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We are going to The moon for two reasons. First, we want to set up a more permanent base. Nasa refers to this as "we're here to stay" The second reason we are

We are going to The moon for two reasons. First, we want to set up a more permanent base. Nasa refers to this as "we're here to stay" The second reason we are going to the moon so that we can put the first person of color and the first woman on the moon. That is explicitly an Artemis mission purpose. Only time will tell if either of these two missions were actually worth it. One more point > Early on, SLS designers made the catastrophic decision to reuse Shuttle hardware, which is like using Fabergé eggs to save money on an omelette. SLS designers did not make the decision to use shuttle hardware per se. SLS was explicitly designed and funded to use that hardware. One of the original purposes of Artemis, before the other two purposes that we see in the media were even decided upon, was to make use of shuttle hardware.

idlewords 2y ago
Note that the first reason you give is tautological.
- dotancohen 2y ago
  Possibly, but it's not unique to SLS. People were jesting twenty years ago about the purpose of the Space Shuttle being just a vehicle to get to and from the ISS. And the purpose of the ISS? So that the Space Shuttle would have somewhere to go.
  - iamthirsty 2y ago
    > And the purpose of the ISS? So that the Space Shuttle would have somewhere to go. I don’t think this is accurate. ISS was conceived almost 10 years after the Shuttle started launching, and the U.S. obviously had space station ambitions even before the Shuttle was on the drawing board (Skylab). Additionally the Soviets did the exact same, with Mir being launched prior to the Buran’s first test flight — heck Salyut 1 was launched in 1971.
    - idlewords 2y ago
      It's true for the post-Challenger Shuttle, which really didn't have a credible job to perform except for ISS assembly.
      - iamthirsty 2y ago
        Again, the Challenger disaster was 12 years prior to the launch of the first ISS module. ISS missions only flew 37 times, out of 135 total missions for the Shuttle. The Shuttle had many other uses outside the ISS.
        dotancohen 2y ago
        I first heard the saying I think sometime around the loss of Colombia. Maybe before, maybe after. By the return to flight, it was most certainly more true than false. By that time the shuttles performed very few non-ISS flights. I think that Atlantis flew a service mission to Hubble, other than that I can't think of any other shuttle flights that didn't go to the space station. Columbia was heavier than the other orbiters, so she was flying the non-ISS missions from about '98 until her demise. After that US satellites were launched on disposable, unmanned rockets like the Deltas and Atlas.
    - Dalewyn 2y ago
      ISS stems from Space Station Freedom[1], which itself has its roots in the the Space Transportation System's space station component[2]. The Space Shuttle was a part of the Space Transportation System and the only part to receive funding and see development. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Station_Freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Station_Freedom [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Transportation_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Transportation_System
  - dudeinjapan 2y ago
    Also, the purpose of Earth is so the Space Shuttle has somewhere to launch from and the ISS has something to orbit.
shkkmo 2y ago
Which is the explanation for some of the paradoxes rasied in the article. SLS was foisted on NASA by politicians. The design of Artemis seems set to take advantage of that political will to fund the private development of the next stage of space flight by pretending that funding supports a role for SLS instead of making it completely obsolete.
Yossarrian22 2y ago
There’s also the unstated purpose of beating China to setting up a base.
- usrbinbash 2y ago
  And what if China gets there first? How exactly would that benefit them, in a geopolitical sense? Sorry, but if I have the choice of wasting that much resources just so I can brag about it a bit sooner than my opponent, or watch my opponent do so, while I use said resources more productively, I know what to do.
  - adolph 2y ago
    If China gets there first, they will accomplish half of the above stated number two reason, reproduced below. > The second reason we are going to the moon so that we can put the first person of color and the first woman on the moon. That is explicitly an Artemis mission purpose.
  - margalabargala 2y ago
    > And what if China gets there first? How exactly would that benefit them, in a geopolitical sense? If China gets there first, the enormous amount of international credibility and resulting soft power that they will gain internationally, at the US's expense, will be immense and will be worth the resources they spend several times over.
    - usrbinbash 2y ago
      > the enormous amount of international credibility and resulting soft power You know what is giving China soft power? Funding projects around all of Africa. You know what is not giving western countries soft power? Burning Billions on Space Programs that serve zero purpose and could achieve more with much less investments, if we just continued sending robots. Again, I know where I would allocate my resources if I had a hand in this game.
      - 2y ago
wolverine876 2y ago
Afiak, the purposes are to begin to setup the infrastructure for permanent habitation, and to prepare for a crewed flight to Mars. > That is explicitly an Artemis mission purpose. Where does it say that?
- mathgeek 2y ago
  > Where does it say that? First line of the official page at https://www.nasa.gov/feature/artemis/ https://www.nasa.gov/feature/artemis/ "With the Artemis campaign, NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before."
