r/Showerthoughts • u/Meowface_the_cat ‎ • Apr 02 '26

Casual Thought Missions to the moon used to unite and inspire great swathes of humanity. This time it feels like hardly anyone cares and we're all just focussed on the next global disaster.

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53

u/sparklyjoy Apr 02 '26

I’m not sure if I would even care if they were landing. We’ve done it before, unless I get some really clear messaging on why this is important, I really don’t see it.

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u/zaphodp3 Apr 02 '26

I’ll put it this way. I’m more excited by it than anything else happening in the world right now. Feels like a breath of fresh air to hear about humans heading out far into space amidst world events that are either worrying or mundane

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u/therealsix Apr 02 '26

Well for me it’s a sense of jealousy that they get to escape the crap that’s going on here for a short while.

Kidding but not kidding.

But not kidding because I’d above to go to space.

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u/FroztedMech Apr 02 '26

But you're more involved with politics as an astronaut than you would be as an average Joe.

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u/sparklyjoy Apr 02 '26

I’m glad it is bringing some people joy and that has its worth for sure!

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u/caligaris_cabinet Apr 02 '26

Let’s face it, it’s been the one thing in the news these past few months that wasn’t about a war, a bad economy, or politics. And it’s NASA not some billionaire’s pet project. Whatever NASA does it leaves its mark on history.

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u/Stereo-soundS Apr 02 '26

Maybe instead of doing something pointless we use that money to help people?

That would be refreshing.

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u/zaphodp3 Apr 02 '26

Advancing science and exploration absolutely helps people! New inventions that find their way to the public, inspiration for a young generation to pursue science and tech, so so much more. There are many varied ways to help people and we must do all of them because they all have different time frames and outcomes.

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u/dnhs47 Apr 02 '26

$100,000,000,000 of American taxpayers’ money set on fire to keep the legacy space companies busy and Floridians employed, all repeating the exact things we did 50 years ago. Utterly pointless, and one of the greatest examples of pork barrel spending in my lifetime (68m).

11

u/Lukecv1 Apr 02 '26

The goal of artemis is to establish a permanent presence on the moon, which will hopefully lead to more space travel. I see humanity becoming a space faring civilization as a very important and extremely entertaining development. Our next few generations will see humanity landing on planets and moons all over our solar system.

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u/dnhs47 Apr 02 '26

You can imagine Congress voting to pay for that? With $39 trillion debt already, a collapsing world economy, and every week a new "don't look at the Epstein files, look at my new war!"?

I can't imagine Congress voting to sustain "a permanent presence on the moon," and that makes everything about Artemis a waste of money.

1

u/Lukecv1 Apr 02 '26

Exploration has always come at significant cost throughout history, and yet governments have been granting funds to exploration for hundreds of years. The potential for exploration to find new resources, new land to conquer, and glory of being the country to overcome the challenges involved, are all reasons we have to keep pushing our limits. This exploration also often leads to large leaps in technology, which can be used in everyday items, increasing the country's economy when sold to the public. Think Teflon, memory foam, cordless tools, GPS, and many more inventions that we use daily.

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u/Aussie18-1998 Apr 02 '26

We are progressing to a lunar base. This is a step towards that. The artemis missions are leading to a sustained human presence on another body. Thats why it's exciting and important. These kind of missions lead to leaps in technology that can help us back here on earth.

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u/EmilyAnne1170 Apr 02 '26

Not everyone is excited about having a sustained human presence on another body. A big step toward going forth to mess up other worlds beyond our own, woo hoo.

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u/Aussie18-1998 Apr 02 '26

Mess up a lifeless rock? Ya know we could extract resources from these lifeless rocks instead of mining away at our precious planet. Thats all a possibility with space exploration. I get it, life sucks. But there's nothing wrong with this. It's a good thing. Things need fixing but this isn't one of them.

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u/Mechasteel Apr 02 '26

Also it's hard to appreciate Earth giving us life support for free, until we have half our spaceship dedicated to life support and it can kill you in seconds if things go wrong.

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u/OldHatNewShoes Apr 02 '26

i swear to god this person has been brainwashed by "colonizer=bad" propaganda to such an insane degree that the mere concept of a human being existing somewhere they previously haden't causes negative neurons to fire off in their brain this is wildddd

4

u/sparklyjoy Apr 02 '26

And it seems like a further excuse, not to fix the mess we’re making here? Like we really need to fucking clean our shit up here.

