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It's hard not to see this as a consolation prize. In 1969, we went to the moon.
In 2026, with all the benefits of a tech industry that has become ever more powerful, with endless money poured into innovation, our 'rough guide back to the moon' is an AI model that maps it. It's powerful and impressive, of course, and doubtless very useful to researchers, and space exploration is not a priority--all of that is true, sure.
But to have the fruits of 50+ years of technological progress result not in going back to the moon, or onto other challenges, but just a refinement in looking at the moon. Is this the best giant leap we can muster now? So much innovation and yet we lack a capability we used to have.
I know there are all sorts of ways to explain this away, but it still makes me sad.
The goal is entirely different.
Apollo - Cold war. USA must do it before Russia and win the space race. Money is not a restriction. USA did it before Russia and won the space race.
Artemis - Prove a multi-national program can function under financial, economic, political, and even technical restrictions. We can't simply land and observe, it needs to be a team effort under a tight budget.
https://www.planetary.org/charts/apollo-vs-artemis-spending
Some of it.
Not first to the space, not first to the Moon, not first in human spaceflight, not first in spacewalk, etc.
That remains a ridiculous argument. The thing about a race is you can always think of excuses for not winning. Plans for Mars were being met by all accounts, however Nixon still cancelled them because the Apollo victory was so decisive.
Thats a ridiculous comment. The thing about the space race is we were getting are ass kicked, then said 'Oh the finish line is actually this. Oh look we kicked your ass "
It was like we lost the first 9 events of a decathalon and then won the 1500 and declared ourselves the winner.
You're supporting the USA decisive victory with this take. We are not disagreeing on the winner.
Actually, in Russia do they have a pitch for where they’d rather draw the finish line? I admit it is probably influenced by having a US upbringing, but “landing on the Moon” does seem like a natural finish line for a space race.
The move of picking an advantageous finish line is easily countered by… picking an obvious successor finish line. If they’d stuck a base on the moon that’d have been a pretty compelling “actually, here’s the next finish line.”
Maybe they have some space-station based claim.
But the finish line did keep changing: first satellite in orbit, first living mammals in orbit, first human in orbit, multiple humans in orbit, spacewalk, moon landing, human moon landing, planetary landing, space station, reusable space plane, modular space station.
I think both sides broadly agreed on all of those as their "next big goal" (with slight question mark over the space plane, as you could reasonably say the Soviet programme was purely reactive).
The race ended after the fall of the Soviet Union (with the Challenger disaster being an additional factor), not because it had been definitively won.
And left to die in orbit.
I agree here, but it’s not really a game with declared rules or something. I think the US won in a game of oneupsmanship. Rather than try to make up rules, we can observe that the US always lost by little enough to plausibly claim that there was another more interesting goal right there. Then, won on the goal where, for whatever reason, there wasn’t a natural follow-up.
Of course, getting people to believe that the next thing you go for is a natural follow-up is itself an exercise in PR or propaganda. That’s why I’m mostly curious about how Russians saw
There are definitely candidates for what could have been the “next target.” In my perception these just weren’t something people were excited about. But I wasn’t born at the time and I’m American so I know I got a biased telling.
Russia has the first finish line -- Sputnik. You can pick a successor finish line to diminish the American accomplishment, but Russia will always have that first one.
Nah, the V2 was the first rocket to reach space.
IMO he stopped it because Russia wasn't meaningfully threatening to field a Mars mission. The end was always artificial and if the USSR had beat the US to the Moon maybe we would have gotten a race to the first "permanent" base on the Moon or spacestation or even a rush to Mars. That's the point of the "did the US really win the Space Race?" question, it's about how the finish line was essentially always the next thing the USSR hadn't done yet.
Nixon cancelled them because he was increasingly worried about a catastrophic accident and felt it could damage his political career and ambitions. Seriously. [1] If he only knew... Outside of that you're correct. We were already set for progress onto Mars. In a parallel timeline where one man's political ambitions, and myopia, didn't override the interests of an entire species - we could already viably have multiple parallel civilizations scattered throughout the solar system, and perhaps already be flirting with abstract concepts of moving beyond just the solar system. We're left with our timeline, but hopefully people 60 years from now might look back at us more fondly for our actions of today, and tomorrow.
[1] - https://www.planetary.org/articles/1027-when-nixon-stopped-h...
