2y ago

For the first time in 51 years, NASA is training astronauts to fly to the Moon

arstechnica.com

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2y ago

For the first time in 51 years, NASA is training astronauts to fly to the Moon hi

arstechnica.com /space/2023/07/for-the-first-time-in-51-years-nasa-is-training-astronauts-to-fly-to-the-moon/

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2y ago

For the first time in 51 years, NASA is training astronauts to fly to the Moon

arstechnica.com /space/2023/07/for-the-first-time-in-51-years-nasa-is-training-astronauts-to-fly-to-the-moon/

20 comments

Commander Reid Wiseman and his crewmates—pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen—were named to the Artemis II crew on April 3.
"Hello, crewmate! What are you doing on this mission?"
"I'm the pilot. You?"
"I'm the Canadian."
I see a bunch of people saying we should spend our limited money elsewhere. But these missions cost money similar to our Movies for fuck's sake. Spending money on these missions (the money goes to people on the earth, making technical stuff, it doesn't vanish) is better than spending on bread and circus, or even military.
The money amounts are FUCKING TINY. Stop whining so much about a good thing. We are talking about nations, not a single broke household.
- Yeah I mean really, if the US can spend 1.8 trillion on pandemic relief, a few billion on space exploration is a drop in a bucket. And we'll probably get better returns on the investment.
I would love it if they landed on the moon on the anniversary of the original landing. Then I'd share my bday with both anniversaries of the landings.
This makes me so happy
It happened decades before I was born and we haven't bothered to land on a single celestial option since. It's ridiculous. I can't believe no other country even did it since then.
- Why is it ridiculous? What incentive did they have?
  
  What incentive did they have?
  Being cool.
News about the moon always gives me a big what-if sense. Like the series "For All Mankind". It is always with a big regret that I think of what could have been. But excitement about what will be in terms of space exploration. Is there any other explanation besides money and public support for why the moon and space stopped being interesting for governments?
- There's nothing on it we can use. That's the gist of it. If it has resources we could exploit we'd have been making bases up there since day one.
  
  There are so many asteroids with exotic materials that justify throwing nonsensical amounts of money into furthering space exploration and travel. The problem is being unable to take advantage of those resources in our lifetime. Makes us unwilling to try.
Sooo... the US is, once again, feeling threatened and is planning to send people to the moon to make itself feel better about it - just like last time.
I get that this is really cool and I love space too, learning about it is great.
But is this really what we should be spending our limited resources on?
- The US has virtually unlimited resources, they just usually choose to spend them on military and corporate subsidies.
  
  I meant as a planet, not country
- Space research can help us make better use of resources
- US prints the reserve money of the world. They basically have unlimited resources. This is better than money spent to kill midlle easterns
Woopty dooo. The last thing civilization needs is more pointless trips to the moon.
- The endgame is asteroid mining. Getting more efficient at space travel allows us to retain more energy for mining operations.
  
  No the end game is the consumption of all resources until we run out and die. Earth wasn’t enough now we need to fuck up the moon

20 comments