I would be more depressed if, looking at the current political landscape this corner decided to be entirely alienated or oblivious to the environment in which this massive achievement is made.

do you think the current environment is more or less just than it was during the 1969 moon landing?

Not all hackers!

If one can't find their true purpose in life, they resort to seek purity in morals and virtue (in themselves and people around them).

It is possible but you have to cultivate it. There is no mechanism here that automates it, so it’s up to each author’s sentiment to shape the outcome as they see fit.

Submit threads that are apolitical and guide conversations to be positive.

Yes, but it's depressing because of the environmental factors causing the problem, not the people experiencing the problem.

I have family who worked for NASA until the 70s. They’re one of the biggest sources of criticism of this project.

There are negative things to observe about this project. They should not be ignored

It’s unfortunate, but if you’re blaming the people in the thread for this, I think you’re directing your energy in the wrong direction. Focus on the people who foment and benefit from this division and distraction instead. If you want people to appreciate the bigger picture, you can’t keep forcing them to live on a shorter and shorter term outlook. The HN that you’re presumably nostalgic for existed in a time when there was a lot more fat on the bone, and every efficiency hadn’t been extracted for nebulous benefit to the average person.

These people existed in the Apollo era just not on a website. We weren't exactly living in a utopia then either and you'd have difficulty convincing some folks to be excited about space exploration then too.

Some people feel their outlook on the world takes precedence. And they'll shit in other people's celebrations to get their point across. Best to downvote or ignore them and embrace what nuance you can find.

Oh man 10-day long airplane ride. No thanks.

Kinda surprised the gallery doesn't allow me to use the arrow keys on my keyboard for next/previous navigation.

Will Elon set up a lot of colorful and blinking billboards to make it less grey?

no shared values exist to draw upon.

My problem isn't that these people exist in the world. My problem is they're increasingly drowning out other voices in a community I'm part of. I would prefer significantly more active moderation against politics and general non-technical negativity on this site.

Have a look at the tracker at https://issinfo.net/artemis.html

They're already at a point where they see the moon from a different angle than we see it from Earth, enough to see a bit of the side that we can't see from here.

Imagine you're holding a ball with drawings on it. Hold it out at arms length and fix how it looks in your memory. Now bring it close to your face and move your head a tiny bit to the side. You're not seeing the whole back-side of the ball. Far from it! However, you are seeing some bits you weren't seeing before and the whole picture you can see now looks different than it did when the ball was at arm's length.

That's my guess. They're seeing parts of the dark-side of the moon because they're now close enough that they have a different viewing angle than we do on Earth. Remember, they're not flying straight at the moon. That's not how transfer orbits work.

Remember that they’re not flying towards the Moon but to a point in space where they and the Moon will be closest together in a day or two, hence the Moon is now ‘off to their side’ and they can see a segment of it that is hidden to Earth observers … I think.

Also, the dark side of the Moon is often illuminated but we call it dark because it’s also hidden from earth due to the Earth and Moon being tidally locked (the same side of each always faces the other body).

I've been using this one: https://issinfo.net/artemis.html

Better information density.

I think they could not communicate if they were really on the far side of the moon.

So I guess they see it differently than us, eg from the side but not from the back.

“First glimpse of the dark side of the moon” rather than “the whole dark side of the moon”. Title is pretty accurate for my understanding.

They did that change a long time ago. They are on a course to go around the Moon from the TLI burn (trans lunar injection) Thursday at 7:49pm EDT. They don’t need any more burns for that.

That is a shame they cut that out.

It is this week. Which is interesting because the photo in the clip is the familiar near side -- I recognize the bunny.

The phrase never meant dark as in "unlit". It has always meant dark as in "occult".

The sun

The sun still. It's just that that side never points towards the earth, but it still gets sunlight. Same as how the side we see isn't fully lit except during a full moon.

The other well publicized photo they did was of the dark side of the earth (it was night), so same idea(?)

One is the domain of humanoid cows, the other is the domain of absent fathers.

it's amazing, but I'll refer you to Gil Scott-Heron for my feelings on the matter

  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
  With whitey 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 shit 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

I sure hope they don't. Even just the hint of connecting this achievement to the supposed Christian nature of the US would reinforce a lot of the bad things in the world right now. Namely, that we're actively at war in the middle east (Christianity and Judaism vs Islam), in a burgeoning cold war with China (more Christianity vs "godless" communists), and run by an increasingly fascistic administration (the ties between religion and government are a hallmark of fascism).

Is there really less "fat on the bone" though? What metric are you tracking for that and what are the historical norms?

"forcing them to live on a shorter and shorter term outlook" -> social media?

Rather than assigning blame I think it's fair to ask the people here to behave. Maybe it's not their fault they spend their day doom scrolling and have the attention span of a cat but they do have agency to change that. [EDIT: This is an attempt at humor]

Isn't "Focus on the people who foment and benefit from this division" asking for politics? The way we get at "those people" (and let's not even argue about who they are) is to regulate ourselves (or for the moderators to do that) and have a more substantive and positive discussion regardless of our perceptions.

