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I like how most people's reactions at this point are "yeah, whatever", as if it's every day that humans observe the far side of the moon with a naked eye throug
by nasretdinov 7mo ago
I like how most people's reactions at this point are "yeah, whatever", as if it's every day that humans observe the far side of the moon with a naked eye through a window :). We do know what it looks like and we have photos from the surface, yes, but seeing the reaction from real people who're actually there does hit different, at least for me
- izzydata 7mo agoPeople are struggling to afford every day life and we are surrounding by crazy things every day like cellphones talking to satellites in space. On any objective measure it is definitely amazing to send humans to the moon, but there are more pressing issues for most people right now. If we as a species had more of our ducks in a row we may be able to better celebrate this as the achievement for humankind that it is.
- wat10000 7mo ago1969 wasn’t exactly all flowers and sunshine either.
- whateveracct 7mo ago[flagged]
- Bnjoroge 7mo agothe hell does that have to do with anything
- philipallstar 7mo agoThey could've employed the astronauts to be waiters in Africa.
- whateveracct 7mo agothe comment i'm replying to is saying that the moon mission is morally dubious because we haven't solved domestic poverty
- raverbashing 7mo agoYeah your life must really suck if you only care about immediate hurdles and pains without making room for hope or creativity
- trial3 7mo agoyou’re making their point, you just don’t know it yet
- jameslars 7mo agoAnd your life might be very privileged to so flippantly disregard anyone’s reality that is just that difficult.
- philipallstar 7mo agoIt's that difficult but they're also commenting on hn.
- pests 7mo agoAnd? Is that a hurdle or something? You know homeless people are allowed to go on the internet? Smartphones? You'll find other homeless or desolate people here on HN - I won't name anyone out of respect but if you read enough comments here over time you would recognize them.
- onraglanroad 7mo agoWell yes. For too many people, life does suck for that very reason. That's not something to mock people for; it's a problem to apply your mind to and fix.
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago> it's a problem to apply your mind to and fix In kids, sure. In adults, not sure it’s worth the effort on a society wide basis.
- bluegatty 7mo agonah, it just seems like that on Twitter. We have more prosperity by far than we've ever had in history, this is a time to celebrate. We have our 'ducks in a row' more now than in the 1960's when we went to the moon because of a cold war and nuclear annihilation / escalation. My grandparents were born on farms with no electricity, plumbing, there was no real 'police' no social services, no healthcare, no antibiotics, 10% of children did not make it past age 1. That's in living memory. Despite the insanity on the news, it's mostly drama, and we still have more people coming out of abject poverty than ever. We have 'modern world problems', they are real problems for sure, but they are of a different scale entirely. Frankly, it may never even get that much better as we may be hitting diminishing marginal returns on 'progress' - we now have to figure out how to live 'long lives and stay healthy'. It's a fine time to go to the moon.
- izzydata 7mo agoIt is a fine time to be going to the moon, but we could be doing multiple productive things at the same time. It just doesn't surprise me that there are so many people that are not caring so much about this.
- bluegatty 7mo agoWe are doing multiple productive things. Zillions of them. They are like 50 companies making robots right now that will soon do a lot of work. There are advances in many fields. Headlines are dominated by something else, the 'news' is not a good reflection of reality.
- westmeal 7mo agoWhat about the workers that will be eventually replaced by said robots? You think they're just going to get free money to exist? Most likely they'll end up in the private prison system or in institutions while the corporations pocket all of the savings. Things are a lot more complicated than they seem I think...
- 7mo ago
- arscan 7mo agoI don’t think people are spending their time on more pressing issues. I think they are just are hooked on an endless stream of content that is built for addiction and is always within arms reach.
- lurking_swe 7mo agopeople have been struggling to afford every day life for decades. So that’s nothing new. Unless only people in the 1st world count as people lol. You’re either emotionally consumed by the human struggle or not, it’s a personality thing - in my opinion. You’re allowed to be poor and a nerd, unless I missed the memo. I’ve met poor and wealthy people that are excited by space.
- didgetmaster 7mo agoStruggling to meet our basic needs is not a recent phenomenon. It has been a part of the human condition for millenia, not just decades. Some people think that if we can just eliminate our 'struggles' by building AI tools to do the hard thinking or robots to perform all our labor; that civilization would become some kind of utopia. I don't believe that. Progress happens when we do hard things.
- WalterBright 7mo ago> for millenia Since the first life appeared.
- DaedalusII 7mo ago[flagged]
- remarkEon 7mo agoI see that "whitey on the moon" is back. If it makes you feel better, the amount of money the United States spends on space is a very small percentage compared overall entitlement spending. There is always going to be some level of inequality, so your maxim that we should only spend money on space exploration when those problems are solved just isn't workable. The enormous amount of money the United States spends on "solving" inequality and poverty begs the question of if that's even an effective or efficient allocation of resources in the first place.
