Why Doesn't Anybody Realize We're Going Back to the Moon? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Doesn't Anybody Realize We're Going Back to the Moon?

#151

Post by krapp » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

ajam1507 wrote: post #146

razorbeamz wrote: post #90

It hasn't been very well marketed. NASA lost a lot of their budget and they're not spending so much on outreach. I didn't know it was happening at all until launch day.

They should be spending exactly $0 on marketing. They're sending people around the moon in a giant rocket ship. It sells itself.

>They're sending people around the moon in a giant rocket ship. It sells itself.

It actually doesn't. It didn't even "sell itself" the first time. Apollo required a massive national propaganda campaign framing the space race in terms of an existential war against communist annihilation to get people to even care - and people still stopped caring once the news stopped being sensational.

Re: Why Doesn't Anybody Realize We're Going Back to the Moon?

#152

Post by vkou » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 5:30 PM UTC

JohnTHaller wrote: post #80

breve wrote: post #34

> The Apollo program was the triple-back-handspring exclamation mark on a century of American technological transformations, during which Americans had electrified their cities, filled their streets with cars and their skies with airplanes, split atoms, and invented digital computers. And look at America now. Erratic, belligerent, applying tariffs on a whim, threatening to annex Canada and Greenland, threatening to l…

Don't forget blowing up boats we think might be drugs and then purposely killing the survivors on the orders of the self-proclaimed US Secretary of War. "no quarter, no mercy"

> "no quarter, no mercy"

Which is exactly how him and his friends should be dealt with by the courts.

Re: Why Doesn't Anybody Realize We're Going Back to the Moon?

#153

Post by Desafinado » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 5:34 PM UTC

It's hard to get excited about an organization spending ?? on a pointless mission that's happening because of organizational inertia when kids don't have functional textbooks at school.

Re: Why Doesn't Anybody Realize We're Going Back to the Moon?

#154

Post by abdelhousni » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 6:17 PM UTC

metalman wrote: post #4

abdelhousni wrote: post #2

Some people may think it's "Fake news"... Seriously, I guess people are more concerned of the damages and crimes done by the US Trump government and its effects on earth.

it is at a minimum, semantic missalignment, as they are most defintly not going " to the moon", but are going to take a huge swing by at a huge speed, because they dont have the fuel to do a burn into a circular LLO (low lunar orbit),and then get home, and are realy just slingshoting back to earth. wish them luck in that though.

I just saw the NASA simulation, it is indeed terrific and also risky. I hope they keep safe.

Re: Why Doesn't Anybody Realize We're Going Back to the Moon?

#155

Post by Gagarin1917 » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 6:37 PM UTC

sph wrote: post #150

Gagarin1917 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you have been uninterested in Apollo at the time because of the Vietnam war? Or are you maybe just generally uninterested in space exploration?

There was no social media and high-speed internet in your pocket during the Vietnam war. We are literally bombarded with information every waking moment of our lives, and consume more highly-emotional information to take a break from too much information.

Which is why allowing oneself to appreciate something as positive and inspiring as the Artemis Program is so important these days.

Re: Why Doesn't Anybody Realize We're Going Back to the Moon?

#156

Post by poulpy123 » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 7:37 PM UTC

"Why isn't everyone as obsessed as me about my hobbies?"

Well maybe because the context here is not great and we don't have much time and energy to focus on these useless endeavors

Re: Why Doesn't Anybody Realize We're Going Back to the Moon?

#157

Post by palata » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 8:55 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #147

majkinetor wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we are throwing so much resources at something that we already know we can do. No, "we" knew how to do it with 10x more money and people on the board, in a very unsafely manner. It was a few times muscle flex and thats why it stopped. Making entire thing routine, cheap and safe is something else, and "we" don't know yet how to do that, or we would have at least few scientists constantly on the Moon. It's a differen…

Yeah, I suppose it is as if we had stopped at the Wright brother's first flight. "Hey, humans flew, cool, now let's get on with a Great War or something…" While there are many very bad problems on the Earth, this is something that can make me feel a little better about mankind, perhaps give me hope? And I think I would be less happy if we were not doing it.

> I suppose it is as if we had stopped at the Wright brother's first flight.

I disagree. Building planes had obvious potential. "If I could fly like a bird, then I could go much faster to some places" seems like a straightforward one.

What is the obvious useful consequence of sending humans to the Moon? To me this is more like teaching a monkey to fly with a paraglider. It's very impressive and very cool, but I don't know that it brings more than that.

But in the spirit of the ONE argument I see over and over around here, I guess it would be something like: "by teaching monkeys to fly paragliders, it helps us design paragliders for lighter people, and because those trained monkeys were so expensive, we may develop new, safer fabrics that could then be reused in many places. If the brilliant people who work on this project were not doing this, they would probably be bureaucrats or financiers, and nobody would EVER work on developing new fabrics".

Well... I'm not convinced.

Re: Why Doesn't Anybody Realize We're Going Back to the Moon?

#158

Post by ponector » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 9:09 PM UTC

palata wrote: post #11

I grew up admiring the Apollo mission and the likes. Nowadays, I recognise that it is heavy engineering, but I am not so impressed by the fact that we are throwing so much resources at something that we already know we can do. In fact, we have had humans surviving in space for decades now. It's costing a lot, it's not bringing much. But more than that: we have much more important problems to solve, starting with our…

I would rather be watching four humans travelling to the moon than four aircraft carriers travelling to the Gulf.

Re: Why Doesn't Anybody Realize We're Going Back to the Moon?

#159

Post by burnt-resistor » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

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Re: Why Doesn't Anybody Realize We're Going Back to the Moon?

#160

Post by Ferret7446 » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 10:06 PM UTC

ottah wrote: post #139

majkinetor wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we are throwing so much resources at something that we already know we can do. No, "we" knew how to do it with 10x more money and people on the board, in a very unsafely manner. It was a few times muscle flex and thats why it stopped. Making entire thing routine, cheap and safe is something else, and "we" don't know yet how to do that, or we would have at least few scientists constantly on the Moon. It's a differen…

Everyone has a right to feel about this however they please. In my opinion, it's an extravagant waste of shared government resources, from a state that is underserving it's citizen's basic needs. I for one am angry at the billions of dollars and engineering capacity put into a vanity project that doesn't improve the daily lives of anyone besides people selling rockets.

Perhaps, but I'm more angry at the 100+ billion gone to fraud in California. This is very far down the list of government "waste" to be worth giving an ounce of outrage about.