| ▲ | nancyminusone 4 hours ago |
| Do you watch sports, football, the Olympics? If not I'm sure you know someone who does. Same category as this. Each of the 32 NFL team is worth about the cost of 1-2 Artemis launches. The entire league could fund the whole Artemis program nearly twice. Hosting the Olympics is worth about 3-10 launches. Like sports, the objective is ultimately useless except as a showcase of what humanity has to offer, and people like to see that. |
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| ▲ | Rebelgecko 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| I think in general space exploration is a great use of taxpayer money, but the artemis program doesn't seem great from either a "science per dollar" or "novel accomplishment per dollar" standpoint. If the goal was just to flex on the rest of the world I would've much rather we focused on going somewhere new or returning to the moon in a more sustainable way |
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| ▲ | pj_mukh 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | "returning to the moon in a more sustainable way" Isn't this the point of this mission? If your point is "it shouldn't take this much money", then I agree. But also point to almost everything else. | | |
| ▲ | Rebelgecko 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Each Artemis launch costs something like $4b (that's the incremental cost of a new rocket, it's much higher if you amortize the design costs). IMO the program is not optimized for cost or sustainability, it's optimized for creating jobs in various congressional districts. Of course that provides a certain amount of political sustainability to the so-called Senate Launch System. I just don't see a future where NASA can afford multiple SLS launches per year to maintain a continuous Lunar presence | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 17 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > Each Artemis launch costs something like $4b Early launches, yes, because SLS is a garbage heap. Later ones, almost certainly not. |
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| ▲ | runarberg 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think that is the point, but whether this mission will actually do that is rather unconvincing. After (and if) Artemis III lands on the moon and brings home the astronauts there seems to be very little planned on how we actually get to the moon base which NASA is claiming this will lead to, let alone the manned Mars mission that is also supposed to follow. In other words, I think NASA is greatly exaggerating, and possibly lying, about the utility of this mission. | | |
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| ▲ | sixothree an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | I feel like these missions are just paving the way for billionaires to have a new vacation spot. |
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| ▲ | ApolloFortyNine 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Even if you think Space travel is worth the money (which I personally do), adding humans to the mix makes projects incredibly more expensive. Even in the realm of space travel and research, sending humans is a questionable use of the money. |
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| ▲ | post-it 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Sports would also be much cheaper without humans. | | |
| ▲ | zarzavat 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The most important (if not entertaining) things you can do in space don't involve humans. Telescopes, communications, earth observation, sending probes to distant bodies, etc. It's nice that we can send humans to space and it's good to keep that capability going so that the knowledge doesn't die. But the unmanned missions tend to pull the weight of actually accomplishing useful things. Humans just get in the way. | | |
| ▲ | pigpop an hour ago | parent [-] | | Most people don't find those things interesting unless people are directly involved in them. |
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| ▲ | wat10000 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Turns out I don't understand the point sports either. |
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| ▲ | palata an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The difference being that sports are not exclusively paid by taxes, I guess? |
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| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 7 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > difference being that sports are not exclusively paid by taxes Space isn’t financed “exclusively” by taxes, either. |
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| ▲ | runarberg 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I think there is a major difference though. Sports events are not pretending to be anything else. The Artemis mission claims to be advancing science and claims to be a stepping stone for an eventual moon base and a manned mission to Mars. I personally have serious questions about all of these. |
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| ▲ | foltik 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Do you really disagree that it’s advancing science? Surely actually testing hardware, building knowledge on how to run this type of mission, learning to use lunar resources, figuring out how to keep people alive, etc. will teach us things we couldn’t learn any other way. Fwiw do share your concerns about the methods (sending humans on this specific mission is questionable, SLS is questionable compared to SpaceX approach). | | |