- Eisenstein 7mo ago1. Do you think that it is the mission that is misguided, or the methods, in "solving" inequality and poverty? 2. What would you rather the money be spent on?
- remarkEon 7mo ago1. Both. 2. I don't understand the question. What money?
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- Eisenstein 7mo ago1. Why would eradicating poverty not be something to strive for? 2. The money you mentioned as basis of the comment I replied to. But if you have a cognitive disability which precludes the ability to follow a conversation's thread, I can summarize the previous state at the start of each response.
- someothherguyy 7mo agoFor some numbers: The Artemis program has an estimated cost of 93B since 2012 [0]. As a comparison: "Between 2020 and 2024, $771 billion in Pentagon contracts went to just five firms: Lockheed Martin ($313 billion), RTX (formerly Raytheon, $145 billion), Boeing ($115 billion), General Dynamics ($116 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($81 billion). In comparison, the total diplomacy, development, and humanitarian aid budget, excluding military aid, was $356 billion."[1] 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#cite_note-NASA_OIG_2021-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#cite_note-NASA... 1. https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/economic/us-federal-budget https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/economic/us-federa...
- verzali 7mo agoAmerica has spent more than the equivalent of Artemis blowing up yet another middle eastern country for no good reason. I know which I'd rather get the money.
- baal80spam 7mo agoI see what you mean, but I kind of understand the reaction: what does this change in 99.99% of people lives? Nothing at all. It's not necessarily ignorance.
- NetMageSCW 7mo agoI think in this case more than 0.1% feel a bit of inspiration in a time of darkness.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- thomashabets2 7mo agoTo me, the importance of crewed spaceflight like this cannot be overstated. I think my way of thinking was best phrased by Eddie Izzard: "When we landed on the moon, that was the point where god should have come up and said hello. Because if you invent some creatures, put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, you fucking turn up and say 'well done'". Now, it's not the reason I'm an atheist, but "getting from the blue one to the grey one" (and hearing nothing) is so big that to me it disproves at the very least the existence of a personal god. You may think it ridiculous, but I'm trying to convey why some people would think that it does change their life. Most world events don't change 99.99% of people's lives, and yet they matter too. The only big world event, maybe in my entire life, that affected my life was covid. Because I lived in a lockdown country.
- skybrian 7mo agoIt's great for them, but I'm not really into reaction videos. Pictures taken by space probes are just as good as far as I'm concerned.
- thomashabets2 7mo agoIt's not for the reason that the parent commenter said, and it's not the moon (yet), but you can't take photos like this with probes alone: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2026/apr/05/nasa-orion-spaceship-artemis-ii-mission-in-pictures#img-6 https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2026/apr/05...
- b00ty4breakfast 7mo agoit's amazing, but I'll refer you to Gil Scott-Heron for my feelings on the matter A rat done bit my sister Nell With whitey on the moon Her face and arms began to swell And whitey's on the moon I can't pay no doctor bills But whitey's on the moon Ten years from now I'll be payin' still While whitey's on the moon The man just upped my rent last night Cause whitey's on the moon No hot water, no toilets, no lights But whitey's on the moon I wonder why he's upping me? Cause whitey's on the moon? Well I was already giving him fifty a week With whitey on the moon Taxes taking my whole damn check Junkies making me a nervous wreck The price of food is going up And as if all that shit wasn't enough: A rat done bit my sister Nell With whitey on the moon Her face and arm began to swell And whitey's on the moon Was all that money I made last year For whitey on the moon? How come I ain't got no money here? Hmm! Whitey's on the moon Y'know I just 'bout had my fill Of whitey on the moon I think I'll send these doctor bills Airmail special To whitey on the moon
- lookalike74 7mo agoGreat share, thank you!
- sebmellen 7mo agoInteresting. For all of Gil Scott-Heron's brilliance, this is by far my least favorite work of his.
- fooblaster 7mo agoIt's fine to not be interested, but this time one of the astronauts is black
- rybosome 7mo agoI just came across this poem a few days ago and had the opportunity to think about it. It’s a valuable perspective to hear. As someone prone to getting caught up in the breathless excitement about science, progress, human achievement, etc., it is a hard truth that these things are abstract and not relevant for people who are struggling with day-to-day life, particularly when those struggles are a result of the same government that is executing this mission. However, the older I get, the less I bind to the idea of a single, correct truth. This perspective doesn’t invalidate the perspective that the mission is valuable. The complexity of the system in which this is taking place means that these things (moon missions and affordable healthcare) aren’t fungible for one another; his poverty wasn’t the result of the moon mission, it was the result of EVERYTHING that had happened over the 100 years prior. So it’s useful to hear. It’s a sharp, valid reality check for those of us who like to think in big, abstract concepts. And, it’s one perspective among myriad valid perspectives.
