Earlier quoted context omitted.
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'…
"far-side of the moon" There is no dark side.
Artemis II crew see first glimpse of far side of Moon [video]
411–420 of 480 posts
Re: Artemis II crew see first glimpse of far side of Moon [video]
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
SpaceX did not receive government subsidies. Government contracts, yes, but those are payments for services delivered, not subsidies or handouts.
Re: Artemis II crew see first glimpse of far side of Moon [video]
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
We call it "dark" because we are sloppy. The same side of the moon always faces the Earth. If the same side of the Earth always faced the moon, then only one hemisphere would be able to see the moon. Since you can see the moon from everywhere on Earth (not at the same time...), we know that the same side of the Earth does not always face the moon. Unless you're thinking of the "outside" of the Earth. /s
I've just been reading Narnia stories to my son and lots of the language seems dated and initially confusing but very descriptive and more poetic. Even though that was just in the mid-20th century.
Re: Artemis II crew see first glimpse of far side of Moon [video]
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
do you think the current environment is more or less just than it was during the 1969 moon landing?
I think the tech world is fundamentally difference, though I'm not old enough to experience it in '69. I don't believe we had tech moguls who built enormous wealth and realized they could by the influence they couldn't muster with social influence, and that has made the world net-worse.
Didn't this just describe the robber barons of the Gilded Age? Moguls and oligarchs of the day, yes. Amassed their fortunes on the emerging frontier technology of the time, I'd say so. Wielded enormous power over political discourse and essentially owned the law makers of the day. Rhymes, for sure.
It doesn't really matter whether you live in a democracy if the the very issues that are even allowed to be voted on are decided by an elite, wealthy and politically connected group.
Re: Artemis II crew see first glimpse of far side of Moon [video]
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you always felt the same way about Apollo and the Vietnam War? Or are you considering this for the first time?
I’m finding this a lot. I always found the scrutiny of Trump to be quite over the top and never really found him to be any more corrupt or awful than any other politician, just that he was openly anti establishment. Which is what I guessed was the reason for the hyper scrutiny. I ask some people about Iraq and Afghanistan and they never really seem to know as much or have as much detail as they do with how illegal th…
Russian invaded Ukraine, and people are on board with helping Ukraine defend itself - because Russia is trying to reconstitute the soviet union, and Ukraine is just one stop along the way.
Re: Artemis II crew see first glimpse of far side of Moon [video]
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
He hasn't killed anybody. Nor has he been charged with any crimes. google sez: "One estimate suggests Tesla’s impact, through emission reductions, has saved over 20,000 lives globally." google sez: "A 2022 report suggested that Tesla and other electric vehicle technologies (which often include enhanced safety features) have contributed to saving thousands of lives." Empathy is judged by what one is willing to freely…
Here's the deal. I feel the same way about it as you do Walter. I don't really care about all those people who will die because of Musk's actions at Doge with USAID. Poor Americans, poor Africans, In the context of getting humanity to space are all just fuel for the fire -- just like the slaves in mittelwerk and Von Braun. You don't need to convince me that you care about human life and that Elon Musk does too with s…
Re: Artemis II crew see first glimpse of far side of Moon [video]
#417I like how most people's reactions at this point are "yeah, whatever", as if it's every day that humans observe the far side of the moon with a naked eye through a window :). We do know what it looks like and we have photos from the surface, yes, but seeing the reaction from real people who're actually there does hit different, at least for me
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 q…
In general, pork is an overstated problem. We've had far less so-called pork in legislation the past 20 years or so, but that reality has actually contributed to grid-lock and dis-empowerment of the legislature. Pork often functioned as a kind of grease on the wheels and, while gross, gave legislators incentives to bargain and levers with which to do it. The war on pork is one part of the story of how the US congress has calcified.
Re: Artemis II crew see first glimpse of far side of Moon [video]
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
The pork funnel is going to exist unless something major changes; so I'd rather get moonshots out of the pork.
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.
We tend to look at pork as unambiguously bad because it's wasteful or often has more than a whiff of corruption, but the picture for political scientists is more mixed.
Turns out it's easier to bargain with legislators when policy can give them a win in their districts or states. It greases the wheels for negotiation or provides levers to flip opposition party members. Legislatures often become more sclerotic and dysfunctional after reforms to pork barrel spending.
I don't want to call pork good, but there are real trade-offs to pork-free government that we haven't figured out how to solve any other way
Re: Artemis II crew see first glimpse of far side of Moon [video]
#419Far side != Dark side
In traditional definitions, Far side = Dark side
If, when you say Dark side, you mean the side not receiving sunlight, then you're using a less informed, though more literal, definition of 'dark'.