  - foobarian 2y ago
    That seems like a side effect more than an explicit purpose. Down below is more to the point: > WHY WE’RE GOING TO THE MOON > We’re going back to the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and inspiration for a new generation of explorers: the Artemis Generation. While maintaining American leadership in exploration, we will build a global alliance and explore deep space for the benefit of all.
verticalscaler 2y ago
[flagged]
- dudeinjapan 2y ago
  True, going to the moon would be an excellent way to get your Earth-scale weight down! And on prime-time TV no less.
dudeinjapan 2y ago
I'd like to see us put the first ventriloquist on the moon, with a miniature spacesuit for their little buddy. "That's one small step for dummy-kind--", "Who ya callin' small ya big dummy!" This is why we go to space.
- thombat 2y ago
  So long as they do a gag where the dummy's suit is depressurised and he continues to protest but now silently, then I'm all for it. If Man is truly to live along the stars then vaudeville humour shall be part of it
  - dudeinjapan 2y ago
    A good name for the dummy would be “Houston”. The potential for gags is limitless.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
RobotToaster 2y ago
It seems crazy to me they've managed to use shuttle parts to make a design that seems older and worse than the shuttle. People called the shuttle a truck, but they've used parts from it to make something that looks like a Ford model-T in comparison.
- pookha 2y ago
  The moon has trillions of dollars in water, helium, and metals (rare earth, titanium, etc). It's an f'ing goldmine and controlling said resource will be something hostile authoritarian regimes (China) would seek out. There's simply no excuse that the US should be this bad at making a system to reach the moon. The Chinese have committed insane sins and dropped massive amounts of space hardware on the earth (luckily it landed in the ocean). We should be dunking on them but instead we've got this buffoonery?
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    None of the material on the moon is worth more than the cost of shipping it back to Earth.
  - jandrese 2y ago
    This sounds completely insane to me. Are people worried that China is going to mine out the moon before the US gets there? You're talking about trillions of tons of material, it won't be the limiting factor in your lifetime. And this assumes that lunar mining/refining is even practical.
    - RobotToaster 2y ago
      Same, but if that kind of paranoia gets us back into space I don't mind it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - NikolaNovak 2y ago
    I have never found any math that made trip to the moon for materials even remotely wortwhile, by like orders of magnitude, not just today with today's technology, but for any foreseeable future we can meaningfully discuss. Water in particular is an unfortunate one to start with, given its abundance and ease of extraction on earth, vs absolutely positively ridiculous efforts to obtain them from the moon. But everything else from metals to obscurely valuable versions of Helium, seems to fall apart as soon as we go from "Look! Up there in the sky! Minerals!!!1", to "let's do a back-of-the-napkin math along any of the materials, science, energy, or money axis" I enjoy using traditional cold-war bogey-men to scare ignorant politicians into accidentally sponsoring real science as much as any other person, I do, but... as long as we're not actually buying into that sillyness, right?.... right?
usrbinbash 2y ago
> Only time will tell if either of these two missions were actually worth it. No time required, we already know the answer: neither of these two goals is worth the enormeous pile of resources burned to achive it. 1. A permanent human presence on the moon serves what purpose exactly that Robots cannot do? If we want to set up shop there: Why not send robots and an automatic laboratory-repair-bay? It's the moon, we can even remote control the damn things with only 2 seconds latency! What excatly are humans supposed to do there, that robots cannot? 2. Go ask women in underpaid care work and people of color in underserved communities, what they think would benefit them, and the general sense of equality, more: Hundreds of billions of dollars poured into improving social services like adequate pensions for carework, childcare, better supervision programs against discrimination in the workplace, better educational systems, etc. OR hundreds of billions of dollars burned by space-billionaires to let some old politician say "We did it!" at a press conference?
- nathan_compton 2y ago
  People who get miffed at putting women and poc in space also don't want to spend more on social services, though, so its kind of a false dichotomy. It's not like if we could somehow convince the powers that be to cancel the space program they would put it all into education, jobs programs and basic income.
- jodrellblank 2y ago
  Money isn't burned when spent on space programs. resources, e.g. fuels are, but money is spent, it stays down here on Earth, employing people, boosting corporate profits (and therefore pension funds and other things which invest in them), employing people (who maybe women and people of colour).
  - rurp 2y ago
    You could make the same argument about any government spending program, no matter how wasteful it is. The money always goes into the economy. The question is how to get the most useful output from that spending.
GolfPopper 2y ago
>First, we want to set up a more permanent base. Nasa refers to this as "we're here to stay" Perhaps I've not been following Artemis closely enough, but it doesn't seem to have anything actually in progress that would directly connect to the "permanent base" idea, beyond "Well, we need to go to the moon if we want a permanent base there". But that's sort-of like saying, "Well, I need to enroll in a university if I want a PhD".

