say this as an engineer who works on much simpler things that almost never work perfectly the first time.
for me, it’s the fact that it’s being used as a political tool by the usa to broadcast their prowess, that it’s being presented as a hopeful look in the future all the while the country running this is bombing and murdering hundreds of thousands, and that the companies benefitting from artemis’s publicity are mostly “defense” contractors like spacex and lockheed-martin, aka again the same people doing all the genocide
it’s hard to feel excited about it even tho there is plenty of cool science being done, that cool science stands on a mountain of tragedy and horrors
for me its not only the glacier pace of progress… its also the lack of scientific motivation.
this didnt happen for science… its a political tool
The Apollo program was also a political tool, but it was astounding (not that I know first-hand, just hearing what my folks have said, and even they were fairly young at the time). Artemis doesn’t have the same caché, I guess.
fair… i grew up with the shuttle… we were constantly reminded about the science
even that sucked due to the politics… as i would later find out the shuttle was stupidly inefficient but profitable for some
There are scientific targets and experiments being run
https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/artemis-ii-science/
100% there is a big political component to the effort, but there are also data that we can’t get without getting farther from Earth
I feel the same apathetic “whatever” response. I love rockets. I love space. I struggle to care about this.
The program is almost 2 decades late and using recycled technology. It is literally using spare parts from the shuttle. I don’t believe it will ever actually get to the boots on the ground phase. I am actually surprised they made it to this mission. After all the boondoggle from Boeing I really thought it would die a quiet death somewhere out of sight.
Not only do they have technical hurdles, we have seen normally safe agencies become political battle grounds. We see science becoming less and less important at every level of society. We are living through Idiocracy and they still act like we are the same country that went to the moon the last time.
If we see people on the moon in our lifetime I don’t believe they will arrive on a NASA mission.
For me, I just don’t see it as the step towards a bright future that it cone was.
So we reinvigorate the world’s interest in space missions, then what? Every iota of evidence from our own planet tells us that businesses are going to own the moon, mars, and beyond. Wayland-Yutani is more likely than The Federation.
I just can’t get excited about another frontier for Musk and Bezos to rub their stanky dicks all over.
I was far more excited to see the solar panels in Syria.
We can’t even wipe our own asses without jihading or reinstating a cool new kind of slavery with extra steps. What are we going to do with a new frontier?
I’m betting a corporate slavery jihad of environmental degradation.
I mean, that tracks historically
The Expanse sheds one I believe to be a plausible picture of our future, although it seems optimistic on some fronts.
I disagree.
Its slightly firmer science than star trek, but it still makes a lot of license IMO.
I dont think the cost of sending humans to Mars or to do asteroid mining will ever be justified. Bots, and not humanoid ones will explore the frontier of space, and collect the minerals we need.
If you think about all the stuff humans need to survive for any length of time it just doesn’t make any sense to send a human.
idk maybe you’re right, we’ll see if we both live long enough to find out…
This is why the moon is critical. Going to mars or wherever will be insanely expensive compared to the little moon trip. To make it at all affordable, you don’t just need one of the new reusable launch vehicles but you need to use local resources as much as possible. Let’s prove our ice mining and habitat construction
Consider spending tens of billions of dollars just sending water to mars, and hope you don’t screw up the schedule when an “emergency” resupply is nine months. Same for air. And food. So much more for fuel. No one is going to spend that. But if you can use local resources for fuel, water, air, radiation shielding, and grow at least some of your own food, you’re more resilient and much much cheaper.
The mining isn’t likely to be useful for sending anything back to earth - way too expensive. Space mining is all about making space affordable, and we’re talking about really fundamental things to mine.
I agree that moon stuff is a critical first step to doing anything in space, but my point is that I don’t think sending humans will ever be the best way to do anything.
Bots are just so cheap and effective and disposable by comparison.
How many decades more research and development before we can safely establish a permanent base on mars, and in that time how much more effective and reliable and deployable will bots become?
Eventually the calculation will be: we can afford to do a manned return trip to Mars, or we can afford to solve cold fusion by doing whatever thing with a bot, or something similarly amazing.
In all honesty at this stage it’s not that exciting. They’re hyping up people going further from the earth than ever before, which is technically true, but astronauts have orbited the moon before just not quite as far in absolute distance.
So this is mostly doing something done before in the 70s. Rocket launches, grainy images of the moon from close up, photos of earth from near the moon and astronauts floating in zero G isn’t new.
I don’t blame you for not getting excited to watch long videos where not a lot happens very slowly, or reading press coverage which is brutally honest largely fluff.
The ultimate goal is exciting, but that doesn’t mean every step on the way is exciting. I suspect the first moon landing will be of more interest, then the next one will not be, even though the landings are a stepping stone to Mars.
Because you can see it for the distraction that it is. In a vacuum it is a wonderful or at least interesting and significant thing but it is also clear that it’s just a PR stunt by the US government.
That’s not to belittle the training, dedication, preparation, and everything else that was done by all of the people around adjacent to or even inside the rocket. The indictment is not on them.
We have so much problems down here on Earth that Artemis seems like a smokescreen. I see no way it could benefit humanity.
One of the ways it could benefit humanity is to offload the destruction of our environment in pursuit of rare earth metals, natural gases, to a moon or planet where the environment does not support life.
Strip mining and fracking are actively and rapidly destroying our planet. Stopping those activities here would be a massive improvement to our chances of survival on Earth into the future.