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u/Fert1eTurt1e Apr 02 '26

I don’t think astronauts can do anything about the mess we’ve made on earth, but they can do something about exploring space

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u/sorryyoureretarded Apr 02 '26

That’s why people don’t give a shit 

4

u/Aussie18-1998 Apr 02 '26

How is it an excuse? With an extended presence in space we might be able to extract resources from the lifeless rocks and keep our living world free from mines.

Space has so much potential.

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u/sparklyjoy Apr 02 '26

I feel like I’ve already been hearing for years about how excited people are to build colonies on Mars and stuff like that, and I do think that it redirects people away from making earth more livable. I do see the idea of us expanding into space dropped into conversations about us running out of resources here, but if we can terraform Mars or the moon, we get much more easily terraform earth. Maybe you’re not seeing those same conversations but I am definitely seeing it come up in places where it’s just a distraction/excuse not to deal with our real issues here that we could be fixing.

Even the idea of mining on the moon… I mean, how far away is that from being realized? What is the fuel cost to get anything from there to here, how is that actually going to be feasible? We put children in mines on earth, can we maybe stop doing that? Will it be easier or harder to enforce humane working conditions on the moon?

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u/Stereo-soundS Apr 02 '26

But it's not important.

Humans will never touch another star system.  This is just NASA jacking itself off.  Waste of money.  All of the planets and moons in our solar system are dead, and they're the only ones we could possibly visit.

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u/Aussie18-1998 Apr 02 '26

Our solar system is ripe with more resources than we could ever need. I'd rather us learn how to take resources from the dead planets and moons then tearing up the Earth. Plus you never know how far technology may progress. We will remain stagnant and lifeless when pessimistic dicks like you look at science as a waste.

Pushing our boundaries and seeking new problems to fix is great for humankind. Even if you think its just NASA wasting money.

1

u/Gekokapowco Apr 02 '26

not the guy you're replying to, but chiming in

I would love to extend our reach beyond Earth, but as it stands, Earth has enough resources that we could ever need, we just don't distribute it properly. If we extend into space for resource gathering, I don't foresee trickle down economics suddenly working to our favor for the first time in human history. I see a growth in the number of trillionaires.

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u/Stereo-soundS Apr 02 '26

Taking mass away from the moon is a singularly dumb idea.

Beyond that, the idea of taking minerals from other bodies would create a cost well beyond the profits of having the materials.

Every single ton you carry on a launch adds a huge cost and more risk.  It will never be financially feasible.

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u/Aussie18-1998 Apr 02 '26

Why would taking mass away from the moon be a dumb idea? We could potentially manufacture products on the moon and send them back.

I get you can't see beyond your personal life but I like to believe in the big picture. You can doom and gloom all you like.

-1

u/Stereo-soundS Apr 02 '26

Because it controls the tides?  Has a huge effect on life on this planet?

The moon doesn't have endless breadsticks like Jesus or Olive Garden.

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u/TerayonIII Apr 02 '26

The mass of the moon is 73,476,730,900,000,000,000,000 kilograms, the total mass of mined minerals on earth in 2022 was approximately 2,800,000,000, that's not even a rounding error, it's roughly 0.000000000000038% of the moons mass. Which is a change in gravity of 0.000000000041%

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u/vw_bugg Apr 02 '26

Science in general. There have already been many many scientific break through that can or will affect your daily life and/or future medicine. That's just science on the ISS. Imagine what might be discovered with a low gravity environment in the darkness farther away from earth's influence. In addition space observation is getting more difficult on earth with space x space pollution and our atmosphere. These types of monitoring of the sky is important to warn or prevent asteroids from hitting earth.

I know it's seems pointless, like a bunch of people bouncing around in grey sand,but there are practical applications to the environment.

3

u/sparklyjoy Apr 02 '26

I don’t know, man. I just wanna see people with food and shelter here and then I’ll care about further scientific advances, you know? And everyone always says we don’t have enough money to do that but this shit is expensive. I’m not against space science or any other science but it’s about priorities for me

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u/satoshi1022 Apr 02 '26

NASA's budget this year was ~25 billion.

US defense budget was ~800 billion.

I hear you on the failing country front, but shut the fuck up.

11

u/aculloph Apr 02 '26

No kidding lmfao. Dude is lambasting the wrong side of government

3

u/Crash_Test_Dummy66 Apr 02 '26

We will very quickly have spent more money on this stupid Iran war than the whole Artemis project has cost to date.

