this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2026
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When I've brought up my excitement about Artemis II with liberal friends and family, I've gotten from them the exact sort of dismissive crankiness and talk about "wastes of money" as you're doing now.
The thing is, if we want to abolish money, we should try not to think of wastes of government money to begin with. We aren't DOGE, right? We can think of wastes of government resources, but in that case how do you define waste? The way I see it, a waste of resources is basically anything that furthers an oppressive system. It's wasteful because you're hurting people to prop up a system that's already on borrowed time.
This is the big difference between Artemis II and the military: You can argue that Artemis II vaguely furthers oppressive systems because it's a vanity project slash display of strength of a dying empire, a way to push the narrative that capitalists can destroy the Earth because "we can just colonize the stars" when they're done, or the first steps to putting nukes on the moon, or something like that; but I'd argue that manned space travel will exist under any current or future mode of production, that the nukes aren't on the moon yet, and that everything narrative about Artemis II can be countered with our own narrative.
If there was no Artemis II there still wouldn't be "money for healthcare and housing".
Edit: A flaw in my thinking pointed out elsewhere in this thread is that the mission essentially serves as a middleman for transferring superprofits to Lockheed, Boeing etc. So even if the mission itself doesn't hurt anyone, it still gives funding to people who do, and to that extent the choice of contractors if nothing else is wasteful.
I feel kinda depressed, to be honest. I'd been looking forward to this my whole life, but I can't really enjoy it now because of the Context. It stinks. Maybe I should take a break from this site or something.
I agree with you that space travel would be a thing in almost any society that has the resources. Space and space travel are topics that interests humans across many cultures. Journalists consider the topics news value in itself, the most tiny discoveries in space get published by general media because even mentioning space (travel) generates interest. Allocating resources towards space travel is justified if it’s what people want to work for. In capitalist society every ‘cool’ thing will be tainted by the horrors of capitalism, same as sports and arts. I think most criticisms on space travel itself are misdirected, but the criticisms on this particular mission seem valid.
Artemis II is doing a couple pre-landing apollo missions worth of systems testing, e.g. if they get around to doing another crewed landing instead of giving up when china beats them to it, then that mission shouldn't have the MS outlook (lol) or toilet issues.
Yeah, there's gonna continue to be manned travel in the sense that there will be researchers in high orbit doing micro-gravity experiments. But crewed missions traveling to this or that celestial body? Landing on them? No way. Not this century. Probably not the next one either. There's just... not really any reason to send people that far up the gravity well. Any research, any scientific breakthroughs to be had, will be exponentially cheaper, safer, and easier to do with specialized remote crafts and tools. Colonization is, of course, so laughably out of the picture for anyone at any point for the next seven generations (and probably the next seven after that), it hardly bears mentioning.
Maybe if Artemis II happened a few years ago, I'd be crankier about it. It's pure boondoggle. Hogwash. A humbuggery of planetary proportions. It's really really funny. Real dying empire hours. A cargo cult recreation, not understanding why the first half-dozen or so moon landings (both crewed and otherwise) were scientifically and historically important, but trying to manufacture that importance anyway.
ADVERTIZING! IN! SPACE!How can you not get a chuckle out of that? Americana absurdity par excellence.
these days the thing I'm really concerned about^[at least, the broad view from 50,000, but looking out rather than in. Plenty of concerning things happening on the ground....] is that company saying they're gonna put mirrors in orbit so they can "sell sunlight at night"
Communism is a stateless, classless, moneyless society, but what tells you it will be "humbugless"? I know that research is far cheaper, safer and easier with specialized robots than with people, I just don't see why that matters. My idea is that people will land on the moon under communism because (1) it is possible, and (2) it is really really cool.
Edit: To be clear about my biases here: I was born roughly midway between Apollo 17 and Artemis II, and the first time I ever said what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer was that I wanted to be the first person to set foot on Pluto. So if you're old enough to remember the '60s and '70s, then sure, I can understand finding Artemis II to be a complete wet fart compared to the Apollo program. You were there, you'd know. What I find less understandable is the certain majority of Hexbears who grew up in the '80s~'10s who have never in their lifetimes seen a human being go beyond LEO… I mean, yeah, sure, it's Been Done Before, but you haven't been there to see it happen, right?
So when I saw the Artemis II launch live, I was genuinely moved to tears. I felt connected to everybody else who saw the launch live with me, and to the past generations who saw the Apollo launches live. A launch like Artemis II is literally something I've been waiting two lifetimes to get to see happen, so when people go around making fun of it I get a bit irate. Like, there are many, many critiques of the program that are completely fair and that I don't mind reading or hearing, but when people come across as actually accusing anyone genuinely emotionally moved by the mission of being stupid… Y'know? I just don't like it. I don't like feeling like people are calling me stupid for liking things.
I am in favor of going to space cause it's cool. I'm more of a build a fuckload of orbital space stations kinda guy tho. The moon is cool but dammit I wanna leave on an orbital colony and die fighting for Zeon
It's not cool. We don't need to go up.
We need to go down. Defund all space programs. We need digging platforms.
How about we compromise and go sideways
Fun fact: theres more unexplored space inside the earth than in the whole galaxy