Oh asteroid mining with slow electric engines would offload SOOOOOO much emissions and pollution. Granted we would have to build some sort of space elevator or platform which would be a global effort and cost hundreds of trillions in every stage. But once the main aspects were done, it would be very efficient.
Also it turns out asteroids are conveniently formed in layers like an onion. All the work of pulling veins of ore out of ground and rock is unnecessary, because the heavier elements are further towards the center of these much MUCH Smaller bodies than planets, and the lighter elements on on top. It would make it far far easier to find and harvest these minerals and resources than it is now. As most people are aware, rare earth minerals aren’t actually rare, they’re just so scarcely spread out over our crust.
All the minerals and resources we want that are actually from Earth’s formation are hundreds of miles below the surface, most likely in molten form in the mantle, because of how cosmic body formation works with density and gravity. The resources we are extracting were probably almost all deposited by asteroid, meoterite, and comet strikes, that also probably brought our oceans.
All this to say, these asteroid did the same thing Earth did, pulled their heavy materials to their cores, but these are much easier to crack and process than an entire planet. We don’t need to go all Ishimura from Dead Space with planet cracking, when we can just crack open tiny to small sized asteroids and harvest those valuable materials much more readily, in FAR FAR higher quantity than on Earth’s surface, and with very little environmental impact.
That would be givin a lifeline to an already unsustainable and destructive system.
So… we need resources. Like if we go back to preindustrial society, hundreds of millions die, from diseases and famine and disability and a whole onslaught of issues. We are currently fucking over our planet to scrape the remnant of asteroid impacts to make the tools and systems we use. Now, are a bunch of those unnecessary, of course, and can they probably be done better, yes. But until we have Star Trek style replicators or hard light technology, we will need a decent amount of resources to continue existing. And I don’t know about you, but asteroid mining seems a LOT more attainable and within the nearish future timespan than replicators or hard light.
No, we need different system. We already have enough resources to provide every human being on Earth with decent life. With late capitalism whole universe would not be enough, because its greed is insatiable. So, we’ll add exploitation of Moon to exploitation of Earth.
Oh I meant we use this technology in collectivist ways, not private corporations mining. Truly, to build that initial space elevator or space dock, I can’t imagine it outside of a star trek like Earth. We would have to all work together for this and for many other projects which would be cool to accomplish
In today’s climate I would rather fear militarization of Moon. i also remember that as a kid I have heard that we were to have first Moon base about 25 years ago. The older I get, the more favourably I think about degrowth, so I am rather for utilizing present resources, instead of expanding the pool, because that would only expand expoitation.
There are an endless number of problems here on earth. However while we can make a difference, establish a trend, we can never fix them. It’s a losing battle. We fix at least as many problems by improving technology, civilization.
Let’s take refrigerators. There are way too many people without adequate food and there always will be. We can fix the excesses, we can set a trend but we will never end hunger. However technology advances, overall societies become wealthier, and now at least in developed countries almost everyone has access to refrigeration. Trying to help the hungry doesn’t get us there, shifting the whole society forward does.
We may not have concrete ideas how Artemis can shift society forward but in general big technology challenges do
Most of Earth problems have very little to do with technology and a lot to do with political and economical systems. And even it we had a Zeus program going straight to Jupiter would make noe difference.
But doesn’t that argue against your earlier point? If our myriad of earthly problems are generally political and economic system, then Artemis does not take away from addressing them.
But it does not feel like it is important. For me it’s like solving problems of 10th urgency insead of the most important ones.
I think actually watching some of the video would help with that. I watched some video of events while they were up there, what they were feeling and how much they obviously cared about each other and what they were doing.
Tonight I watched the splashdown and felt unexpectedly emotional about it, not sure whether it was contemplating the enormity of the achievement, or the display of the good and smart and positive side of humans working together to do something big again instead of the constant drumbeat of destruction, or maybe just that we didn’t have yet another disaster.
I was also uninterested until seeing the astronauts out there. I saw a comment that sums it up: “turns out, I’m not tired of space. I’m tired of Musk and Bezos and corporate bullshit in space.”
I’m still bummed that the mission was reduced to a photographic flyby without any meaningful interaction. There’s nothing especially triumphant about this trip as it was already known to be achievable. That makes me assume there’s something hidden, such as secret probes, positive PR for the US government in the most heinous of times, more cover up for the epstein files, slapping the orange name on yet more activities despite robbing the NASA budget, etc.
But, for an hour or two spread across the last few days, it was still beautiful seeing 4 humans being genuine people. They even got the “end of vacation” sad feeling 24 hours before return. I can’t decry the loss of NASA funding and be disinterested in this. I have to beleive this mission will inspire the next generation there’s still something valuable in bigger projects with cooperation and scientific endeavors. I don’t think we’ll match the power of the first lunar landing anytime soon, but from the Apollo and Shuttles to now, we’ve just been subjected to corporate spaceflight and dick swinging competitions about whose craft docks more often. For just one more time, we don’t have a billionaire’s name visibly attached.
There’s nothing especially triumphant about this trip as it was already known to be achievable.
It’s been so long since we did this that it’s all new people and newer technology now (although unfathomably, they used Microsoft products on a critical mission!?! but I digress). So before attempting to land on the moon, they still have to do the preliminary missions to test all the systems and work out any bugs–and they found some. So this was important, and a success.
