| ▲ | Planktonne 3 hours ago |
| It's hard not to see this as a consolation prize. In 1969, we went to the moon. In 2026, with all the benefits of a tech industry that has become ever more powerful, with endless money poured into innovation, our 'rough guide back to the moon' is an AI model that maps it. It's powerful and impressive, of course, and doubtless very useful to researchers, and space exploration is not a priority--all of that is true, sure. But to have the fruits of 50+ years of technological progress result not in going back to the moon, or onto other challenges, but just a refinement in looking at the moon. Is this the best giant leap we can muster now? So much innovation and yet we lack a capability we used to have. I know there are all sorts of ways to explain this away, but it still makes me sad. |
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| ▲ | bluGill 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Going to the moon is a publicity stunt. Been there done that. There are very few good arguments for putting anything on the moon, much less a human (which generally can do much less because all the life support needed can't be put into science). All the arguments for going to the moon need to be considered against everything else we can do - opportunity cost is real, but investing in the moon we are not investing in something else. (including less working hours...) Most of the things we developed for the moon would have been done anyway, and we don't know what things would have been developed sooner if we were not focusing on the moon. Be realistic. You can support going to the moon. However be honest: there isn't much value from it and there are plenty of reasons to say we shouldn't. |
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| ▲ | somenameforme 8 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I think this sort of view is quite myopic. In general space has practically infinite everything - land, resources, energy, and more. It has the potential to enable, in turn, infinite expansion of humanity. But we're not going to get to the endgame without playing the opening first. The path to international air flight began with often suicidal attempts to flap our arms with various instruments attached and act like birds, with many thinking we'd never go anywhere beyond that. With space we're already a bit more advanced, yet we're far from where we need to be - and the only way we're going to get there is by going out and starting on a very long journey. We didn't do anything in 1969. Landing on the Moon and leaving a flag is like seeing the Wright Flyer go 260m, waving a Mission Accomplished banner, and then quitting with that as the state of art of flight - a mildly interesting novelty that was, at best, a proof of concept. | |
| ▲ | dabluecaboose 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I've heard a lot of arguments against human space exploration, but "We could put that energy into working less" is probably one of the more out-there arguments that's hard to take seriously. | |
| ▲ | ramesh31 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >"There are very few good arguments for putting anything on the moon, much less a human (which generally can do much less because all the life support needed can't be put into science)." The arguments are entirely romantic. But then, what exactly is life without romance? That's probably the single greatest loss of modern society; that we've been convinced nothing matters but the material and concrete. | | |
| ▲ | bluGill 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | At that point though, there are lots of other romances to peruse. Somebody could go to the moon, but it won't be me. I could however go to my local art museum - at a much smaller costs than my share of sending someone else to the moon, but I'd get more value from my trip to the art museum than someone else on the moon. Or in my case I just went to my local high school marching band competition, and got to hear some great music. YMMV on what you find more romantic. | | |
| ▲ | edgyquant an hour ago | parent [-] | | People want to go to the moon, you could make your same argument for lots of things humans have done but at the end of the day science is not the reason 99% of people care about or want to colonize space. People have a desire to colonize space |
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| ▲ | bryanlarsen an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > endless money poured into innovation The US put 5% of the federal budget into the original moon mission. NASA and SpaceX and the US Space Force combined don't spend anywhere close to that on R&D. |
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| ▲ | 1970-01-01 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The goal is entirely different. Apollo - Cold war. USA must do it before Russia and win the space race. Money is not a restriction. USA did it before Russia and won the space race. Artemis - Prove a multi-national program can function under financial, economic, political, and even technical restrictions. We can't simply land and observe, it needs to be a team effort under a tight budget. https://www.planetary.org/charts/apollo-vs-artemis-spending |
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| ▲ | abcd_f 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > won the space race Some of it. Not first to the space, not first to the Moon, not first in human spaceflight, not first in spacewalk, etc. | | |
| ▲ | 1970-01-01 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That remains a ridiculous argument. The thing about a race is you can always think of excuses for not winning. Plans for Mars were being met by all accounts, however Nixon still cancelled them because the Apollo victory was so decisive. | | |
| ▲ | rtkwe 34 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | IMO he stopped it because Russia wasn't meaningfully threatening to field a mission. The end was always artificial and if the USSR had beat the US to the Moon maybe we would have gotten a race to the first "permanent" base on the Moon or spacestation or even a rush to Mars. That's the point of the "did the US really win the Space Race?" question, it's about how the finish line was essentially always the next thing the USSR hadn't done yet. | |
