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.
It’s more than that. The thought of us doing something incredible like establishing a permanent moon base feels more depressing than inspiring these days because enshitification will be baked into it right from the planning stages
I have become very cynical of tech over the past several years and am strongly opposed to any sort of space colonization.
Me to. Theres a podcast called “tech won’t save us” that i hate listening to because it reminds me how much we have lost.
I get your sentiment but that’s exactly why we need space colonization.
There is a thing called translatio imperii which means that empires aren’t created nor destroyed, they just move from one location to the next, always on the frontline of humanity.
If we don’t get spaceflight, the US will stay an imperial entity for eternity. Only if space colonization succeeds, mars can become the next empire which means that the US stops being one, interestingly.
Thats actually a perfect explanation that I think is inline with this
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YfhA3KWLtFqBeFnpb/my-specific-singularity-timeline-to-utopia
Class warfare will be the foundation it’s all built on. Any tech developed for the moon, Mars, whatever - anything we gain in knowledge in return - is going to go to benefit rich fuckers, not you. One day there will be more space tourists. Rich people, not you. Maybe one day Man will even colonize another world. Rich people, not you.
Maybe they will take us along as servants? Oh, no, they will build robots for that…
Plus, space travel mainly benefits the super rich.
Ay?
Do you mean only the super rich will be able to travel?
The only travel anyone will be doing in the next 100 years or more will be going to the moon to squeeze into a tiny smelly hab module to figure out how to avoid getting regolith in your ass crack.
I think space travel will be the exclusive reserve of hard core science nuts.
Even in say 500 years. Will there be a “colony” on Mars with anything more than a dozen science nerds? I doubt it.
Epstein files ?
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.
It also wasnt even really a bright spot because it was being actively used as a propaganda story for Trump.
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.
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.
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.
I feel oddly similar. I think it’s that I can’t cheer for America.
It’s hard to be excited about going to space when you can’t afford to exist on earth.
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
Could the same thing be said about the Apollo program in the 60’s?
Factually, sure, but emotionally, not even close.
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.
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.
If they landed and did stuff that was more complex than we can send robots to do it would have been pretty awesome!
This flyby is a necessary precursor to landing and doing those cool things.
They need to take tiny incremental steps because the cost of a fuckup is so great.
If the public has to watch someone expire in space due to a malfunction the existing candle flame of support for these endeavours would be snuffed out.
With only two seconds of ping they can work from Earth with robots. Sending people is just a dick contest.
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.
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.
I think you’re asking a question only you can answer
I don’t care about it because it’s a NASA mission and I’ve noticed that anything American these days makes me nauseous.
Call me anything you like, I don’t care, this is how o feel after years of america bullshit and decades of more murrica bullshit with their preprogrammed exceptionalism.
I look down upon them, I pity them at best
And then there is something as great as this and I just can help but feel like it’s tainted somehow. I know it’s an international collaboration, but still, the smell somehow remains
I’m sorry, but fuck, so much misery and death and suffering has been brought to the world by the US for so long already… Trump is just the next iteration taking this place to its natural conclusion. Of course trump is corrupt, the country has been through and through corrupt for decades. This is just a typical self absorbed American grabbing the chance geven to get me myself and I to the top.
So yeah, mixed feelings at best.
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
And don’t forget that a big part of the shuttle sucking was caused by the military who forced nasa to make major design changes so that the shuttle could fulfill military tasks. Tasks which the shuttle never even wound up being used for because the military simply created their own separate rockets to do those tasks.
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
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.
This ^ I get it, the images we are getting back ARE stunning, but is there anything about this mission that demanded a manned spaceflight? Couldn’t we/didn’t we already do the same thing remotely with the other planets?
I’m glad we’re getting back to it, and I’m happy to see anything other “We’re sending mice up on the space shuttle… AGAIN!”
But even Artemis IV where they are planning a moon landing has been done.
Let me know when the first colony is formed, then I can get excited.
Let me know when the first colony is formed, then I can get excited.
It will only be open to billionaires. Or to people there to make money for billionaires. That’s why I’m not excited.
Compulsory moon colony for billionaires would be great thanks.
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.
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 mean it’s cool and I love space exploration, but at the same time, it’s something that has been done a while ago already, so it’s not that impressive. Now if they went around Mars or did something nobody did before, that would be something else. As it is it seems a bit superfluous to the phillistine that I am. I actually don’t know what the point of the mission was, I don’t think major media mentioned it (or I missed it).
I think I read that the mission goals included preparing for the actual moon landing in future missions
it would be surprising if they can even get to the moons. we are just not technologically there yet. space exploration kinda took a backseat after the first few times, for like decades, so people lost interest eventually.
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.