This is nonsense. A trip to Mars would take a minimum of 6 months and could only be resupplied every 2 years. Mars has a tiny amount of water, virtually no atmosphere, and receives 700x more radiation than Earth. Mars colonists would be forced to spend virtually all their time underground working hard to keep themselves alive, being bored senseless because there's nothing to do for fun (besides electronic entertainment, I suppose), or both.
Keep in mind that the Apollo program only gave us about two weeks of human time spent on the moon's surface total. In no way were we prepared to go to Mars after Apollo. We couldn't have managed a round trip around Mars, much less landing there and creating a permanent colony.
The idea that we would have "parallel civilizations" not just on Mars, the easiest other planet to inhabit, but "throughout the solar system" is delusional. Are we talking about also colonizing Venus, a planet where the surface temperature is hot enough to melt lead, the wind travels at hundreds of miles per hour, and the atmosphere is composed of sulfuric acid?
The sad (?) reality is that humans evolved to live on Earth and if we ever permanently live outside Earth, it will in all likelihood be in a form no longer recognizable as human, whether it's due to our physical bodies being engineered to withstand the rigors of life on a foreign planet or because our consciousnesses have been somehow uploaded to machines.
I cannot enough recommend the book A City on Mars. It's written by two giant space nerds who are nonetheless clear eyed on the many, many, many challenges to creating permanent space settlements of any kind.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/125084292-a-city-on-m...
https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/18xmkp0/a_city_on_ma...
The public had lost interest in it, and so the political support for more was gone.
This is such a bad response. The space race was to get to the moon. There is a reason the USSR dropped any crewed lunar plans instantly when the USA landed (also they couldn't get the N1 to stop exploding) and went all in on satellites. They also kept the crewed tests secret because they knew they were behind the USA and was embarrassing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AmericaBad/comments/1apgsc9/regardi...
That's either revisionist or ignorant (likely the latter, looking at cheap memes). The term was coined by American journos in the early 50's, and the actual events started in 1955, very publicly. And objectively speaking it never ended until the USSR crashed.
You should probably read something on the Soviet space program (starting with Rockets and People, for example), and the US one while you're at it. The Soviets didn't went all in on satellites. They simply returned to the original ideas Korolev & co had long before Sputnik ever flew, namely LEO modular assembly tech followed by manned circumnavigation of Venus (before the surface conditions were known) or Mars (after that) as a meaningful first step in deep space exploration. Which was pretty pragmatic and long-term thinking, although it's hard to say how realistic it was politically: they would have finished by the late 80's at best and securing the funding without propaganda-worthy progress wasn't a given. Regardless, they succeeded at actual LEO colonization, which was presumably "not space race" (I'm sure Space Shuttle/Freedom being a massive failure and NASA seeking Soviet expertise after the crash has nothing to do with that framing...).
Lunar missions, let alone single-flight ones without modular spacecraft, were a practical dead end and a distraction, the engineers understood that perfectly. The party however got successfully baited by JFK's advisors into the race they couldn't win because they still needed to close the "reverse missile gap" after the US panicked and closed the actual missile gap they imagined existed by building a ton of Titan IIs. The Apollo people were also in perfect understanding that the program had no practical followup and only existed for novelty, see anything written by Chris Kraft and Gene Kranz who were actual participants. STS was a colossal blunder and a setback as well, in practical terms, and it was obvious before the first flight.
The race was never limited to manned missions either. For example most of what we know about the Solar System comes from the JPL, which is hugely underappreciated. The Soviets only succeeded with Venus missions.
Well, President Kennedy kind of spelled out the finish line.
Although, to be specific, he did not say it was a race, but rather something the U.S. should strive for—even specifying a deadline.
... or maybe just called some convenient events "space race" and refused to notice the others. Like a literal space colony circling above, for example. If you control the framing you control the reality.
That’s like saying the goal of the process is the process. It is a recursive definition and a pointless, expensive endeavor.
Going to the moon is a publicity stunt. Been there done that. There are very few good arguments for putting anything on the moon, much less a human (which generally can do much less because all the life support needed can't be put into science). All the arguments for going to the moon need to be considered against everything else we can do - opportunity cost is real, but investing in the moon we are not investing in something else. (including less working hours...) Most of the things we developed for the moon would have been done anyway, and we don't know what things would have been developed sooner if we were not focusing on the moon.
Be realistic. You can support going to the moon. However be honest: there isn't much value from it and there are plenty of reasons to say we shouldn't.