| ▲ | asdfasvea 41 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Thats a ridiculous comment. The thing about the space race is we were getting are ass kicked, then said 'Oh the finish line is actually this. Oh look we kicked your ass " It was like we lost the first 9 events of a decathalon and then won the 1500 and declared ourselves the winner. | | |
| ▲ | bee_rider 25 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Actually, in Russia do they have a pitch for where they’d rather draw the finish line? I admit it is probably influenced by having a US upbringing, but “landing on the Moon” does seem like a natural finish line for a space race. The move of picking an advantageous finish line is easily countered by… picking an obvious successor finish line. If they’d stuck a base on the moon that’d have been a pretty compelling “actually, here’s the next finish line.” Maybe they have some space-station based claim. | |
| ▲ | 15 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | 1970-01-01 32 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | You're supporting the USA decisive victory with this take. We are not disagreeing on the winner. |
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| ▲ | tekla an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is such a bad response. The space race was to get to the moon. There is a reason the USSR dropped any crewed lunar plans instantly when the USA landed (also they couldn't get the N1 to stop exploding) and went all in on satellites. They also kept the crewed tests secret because they knew they were behind the USA and was embarrassing. https://www.reddit.com/r/AmericaBad/comments/1apgsc9/regardi... | | |
| ▲ | orbital-decay 33 minutes ago | parent [-] | | >The space race was to get to the moon. That's either revisionist or ignorant (likely the latter, looking at cheap memes). The term was coined by American journos in the early 50's, and the actual events started in 1955, very publicly. And objectively speaking it never ended until the USSR crashed. You should probably read something on the Soviet space program (starting with Rockets and People, for example), and the US one while you're at it. The Soviets didn't went all in on satellites. They simply returned to the original ideas Korolev & co had long before Sputnik ever flew, namely LEO modular assembly tech followed by manned circumnavigation of Venus (before the surface conditions were known) or Mars (after that) as a meaningful first step in deep space exploration. Which was pretty pragmatic and long-term thinking, although it's hard to say how realistic it was politically: they would have finished by the late 80's at best and securing the funding without propaganda-worthy progress wasn't a given. Regardless, they succeeded at actual LEO colonization, which was presumably "not space race" (I'm sure Space Shuttle/Freedom being a massive failure and NASA seeking Soviet expertise after the crash has nothing to do with that framing...). Lunar missions, let alone single-flight ones without modular spacecraft, were a practical dead end and a distraction, the engineers understood that perfectly. The party however got successfully baited by JFK's advisors into the race they couldn't win because they still needed to close the "reverse missile gap" after the US panicked and closed the actual missile gap they imagined existed by building a ton of Titan IIs. The Apollo people were also in perfect understanding that the program had no practical followup and only existed for novelty, see anything written by Chris Kraft and Gene Kranz who were actual participants. STS was a colossal blunder and a setback as well, in practical terms, and it was obvious before the first flight. The race was never limited to manned missions either. For example most of what we know about the Solar System comes from the JPL, which is hugely underappreciated. The Soviets only succeeded with Venus missions. |
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| ▲ | next_xibalba an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That’s like saying the goal of the process is the process. It is a recursive definition and a pointless, expensive endeavor. | |
| ▲ | orbital-decay 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >and won the space race ... or maybe just called some convenient events "space race" and refused to notice the others. Like a literal space colony circling above, for example. If you control the framing you control the reality. |
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| ▲ | sajithdilshan 42 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think the problem is not the technological advancement, it’s the limits of physics which are the same as in today as it was back in 1960s. We have immense computing power now compared to 50 years ago. But that doesn’t help to escape the gravity well of earth. We’re still using the same chemical rockets to go to space, haven’t invented any new type of rocket drives |
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| ▲ | heaney-555 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You should look into the Artemis program! Not only are we going back, but we're building a base, which will effectively be the spiritual successor to the ISS. |
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| ▲ | edgyquant an hour ago | parent [-] | | I’ll have to see it to believe it. Artemis was slow but seemed to be making progress and now things have been shaken up again and plans totally changed. To me that seems like it’s not going to happen |
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| ▲ | anovikov 31 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There is a dumb ass simple explanation: in about the same time it took to build rockets that took people to the Moon, we figured out that there was nothing to do there for humans. Or anywhere in the Solar System for that matter. I mean until 1960 people expected to find whole civilisation or at least intelligent life on Venus and until 1964, at least some life on Mars. By then, it was too late to stop Apollo, but already no point to go anywhere else or expand Moon presence. |
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| ▲ | simonedepertis 25 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | shusjsjns 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
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