idlewords 2y ago

Note that the first reason you give is tautological.

dotancohen 2y ago
Possibly, but it's not unique to SLS. People were jesting twenty years ago about the purpose of the Space Shuttle being just a vehicle to get to and from the ISS. And the purpose of the ISS? So that the Space Shuttle would have somewhere to go.
- iamthirsty 2y ago
  > And the purpose of the ISS? So that the Space Shuttle would have somewhere to go. I don’t think this is accurate. ISS was conceived almost 10 years after the Shuttle started launching, and the U.S. obviously had space station ambitions even before the Shuttle was on the drawing board (Skylab). Additionally the Soviets did the exact same, with Mir being launched prior to the Buran’s first test flight — heck Salyut 1 was launched in 1971.
  - idlewords 2y ago
    It's true for the post-Challenger Shuttle, which really didn't have a credible job to perform except for ISS assembly.
    - iamthirsty 2y ago
      Again, the Challenger disaster was 12 years prior to the launch of the first ISS module. ISS missions only flew 37 times, out of 135 total missions for the Shuttle. The Shuttle had many other uses outside the ISS.
      - dotancohen 2y ago
        I first heard the saying I think sometime around the loss of Colombia. Maybe before, maybe after. By the return to flight, it was most certainly more true than false. By that time the shuttles performed very few non-ISS flights. I think that Atlantis flew a service mission to Hubble, other than that I can't think of any other shuttle flights that didn't go to the space station. Columbia was heavier than the other orbiters, so she was flying the non-ISS missions from about '98 until her demise. After that US satellites were launched on disposable, unmanned rockets like the Deltas and Atlas.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    ISS stems from Space Station Freedom[1], which itself has its roots in the the Space Transportation System's space station component[2]. The Space Shuttle was a part of the Space Transportation System and the only part to receive funding and see development. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Station_Freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Station_Freedom [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Transportation_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Transportation_System
- dudeinjapan 2y ago
  Also, the purpose of Earth is so the Space Shuttle has somewhere to launch from and the ISS has something to orbit.

shkkmo 2y ago

Which is the explanation for some of the paradoxes rasied in the article. SLS was foisted on NASA by politicians. The design of Artemis seems set to take advantage of that political will to fund the private development of the next stage of space flight by pretending that funding supports a role for SLS instead of making it completely obsolete.

Yossarrian22 2y ago

There’s also the unstated purpose of beating China to setting up a base.

usrbinbash 2y ago
And what if China gets there first? How exactly would that benefit them, in a geopolitical sense? Sorry, but if I have the choice of wasting that much resources just so I can brag about it a bit sooner than my opponent, or watch my opponent do so, while I use said resources more productively, I know what to do.
- adolph 2y ago
  If China gets there first, they will accomplish half of the above stated number two reason, reproduced below. > The second reason we are going to the moon so that we can put the first person of color and the first woman on the moon. That is explicitly an Artemis mission purpose.
- margalabargala 2y ago
  > And what if China gets there first? How exactly would that benefit them, in a geopolitical sense? If China gets there first, the enormous amount of international credibility and resulting soft power that they will gain internationally, at the US's expense, will be immense and will be worth the resources they spend several times over.
  - usrbinbash 2y ago
    > the enormous amount of international credibility and resulting soft power You know what is giving China soft power? Funding projects around all of Africa. You know what is not giving western countries soft power? Burning Billions on Space Programs that serve zero purpose and could achieve more with much less investments, if we just continued sending robots. Again, I know where I would allocate my resources if I had a hand in this game.
    - 2y ago

wolverine876 2y ago

Afiak, the purposes are to begin to setup the infrastructure for permanent habitation, and to prepare for a crewed flight to Mars. > That is explicitly an Artemis mission purpose. Where does it say that?

mathgeek 2y ago
> Where does it say that? First line of the official page at https://www.nasa.gov/feature/artemis/ https://www.nasa.gov/feature/artemis/ "With the Artemis campaign, NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before."
- foobarian 2y ago
  That seems like a side effect more than an explicit purpose. Down below is more to the point: > WHY WE’RE GOING TO THE MOON > We’re going back to the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and inspiration for a new generation of explorers: the Artemis Generation. While maintaining American leadership in exploration, we will build a global alliance and explore deep space for the benefit of all.

