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Artemis II Launch Day Updates

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Re: Artemis II Launch Day Updates

#881

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sending people to the moon was never useful. We can get more done with robots, both cheaper and safer. There are plenty of more useful things we can do instead. okay what is more useful is a matter of opinion. you can disagree, but I stand by it

I've never understood this hyper-utilitarian perspective. It just seems divorced from what emotionally inspires most people. Most of what people find inspiring doesn't directly provide a lot of objective utility, and is often quite dangerous for the individuals who choose to participate. Reaching the highest peaks in the last century, antarctic expeditions, pushing the limits of racing vehicles, attempting a sub two…

I also don't understand why people get their whole identity wrapped up in watching people play a kids game. (football, baseball...). Sure playing is fun, but watching someone else play

Re: Artemis II Launch Day Updates

#882
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We lived ~60 miles North of the Cape when I was a young boy, and watching the Saturn V's go on the way to the moon was a forming experience.

80 miles for me! I was a Space Shuttle era kid though. Saw the Challenger disaster during my lunchtime. And then on perpetual replay for the rest of the week on WESH/WCPX/WFTV most likely. Even still, just knowing we were launching all those people into space was awe-inspiring.

TBH, I was probably closer to 80 miles than 60 before we moved. to Daytona... Flagler Beach. You?

Re: Artemis II Launch Day Updates

#883

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So landing on the moon triggered a reduction in global rates of poverty? do you have any research or citations for this claim?

Vaccines, Mobile Phones, Internet, GPS (How do you think container ships navigate), High yield seeds/fertilizers and the Green Revolution, Weather Satellites, I could go on. It's really getting tiring repeating this stuff over and over again to the anti-space crowd.

Vaccines were invented during the moon landings? High yield seeds and fertilizers are due to the moon landings? The internet was invented due to the moon landings?

You didn't provide any citations that show any of the above has lifted people out of poverty. Please go on, and maybe tell us how ships navigated the seas before GPS, sounds impossible.

There are no causal connections between going to the moon and lifting global poverty. In fact, the money spent on going to a dried up satellite could have lifted people out of poverty.

Re: Artemis II Launch Day Updates

#885
post #265
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope it does. But every day that goes by I feel that the future is just going to be like what's shown in the expanse series

My personal take for a long time has been that the primary driver of most war today is boredom. War today is undertaken for entertainment. It's a special kind of entertainment that taps into deep brain stem circuits and provides a false but deeply resonating sense of purpose and meaning. When you hear that "people don't have a sense of meaning," it means their brain stem is not feeling the tribal loyalty emotions con…

I think this is skewed by your perception of how frequent wars actually are. If your idea of a typical war is Trump bombing Iran, well, I disagree with your assertion, but it's at least a colorable argument. But those kinds of wars between clearly defined states are actually incredibly rare.

Your typical war, however, looks more like the M23 rebels (backed by Rwanda, though they deny this) fighting the Congo state. Take a more expansive definition of war to include armed conflict in general, and the typical case looks more like the ELN in Colombia. Almost all of these kinds of conflicts can be fairly analyzed as fighting for control of resources, chiefly land and the people or the rents that can be derived from de facto control of that land.

Re: Artemis II Launch Day Updates

#886

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sending people to the moon was never useful. We can get more done with robots, both cheaper and safer. There are plenty of more useful things we can do instead. okay what is more useful is a matter of opinion. you can disagree, but I stand by it

It may not be useful but we'll do it anyway. And then it may come to have utility.

> then it may come to have utility.

Maybe, but at what cost? What are we not getting/doing because we are doing this instead? This is of course an unanswerable question, but it is the correct response here - you are getting so focused on what this might gain that you forget that other things also have gains. Time is not unlimited, people who are working on space could work on something different instead, but they cannot do both.

Re: Artemis II Launch Day Updates

#887

It's good to see NASA finally do something beyond navel gazing. Nonetheless, calling this flight historic is a stretch. Other than flying a few miles further than Apollo 13, it will actually accomplish less than Apollo 8 did 57 years ago.

what about the fact that it is a joint effort between different agencies?

Doesn't mean a thing in the grand scheme of things. Nor does having a woman, a minority, and a Canadian. Those are irrelevant. It makes some people feel good and others virtuous, but it doesn't further the mission one iota. Show me technical accomplishments, regardless of the crew composition and the agencies involved. The crew can all be women or minorities, I don't care. I'm looking for progress and accomplishments, not virtue signaling.

Re: Artemis II Launch Day Updates

#888
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Global rates of poverty are 83% lower than they were in 1969 when we landed on the moon. Obvious post hoc fallacy

It’s only a fallacy if the purported facts are fallacious. And in the case of lifting most of humanity out of poverty, two things are responsible: capitalism and technology. You can argue that China is a communist state, but it’s the allocation of capital to things that matter that has enable China to thrive.

> And in the case of lifting most of humanity out of poverty, two things are responsible: capitalism and technology.

You alleged above it was due to the moon landings that people were lifted out of poverty. Do you understand the difference here?

Re: Artemis II Launch Day Updates

#889

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Project Gemini has entered the chat." Did I do that right? Anyway, what are we talking about?

> Did I do that right? Unless you’re trying to make a reference to the Gemini programme. No.

I guess I was a little distracted by the tangent to starship over the orion/Artemis I was disappointed to see that after all these years NASA trying the old trick again and hoping people get excited.

As for spaceX and starship, I haven't kept up with it but I trust it's still putting NASA to shame wrt setting the state of the art.

Re: Artemis II Launch Day Updates

#890

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, the fact that nobody can say how many fuel launches a moonshot is going to take, but at least 12? And that the lunar orbit chosen due to available energy makes rapid extraction impossible?

"How many fuel launches" is the error margin. If they get less performance or more mission payload, they can add tanker launches. If they get more performance or less mission payload, they can remove tanker launches. People ran into "the design is 10% heavier than planned for unexpected engineering reasons and now we have to make hard choices" on space missions far less complex than a literal Moon landing. SpaceX has…

So many (perceived) problems with spaceflight and building moon bases and the like are solved by simply making the process and cost of launching faster, easier and cheaper; the problem that NASA has always had is that each launch, even with the reusable space shuttles, cost billions and took years of engineering, planning, etc. To the point where yesterday's launch was done with (what I perceive to be) salvaged parts where the engineering was done decades ago, because engineering something new would be too expensive and take too long.

Sure, don't fix what isn't broken and all - *nix tools are decades old too after all - but still.

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