Russell GarnerDon't want to piss on anyone's chips, and I definitely tuned in, but I'm slightly underwhelmed by us going for a jaunt round the moon. Everything is so dire down here, I'd be happier to see clean energy initiatives, or diplomatic breakthroughs, or the puncturing of the worldwide far right. I don't derive a lot of hope from seeing people burn more fuel to do things we've already done, this isn't For All Mankind.
I suppose one thing it does do is unite a lot of Star Trek fans briefly in remembering what we thought hope looked like.
Schroedingers_Cat@rgarner I am sort of with you. The original space programme did provide science and was exciting.
But Musk and his ridiculousness has destroyed all of the excitement of space travel.
I do think, at this point, the money and resources need to be focussed on earth and our problems.
@SteveClough maybe I'm wrong? Maybe it provides hope and a thing for thinkers to galvanise around?
slotek@rgarner @SteveClough Artemis has nothing to do with advancing science or increasing the human body of knowledge. It's about mining Helium-3 as a fuel source.
[EDIT: To be clear, I concur with your sentiment!]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_policy_of_the_first_Trump_administration
Jake in the desert
Kevin Boyd (he/him) 🇨🇦@rgarner Counterpoint from 1970 that still rings true today, especially the bit about war: https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/why-explore-space
Also hank green had a recent video about the scientific benefits of re-visiting the moon with scientific technology that is 50 years newer, it was pretty interesting.
Sigillo SacroI'll piss on anyone's space travel chips anyday, without shame. How silly to spend trillions on something so grandly useless to anyone but a few very rich people who wish to get *even richer*
@siin well. A bunch of clever people I like were happy about it. And we're not happy enough on balance.
@siin I want other people to remember what it is to be happy. This just seems like an alien (to me) way to do it, if you'll excuse the barely-a-pun
@rgarner @siin It's a nice shiny distraction, but who is happy about the prospect of mining the moon (besides energy barons and the tech-bro elite who want to seed Earth 2.0 with their superior DNA 🙄)?
Maybe we could have shot off some fireworks to christen a couple hundred billion dollars worth of windmills instead.