>Focus on the people who foment and benefit from this division and distraction

your comment is entirely politcal, i.e. contributing more to the problem.

qui bono? we for sure don't bono.

Because it's not always dark. Only during a full moon on Earth is the far side fully dark.

I was also very confused, but after some reading I figured it out.

> In an interview with NBC News from space, NASA astronaut Christina Koch described seeing the moon out the window of the Orion capsule and realizing that it looked different from what she was accustomed to on Earth.

> “The darker parts just aren’t quite in the right place,” she said. “And something about you senses that is not the moon that I’m used to seeing.”

They are not on the other side of the moon seeing the full dark side, but from their position they're seeing the moon at a slight angle, meaning that SOME of what they now see is "the dark side", or the part we can never see from earth since the same side always faces us

>they haven’t adjusted course to go round the far side of the moon yet

They did, 3 days ago! Maybe this is being pedantic (?) but the trans-lunar injection burn they did on April 2 put them on the complete trajectory including return to Earth. Though there are still possible correction burns that can be done to increase precision (the first 2 of these were already canceled).

They’re far enough out that they can see some stuff you don’t see from Earth. They aren’t seeing the entire far side yet.

Illustrated: https://www.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comments/1sd797j/the_moon...

I think they're saying they can see a sliver of the far side, and that seeing the moon from a slightly different angle is weird having seen the near side so often. But they didn't really make that clear.

It’s approximately the dark side when the moon is full, which happened two days ago.

What you link to is from a different interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpPTnR5jin0

The moon is tidally locked with the Earth, which means the same side always faces the Earth. So, for example, when the moon is between the Earth and the sun, the far side (from the perspective of Earth) would be fully illuminated by the sun.

The “far side” of the moon refers to the hemisphere that can’t be seen from Earth.

Great share, thank you!

Interesting. For all of Gil Scott-Heron's brilliance, this is by far my least favorite work of his.

I just came across this poem a few days ago and had the opportunity to think about it.

It’s a valuable perspective to hear. As someone prone to getting caught up in the breathless excitement about science, progress, human achievement, etc., it is a hard truth that these things are abstract and not relevant for people who are struggling with day-to-day life, particularly when those struggles are a result of the same government that is executing this mission.

However, the older I get, the less I bind to the idea of a single, correct truth. This perspective doesn’t invalidate the perspective that the mission is valuable. The complexity of the system in which this is taking place means that these things (moon missions and affordable healthcare) aren’t fungible for one another; his poverty wasn’t the result of the moon mission, it was the result of EVERYTHING that had happened over the 100 years prior.

So it’s useful to hear. It’s a sharp, valid reality check for those of us who like to think in big, abstract concepts. And, it’s one perspective among myriad valid perspectives.

The author of this poem went to great lengths to show his racism. It reminds me of a post, probably on Reddit, of a similar racist nature. Just when it's going in the other direction it's clearer.

The post was by a man, supposedly white, who had to pull his child or children from private school because he could not pay for it. His frustration was based on the fact that his taxes were higher than the school tuition, and that another student at the school, a black student, was having his tuition paid by the government. He implied that he was paying for another person's education, and could not afford his own child's education. He saw the same dichotomy as that expressed in the poem, in the other direction.

It's fine to not be interested, but this time one of the astronauts is black

Choosing one (deliberately ambiguous) line to label the comment “entirely political” is the kind of thinking that explains why tribalism has been so effective.

> Is there really less "fat on the bone" though? What metric are you tracking for that and what are the historical norms?

It’s just my experience over the last 15 years. If it doesn’t align with yours, that’s nice to know.

> "forcing them to live on a shorter and shorter term outlook" -> social media?

Sure, but it could be lots of other things like 24hr news or the emergence of the gig economy.

> Isn't "Focus on the people who foment and benefit from this division" asking for politics?

No it’s not, it’s asking for agency, personal accountability and self-awareness, as you yourself allude to. If that means politics for you, that’s up to you. I don’t imply to “get at” anyone, but to do best by ourselves instead of doing best by those who benefit from dividing or distracting us.

... matter of fact it's all dark.

(The moon has an albedo of 12%)

I relish in the pedantry. Thanks Pierre

> “And something about you senses that is not the moon that I’m used to seeing.”

Almost philosophical /S

Hence the use of first glimpse.

Yes and (IIRC) they don't want to flyby while at full moon on the far side as to have some shadows to help differentiate the terrain

Sounds like marketing speak.

I get the general frustration there, but it's weird to focus on NASA's budget when it's such a teeny tiny fraction of the total.

Yes, there's a lot of government waste, but NASA ain't it.

And I would suggest that the billionaire class and unfettered capitalism are far more responsible for the modern day version of Scott-Heron's woes than the good ol' government scapegoat.