verticalscaler 2y ago

[flagged]

dudeinjapan 2y ago
True, going to the moon would be an excellent way to get your Earth-scale weight down! And on prime-time TV no less.

dudeinjapan 2y ago

I'd like to see us put the first ventriloquist on the moon, with a miniature spacesuit for their little buddy. "That's one small step for dummy-kind--", "Who ya callin' small ya big dummy!" This is why we go to space.

thombat 2y ago
So long as they do a gag where the dummy's suit is depressurised and he continues to protest but now silently, then I'm all for it. If Man is truly to live along the stars then vaudeville humour shall be part of it
- dudeinjapan 2y ago
  A good name for the dummy would be “Houston”. The potential for gags is limitless.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

RobotToaster 2y ago

It seems crazy to me they've managed to use shuttle parts to make a design that seems older and worse than the shuttle. People called the shuttle a truck, but they've used parts from it to make something that looks like a Ford model-T in comparison.

pookha 2y ago
The moon has trillions of dollars in water, helium, and metals (rare earth, titanium, etc). It's an f'ing goldmine and controlling said resource will be something hostile authoritarian regimes (China) would seek out. There's simply no excuse that the US should be this bad at making a system to reach the moon. The Chinese have committed insane sins and dropped massive amounts of space hardware on the earth (luckily it landed in the ocean). We should be dunking on them but instead we've got this buffoonery?
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  None of the material on the moon is worth more than the cost of shipping it back to Earth.
- jandrese 2y ago
  This sounds completely insane to me. Are people worried that China is going to mine out the moon before the US gets there? You're talking about trillions of tons of material, it won't be the limiting factor in your lifetime. And this assumes that lunar mining/refining is even practical.
  - RobotToaster 2y ago
    Same, but if that kind of paranoia gets us back into space I don't mind it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- NikolaNovak 2y ago
  I have never found any math that made trip to the moon for materials even remotely wortwhile, by like orders of magnitude, not just today with today's technology, but for any foreseeable future we can meaningfully discuss. Water in particular is an unfortunate one to start with, given its abundance and ease of extraction on earth, vs absolutely positively ridiculous efforts to obtain them from the moon. But everything else from metals to obscurely valuable versions of Helium, seems to fall apart as soon as we go from "Look! Up there in the sky! Minerals!!!1", to "let's do a back-of-the-napkin math along any of the materials, science, energy, or money axis" I enjoy using traditional cold-war bogey-men to scare ignorant politicians into accidentally sponsoring real science as much as any other person, I do, but... as long as we're not actually buying into that sillyness, right?.... right?

usrbinbash 2y ago

> Only time will tell if either of these two missions were actually worth it. No time required, we already know the answer: neither of these two goals is worth the enormeous pile of resources burned to achive it. 1. A permanent human presence on the moon serves what purpose exactly that Robots cannot do? If we want to set up shop there: Why not send robots and an automatic laboratory-repair-bay? It's the moon, we can even remote control the damn things with only 2 seconds latency! What excatly are humans supposed to do there, that robots cannot? 2. Go ask women in underpaid care work and people of color in underserved communities, what they think would benefit them, and the general sense of equality, more: Hundreds of billions of dollars poured into improving social services like adequate pensions for carework, childcare, better supervision programs against discrimination in the workplace, better educational systems, etc. OR hundreds of billions of dollars burned by space-billionaires to let some old politician say "We did it!" at a press conference?

nathan_compton 2y ago
People who get miffed at putting women and poc in space also don't want to spend more on social services, though, so its kind of a false dichotomy. It's not like if we could somehow convince the powers that be to cancel the space program they would put it all into education, jobs programs and basic income.
jodrellblank 2y ago
Money isn't burned when spent on space programs. resources, e.g. fuels are, but money is spent, it stays down here on Earth, employing people, boosting corporate profits (and therefore pension funds and other things which invest in them), employing people (who maybe women and people of colour).
- rurp 2y ago
  You could make the same argument about any government spending program, no matter how wasteful it is. The money always goes into the economy. The question is how to get the most useful output from that spending.

GolfPopper 2y ago

>First, we want to set up a more permanent base. Nasa refers to this as "we're here to stay" Perhaps I've not been following Artemis closely enough, but it doesn't seem to have anything actually in progress that would directly connect to the "permanent base" idea, beyond "Well, we need to go to the moon if we want a permanent base there". But that's sort-of like saying, "Well, I need to enroll in a university if I want a PhD".