- GolfPopper 7mo agoSpeaking 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.
- al_borland 7mo agoI 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 https://youtu.be/j_AlXChA9F4
- ryandrake 7mo agoI 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.
- bombcar 7mo agoThe pork funnel is going to exist unless something major changes; so I'd rather get moonshots out of the pork.
- dingaling 7mo agoBut 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.
- Bnjoroge 7mo agothere's zero difference between a photo taken by them and one by cameras on ISS.
- gus_massa 7mo agoStealing a link from a comment by ceejayoz, the difference is like a 5% or 10% [it got deleted now] https://www.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comments/1sd797j/the_moon_as_seen_from_artemis_ii_projected_onto/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comments/1sd797j/the_moon...
- gus_massa 7mo agoToo late to edit: perhaps a bit more than 10%. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47651659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47651659
- nixon_why69 7mo agoI'm not being a hater, but we landed on the moon 55+ years ago and now we're doing a flyby with 35+ year-old engine tech. It's good that we're doing something but we should be doing better.
- nine_k 7mo agoIn 2-3 years we should expect a Starship mission to Moon, at a much more sensible scale, as in the amount of scientific gear and actual researchers delivered to the surface (and then back).
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- juleiie 7mo agoThere is literally not many things in life I hope so much for than starship success. Sounds strange perhaps but I just love space and I hope it succeeds. Funnily I absolutely despise Musk at the same time for being absolute buffoon
- pstuart 7mo agoWe're days away from the SpaceX IPO that will make Musk even richer than he is now. I don't trust him with that money.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- juleiie 7mo agoI trust his gargantuan insecurity Sometimes the flaws of someone make him completely predictable. Very trustworthy to repeatedly pour billions in an attempt to become someone he fantasizes to be. There are innumerable amount of assholes in history that sold things we use daily, sometimes at the expense of original inventors. It is hard to cope with the idea that greed, ambition and ruthlessness are the building blocks of everything that stands around us. Sometimes it makes me want to reject everything I know of good and human and feed these traits until they fill the hollow parts of mind with wealth, empty fame and too many lonely sunsets on a private island.
- yread 7mo agoIt's also not the first time humans are seeing the far side of the moon, Ronald Evans orbitted the Moon 75 times in the orbital module during Apollo 17 (and other ppl did before him), so he also saw it right? The only unique thing is that its the first mission where they dont really do anything more interesting than looking at the far side
- NetMageSCW 7mo agoApollo 8 did pretty much the same thing so not a first there either, but a first for today’s Orion architecture.
- s5300 7mo ago[dead]
- BurningFrog 7mo agoI'm very excited about the later steps of the Artemis project! Landing on the Moon South Pole and start setting up the lunar station there will be a huge step, especially after 50 years of nothing!! But this flight has already been done without a crew. Doing it with a human crew is important, but it achieves nothing new and exciting.
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago> it achieves nothing new and exciting I thought this but have since changed my mind. On board, real humans tax life-support systems in a way that’s difficult to simulate. And real human astronauts garble processes and communications with ground control in ways that a nation that hasn’t done deep spaceflight in a generation could probably do with practice on.
- BurningFrog 7mo agoI half agree. It is new and important. But it's hard, at least for me personally, to get really excited about it...
- WalterBright 7mo agoI thought the various space stations were there to develop & test life-support systems long term?
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago> thought the various space stations were there to develop & test life-support systems long term? I thought ducks were a preparation of chicken until my early teens. I was wrong. We have never flown this deep-space life-support system on the ISS together. In parts, yes. But that doesn’t substitute for a real mission. As for simulations, how would you rate your experience from a role play versus the real deal?
- kurthr 7mo agoActually, at this moment, the top 3 parent posts are all about how people aren't responding positively enough to this event. I think it's really cool, and more people would be more exited, if there wasn't so much else going on. To be fair, I already had the conversation this weekend that the late 60s-70s were also quite fraught. Maybe we really have just been jaded by hours of youtube and tiktok shorts? I watched it on a 9" B/W crt and I was amazed! Of course I hadn't seen 2001, StarWars, Contact, or The Expanse.
- SergeAx 7mo agoBut we, as humans, were literally "been there, done that". Nothing new is happening. We are just picking up the ball where we dropped it 50 years ago. The ship is somehow newer and even has a toilet. The said toilet receives most news coverage.
- functional_dev 7mo agoAgreed, every astronaut says no photo prepares you for actually being there. Knowing what the far side looks like and floating there looking at it are completely different things