I am not a Christian, but it was arguably the Christian value system which forged the government and institutions that made these achievements possible. Such progress happens only in high trust societies.

Yes, I remember that nihilistic piece of race rage bait and I remember it well. Now that 'non-whitey' is gliding past the moon and has shown he is past all that race-rage baiting by stating that [1] this is just — this is human history ... It’s the story of humanity — not black history, not women’s history I hope that the like of Scott-Heron and those who like to push this type of narrative are willing to finally take that hammer to ram down that nail into the coffin of the 'systemic racism narrative'.

No, I'm not holding my breath, the narrative if far too profitable for far too many people [2] to be put to rest.

[1] https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-black-astronaut-on-arte...

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11151740-racism-is-not-dead...

I'm more worried about Chinese fascism than the American kind.

It got deleted now. It would be nice to see a new versions if abailable.

So, let's make some guess, but IANAA. Orion is in the middle of the trip going to the meeting point to the Moon in a quite straight line but the Moon is still not there. It will be there in 2 or 3 days, that is like 45° of the orbit.

  O                                                          .   .    o
  Earth                            >   .    .     .     .             Moon
                                   Orion                              in 3 days
                                                                    .
                                                                  .
                                                               .
                                                            .
                                                         .
                                                       .
                                                     o
                                                     Moon
                                                     now

Using some sloppy Math and sloppy Astronomy, I estimate that the difference between our point of view and their point of view is 20° or 30°. So the visible surface has like a 10% difference, that is consistent to call it a "glimpse". My estimation is also similar to the graphic posted in Reddit, but I'm not sure what was the problem.

I actually can't tell the difference in the photo to save my life, but I have a friend that is astronomer and I'm sure that if I show the photo to him, he could use a sharpie to mark the difference on my screen without any problem.

Yes, and right now is full moon, thus the far side is only illuminated by stars.

> It’s approximately the dark side when the moon is full, which happened two days ago.

Who downvotes that? It is true.

Edit: maybe you can illuminate why you downvote?

very cool visualization thanks for sharing. I was impressed at how smooth the rendering ran on my 5+ y/o iPad Air.

thank you, as usual…knee jerk reaction was wrong, apologies and updated

I still liked what he had to say so gonna leave up the link itself

Really drives home how bloody empty almost all of space really is.

I'm very excited about the later steps of the Artemis project!

Landing on the Moon South Pole and start setting up the lunar station there will be a huge step, especially after 50 years of nothing!!

But this flight has already been done without a crew. Doing it with a human crew is important, but it achieves nothing new and exciting.

Also don't forget about working in "That's no moon. It's a space station." somewhere.

> Just looks like the Moon.

It is the moon.

> Also didn't realize we could capture an image like this in what I assumed was total darkness.

The "Dark Side of the Moon" is a misnomer. It gets as much light as the side we can see.

Same. There's a lot out there to get us down, but most people are fundamentally good at the end of the day, regardless of culture or borders.

Did you miss "Artemis 2 is not safe to fly" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47582043 ?

It is not possible for them to say a bit longer because Orion doesn’t have the deltaV necessary to go into LLO and orbit the Moon like Apollo 8. Orion is like HlS in that it is the worst possible craft for a mission to the Moon, but it’s the one we have. At least Starship has a potential future for further missions.

Agreed. I remember following the various Mars rover missions of the 1990s-2010s with avid interest. I have now lost my interest in space completely. The house is on fire and we're going on holiday again? It's beginning to feel almost indecent.

I don't think they'd or any other space mission will take that much risk anymore. Atleast without the pressure/tension of cold war space race.

Something in a style of Chris Hadfield [1]. That would be great!

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo

Absolutely. Last year we went to Italy and I played “The Count of Tuscany” in the car while driving in Chianti region. My wife does not really enjoy Dream Theater but that was in the rider for the Italy trip :-)

I completely understand and agree. But there is still something magical about spaceflight that will forever put me in awe. It’s a small moment of wonder in a world of disappointment. I’ll take anything I can get these days

In fact a trip to the Moon gives me hope for our species—that not everything is shit.

The trip to the moon just makes me depressed about all the problems here because they seem so pointless in perspective.

Speaking for myself (who has been fascinated with the space program since I was a small child), any joy I might feel around Artemis II feels tainted, by the immense amount of pork involved (SLS is called "Senate Launch System" for good reason) to the point where Artemis is more corporate welfare that happens to involve the Moon than a real space program, and by my belief that it is intended to be little more than a quick, dirty, and vainglorious Apollo repeat by a failing government.

Kind of a false dichotomy. How about medical care as a right for a big abstract concept? He's not anti-science here, he's against the inequality of its distribution.