| ▲ | palata an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | It's not science, it's engineering. I don't think it's advancing science in a way that wouldn't be possible with a fraction of the cost without sending humans there. | | |
| ▲ | foltik 10 minutes ago | parent [-] | | The distinction is kind of meaningless, advancing our engineering capabilities in space is advancing the science. And as I said, agreed on the concerns about cost and sending humans. |
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| ▲ | duped 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Do you think we will learn more from Artemis or the Asteroid Redirect Mission? Because that's a concrete example of how funding this mission caused other experiments to be cancelled. | | |
| ▲ | foltik 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Fair point, but that’s an argument about prioritization within NASA’s budget (and its size relative to other spending), not the scientific value of the mission. | | |
| ▲ | duped 3 minutes ago | parent [-] | | There's never non-zero value to any challenging engineering problem. The question is whether the finite resources spent to solve it are best spent on it versus other projects. And in this mission in particular, you can't divorce science from politics. NASA's budget was reined in by Trump 45 and his admin picked Artemis because a manned mission to the moon invokes a particular feeling and memory, not because it benefits science. The moon is a known quantity, and going there is not more valuable than the other projects the government could have spent $100 billion on. Keep in mind, this is one of the most expensive single launches in history while there is a partial government shutdown and the rest of the federal government that does real research has been gutted by this same administration. So it's tough to talk about "scientific value" when it's obvious that this mission is doing little science at the same time the government has decreed it won't be in the business of paying for science. |
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| ▲ | nancyminusone 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The fact that we hope to get some new tech with this whereas sports aims for nothing is just icing on the cake. I think big space missions are worth it every now and then on a humanitarian level; even if no new discoveries are made, a new generation of engineers will become fluent in what we have already discovered. Humanity's education is not "done" when the last fact is written in a book, it needs to be constantly refreshed or it will disappear. Even in sports you do not get "nothing", it has certainty helped advance the field of medicine. | | |
| ▲ | runarberg 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > a new generation of engineers will become fluent in what we have already discovered. We seem to have lost the technology of going to the moon we gained from Apollo. So without an actual follow-up and a tangible long term plan I suspect the exact same will happen this time around. | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 13 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > We seem to have lost the technology of going to the moon we gained from Apollo Some of it. Much for good reason. What are you referring to that we’ve lost that we would want? | |
| ▲ | nancyminusone an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yeah, that's probably an indication that we waited too long. | | |
| ▲ | runarberg 23 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Or, more likely, it is an indication that manned moon missions are simply not that important, that this technology is simply not worth the cost of maintaining. In contrast, we kept the technology of doing robotic missions in space, on the moon, and even on other planets and even asteroids (the latter two have much to improve upon though). |
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| ▲ | bee_rider 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I don’t have any questions about a mission to Mars, it is a stupid and pointless trip that I don’t want to ask any questions about. The Moon, I dunno, it’s at least in Earth’s gravity well so it isn’t like we’re going totally the wrong direction when we go there, right? At best it could be a gas station on the trip to somewhere interesting like the Asteroid belt, though. | | |
| ▲ | runarberg 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Whether a moon base is needed or even beneficial is a question I have not heard a convincing answer in favor. And even if moon base is indeed needed and/or beneficial to future space exploration / resource extraction why robots cannot more efficiently build (or assemble) such a moon base is another question I need an answer to. We are sending humans to (or around) the moon now, but it may just turn out to be a wasted effort, done solely for the opulence (or more cynically bragging rights / nationalist propaganda). | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 4 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > Whether a moon base is needed or even beneficial is a question I have not heard a convincing answer in favor If we want to go to Mars, the Moon is a good place to learn. Simple things like how to do trauma medicine in low g; how to accommodate a variety of human shapes, sizes and fitness levels; how to do in situ manufacturing; all the way to more-speculative science like how to gestate a mammal. These are easier to do on the Moon than Mars. And the data are more meaningful than simulating it in LEO. If we get ISRU going, doing it on the Moon should actually be cheaper. If we don’t want to colonize space, the Moon is mostly a vanity mission. That said, the forcing function of developing semi-closed ecologies almost certainly has sustainability side effects on the ground. | |
