Ask Lemmy

It's been overshadowed by other current events.

I'm finding it hard to be happy about any of the positives coming from the US government these days. A couple of bright spots don't really outshine the depressing everything else.

It's hard to be excited about going to space when you can't afford to exist on earth.

I should be way more excited, but the current administration has ruined everything. NASA is too focused on creating a moon base which is dumb as shit. Let's try and save earth before jumping ship to another planet.

I feel oddly similar. I think it's that I can't cheer for America.

I love space and discovery. I also dont super care about this because what is even the point of it? We did a fly around of a rock in our backyard we know super well already. Give me more JWST, not this

for me, it’s the fact that it’s being used as a political tool by the usa to broadcast their prowess, that it’s being presented as a hopeful look in the future all the while the country running this is bombing and murdering hundreds of thousands, and that the companies benefitting from artemis’s publicity are mostly "defense" contractors like spacex and lockheed-martin, aka again the same people doing all the genocide

it’s hard to feel excited about it even tho there is plenty of cool science being done, that cool science stands on a mountain of tragedy and horrors

I don't care about it because it's a NASA mission and I've noticed that anything American these days makes me nauseous.

Call me anything you like, I don't care, this is how o feel after years of america bullshit and decades of more murrica bullshit with their preprogrammed exceptionalism.

I look down upon them, I pity them at best

And then there is something as great as this and I just can help but feel like it's tainted somehow. I know it's an international collaboration, but still, the smell somehow remains

I'm sorry, but fuck, so much misery and death and suffering has been brought to the world by the US for so long already... Trump is just the next iteration taking this place to its natural conclusion. Of course trump is corrupt, the country has been through and through corrupt for decades. This is just a typical self absorbed American grabbing the chance geven to get me myself and I to the top.

So yeah, mixed feelings at best.

for me its not only the glacier pace of progress.. its also the lack of scientific motivation.

this didnt happen for science... its a political tool

I feel the same apathetic "whatever" response. I love rockets. I love space. I struggle to care about this.

The program is almost 2 decades late and using recycled technology. It is literally using spare parts from the shuttle. I don't believe it will ever actually get to the boots on the ground phase. I am actually surprised they made it to this mission. After all the boondoggle from Boeing I really thought it would die a quiet death somewhere out of sight.

Not only do they have technical hurdles, we have seen normally safe agencies become political battle grounds. We see science becoming less and less important at every level of society. We are living through Idiocracy and they still act like we are the same country that went to the moon the last time.

If we see people on the moon in our lifetime I don't believe they will arrive on a NASA mission.

For me, I just don’t see it as the step towards a bright future that it cone was.

So we reinvigorate the world’s interest in space missions, then what? Every iota of evidence from our own planet tells us that businesses are going to own the moon, mars, and beyond. Wayland-Yutani is more likely than The Federation.

I just can’t get excited about another frontier for Musk and Bezos to rub their stanky dicks all over.

I don't care because it doesn't seem like a genuine mission to prove something. It feels like a purely political stunt. At least with the original mission, it was breaking a frontier on top of trying ot show off to Russia during the Cold War, but this time it's only the US flexing as mandated by the Orangegutan in Charge because he can and it feels icky.

In all honesty at this stage it's not that exciting. They're hyping up people going further from the earth than ever before, which is technically true, but astronauts have orbited the moon before just not quite as far in absolute distance.

So this is mostly doing something done before in the 70s. Rocket launches, grainy images of the moon from close up, photos of earth from near the moon and astronauts floating in zero G isn't new.

I don't blame you for not getting excited to watch long videos where not a lot happens very slowly, or reading press coverage which is brutally honest largely fluff.

The ultimate goal is exciting, but that doesn't mean every step on the way is exciting. I suspect the first moon landing will be of more interest, then the next one will not be, even though the landings are a stepping stone to Mars.

We have so much problems down here on Earth that Artemis seems like a smokescreen. I see no way it could benefit humanity.

We can't even wipe our own asses without jihading or reinstating a cool new kind of slavery with extra steps. What are we going to do with a new frontier?

Because you can see it for the distraction that it is. In a vacuum it is a wonderful or at least interesting and significant thing but it is also clear that it's just a PR stunt by the US government.

That's not to belittle the training, dedication, preparation, and everything else that was done by all of the people around adjacent to or even inside the rocket. The indictment is not on them.

I mean it's cool and I love space exploration, but at the same time, it's something that has been done a while ago already, so it's not that impressive. Now if they went around Mars or did something nobody did before, that would be something else. As it is it seems a bit superfluous to the phillistine that I am. I actually don't know what the point of the mission was, I don't think major media mentioned it (or I missed it).

I think actually watching some of the video would help with that. I watched some video of events while they were up there, what they were feeling and how much they obviously cared about each other and what they were doing.

Tonight I watched the splashdown and felt unexpectedly emotional about it, not sure whether it was contemplating the enormity of the achievement, or the display of the good and smart and positive side of humans working together to do something big again instead of the constant drumbeat of destruction, or maybe just that we didn't have yet another disaster.

I think you’re asking a question only you can answer

This system of things, all over the world, is falling apart. Going to space might be likened to a desperate cry for sanity. But a single cry of a baby in an ocean of crying individuals all over the world is not something given much attention.

Whitey On The Moon by Gil Scott-Heron comes to mind. Planet is burning and they're sending money to space.

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
And now whitey's 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 crap 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

this song describes perfectly why I couldn't give a fuck about space colonization anymore.

after covid, Ukraine, Palestine, Iran, Sudan, etc. and the sheer number of genocides the governments around the globe managed to squeeze in in just a short 6 year period, I stopped caring about the progress and democracy fetish they're trying to force feed us.

if we wanna make the world a better place, we gotta stop relying on them. i know now they're gonna use those space launches to perfect their genocidal weapons, that's why I could enjoy NASA before I knew the military industrial complex

I don't think it's all that hot what's being done in contrast to what has already been achieved decades ago.

So, once around the moon, Hm.

On the other hand, stuff others already said. There's so much stuff going in, imo the effort could be used in other places.

Same. Part of it for me, I think, is that is an enormous expenditure that goes mostly to Elmo. The Apollo missions were more in-house, with lots of cool innovations, and it feels like the privatization of a great and inspiring heritage.

It's eclipsed (no pun intended) by the horrors of war, disease, and conservatism. It's hard to be excited about the moon when there's measles outbreaks and at least one genocide.

OP is Neo at dinner wondering why his steak isn't fulfilling.

I don’t like it way Elon Musk fans gush over everything Space X does… but I am excited that even with an administration and voter base that are clearly hostile to science, we can still DO science. So even though it’s not what I’d rather them do, they’re still doing science.