I don't think it's actually a useful perspective at all. The poem is racial resentment repackaged as a means to guilt trip people into feeling bad about adventure, science, and exploration. Unless they were pretty well read at a young age, most millennials probably first experienced this poem in the film First Man, where it is read as a backdrop to Apollo 11 traveling to the moon. It's a great scene because the juxtaposition is stark. We can either hold ourselves back an an endless and futile journey on solving the human condition of poverty and inequality, or we can explore the stars. It's an easy choice.

I'm not being a hater, but we landed on the moon 55+ years ago and now we're doing a flyby with 35+ year-old engine tech. It's good that we're doing something but we should be doing better.

It's also not the first time humans are seeing the far side of the moon, Ronald Evans orbitted the Moon 75 times in the orbital module during Apollo 17 (and other ppl did before him), so he also saw it right? The only unique thing is that its the first mission where they dont really do anything more interesting than looking at the far side

there's zero difference between a photo taken by them and one by cameras on ISS.

It's great for them, but I'm not really into reaction videos. Pictures taken by space probes are just as good as far as I'm concerned.

I wish the crew quoted "there is no dark side of the moon really. As a matter of fact, it's all dark."

> I wish this mission took greater risks

It's already risky enough: https://idlewords.com/2026/03/artemis_ii_is_not_safe_to_fly....

People are struggling to afford every day life and we are surrounding by crazy things every day like cellphones talking to satellites in space. On any objective measure it is definitely amazing to send humans to the moon, but there are more pressing issues for most people right now.

If we as a species had more of our ducks in a row we may be able to better celebrate this as the achievement for humankind that it is.

I see what you mean, but I kind of understand the reaction: what does this change in 99.99% of people lives? Nothing at all. It's not necessarily ignorance.

Optimism will get you through.... Humans have bumpy rides, but in the aggregate we figure it out and move on

That's because it's the near side, not the far side.

Given how many of these problems are self-inflicted, maybe we should focus more on trips to the moon and beyond, not less.

Actually a lot of the enlightenment ideas (which our government is based on) came from native American critiques of European societies. Read The Dawn of Everything for the details.

The "Christian value system" isn't something to revere.

Wanda Sykes is also famous for a pithier more recent take on it

China may be authoritarian (I would agree that they are), but they're not fascist. They're also a much smaller threat to anyone living in the US. I'm more worried about the jackbooted thugs on my own streets than the ones halfway around the world.

Can you explain what "Chinese fascism" is? Not citizen of any super-power, but how can you be sure you're not fallen under some propaganda where you see "them" as being evil and not just some other-way-of-living?

Take a look at https://issinfo.net/artemis.html

Your illustration is about right, but the angle they're catching now is even a bit further than you've shown.

And a little bit by asteroids like 20 Massalia and comets like 24P/Schaumasse.

The manned space program launches from Florida but is controlled from Houston. Why? Wouldn't it make more sense to have both in the same place?

Florida is because there's no other safe place in the US to launch a big rocket on an easterly trajectory* than Florida. Or the extreme southern tip of Texas, which SpaceX uses.

Houston is because NASA needed LBJ's support. They even named the place after him.

* Why easterly? Because that's the direction Earth rotates. If you orbit in that direction you get some free momentum from the planet itself.

> the immense amount of pork involved (SLS is called "Senate Launch System" for good reason

Most of science has always had this dual use purpose.

No senator ever would have voted for any kind of space program just to send a few tourists to the moon. It's a way to have a substantial workforce, spread across a wide area (so they can't all be hit by the same bomb), that knows how to make and launch rockets and to do weird stuff in space and to work with very energetic materials.

But I agree that it feels hollow right now because of the war abroad and also the needless disrespect we've shown to our Canadian friends at home.

It reminds me a little bit of The Man in the High Castle, it's like these videos are sent from some happier timeline that we don't live in. Hopefully they inspire some people to bring the spirit of curiosity and friendship they present back to our earth.

Is it meant to guilt trip people? Or is it an honest expression of the frustration (and yes, racial resentment) that the author feels?

This is why I consider it a useful perspective to hear. I read this as a human being simply saying “this is how I feel in these circumstances”.

It’s uncomfortable, and I don’t believe that space exploration should be gated on solving poverty and inequality, but it is important to understand that an intelligent, thoughtful human being arrived at this place.

In a sense I feel that this is actually an appeal to the same sense of curiosity that drives space exploration. Why do we explore space? To learn and understand. Why should we consider human perspectives we don’t agree with? To learn and understand.

He could be expressing the generational frustration of being black in America. When things are so segregated you feel you are looking across at a different country landing on the moon, you might write such a poem.

> but it was arguably the Christian value system which forged the government and institutions that made these achievements possible.

Many of the founders were specifically anti-Christian. They were deists, and believed in a higher power, but specifically rejected the idea of a divine intervention of God or Jesus.

Christians do not own the idea of being nice to others and trusting others.