The arguments are entirely romantic. But then, what exactly is life without romance? That's probably the single greatest loss of modern society; that we've been convinced nothing matters but the material and concrete.
At that point though, there are lots of other romances to peruse. Somebody could go to the moon, but it won't be me. I could however go to my local art museum - at a much smaller costs than my share of sending someone else to the moon, but I'd get more value from my trip to the art museum than someone else on the moon.
Or in my case I just went to my local high school marching band competition, and got to hear some great music. YMMV on what you find more romantic.
People want to go to the moon, you could make your same argument for lots of things humans have done but at the end of the day science is not the reason 99% of people care about or want to colonize space. People have a desire to colonize space
Some people. I'm all for allowing those people do to it.
However the context tends to include I'm being asked for fund the dreams of those people (via taxes) and that impacts my ability to fund my own dreams.
What??? I bet you consume large quantities of art and romance, like everyone else. Like look at the tremendous choices you have for entertainment.
I've heard a lot of arguments against human space exploration, but "We could put that energy into working less" is probably one of the more out-there arguments that's hard to take seriously.
Work is a necessary evil. If it is not necessary, then it is just a regular evil. There are no credible arguments that going to the moon is necessary, or supports some other necessary goal.
Of course by work, I mean work directed by somebody else to serve their ends, in exchange for money to live your own life. If we could afford to have people work five hours a week and still maintain a functioning society, then surely it is a moral obligation for us to do that. If you decide you want or need to do some kind of voluntary work to keep your mental health intact, so much the better. And if those happy people want to voluntarily commit some of their energy to going to the moon for no reason, then good for them.
I really cannot imagine taking your position. Working less is the pretty much the only thing we should be putting energy into.
I wonder what this would look like. I feel like nearly all of mankinds greatest achievements are due to our current structure of employment or at being forced to do something at the behest of someone elses ends.
like out-of-control global warming, depletion of freshwater reserves, destruction of soil, mass surveillance, extremely uneven distribution of resources. I mean all previous innovations which were supposed to allow working less somehow never materialized in working less, and the quality of life improvements are greatly questionable, basically keeping the production-consumption machinery takes up all the surplus it produces, while depleting the resources we have.
The great achievements we have are much like the Moai statues on the Easter Island.
The bone evidence of pre-Columbian Indians in America is one of periodic starvation. For the colonists, the bone evidence is one of extremely hard labor and short lives.
America's poor have a higher standard of living than medieval kings.
“the superfluous is highly necessary”
– Voltaire
Work is a good.
I get fulfillment via work.
A life without purpose leads to sloth and early death.
Good for you. And I hope you never get laid off, burned out, or anything else.
I however do not get my fulfillment via work. I work to live, and I do [mostly] enjoy my work. However I have a very long todo list that I'm not getting done in part because I don't have the time to work on it (and in part because I don't have the money for the tools/parts I need)
I think this sort of view is quite myopic. In general space has practically infinite everything - land, resources, energy, and more. It has the potential to enable, in turn, infinite expansion of humanity. But we're not going to get to the endgame without playing the opening first.
The path to international air flight began with often suicidal attempts to flap our arms with various instruments attached and act like birds, with many thinking we'd never go anywhere beyond that. With space we're already a bit more advanced, yet we're far from where we need to be - and the only way we're going to get there is by going out and starting on a very long journey.
We didn't do anything in 1969. Landing on the Moon and leaving a flag is like seeing the Wright Flyer go 260m, waving a Mission Accomplished banner, and then quitting with that as the state of art of flight - a mildly interesting novelty that was, at best, a proof of concept.
Even if you think a space industry is useful in general, there is no reason for humans to be involved. Robots are superior to humans for this application today and will only become more superior in the future.
Why pursue space exploration if all we can do is send robots there? The only meaningful thing for humanity is sending Humans to places.
Gathering more resources so the overlords can have more humans enslaved with shinier golden handcuffs, who can consume more so number line goes up is not a meaningful goal to pursuit, and robotic-only commercially rationalized spaceflight has only this to offer.
Scientific discovery, so we can have better simulations about things of no use or effect on us? Why? Taking people to places and utilizing the resources there, and building a more resilient humanity is a worthy endeavor, and while robots are useful for that, ultimately human spaceflight (or interplanetary/interstellar travel) is he goal, not having only a space industry.
