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
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 literally don’t even want to watch Project Hail Mary.
I think of all those space movies where the Earth has to do something together. Where it cuts to listeners in Paris, Beijing, Zimbabwe, New York, and Moscow before going back to some Mission Control center saying “We’re counting on you.”
Then I realize, in reality, there would be American cultists actively fighting any kind of effort to save the world, or run a giant “DEI WILL DOOM US” campaign because one of the astronaut crew is part Asian.
I want these stupid fanciful astronauts to see that we actively don’t have the circumstances to create these wonderful worldwide moments of joy anymore because of the overwhelming levels of sick hatred they’ve created in bankrupting our world of empathy and flooding it with religious propaganda.
The people personally funding rockets could have cured cancer everywhere with their savings. I honestly think if a lethal meteor was headed for the Earth, they’d want to live, but they’d invest everything into trying to save themselves rather than trying to save everyone.
Project Hail Mary doesn’t do that, from what I recall. I think it’s just the US government/military collecting a bunch of scientists. Maybe it’s cut from the adaptation. The mission has a lengthy timeline of decades while the existential threat is already harming the planet. It doesn’t really paint the Earth in any kind of dreamy co-op light from what I recall.
It’s a beautiful movie. I like hard sci-fi drama. My SO does not. We both enjoyed it as it split the difference. It has some beautiful visuals along the way. It’s far from “men being dicks in space” like Ad Astra and it doesn’t do the Armageddon thing with the global livestream. I’m not saying you have to watch it, but it’s just a nice, well done movie worth the time IMO.
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.
In red states. In some of the worst red states
I kinda felt the same way tbh, I love space stuff so usually I would be super exited about it, and maybe following it in real time, specially taking into account the budget cuts that NASA has been getting over the previous decades, I should be hopeful for the start of a new age of (manned) space exploration, but given the current political climate I can’t ignore that the whole thing ends up being a demonstration of power by the USA first and a scientific mission second.
Thing is, this has always been the case since the very first space missions, it’s nothing new that governments only finance space programs for ulterior motives. Maybe I’ve become too cynical to be able to separate stuff from their political context.
It’s hard to be excited about going to space when you can’t afford to exist on earth.
I don’t like it way Elon Musk fans gush over everything Space X does… but I am excited that even with an administration and voter base that are clearly hostile to science, we can still DO science. So even though it’s not what I’d rather them do, they’re still doing science.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
My personal opinion of it is that it was either a reaffirmation of the tech need to do it, in which case its kinda sad that we haven’t progressed beyond that for the last 50 years. The other idea I have of it is that it was the simplest and fastest way to get eyes on the dark side of the moon to verify or discount the notion of China building a base there
Fwiw the module is 50% larger by volume than Apollo and carries four people rather than three
Also: computers, and a 120Mb/s laser link to earth!
And Microsoft Outlook … LoL
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.
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.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
It boils down to this: Going to the moon in the 60’s was political, though a massive technical feat.
Since then we’ve figured out how to send robots to fucking Mars to do the science we want to do, for a fraction of the cost (and none of the risk) of sending humans.
Artemis just isn’t where we should be spending money, never mind the political bullshit surrounding it, and the typical government vendors getting their hands in the cookie jar like they did for Apollo (looking at you, Boeing).
And I say all this as someone fascinated by Apollo, and as excited as anyone else by the prospect of humans on the moon. I just no longer see the cost/benefit of humans vs automation there.
We have remote rovers in the sea and on Mars. For the moon surely we could send all sorts of devices to do science there. It’s faster to reach, we have near real-time comms, it has a greater solar exposure so power is less of a problem. So where are those rovers?
We don’t have them because they would expose the pointlessness of sending humans.
Artemis just isn’t where we should be spending money
The warcry of a capitalist. It’s the justification for ending park services, museums, or anything that isn’t specifically generating a porfit.
Eh, yes you’re right but seriously what are we gaining from this mission? As far as I’ve heard there’s nothing really new that were gaining from it, just… Because?
To the ops point, there are a multitude of more beneficial projects that money could have gone toward instead in the same realm.
Well, I guess that depends on what you define as an achievement.
In terms of skills and expertise there’s only a handful living people with lunar experience and all of them are 60+ years old. It’s important to pass these skills down from person to person as training manuals and videos aren’t the same as an actual person passing on this wisdom. This one shouldn’t really need any explanation.
For dick-measuring newspaper headlines, we did just send some humans farther into space than we ever have before. That’s a tangible thing that’s measurable; anyone can understand it.
For raw, practical science, somone who’s a bigger nerd than me will have to tag in for that. What I do know and understand is we’re launching more advanced technology with a ship that’s both smaller in size with more interior space. We’ve got measurements of the astronauts in deep space and data on the far side of the moon. Regular people arguing over the importance of this data isn’t going to produce anything conclusive.
Most importantly we tested all new everything and it worked!
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
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.
You don’t just jump right to the final goal, there are many steps to get there. This was one of them
is there anything about this mission that demanded a manned spaceflight?
You don’t just send astronauts into space for a photo op. You pair the photo op with critical testing of systems required to support the next iterations of the mission.
For me it’s the pace. I know it’s not that simple, but we’ve been to the moon already. The first unmanned Artemis mission was almost 4 years ago, and now this one, and the next one - which will include landing on the moon…again…won’t be for another 2 years at least. We won’t even begin to build a base until the 2030s.
Even the moon base is just a “stepping stone” to Mars, and we already know that long-term colonization on Mars is unrealistic, given current tech. We don’t yet know how to even survive on Mars (or the moon, for that matter) for more than a few days.
And even if we solve these problems…then what? We also know that even if we figure out how to keep a few people alive for just a few years on Mars, there’s just no reason to try to keep a large number of people on Mars. It’s just too damn hostile.
I don’t know. I agree that this doesn’t have the same romantic feeling of awe and discovery and exploration that I feel like I’m “supposed to” have.
I also don’t see how “colony” happens, but I do see “base” on mars as both something we could afford and something worth doing.
Making it feasible mostly depends on the boring innovations of figuring out how to use local resources.