If DOGE served for anything at all it was for showing that there isn’t even that much “waste” per se. If there’s any waste it’s in the Pentagon which can’t even audit itself, but of course DOGE didn’t even get close to that. It was all performative for them.

The Renaissance and Enlightenment were anti-religious ideals, of the power of mankind over the gods.

I suggest you look up the founding fathers' views on religion.

Why are you so angry about a black person's perspective of what the moon landing meant to them? Rather than putting a nail in the coffin of the "systemic racism narrative", your post underlines how long we still have to go as a society to take black people's perspectives seriously, rather than simply denigrating them as "race bait."

I wonder why they decided on that timing? If it were better illuminated by the sun, couldn't they get some better photography?

I'm sure it's the flat-mooners downvoting.

I know the RS-25 engines[0] (aka SSME, Space Shuttle Main Engine) were "reusable" in an academic sense (needing a ton of refurbishment after each use) but it hurts my heart that we're dropping them in the ocean and it makes it hard for me to feel good about the Artemis program. It's irrational but it makes the kid who loved the Space Shuttle (which, itself, was a political pork barrel and a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none kind of program) sad.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-25

I ran across this video[0] yesterday with Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about how it’s always been political. The first moon landing was more about global politics than science. As a child you likely weren’t concerned about that side of it, or were shielded from it.

It isn’t always the purist motivations that push the human race forward, but forward it moves us.

[0] https://youtu.be/j_AlXChA9F4

> my belief that it is intended to be little more than a quick, dirty, and vainglorious Apollo repeat by a failing government.

If the USA successfully sends people to the Moon, achieves all of NASA's technical goals, and the astronauts make it back in one piece, isn't that literally the opposite of failure?

It might be expensive and you can argue that it's wasteful. But even to that point, the $11B cost of SLS is nothing for the US Gov. For example the F35 is a >$1T government program. That doesn't seem a lot to explore a new frontier and expand the scope of humanity.

> Kind of a false dichotomy.

That’s precisely my point. Some stanzas in the poem suggest that there’s a direct connection between the moon mission and his poverty.

> The man just upped my rent last night > cause Whitey’s on the moon

> Was all that money I made last year > For Whitey on the moon?

And my point then was that I can see and empathize with his frustration, but I don’t feel it’s a singularly correct perspective to the exclusion of the perspective that the missions were of great value.

> We can either hold ourselves back an an endless and futile journey on solving the human condition of poverty and inequality, or we can explore the stars. It's an easy choice.

"Sorry, poor people; but I want to live on Jupiter so you're just gonna have to starve to death".

What a loser

> We can either hold ourselves back an an endless and futile journey on solving the human condition of poverty and inequality, or we can explore the stars. It's an easy choice.

Wait... Are you suggesting that "exploring the stars" is less of an endless and futile journey than dealing with poverty and inequality?

> an endless and futile journey on solving the human condition of poverty and inequality

It’s very telling that you think poverty can’t be solved.

—

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

With whitey on the moon.

Rest in peace Gil-Scott Heron.

Also the heatshield is designed in a way that is cheaper to manufacture but less safe.

Apollo 8 did pretty much the same thing so not a first there either, but a first for today’s Orion architecture.

Yes, and that's part of what spaceflight is. https://1517.substack.com/p/1-in-30-artemis-greatness-and-ri...

It has always been a touch-and-go affair

It's not for the reason that the parent commenter said, and it's not the moon (yet), but you can't take photos like this with probes alone: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2026/apr/05...

It's true, too. Lunar albedo is 12%.

https://www.ign.com/articles/2015/08/05/nasa-releases-a-gif-...

For some numbers:

The Artemis program has an estimated cost of 93B since 2012 [0].

As a comparison:

"Between 2020 and 2024, $771 billion in Pentagon contracts went to just five firms: Lockheed Martin ($313 billion), RTX (formerly Raytheon, $145 billion), Boeing ($115 billion), General Dynamics ($116 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($81 billion). In comparison, the total diplomacy, development, and humanitarian aid budget, excluding military aid, was $356 billion."[1]

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#cite_note-NASA...

1. https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/economic/us-federa...

1969 wasn’t exactly all flowers and sunshine either.

I don’t think people are spending their time on more pressing issues. I think they are just are hooked on an endless stream of content that is built for addiction and is always within arms reach.

I see that "whitey on the moon" is back.

If it makes you feel better, the amount of money the United States spends on space is a very small percentage compared overall entitlement spending. There is always going to be some level of inequality, so your maxim that we should only spend money on space exploration when those problems are solved just isn't workable. The enormous amount of money the United States spends on "solving" inequality and poverty begs the question of if that's even an effective or efficient allocation of resources in the first place.

To me, the importance of crewed spaceflight like this cannot be overstated. I think my way of thinking was best phrased by Eddie Izzard: "When we landed on the moon, that was the point where god should have come up and said hello. Because if you invent some creatures, put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, you fucking turn up and say 'well done'".