What is the point in having a colony of maybe dozens of people completely dependent on shipments from Earth? Building a self-sustaining colony is so far outside the realm of possibility that it isn't worth thinking about, and building a symbolic outpost serves no practical purpose.
The Jamestown colony relied on shipments from England.
And look at what America became.
Jamestown went to a place where humans had lived for thousands of years. They used shipments from England, but they didn't need them at any time.
Very funny!
The Earth has more land than mankind will ever need. The Earth has effectively infinite energy from the Sun. And most of the resources we need are derived from biological matter, which Space lacks.
Ah, but humanity is an expansive and consuming force, as is natural since most forces in the universe are entropy increasing ones. And since amino acids have been discovered on asteroids and tardigrades and fungus have been shown to survive space travel, we can't even say that Space provably lacks biological matter. Expanding (back?) into space is our manifest destiny, and good for the price of real estate too since all of earth becomes a luxury destination.
Population growth has been slowing for a long time, and is actually already below replacement level in most parts of the world outside Africa. It's unlikely that we will ever reach a global human population of even 11 billion. Some estimates put the peak at under 9 billion.
That's 3/3 complete bullshit, and first two doesn't even take high school level math to disprove completely.
I get it though. This is just how naturalism looks like when runs out of arguments in its favor.
Feel free to disprove them completely since you're so confident
Radioactive, toxic, dry, low-gravity and anoxic land isn't exactly prime real estate. Even the North Pole is a better environment for humans to live in than the Moon or Mars are.
Love the (sorry, but greedy) take. Maybe we shouldn't expand infinitely. I don't see our species as that special. Maybe we should stay a bit modest, and errm, down to the earth in our ambitions.
Both humans and resources can't be in infinite number at the same time. Something can be infinite relative to other, and I like the current balance, thanks.
The solar system has effectively infinite resources.
Why should we not expand into space? To make sure that all the lifeless rocks in it stay lifeless? If earth were twice as large would you say that logically we should only inhabit half of that earth or do you believe that human beings have a natural claim to everything that can be reached via boats and legs but not via rockets? Personally, I would like a future where I can see other planets with my own eyes and dislike a future where the entire species is dependent on one planet being habitable.
...of a density so low that it is 0 on average.
space has practically infinite nothing.
I know the pretty pictures always show the planets all nice together, but in reality there's this huge, irradiated, projectile-infested nothing that you and I cannot deal with, even with current tech.
You fail to comprehend just how large space is. Almost all of space is well out of reach. There is zero reason to think we will ever be able to overcome the laws of relativity, which in turn mean we will never be able to reach the stars. I know, this negative comment makes you mad, but there is every reason to think it is the case.
A SciFi generation ship could maybe do that to the closest stars before it fails completely - but we have reason to think those stars will have any planet we can terraform. (ignoring the ethics if life exists - we don't have the technology to detect life on other planets)
Mars is the only planet that could potentially support human life. Even then the best parts are about as nice as Antarctica - not very nice. Which is to say a catastrophic failure of life support gives you seconds to get the backup [scuba type gear?] working as opposed to guaranteed death. Mars is a lot smaller than earth and has much less energy (less sun). Thus there isn't much potential there.
Everything else we can reasonably reach is much harder to work with than Mars.
Face it, earth is all we get: make it last.
Infinite distance and travel cost too!
We'd be much better off building colonies on the bottom of the ocean than on the moon or mars (or a cylinder floating at a lagrange point.)
After we run out of space on the ocean I suppose it will make sense to consider space colonies, but I think you are really underestimating the technical challenges.
Farside radio telescope:
https://www.colorado.edu/project/lunar-farside/
Very few is not zero...
There is no reason the above cannot be maintained by robots, and many reasons it should be if we have it. We should also question if it is worth it.
Is that your litmus test--it has to have "value"? What's the value of Hubble? Of the Nancy Grace Roman observatory? Are you against those too? Maybe you prefer if they had left it as a spy satellite--at least that has real value.
Humans are going to walk on the fucking moon! How can you not be excited about that? There is value in pushing the frontier, in doing things at the limit of human technology, in seeing new worlds through human eyes.
Been there done that. Last happened in 1972, there is nothing exciting about it anymore. I have other things in my life that are exciting - things that really are exciting.
You should look into the Artemis program! Not only are we going back, but we're building a base, which will effectively be the spiritual successor to the ISS.
