| ▲ | GolfPopper 7 hours ago |
| Speaking for myself (who has been fascinated with the space program since I was a small child), any joy I might feel around Artemis II feels tainted, by the immense amount of pork involved (SLS is called "Senate Launch System" for good reason) to the point where Artemis is more corporate welfare that happens to involve the Moon than a real space program, and by my belief that it is intended to be little more than a quick, dirty, and vainglorious Apollo repeat by a failing government. |
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| ▲ | al_borland 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| I ran across this video[0] yesterday with Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about how it’s always been political. The first moon landing was more about global politics than science. As a child you likely weren’t concerned about that side of it, or were shielded from it. It isn’t always the purist motivations that push the human race forward, but forward it moves us. [0] https://youtu.be/j_AlXChA9F4 |
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| ▲ | ryandrake 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't think OP's problem with it is that it's "political" but that it's a product of pork and corporate welfare. The political thrust of the Apollo program was more "beat the Russians" and less "funnel money into dozens of already-rich corporations in favored districts." Even thought there was a lot of that, too. Modern space (and defense) projects seem to be almost 100% "pork funnel" and zero anything else. | | |
| ▲ | bps4484 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's not "almost 100% pork funneling" and I know this because....they're there! they are at the moon! I don't like pork either, but let's not blow this out of proportion. How much do we think that it should have cost, if everything was perfectly optimized, to get to the moon? 50b instead of 100b? so ok, 50% was pork, and that's bad, but let's not overstate it and instead allow a little joy in our lives. also the original apollo program was about 300b in today's dollars, so seems like things have always been a little porky. | | | |
| ▲ | bombcar 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The pork funnel is going to exist unless something major changes; so I'd rather get moonshots out of the pork. | | |
| ▲ | dingaling 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | But how many Moonshots could we have got out of $100 billion of vegetarian non-pork? Everything about SLS, and most of Artemis, has been dictated by Congress, often overriding expert advice. Why not just give NASA the money and let them get on with it? The same happens with the US military, Congress constantly deleting funding for programs they don't like to fund ones they do. | | |
| ▲ | trothamel 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | We're about to find out. The new NASA administrator, Isaacman, seems to have done a very good job of convincing the various Senators to, if not get rid of the pork, allow him to allocate it in a way that benefits the lunar program. The result was the Ignition event, which looks like it's planning to send up 17 small and 4 crew-capable landers by 2028, along with a fleet of orbital assets. You can find out more https://www.nasa.gov/ignition/ , especially the "Building the Moon Base" section. The cost is $10B spread out over 3 years. |
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| ▲ | bobmcnamara 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | we've also got 50 years of baseline tech improvement to try out. In the 60s we weren't going to land in the darkness because we couldn't see to land. But the shadows are probably where the water might be, and that's where we're going next! | |
| ▲ | overfeed 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > The political thrust of the Apollo program was more "beat the Russians" and less "funnel money into dozens of already-rich corporations in favored districts." Artemis feels a bit more "Beat the Chinese, and show the world we still got it." I think cost-effectiveness[1] is a fig-leaf for what are SpaceX fanboys: had the same mission been on a Starship, HN would be awash with how other companies (Blue Origin) were late to earth-orbit, and the gap had widened beyond Earth's orbit. 1. In contrast, I haven't seen any complaints about Military-Industrial pork on any of the Iran threads, even when contrasting the cost of interceptors vs drones. Let slone have pork dominate the thread. |
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| ▲ | skeeter2020 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | this is why I mark the divide between the manned and unmanned space program. Historically the unmanned accomplishments have been less political (at least IMO) and made far larger advances. I don't need a human to take a photo of the dark side of the moon and then email it to me if a satellite can do it (with 1980's tech) | |
| ▲ | KellyCriterion 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > more about global politics than science I had a great Prof during my bachelor from Russia - this is what he always told -> and it makes sense: Back then was cold war | |
| ▲ | nemo44x 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It’s a weak take and here’s why. Huge tasks like going to the moon are made up of many different individuals that have different goals. Some are rocket scientists that want to innovate on the science of rocketry. Others are government admins with political goals. So to call the entire thing “political” ignores the purpose of those involved and critical to the outcome at the expense of just labeling it all “political”. |