Now, it's not the reason I'm an atheist, but "getting from the blue one to the grey one" (and hearing nothing) is so big that to me it disproves at the very least the existence of a personal god.

You may think it ridiculous, but I'm trying to convey why some people would think that it does change their life.

Most world events don't change 99.99% of people's lives, and yet they matter too. The only big world event, maybe in my entire life, that affected my life was covid. Because I lived in a lockdown country.

There's a little bit of far side on the right of the picture.

Yeah, if we cut back a bit on the war crimes we could easily fund both more moon missions and cool science, as well as a shit ton of great programs to help people with the basics like food and rent and health care.

You’re not seeing better engines because there aren’t any. We are reaching the limits of physics.

That’s why we are working on alternatives like refueling in space or reusable ships.

The Artemis missions are testing things that we still have a lot of area to improve upon — materials (a huge one), international standards for things like docking ports, computing, radiation safety, and a lot more.

In 2-3 years we should expect a Starship mission to Moon, at a much more sensible scale, as in the amount of scientific gear and actual researchers delivered to the surface (and then back).

Stealing a link from a comment by ceejayoz, the difference is like a 5% or 10% [it got deleted now] https://www.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comments/1sd797j/the_moon...

people have been struggling to afford every day life for decades. So that’s nothing new. Unless only people in the 1st world count as people lol.

You’re either emotionally consumed by the human struggle or not, it’s a personality thing - in my opinion. You’re allowed to be poor and a nerd, unless I missed the memo. I’ve met poor and wealthy people that are excited by space.

Yeah your life must really suck if you only care about immediate hurdles and pains without making room for hope or creativity

nah, it just seems like that on Twitter. We have more prosperity by far than we've ever had in history, this is a time to celebrate.

We have our 'ducks in a row' more now than in the 1960's when we went to the moon because of a cold war and nuclear annihilation / escalation.

My grandparents were born on farms with no electricity, plumbing, there was no real 'police' no social services, no healthcare, no antibiotics, 10% of children did not make it past age 1. That's in living memory.

Despite the insanity on the news, it's mostly drama, and we still have more people coming out of abject poverty than ever.

We have 'modern world problems', they are real problems for sure, but they are of a different scale entirely.

Frankly, it may never even get that much better as we may be hitting diminishing marginal returns on 'progress' - we now have to figure out how to live 'long lives and stay healthy'.

It's a fine time to go to the moon.

I think in this case more than 0.1% feel a bit of inspiration in a time of darkness.

In the aggregate we live miserable lives and then die.

Of the 45 delegates to the continental congress, only two (Benjamin Franklin and another) were known to be deists. One's membership records couldn't be found. The other 42 were active members and on the books in their churches.[0]

Jefferson also was a deist, but he wasn't present at the constitutional convention of 1787 (though he earlier authored the Declaration of Independence).

[0] M. E. Bradford. Founding Fathers: Brief Lives of the Framers of the United States Constitution, second edition. University Press of Kansas, 1994.

Yes, exactly. Being anti-religion does not mean throwing away the entire value system.

I was addressing values, not religion, but I seem to have touched a nerve. I'm not Christian, but I recognize that Christian values lead to high-trust society, leads to innovation in industry and science.

  > I suggest you look up the founding fathers' views on religion

Alright:

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports."

  - George Washington

"It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favors."

  - George Washington

"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

  - John Adams

"The Bible contains the most profound philosophy, the most perfect morality, and the most refined policy that ever was conceived upon Earth."

  - John Adams

"I hold the precepts of Jesus, as delivered by himself, to be the most pure, benevolent, and sublime which have ever been preached to man."

  - Thomas Jefferson

"Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that His justice cannot sleep forever."

  - Thomas Jefferson

Their HN profile is a bunch of complaints about being rate-limited for shitty takes. It's the norm.

current 2nd stage is underpowered, so it has to be compensated by 1st stage right from the start

and since launchpad is in the north hemisphere, Moon has to be at the south part of its orbit

The moon IS flat! Just like the Sun and the Earth.

> That doesn't seem a lot to explore a new frontier and expand the scope of humanity.

There is no gain in knowledge from this mission. It's more like cheering for your favorite soccer team.

Its not Pork and its not science. Its a strategically costly land grab rather than a political vain-glorious stunt.

Same as Mercury/Gemini/Apollo except this time China instead of Russia.

> more about global politics than science

I had a great Prof during my bachelor from Russia - this is what he always told -> and it makes sense: Back then was cold war

Yea what other technological progress was only wanted by losers? Most of it, by your standard. Yet it's also technological progress that has reduced poverty. You don't care about the people of the future and want to keep them in poverty for the sake of the people of today. I wouldn't call you a loser for that but you do have bad morals.

I stated that the United States is based on Christian values. Not that the United States is a Christian state.