I’ll have to see it to believe it. Artemis was slow but seemed to be making progress and now things have been shaken up again and plans totally changed. To me that seems like it’s not going to happen
Another good program to watch is Space: 1999. Just sayin'... :)
The US put 5% of the federal budget into the original moon mission. NASA and SpaceX and the US Space Force combined don't spend anywhere close to that on R&D.
Pretty sure we are talking about the endless AI money glitch.
That's part of my complaint. More and more money is poured into 'innovation' across our society, but what do we have to show for it?
A huge variety of tools and technology that billions of people use daily.
What did we ultimately have to show for the money poured into Apollo? I'm a big fan of space exploration but putting twelve people up there for a few days at a time is pretty small potatoes compared to, say, the creation of smart phones or vast improvements in solar power and batteries or a thousand other things that have been done since 1972. I can push a (virtual) button on a rectangle I carry in my pocket and be instantly on a video call with my mother who lives a thousand miles away. And I don't even have to pay by the minute. That's positively magical, and in terms of actual real-world impact on average people it's far more significant than moon landings.
For starters, you are on HN amusing yourself in your free time.
I think the problem is not the technological advancement, it’s the limits of physics which are the same as in today as it was back in 1960s.
We have immense computing power now compared to 50 years ago. But that doesn’t help to escape the gravity well of earth. We’re still using the same chemical rockets to go to space, haven’t invented any new type of rocket drives
cough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_rocket_propellant#Metha... cough
It’s still a chemical reaction
That's a very bad take. Rocket costs are not driven by physics, they're driven by more mundane issues, like single-use hardware. The cost floor dictated by cost of propellant is remarkably low.
There is a dumb ass simple explanation: in about the same time it took to build rockets that took people to the Moon, we figured out that there was nothing to do there for humans. Or anywhere in the Solar System for that matter.
I mean until 1960 people expected to find whole civilisation or at least intelligent life on Venus and until 1964, at least some life on Mars. By then, it was too late to stop Apollo, but already no point to go anywhere else or expand Moon presence.
Saddest part is that all the tech was apparently so utterly useless for anything that NASA lost it.
But we are going back to the moon. By 2030, I would bet, humans will land on the moon again. Probably Americans first, but if not, definitely Chinese.
And this time, both countries are planning ambitious missions--not just flags-and-footprints, but bases and resource extraction (ice from the lunar south pole).
SpaceX Starship, the vehicle that will return to the moon, can carry 100 tons to the lunar surface--compared to less than 10 tons for Apollo. Moreover, whereas a single Saturn V launch cost almost a billion dollars to launch, Starship should cost a third the price. Effectively, we'll be able to deliver cargo to the moon for 1/30th the price of Apollo. That's real progress.
I've been following the space program since the 1970s and I have never been more excited about it.
The show For All Mankind is a truly bittersweet look at how space exploration could have turned out differently.
I’m sure the technical challenges are much greater than how they are portrayed in the show. But certainly there has been a lack of will and optimism and imagination as well.
I read this a bit fast and with half a brain (because I'm in a boring meeting), but I'm not sure what an "AI model" is over just a common or garden model.
I get the achievement here: it's quite difficult to combine data from these various sensors into one. Is the "AI" bit referring to how that integration was done?
did not know we have -246°c to play with, which means the potential for the whole set of usefull volitiles is there, not just water/O²/H², and given that there is also the potential for +121°c very close to cold deposits, gives most of the basics for refining a whole host of molecules and compounds. Non of that changing the fact that bieng on the moon for any extended time is going to SUCK , the dust is horrible in every possible way, low gravity will weaken , radiation is heavy, and all of the many other risks will add up to a poor career choice, so the compensation will have to be 1 tour, and retire in guaranteed style. Basicly flying a great big ass laser in a lunar polar orbit and zapping the shaded dark sections of craters while some other satelites watch the resulting gass plumes, and of course carve your initials while no one is looking. The band where there is enough solar exposure for power and cold traps is going to be narrow and dramaticly reduce the number of candidates, which has very likely been figured out years ago, especialy for earth facing spots. Still going to need the heavy lift of multiple starship landings and some kind of 'moon link' satelite network.
I'm not gonna lie, I'm closer to a conspiracy theorist and non-believer than I am to trust history on the moon landing stuff. Doesn't help that I wasn't alive when it happened, and that we haven't since gone again. It feels so nonsensical to me, I would love for someone to help me educate myself on it from a more grounded point of view that can satisfy my paranoia. Did we really go there? How come we (as in humanity, any other nation whatsoever) haven't gone again since?