| ▲ | hparadiz 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The moon has about the same make up as the Earth when it comes to distribution of elements in the crust. If it's anywhere near 8% like Earth then it makes sense to mine aluminum and other metals on the moon in order to build megastructures in orbit. Since the moon has no atmosphere you can accelerate things using mechanical mass drivers. Basically rail systems. At 5,300 mph you hit escape velocity and can then move payload somewhere with no rockets. It would keep us from polluting Earth too. This is the precursor to O'Neil cylinder type structures. AI robots will probably be the play but you still want a transportation system that works and frankly building a landing zone would improve overall outcomes regardless. | | |
| ▲ | adrian_b an hour ago | parent [-] | | The rocks at the surface of the Moon are richer in metals than the crust of the Earth. They are especially richer in iron and titanium. Without oxidizing air, it is easier to extract metals from the Moon rocks. There is little doubt that it would be possible to build big spaceships on the Moon. However, what is missing on the Moon is fuel. For interplanetary spacecraft, nuclear reactors would be preferable anyway, which could be assembled there from parts shipped from Earth, but for propulsion those still need a large amount of some working gas,to be heated and ejected. It remains to be seen if there is any useful amount of water at the poles, but I doubt that there is enough for a long term exploitation. | | |
| ▲ | hparadiz an hour ago | parent [-] | | I imagine a foundry would use solar power and lasers to heat up the material. No atmosphere means less heat energy wasted. My thinking has been how to get enough actual build material to build something like an O'Neill cylinder. Well you'd need really thick metal plates. And then you'd want to get them into orbit without rockets. And these stations would likely be at the same orbit as Earth or nearby. Mainly because of how much sun energy you get around here. Going out to the outer solar system is a different beast all together. |
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| ▲ | sarchertech 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | We are nowhere near the capability to launch robots to the moon that can autonomously build or assemble a moon base for any useful definition of moon base. > We are sending humans to (or around) the moon now, but it may just turn out to be a wasted effort, done solely for the opulence My 4 year old is extremely excited to watch the launch tonight because it’s manned. I’d say a few billion is worth it if all it does is inspire a new generation of astronauts, engineers, and scientists. | | |
| ▲ | runarberg 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | And neither are we anywhere near the capability to lunch construction workers to the moon which can build or assemble an equivalent moon base with their human labor. So this answer does not satisfy me one bit. > inspire a new generation of astronauts, engineers, and scientists This is a good point. And I would like it to be true. However when you have to lie about (or exaggerate) the scientific value of the mission, that is not exactly inspiring is it. Your 4 year old could be equally inspired by the amazing photos James Webb has given us, and unlike Artemis, James Webb is providing us with unique data which is inspiring all sorts of new science. | | |
| ▲ | sarchertech 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > And neither are we anywhere near the capability to lunch construction workers to the moon which can build or assemble an equivalent moon base with their human labor. So this answer does not satisfy me one bit. We have the capability to do that. We don’t have the will to do it, but we have the technology. We don’t even have autonomous robots that are capable of building a moon base on earth. > Your 4 year old could be equally inspired by the amazing photos James Webb has given us, and unlike Artemis, James Webb is providing us with unique data which is inspiring all sorts of new science. He’s not though. People gather around as a family and watch manned space missions. It’s exciting in a way that a telescope or a probe isn’t. | | |
| ▲ | adrian_b an hour ago | parent [-] | | Indeed, in 1969, as a small child, I watched the Moon landing together with my parents, in Europe, like also the following missions, in the next years. They have certainly contributed to my formation as a future engineer. |
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| ▲ | shash 28 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | The key here is “could be”. But most four (or in my case, six) year olds can’t really grasp the abstract concepts of what JWST is or the data it’s sending back. For that matter most 40 year olds can’t. A manned mission on the other hand is tangible in a way a probe isn’t. “See the big round thing in the night sky? There are four people going around it in a spacecraft”. It isn’t a _complete_ argument in favour of manned missions- that has to account for the risk of the endeavour and reward of the science potential of having people there to react in ways robots can’t. But it’s hard to pretend that the inspiration pretty much everyone feels when they see manned missions is somehow achievable purely by robotic ones. |
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