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Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

theguardian.com

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Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#3
post #2

Huge congratulations to IM. Landing on the Moon is extremely difficult, despite what playing KSP will condition you to think. For them to successfully land on the Moon is a huge milestone. Now to get people back there... maybe someday.

I still just cannot wrap my mind around how we could get people there, and then all this time later have lost that ability. What happened?

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#4
post #2

Huge congratulations to IM. Landing on the Moon is extremely difficult, despite what playing KSP will condition you to think. For them to successfully land on the Moon is a huge milestone. Now to get people back there... maybe someday.

I still just cannot wrap my mind around how we could get people there, and then all this time later have lost that ability. What happened?

And apparently live video..

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#5
post #2

Huge congratulations to IM. Landing on the Moon is extremely difficult, despite what playing KSP will condition you to think. For them to successfully land on the Moon is a huge milestone. Now to get people back there... maybe someday.

I still just cannot wrap my mind around how we could get people there, and then all this time later have lost that ability. What happened?

It's largely a matter of incentive. In the sixties, the US had an incentive to prove that it had more advanced technology than the USSR. Once we proved we could land on the moon, the novelty quickly wore off for the public, which influenced Congress's decision to cut funding for the Apollo program.

We also haven't returned to the moon yet because of cost, I would imagine.

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#6
post #2

Huge congratulations to IM. Landing on the Moon is extremely difficult, despite what playing KSP will condition you to think. For them to successfully land on the Moon is a huge milestone. Now to get people back there... maybe someday.

I still just cannot wrap my mind around how we could get people there, and then all this time later have lost that ability. What happened?

"Lost the ability" is an odd way of putting it. "Lost the budget" is better.

Ideally we wouldn't have to pick and choose, but since I wasn't US Dictator during the 90s, the Hubble Space Telescope + a lot of probes throughout the solar system was probably more impactful for overall scientific discovery than the counterfactual where NASA invested in continued moon landings.

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#9
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still just cannot wrap my mind around how we could get people there, and then all this time later have lost that ability. What happened?

It's largely a matter of incentive. In the sixties, the US had an incentive to prove that it had more advanced technology than the USSR. Once we proved we could land on the moon, the novelty quickly wore off for the public, which influenced Congress's decision to cut funding for the Apollo program. We also haven't returned to the moon yet because of cost, I would imagine.

But there is plenty of Helium 3 to mine on the Moon, to justify the cost.

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#10
post #7

Impressive feat. Got nervous when they couldn't contact the device, but turns out they did made history. I might be wrong, but from my research it seem like they did this with $118 million paid by NASA. India did it with around $74 million, for reference.

$74m surely?
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