Yes we really went there, quite a few times in the 1970s. We have been again, also several times, with rovers and landers. As for why not humans since then? There's bugger all there to justify the extreme cost (at this time). It's an unpleasant ball made from tiny abrasive dust particles that is more easily explored with robots. The prestige thing is done; until we set up some base there in support of some broader mission (scientific or exploratory) there isn't a reason to send people.
I've put a couple of resources here for you. The first one described the program from a neutral perspective (in line with what you ask - grounded POV to satisfy paranoia): https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/moon-landing/
This one is for people a little further down the conspiracy pipeline, and it debunks the various things that moon landing conspiracists like to talk about: https://www.iop.org/explore-physics/moon/how-do-we-know-we-w...
Both are worth a read!
Finally this is an excellent jumping-off point to understand the Apollo program in more detail, once you're satisfied that it did happen (if you don't think so, you'll reject the source out of hand.) https://www.nasa.gov/the-apollo-program/
The program itself was really, really, really cool and is worth reading about. A truly enormous achievement involving millions of people and an entire country's scientific and engineering capacity.
Thank you so much for this, I am super excited for this read, you made my day!
You are most welcome. Enjoy it!
Also to get the mood and sense how it felt following those flights media outlets back then there is great site
https://apolloinrealtime.org/
I've listened through those flights few times and it still each time takes me back to memories still giving me goosebumps. Especially Apollo 11 when I was nine year old kid listening tiny battery radio all nights at our summer cottage attic.
That's so cool. I feel like society did a bad job passing on the torch of that throughout history to the newer generation, especially outside the US (I'm not an American), so a lot of us are really disconnected with what went down outside of the US.
I don’t usually get parenting right but the stars lined up for this one: I got hold of the Lego Saturn V kit (1969 pieces!) and my two kids and I built it over a few days while listening to this in the background. Last piece on right about the time “the Eagle has landed.”
It is a fantastic site.
The "moon landings didn't happen" conspiracies are, of course, inane, but they come from an understandable place. If moon landings really did happen, how could they just have stopped? There's a disconnect between the event and the consequences.
The resolution is to realize that Apollo was a dead-end stunt, not some universe-altering historical event. The lack of consequences was an inevitable result of the structure of what Apollo was.
Yes, we really went there. There's zero legitimate doubt. If nothing else, consider: the Soviets were locked in a massive propaganda war with the US over the respective countries' space achievements, with the Soviets spending vast resources to show that their ideology was superior by showing what they could achieve in space. They had no trouble tracking American activity in space. If the moon landings had been fake, wouldn't the Soviets have brought their receipts and utterly humiliated their rivals?
We haven't gone again since because there's not much point to it. The US spent an amount of money equivalent to about 10 Manhattan Projects to ultimately put a dozen people on the moon for a cumulative total of somewhat less than one person-month. There was no military utility to it, no commercial benefit, just some science and exploration. Once you've done that a few times, what's the impetus to continue?
The technology was so bleeding-edge that each mission required a huge amount of bespoke manufacturing that got thrown away after a single use, and massive teams of people to run everything, such that each individual mission still cost billions of inflation-adjusted dollars. The American public's stomach for spending such vast sums of money just didn't last. Imagine if you needed to build and throw away an entire Airbus A380 to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. Maybe it would have been summited a few times to show it could be done, but we probably wouldn't keep doing it.
We may be approaching technologically to expanding into the universe but we are certainly not there spiritually. Not to say that we shouldn't pursue this, there are probably war races in space already, but it seems to me that a better path would be growing spiritually before we expand. I wouldn't like to be in a place where we have the technical capability to reach Mars before we learn to live in peace on earth and take good care of our home.
Going back into space will require doing so with a hard nosed commercial mindset. Things on that scale are done because they are profitable, not because of putatively higher minded considerations.
I think our collective spirit is in the best place it's ever been for actually going into space, it's just not the spirit you were probably imagining.
Tangentially related, these articles by Maciej Cegłowski:
* The Lunacy of Artemis – https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm
* Artemis II Is Not Safe to Fly – https://idlewords.com/2026/03/artemis_ii_is_not_safe_to_fly....
Lunacies 5, 6 & 7 are the only things that make the Artemis program useful. Landing 1t on the moon is an expensive, useless, performative flags and footprints mission. Landing 100t keeps the other moon dreams alive.