Do you value separation of state and religious authority? Women's rights? Minority rights? Human dignity? Equality before the law? Sanctity of life? Individual moral responsibility? Monogamous marriage? The objective study of history? Fair trial? Witnesses at trial? Tolerance of alternative viewpoints?

Those are all Christian values. For what it's worth, I'm not Christian.

I think they proved that the waste is not easily defined. I would call fraud, waste, but a computer program isn't likely to discover it without boots on the ground looking to see if the money is actually going where the records indicate.

They want to fly by at lunar sunrise as the shadows help see depth better. Also, they have very sensitive cameras (up to 3,280,000 ISO!); the Earth photo the other day was taken at night, so you can see how they'll be able to get detail even in the dark parts

You and me both. They don’t even put a parachute on the boosters to get them back. Some pieces on these boosters have been in use since the 80s.

My guess is that this mission is not about imaging the far side of the Moon at all as that has been done already.

I don't think OP's problem with it is that it's "political" but that it's a product of pork and corporate welfare. The political thrust of the Apollo program was more "beat the Russians" and less "funnel money into dozens of already-rich corporations in favored districts." Even thought there was a lot of that, too. Modern space (and defense) projects seem to be almost 100% "pork funnel" and zero anything else.

But he's not blaming his poverty on "whitey on the moon" but the lack of healthcare. There is an opportunity cost to war, Moon/Mars missions etc.

Solving poverty and inequality is for the short term - they'll come back and need solving again no matter how many times you already solved them. But once the stars are explored, they stay explored forever. So yea, that's moving forwards and the other isn't.

Artemis II doesn’t have any docking hardware since it won’t have anything to dock with. And Artemis in general is just using the IDSS used on the ISS and by Dragon and Starliner, nothing new being discovered or tested there.

Yeah, RS25/SSME still have a higher specific impulse than any boost stage engine in operation, past or present.

Struggling to meet our basic needs is not a recent phenomenon. It has been a part of the human condition for millenia, not just decades.

Some people think that if we can just eliminate our 'struggles' by building AI tools to do the hard thinking or robots to perform all our labor; that civilization would become some kind of utopia. I don't believe that. Progress happens when we do hard things.

Well yes. For too many people, life does suck for that very reason.

That's not something to mock people for; it's a problem to apply your mind to and fix.

Too late to edit: perhaps a bit more than 10%. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47651659

you’re making their point, you just don’t know it yet

2 to 3 years is wildly optimistic. Of the 5 launches last year 3 were failures and it's not even close to be ready for humans yet.

There is literally not many things in life I hope so much for than starship success. Sounds strange perhaps but I just love space and I hope it succeeds.

Funnily I absolutely despise Musk at the same time for being absolute buffoon

And your life might be very privileged to so flippantly disregard anyone’s reality that is just that difficult.

It is a fine time to be going to the moon, but we could be doing multiple productive things at the same time. It just doesn't surprise me that there are so many people that are not caring so much about this.

That was true the last time we went to the Moon, but this time in the aggregate we live less miserable lives.

The richest person in the world, who has had billions from government handouts, decided they were going to audit government spending.

Fraud doesn't even begin to describe it.

we've also got 50 years of baseline tech improvement to try out.

In the 60s we weren't going to land in the darkness because we couldn't see to land.

But the shadows are probably where the water might be, and that's where we're going next!

And all of that reuse was so expensive that it set back reusable rocketry for decades as the common wisdom said it was uneconomical - even after it was demonstrated that you could have reuse without expensive refurbishment.

I don’t mean to badger, but how can this stanza:

> The man just upped my rent last night > cause Whitey’s on the moon

Be interpreted as anything other than directly blaming his poverty on the moon mission?

Fair, but these images are going to get a lot of public attention, so making them good ones would be worthwhile.

> The political thrust of the Apollo program was more "beat the Russians" and less "funnel money into dozens of already-rich corporations in favored districts."

Artemis feels a bit more "Beat the Chinese, and show the world we still got it." I think cost-effectiveness[1] is a fig-leaf for what are SpaceX fanboys: had the same mission been on a Starship, HN would be awash with how other companies (Blue Origin) were late to earth-orbit, and the gap had widened beyond Earth's orbit.

1. In contrast, I haven't seen any complaints about Military-Industrial pork on any of the Iran threads, even when contrasting the cost of interceptors vs drones. Let slone have pork dominate the thread.

640 ISO ought to be enough for anyone.

The closest stars are way too far to reach on any reasonable timescale. That's not even mentioning the fact that moving forwards is a vague goal. Moving forwards towards what exactly? And if the US government got off of it's ass to... Oh I don't know, maybe fix the bullshit healthcare system we have and help people with tax money instead of bombing people for Israel things would improve quite a bit in a very short time. That's assuming we don't bomb each other over terroritorial squabbles first. In any case I don't really understand your defeatism when it comes to inequality but when it's something as difficult as interstellar space travel you seem to be optimistic.

> I stated that the United States is based on Christian values. Not that the United States is a Christian state.

