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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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.
They aren’t doing anything new, we have already been around the moon.
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
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
I’m betting a corporate slavery jihad of environmental degradation.
I mean, that tracks historically
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.
It’s been overshadowed by other current events. Quite a shame, really
Epstein files ?
That goddamn scandal. The persecution of minorities and the warmongering. The socio-political climate now is far worse compared to the Apollo missions then conducted at the time the US government was unpopular mainly because of the Vietnam War.
The arguments against Artemis aren’t surprising as these also mirror the skepticism towards the Apollo program.
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
If the Untied States manages to survive the mess it is in, it will probably declare ownership of the moon and declare anyone else who manages to land there illegal aliens…including actual aliens
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…
In case we’re not familiar with the cultural/economic backdrop of Bladerunner, etc.:
spoiler
all humans that could afford to leave the planet had done so long before the period the first movie was set in, and those humans that couldn’t quietly, secretly turned into unpaid, unwitting sublime training nodes for each new model of replicant —until said trainees failed to recall their synthetic origins, and could replace the humans without any blowback, scrutiny, or awareness of it at all, really. 😶
This is not scifi. This is where those fucknuts are aiming our species. 🥲
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.
I have become very cynical of tech over the past several years and am strongly opposed to any sort of space colonization.
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.
Fuck that. Saying empires are inevitable is a lot like saying fascism is inevitable. Maybe it’s true but you shouldn’t identify with the thing and make it’s purpose your own
Thats actually a perfect explanation that I think is inline with this
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YfhA3KWLtFqBeFnpb/my-specific-singularity-timeline-to-utopia
That’s complete and utter bullshit.
“Frontline of humanity” what does that even mean, historically? Humanity has always been spread across the earth.
I see absolutely no evidence for this historically, what I see is just people in the Middle Ages trying to brand themselves as the successors to Rome for PR.
The idea of Mars becoming an “empire” is pure fantasy. We can’t even begin to talk about the lack of natural resources when there’s literally no air. Maybe in 40,000 years or something, but not on any foreseeable timescale.
If we don’t get spaceflight, the US will stay an imperial entity for eternity.
This is straight up magical thinking. You might as well say that someone has to sacrifice a virgin goat on the night that the stars are in alignment for the US empire to end. There is zero logical or causal connection between those things, and empires don’t just last “eternally” unless somebody casts the right magic spell.
Maybe in 40,000 years or something, but not on any foreseeable timescale.
Similarly, the NYT predicted in 1903 that it would take “one million to ten million years for humanity to develop an operating flying machine” (airplane). The wright brothers achieved the first powered airplane flight sixty-nine days later. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Machines_Which_Do_Not_Fly
You might want to think about this.
A technological breakthrough could make Mars colonization feasible. It might even be possible for it to be self-sustaining. Who knows?
But an empire? That’s utterly ridiculous. You might as well say that the thing that the American empire will last eternally unless and until we genetically engineer a race of intelligent dragons who will replace it with a dragon empire, and if anyone expresses skepticism of that fantasy, you could just as easily point to “people didn’t think the Wright Brothers could fly.”
One wrong skeptic a hundred years ago doesn’t mean every fantasy is going to happen. There’s countless predictions that didn’t come true.
But an empire? That’s utterly ridiculous.
What’s your argument here? Why is it ridiculous?
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.
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 remember when I was in China, didn’t even have internet.
My parents bought me a children’s book about planets and stuff… I still remember it called 十万个为什么 (Literally: 100 Thousand Whys)
I was so intrigued.
I remember I had not much things to read and I kept reading that over and over again. I remember still having it when I was in 2nd grade in the US… like that’s my last “artifact” of my pre-US life…
I remember just putting it in my bookbag and bringing it to school cuz… idk why… maybe I just felt nostalgic about it and thought it’d be cool to bring a book nobody else in the school would be able to read… sort of like a special ancient text made for me xD
Sadly the binding on that book is garbage and it fell apart and I no longer have that book…
(I don’t remember NASA being mentioned btw)
Later I remember constantly googling space stuff once we had internet access at home…
I think its:
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Childhood… like space is a big concept… so it feels like this “big thing” and I get obsessed about it… like many kids probably do. You go from being in a tiny apartment at home to suddenly knowing about very big empty space… Mind Blowing…
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Humanity already been on the moon… meh… not that exciting… especially not after a few decades and interests fade… like omg someone sailed across the ocean… boo boring… already done…
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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
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.
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.
Same. Part of it for me, I think, is that is an enormous expenditure that goes mostly to Elmo. The Apollo missions were more in-house, with lots of cool innovations, and it feels like the privatization of a great and inspiring heritage.
Nothing on that flight was from SpaceX
Future ones will be, future money will be largely SpaceX, because if they get starship to work it promises to be much much cheaper than anything else
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.
oddly enough i had a discussion with somebody just today that AI is bad because it reduces jobs. now you’re telling me that spaceflight is bad because it creates jobs?
It’s almost as if you’re speaking with different people with different views.
I for example would have told you that AI reducing jobs is amazing and ideally all jobs should be automated, so that everyone can choose to do exactly what they like at all times.
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 find it pointless. We need to think about real sustainable progress in space but you just have to look at the earth to see how we are about sustainability. I firmly believe we have to work on sourcing space resources from space and that is what we should be most workin on. I mean if you look at it reusable rockets are the most impactful thing to happen to our space endeavours in this millenium and it was due to doing one thing. Being more sustainable.
It’s hard to be excited about going to space when you can’t afford to exist on earth.
It’s eclipsed (no pun intended) by the horrors of war, disease, and conservatism. It’s hard to be excited about the moon when there’s measles outbreaks and at least one genocide.
this song describes perfectly why I couldn’t give a fuck about space colonization anymore.
after covid, Ukraine, Palestine, Iran, Sudan, etc. and the sheer number of genocides the governments around the globe managed to squeeze in in just a short 6 year period, I stopped caring about the progress and democracy fetish they’re trying to force feed us.
if we wanna make the world a better place, we gotta stop relying on them. i know now they’re gonna use those space launches to perfect their genocidal weapons, that’s why I could enjoy NASA before I knew the military industrial complex
I thought that before i read your post.
