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.

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

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

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.

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?

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

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.

I remember when I was in China, didn't even have internet.

My parents bought me a children's book about planets and stuff... I still remember it called 十万个为什么 (Literally: 100 Thousand Whys)

I was so intrigued.

I remember I had not much things to read and I kept reading that over and over again. I remember still having it when I was in 2nd grade in the US... like that's my last "artifact" of my pre-US life...

I remember just putting it in my bookbag and bringing it to school cuz... idk why... maybe I just felt nostalgic about it and thought it'd be cool to bring a book nobody else in the school would be able to read... sort of like a special ancient text made for me xD

Sadly the binding on that book is garbage and it fell apart and I no longer have that book...

(I don't remember NASA being mentioned btw)

Later I remember constantly googling space stuff once we had internet access at home...

I think its:

1. Childhood... like space is a big concept... so it feels like this "big thing" and I get obsessed about it... like many kids probably do. You go from being in a tiny apartment at home to suddenly knowing about very big empty space... Mind Blowing...

2. Humanity already been on the moon... meh... not that exciting... especially not after a few decades and interests fade... like omg someone sailed across the ocean... boo boring... already done...

It boils down to this: Going to the moon in the 60's was political, though a massive technical feat.

Since then we've figured out how to send robots to fucking Mars to do the science we want to do, for a fraction of the cost (and none of the risk) of sending humans.

Artemis just isn't where we should be spending money, never mind the political bullshit surrounding it, and the typical government vendors getting their hands in the cookie jar like they did for Apollo (looking at you, Boeing).

And I say all this as someone fascinated by Apollo, and as excited as anyone else by the prospect of humans on the moon. I just no longer see the cost/benefit of humans vs automation there.

We have remote rovers in the sea and on Mars. For the moon surely we could send all sorts of devices to do science there. It's faster to reach, we have near real-time comms, it has a greater solar exposure so power is less of a problem. So where are those rovers?

We don't have them because they would expose the pointlessness of sending humans.

I find it pointless. We need to think about real sustainable progress in space but you just have to look at the earth to see how we are about sustainability. I firmly believe we have to work on sourcing space resources from space and that is what we should be most workin on. I mean if you look at it reusable rockets are the most impactful thing to happen to our space endeavours in this millenium and it was due to doing one thing. Being more sustainable.

While I share some, if not most, of your disinterest, it's probably worth pointing out that while "we" had a Saturn V rocket system and Apollo space program that did, at least superficially the same as Artemis so far, we could not actually repeat a Saturn V launch today, as-in we lost many of those skills and associated experience.

In many ways, Artemis is essentially getting back to where we left off in 1973 with the intention of eclipsing it, but the ongoing NASA budget cuts being perpetrated by the current regime are in my opinion going to curtail the program before too long.

If I recall correctly, after Apollo 11, the TV audiences dwindled for the rest of the program, with a brief spike for Apollo 13, so perhaps there's an aspect of that to consider.

For me the disappointment was triggered by the poor camera handling during launch, the view of backpacks, food and plushies surrounding CAPCOM at Mission Control, the broken toilet debacle and the heat shield obfuscation, all of which made this less leading edge science and more of a shitshow.

I hope the astronauts land safety in a couple of hours, but I won't be watching for days like I did for the first Shuttle launch in 1981.

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.

For me it's the pace. I know it's not that simple, but we've been to the moon already. The first unmanned Artemis mission was almost 4 years ago, and now this one, and the next one - which will include landing on the moon...again...won't be for another 2 years at least. We won't even begin to build a base until the 2030s.

Even the moon base is just a "stepping stone" to Mars, and we already know that long-term colonization on Mars is unrealistic, given current tech. We don't yet know how to even survive on Mars (or the moon, for that matter) for more than a few days.

And even if we solve these problems...then what? We also know that even if we figure out how to keep a few people alive for just a few years on Mars, there's just no reason to try to keep a large number of people on Mars. It's just too damn hostile.

I don't know. I agree that this doesn't have the same romantic feeling of awe and discovery and exploration that I feel like I'm "supposed to" have.

Do you feel science and tech is becoming tainted? Its no longer exciting. Its becoming a bane of existence. I don't think its a direct link, but its a tenuous link.

A step forward for ma...whilst back here they are killing many many man. It leaves a sour taste.

I recalled back about a couple years ago about how we were going back to the moon.

And even then I was like "...Why?" When, we already have had a good idea about it all this time from the Apollo missions and all the stuff we sent up to it over the years.

It was exciting for us back then to go to the moon because:

• It had never been done before.

• It was literally a Space Race.

So those two alone got everyone invested and excited. Nowadays? What are we gaining from this? I don't think anything.

There's a certain strain of thought that runs through my mind sometimes, that space is just too big and too empty to really be worth going into. Like the moon and Mars, maybe a couple other in-system planets, are the only things close enough for realistic human trips in lifetimes. And the trips so far have shown us that yes, those are just big balls of monotonous dirt. You ever kinda landed in that state of mind?

In spite of all that, I do still get excited about it, and really enjoyed following Artemis. Excited to see us (maybe, hopefully) land on the moon again soon. It's remarkable that humans are able to rise to that challenge, and I hope we don't ever entirely stop.

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.

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 feel happy for everyone taking joy in this moment. I don't feel much of anything for it though. It's wildly neutral.

I cared a little bit. Then the astronauts started blathering about the bible.

Funny that you feel this way, because I thought about posting a similar and yet almost opposite post to !mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world. I think it gets too much attention compared to other missions.

I think the Artemis mission isn't completely useless and even regardless of Lunar economy and nostalgic motivation, there are some benefits, sure. But all of this over-sensationalized exposure with more emphasis on the USA is the reality check that we're slowly resetting to a space race. I always thought that it was a beautiful story that what started as competition turned into the biggest evidence of our united efforts. And while I don't think collaborations will end, I fear that they will turn into alliances and we are back to competition.

I've pondered my own lack of interest and I think it comes down to the Artemis program's design being such a shitshow. Sure, if you throw enough brute force budget and a long enough time you can get astronauts back to the Moon. But they're doing it in such a poor manner that I doubt anything will come of it long-term. It's going to be another unsustainable flags-and-foot-prints stunt.

Some of the recent changes hint at NASA maybe finally getting their act together, but I'll believe it when I see it - NASA doesn't actually call the shots here. It's a political program.

They aren't doing anything new, we have already been around the moon.