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US must land astronauts on the Moon again
- senttoschool 3y ago"Because China is doing it" is not a good reason.
- sethrin 3y ago"Because the USSR is doing it" was an equally bad reason.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoIt was fundamentally about proving advanced rocketry & orbital capability: if we can land on the moon, we can incinerate your cities from the sky. Once that was proved, and the technology to deliver long range nuclear weapons implemented, the motivation to push this stuff at all costs dropped. Put another way: back then it was science in the service of warfare with an effectively unlimited budget. Now it's mostly just the science.
- fuoqi 3y agoThe moon mission and ICBMs have almost nothing to do with each other, unlike the first satellite, which was a clear demonstration of the capability to deliver intercontinental payloads and was launched on the rocket literally designed to be able to deliver nuclear payloads to the continental US. The moon mission had only one goal: to save the face after the US has lost all meaningful milestones to the Soviet Union and to "win" the space race by moving the goalpost. I am quite confident, that if the Soviets has managed to land on the Moon first, the goalpost would've been landing on Mars.
- unilynx 3y agoThat's basically the plot of "For all mankind", although they managed to find some intermediate goalposts before Mars
- Grimburger 3y ago> Now it's mostly just the science. With rapidly dropping launch costs there's valid industrial applications in orbit and quite a few startups working on building things in LEO and bringing them back down. Microgravity is incredibly valuable in manufacturing, the Brits worked that out in the 1700's with shot towers. Same with ultra low temps and vacuum conditions.
- matthewfelgate 3y agoLike what?
- bmitc 3y ago> Now it's mostly just the science. No way that is true.
- bluGill 3y agoRight, so lets leave meaningless fights like that back in the 1960s and move on.
- HPsquared 3y agoThe US tends to leapfrog. To Mars!
- andyjohnson0 3y agoThe Russian Luna-25 lander mentionedin the article crash landed a few days ago. They dont appear to be a serious contender at the moment.
- retube 3y agoIt's really weird the spin on this. Space X rockets (and others) blow up all the time, it's part of the R&D process. So not sure why this is being reported so negatively (well, actually, I do, of course...)
- Scalene2 3y agoBecause this was not an R&D mission?
- bkor 3y ago> It's really weird the spin on this. The "spin" is coming from you. > Space X rockets (and others) blow up all the time SpaceX has done ~227 successful Falcon missions in a row. Those rockets do NOT "blow up all the time". Further, the success rate of the Falcon 9 is 247/249. Meaning, 99.20%. For the block 5 variant it is 192/192 or 100% success rate. SpaceX is also developing some rockets. You seem to be comparing rockets which are under development and where SpaceX often gives a low probability of success with missions that are supposed to work. The development rockets are NOT in production, they are NOT used to bring cargo in space. It's really apples vs oranges. > So not sure why this is being reported so negatively (well, actually, I do, of course...) Instead of giving some stupid hint just say what you wanted to say. Up to now what you said doesn't make sense to me, so no why not explain the rest as well.
- DetroitThrow 3y ago>well, actually, I do, of course... I think it's because Luna-24 nearly 5 decades ago was a success, and reported Soviet success rates of their probe programs were 100% (despite the actual number being lower), alongside some cheekiness due to Russian timeline being chosen to land just before the Indian mission. I don't think that such a failure of a 50 year old technology with a previous "100%" success rate is that weird for people to have such a take about. I think it is weird that you suggest SpaceX rockets are blowing up all the time, when a much more direct and accurate comparison would be the Japanese/Israeli lander failure. Do we consider Japan/Israel serious contenders to NASA/ESA in space here? Probably not in the same way as India and China.
- aunty_helen 3y agoThe language of nasa is starting to ramp up. When they fire Boeing and rent SpaceX rockets we’ll know things are getting serious. I also think this is a great example of cognitive dissonance we tech people display, “oh we’re going to the moon in the name of freedom to stop the Chinese claiming all the resources for themselves. That’s good. I like space travel.” Reality is, we’re off to do the same thing we’ve always done, fight over control of resources. There’s hope in knowing that throughout its history, there’s one thing the US has done competently.
- techdmn 3y agoI sometimes like to remind myself that there are lots of things we do competently here in the U.S. Our medical system, for example, converts a public problem into private profit in a way that is unrivaled in the developed world.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoAnd prisons! We made incarcerating people into such a billion dollar business that we have more prisoners than the top 3 leading countries combined
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoYep. We still control: - Puerto Rico - U.S. Virgin Islands - Guam - Northern Mariana Islands - American Samoa - Baker Island - Howland Island - Jarvis Island - Johnston Atoll - Kingman Reef - Midway Atoll - Palmyra Atoll - Wake Island However, we also lost a bunch of territories between 1948 and 1982, particularly the Philippines and the Panama Canal. Can you imagine how much richer we'd be if we had developed the Philippines into a manufacturing hub right before China became one?
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- PCMcGee1 3y ago[flagged]
- mytailorisrich 3y agoIt certainly makes more sense to have a base on the Moon first instead of trying to go to Mars. Once we have developed technologies and experience on the Moon then moving on to Mars becomes more sensible and easier.
- devoutsalsa 3y agoI wonder how much synergy there is in developing a Moon vs Mars mission. I don’t think there’s a lot of overlap. If the plan is to launch Mars missions from the Moon, then the overlap is obvious.
- matthewfelgate 3y agoThere is no point launching to Mars from the Moon.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoMore-so a station in orbit of the Moon.
- cj 3y agoCould something the size of the ISS orbit the moon given the moon's gravity?