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| ▲ | EvanAnderson 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I know the RS-25 engines[0] (aka SSME, Space Shuttle Main Engine) were "reusable" in an academic sense (needing a ton of refurbishment after each use) but it hurts my heart that we're dropping them in the ocean and it makes it hard for me to feel good about the Artemis program. It's irrational but it makes the kid who loved the Space Shuttle (which, itself, was a political pork barrel and a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none kind of program) sad. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-25 |
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| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > it hurts my heart that we're dropping them in the ocean They are functionally obsolete. Chances that we’re still using SLS in ten years is slim. Any resources going towards refurbishment are better spent on Starship and Blue Moon. | |
| ▲ | philistine 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You and me both. They don’t even put a parachute on the boosters to get them back. Some pieces on these boosters have been in use since the 80s. | | |
| ▲ | NetMageSCW 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | And all of that reuse was so expensive that it set back reusable rocketry for decades as the common wisdom said it was uneconomical - even after it was demonstrated that you could have reuse without expensive refurbishment. |
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| ▲ | oceanplexian 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > my belief that it is intended to be little more than a quick, dirty, and vainglorious Apollo repeat by a failing government. If the USA successfully sends people to the Moon, achieves all of NASA's technical goals, and the astronauts make it back in one piece, isn't that literally the opposite of failure? It might be expensive and you can argue that it's wasteful. But even to that point, the $11B cost of SLS is nothing for the US Gov. For example the F35 is a >$1T government program. That doesn't seem a lot to explore a new frontier and expand the scope of humanity. |
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| ▲ | randomNumber7 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > That doesn't seem a lot to explore a new frontier and expand the scope of humanity. There is no gain in knowledge from this mission. It's more like cheering for your favorite soccer team. | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > There is no gain in knowledge from this mission This is wrong. We’re learning a lot about the new life-support systems. (Courtesy of the ESA.) We’re also going to learn more about the heat shield on 10 April. |
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| ▲ | anjel 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Its not Pork and its not science. Its a strategically costly land grab rather than a political vain-glorious stunt. Same as Mercury/Gemini/Apollo except this time China instead of Russia. | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > its not science. Its a strategically costly land grab Step away from your screens. Framing everything exclusively in these hard terms isn’t healthy (or true). |
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| ▲ | jrumbut 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > the immense amount of pork involved (SLS is called "Senate Launch System" for good reason Most of science has always had this dual use purpose. No senator ever would have voted for any kind of space program just to send a few tourists to the moon. It's a way to have a substantial workforce, spread across a wide area (so they can't all be hit by the same bomb), that knows how to make and launch rockets and to do weird stuff in space and to work with very energetic materials. But I agree that it feels hollow right now because of the war abroad and also the needless disrespect we've shown to our Canadian friends at home. It reminds me a little bit of The Man in the High Castle, it's like these videos are sent from some happier timeline that we don't live in. Hopefully they inspire some people to bring the spirit of curiosity and friendship they present back to our earth. |
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| ▲ | dreamcompiler 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The manned space program launches from Florida but is controlled from Houston. Why? Wouldn't it make more sense to have both in the same place? Florida is because there's no other safe place in the US to launch a big rocket on an easterly trajectory* than Florida. Or the extreme southern tip of Texas, which SpaceX uses. Houston is because NASA needed LBJ's support. They even named the place after him. * Why easterly? Because that's the direction Earth rotates. If you orbit in that direction you get some free momentum from the planet itself. |
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| ▲ | influx 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| You know the whole point of the space race was to prove that we could send ICBMs to the USSR right? |
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| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > the whole point of the space race was to prove that we could send ICBMs to the USSR right? No, it wasn’t. The real world seldom has single causation. Some people supported Apollo as a messaging exercise. Most had other reasons. And in any case, there are easy ways to demonstrate ICBM competence. Pyongyang isn’t going to the Moon to prove it can bomb Alaska. |
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