And I said:

> Christians do not own the idea of being nice to others and trusting others.

But let's look at your list:

> Do you value separation of state and religious authority? Women's rights? Minority rights? Human dignity? Equality before the law? Sanctity of life? Individual moral responsibility? Monogamous marriage? The objective study of history? Fair trial? Witnesses at trial? Tolerance of alternative viewpoints?

First of all, these are all Jewish values that Christian's adopted. And secondly, none of these are exclusive to Christianity. In fact they appear in many religions worldwide, as well as secular societies.

These are all just common decency, which is why they appear in most religions, and non-religions.

It's not "almost 100% pork funneling" and I know this because....they're there! they are at the moon! I don't like pork either, but let's not blow this out of proportion.

How much do we think that it should have cost, if everything was perfectly optimized, to get to the moon? 50b instead of 100b? so ok, 50% was pork, and that's bad, but let's not overstate it and instead allow a little joy in our lives.

also the original apollo program was about 300b in today's dollars, so seems like things have always been a little porky.

The pork funnel is going to exist unless something major changes; so I'd rather get moonshots out of the pork.

Some people don’t understand the difference between testing and use. You can afford to test when your launches cost 1/100 of SLS launches instead of risking human lives. Artemis II was human rated with zero launches of its life support equipment, modeling failures of its heat shield, multiple power issues in its only predecessor flight in space. Starship will carry humans after hundreds of launches and landings.

We're days away from the SpaceX IPO that will make Musk even richer than he is now. I don't trust him with that money.

We are doing multiple productive things. Zillions of them.

They are like 50 companies making robots right now that will soon do a lot of work.

There are advances in many fields.

Headlines are dominated by something else, the 'news' is not a good reflection of reality.

It's that difficult but they're also commenting on hn.

  > These are all just common decency, which is why they appear in most religions, and non-religions.

You and I both wish these decencies were common. Some cultures have some variations on some of these decencies, but they are not common. Assuming that they are common is projecting your culture onto others.

This is why I mentioned the importance of high trust society.

Christian values are always whatever individual Christians say they are.

There's really no such animal in practice. Over time Christian values have included charity for the poor, rapacious capitalism, slavery, the abolition of slavery, anti-science, science, war, peace, and the rest.

But how many Moonshots could we have got out of $100 billion of vegetarian non-pork?

Everything about SLS, and most of Artemis, has been dictated by Congress, often overriding expert advice.

Why not just give NASA the money and let them get on with it?

The same happens with the US military, Congress constantly deleting funding for programs they don't like to fund ones they do.

Only 300b for the Apollo program? That sounds downright lean.

How do we take it away from him?

Last time he got a bunch of money he used it to fund SpaceX and Tesla.

Now also Neuralink.

It’s hard to imagine anyone else who’s done more for the planet with his money than Musk.

And? Is that a hurdle or something? You know homeless people are allowed to go on the internet? Smartphones? You'll find other homeless or desolate people here on HN - I won't name anyone out of respect but if you read enough comments here over time you would recognize them.

I trust his gargantuan insecurity

Sometimes the flaws of someone make him completely predictable. Very trustworthy to repeatedly pour billions in an attempt to become someone he fantasizes to be.

There are innumerable amount of assholes in history that sold things we use daily, sometimes at the expense of original inventors. It is hard to cope with the idea that greed, ambition and ruthlessness are the building blocks of everything that stands around us.

Sometimes it makes me want to reject everything I know of good and human and feed these traits until they fill the hollow parts of mind with wealth, empty fame and too many lonely sunsets on a private island.

What about the workers that will be eventually replaced by said robots? You think they're just going to get free money to exist? Most likely they'll end up in the private prison system or in institutions while the corporations pocket all of the savings. Things are a lot more complicated than they seem I think...

We're about to find out.

The new NASA administrator, Isaacman, seems to have done a very good job of convincing the various Senators to, if not get rid of the pork, allow him to allocate it in a way that benefits the lunar program.

The result was the Ignition event, which looks like it's planning to send up 17 small and 4 crew-capable landers by 2028, along with a fleet of orbital assets.

You can find out more https://www.nasa.gov/ignition/ , especially the "Building the Moon Base" section. The cost is $10B spread out over 3 years.

Not when you consider how we got lucky on some aspects

He is also directly responsible for the deaths of many thousands of people via the shutdown of USAID-funded programs.

Get out of hear with your glazing of that Fascist Sieg-Heiling Asshole.

95% of us used to labour as serfs on farms. 4.5% were technical trades. 0.5% noble class, 0.01% high elite.

The industrial revolution moved almost 95% of people away from direct agrarian labour.

We'll find ways.

It won't be pretty in some cases, but we'll figure it out.

I hope you're right but I think it won't be pretty in all cases. It's easy to forget the industrial revolution wasn't entirely positive for common people or for that matter the environment.