- Retric 3y agoThe ISS isn’t in a stable orbit and needs constant though low levels of thrust to maintain its position. You could actually have a more stable orbit over the moon, but getting to it would a lot more deltaV for seemingly zero benefit.
- fallingfrog 3y agoRight-because as far as I know the orbit of the iss is unstable because it’s so low that there’s a very small amount of atmosphere there, enough to eventually slow it down. No atmosphere on the moon.
- tenebrisalietum 3y agoFix housing and about 20 other major issues first.
- midasuni 3y agoThose are political decisions independent from space travel.
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- TapamN 3y agoA society can do multiple things at a time, and it's a more efficient use of resources to do so. Progress made in an activity versus resources put into it is generally logarithmic or even asymptotic when investing extreme amounts of resources, so if you have a huge amount of resources to spend (like a country does), you can get more done in total if you spread them out a bit instead of focusing on one thing at a time. Sticking another billion dollars into fixing housing would have a negligible difference. Finding solutions to something like that requires experimentation, data gathering, and deliberation, which all take time. Putting people on the moon will not affect the passage of time for those of us on Earth. (And it hardly affects the passage of time for anyone on a rocket, as well.)
- tenebrisalietum 3y agoYes, you can totally mow your lawn while your house is burning, and it's easier to mow your lawn than put out a house fire. Therefore, let's mow the lawn instead of putting out the house fire. > Sticking another billion dollars into fixing housing would have a negligible difference. It would if we ... built houses.
- SonicScrub 3y agoUS federal budget currently allocates around 1 trillion dollars for various welfare programs. NASA's entire budget is 32 billion. Please explain how gutting all space-related activities to boost federal social services by a mere 3% is going to contribute meaningfully to solving your list of major issues. Also bear in mind that this is federal social services. Once we tally state and municipal level social service programs, the amount of resources dedicated to space-related activities is a rounding error.
- causi 3y agoCall me cynical but I think this whole recent moon effort is just busy work so we don't have to work on actually pushing the bounds of human exploration by going for Mars. Way more politically palatable to distribute a few tens of billions of dollars to various constituencies to redo things we've already done than to risk failure trying to do something new.
- XorNot 3y agoIt's worth noting that SpaceX's major development change is to "hardware rich" and test often. That's something you can do launching rockets. It's something you can do in orbit. And for deep space the moon is close enough (and by many measures, harder then Mars to land on) to safely yet effectively test practical systems of the type you'd want to go to Mars (consider: Mars' atmosphere is incredibly thin, so it's more Moonlike then Earth like).
- causi 3y agoOh the launch systems and landing systems are fine. I'm referring to plans on building a permanent moon base.
- hoseja 3y agoFor All Mankind, let's go!
- matthewfelgate 3y agoIn a world of negatively I would love to see man on the moon again in my lifetime.
- yanko 3y agoUS may need to solve homeless crowds living in all major cities downtowns first, then to fix it's broken education program and after 2 decades to start thinking how to do its first moon landing
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- bryanlarsen 3y agoNASA's $25B budget wouldn't solve housing in a single city, let alone the nation. We are spending far more on housing then we do on NASA.
- superultra 3y agoI grew up loving space. I still do. I think it’s in humanity’s nature to explore, experiment, expand. But if we can’t fix the home we have, what reason is there that humanity expand into space? How do we know we won’t f that up too? Our current home needs our collective imagination and creativity more than the moon, or space. Once we solve this problem we can move on, but until we do, space exploration is narcissistic manifest destiny escapism at a species wide level.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- themaninthedark 3y agoYour question has been answered, see below. And perhaps you would be glad to hear that the "narcissistic exploration of space" has actually lead to greater care and concern for the planet than we had before we started the endeavor. https://lettersofnote.com/2012/08/06/why-explore-space/ https://lettersofnote.com/2012/08/06/why-explore-space/ >However, I believe, like many of my friends, that travelling to the Moon and eventually to Mars and to other planets is a venture which we should undertake now, and I even believe that this project, in the long run, will contribute more to the solution of these grave problems we are facing here on Earth than many other potential projects of help which are debated and discussed year after year, and which are so extremely slow in yielding tangible results. >Besides the need for new technologies, there is a continuing great need for new basic knowledge in the sciences if we wish to improve the conditions of human life on Earth. We need more knowledge in physics and chemistry, in biology and physiology, and very particularly in medicine to cope with all these problems which threaten man’s life: hunger, disease, contamination of food and water, pollution of the environment. >Of all the many wonderful results of the space program so far, this picture may be the most important one. It opened our eyes to the fact that our Earth is a beautiful and most precious island in an unlimited void, and that there is no other place for us to live but the thin surface layer of our planet, bordered by the bleak nothingness of space. Never before did so many people recognize how limited our Earth really is, and how perilous it would be to tamper with its ecological balance. Ever since this picture was first published, voices have become louder and louder warning of the grave problems that confront man in our times: pollution, hunger, poverty, urban living, food production, water control, overpopulation. It is certainly not by accident that we begin to see the tremendous tasks waiting for us at a time when the young space age has provided us the first good look at our own planet.
- xnx 3y agoCrewed space exploration is a fun stunt, but serves no practical purpose. Leave it to billionaires. Instruments like JWST are much more interesting.
- tivert 3y ago> Crewed space exploration is a fun stunt, but serves no practical purpose. Leave it to billionaires. Instruments like JWST are much more interesting. In reality, the JWST serves as much practical purpose as crewed space exploitation. Maybe even less.