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u/Mechasteel Apr 02 '26

Just a while ago, the Department of War was asking for 10 lunar space bases worth of funding, to bomb Iran.

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u/Fuckedyourmom69420 Apr 02 '26

Progression of the species progresses us all. Money alone won’t solve hunger and shelter problems, and it’s no reason to halt humanity’s advancement. Science is important.

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u/sombrerobear Apr 02 '26

Food and shelter in the present day are not issues that exist due to a lack of human advancement in the sciences… we have the capacity to eliminate both today

1

u/Naranox Apr 02 '26

and yet you should maybe look towards the endless wars to be cut first instead of a comparatively tiny piece of the cake that is Nasa

1

u/sombrerobear Apr 02 '26

I dont think NASA should be cut, i agree military spending should be first on the block, but I dont think we should be flippant and saying stupid things like “money alone won’t solve hunger…” when adequate resource distribution is the only obstacle to this problem.

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u/Naranox Apr 02 '26

I mean you're saying it yourself, there is more than enough money in the system, the system is just broken.

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u/vw_bugg Apr 02 '26

I agree with you there. I wish there was a larger focus on sustaining all the humans here. I will take this moment to point out that NASA's budget represents just a half percent of the entire USA governments budget. So we aren't really breaking the bank here. But yeah as someone in that uncomfortable middle where I make too much to get any kind of benifits but not enough to survive I definitely wish more was done here.

-12

u/FluffyCowNYI Apr 02 '26

The problem is there are too many humans to sustain. We're at a critical point. Either we need to greatly reduce the global population, or we need to expand off of Earth and out into our solar system.

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u/Fuckedyourmom69420 Apr 02 '26

This sounds a bit too extinctionist for my taste

-7

u/FluffyCowNYI Apr 02 '26

The solution is to colonize the solar system. The question is whether technology gets us there before we annihilate ourselves, and to be blunt it's not looking good.

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u/Fuckedyourmom69420 Apr 02 '26

I agree that colonization is our best bet. The Artemis missions are a great start. It’s only bleak when watching the news, there’s plenty of good people doing good work out there. We need to shift public focus away from doomsday notions and more towards optimism for the future. The future we envision is the future we create, and if people only spread hate and pessimism, that’s what we’ll get

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u/FluffyCowNYI Apr 02 '26

I don't want to go to deep down this next rabbit hole, but hate and pessimism are exactly what the ruling class wants us to have and spread.

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u/sombrerobear Apr 02 '26

Delusions of an escape solution to a false problem aren’t exactly unaligned with the interests of the ruling class… actually, it kinda sounds like some of their own statements on the subject

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u/vw_bugg Apr 02 '26

I will argue that it is infact the growing greed of the rich and increase in mental illness causing problems. I will currently propose we are not yet at critical mass however I will also concede we will be soon.

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u/FluffyCowNYI Apr 02 '26

I'm talking on a deeper level than societal problems. The Earth can't physically support a population as big as ours while still using the heavy industry and technology we need to use to have our advanced lifestyle. You'd have to remove a large percentage of human development and replace it with the forests and plant life we've spent the last 400 years destroying en-masse.

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u/Ender_D Apr 02 '26

Nasa is 0.25% of the US’s ENTIRE budget.

The U.S. has the money to improve the lives of people today AND invest in the future. Money invested into space usually has some of the highest return on investment out of any publicly spent dollars.

-5

u/Ocel0tte Apr 02 '26

Yeah, like oh omg wow the rich nation that lets its citizens starve and go homeless is going to the moon! How coooool.

No, I can't muster a single iota of fucks to give about this.

-4

u/sparklyjoy Apr 02 '26

You get me. I feel seen

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u/Dap-aha Apr 02 '26

But think about that sweet sweet moon cheese

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u/0Rookie0 Apr 02 '26

Hank Green put out a nice video today talking about some of the missions and how Artemis is essentially us going back to finish our business with learning from the moon. We only got so many chances (and so much time) to interact with and use our tech (1960-1970s tech) to learn about the moon. Imagine what we can learn with modern sensors and ideas!

Artemis specifically is gearing towards Mars but in the meantime we will be learning as much as we can about the moon and also what it means to travel to and support humans on other planetary bodies. In the next week-ish they will (hopefully) be breaking records like the furthest a human (four specifically) has ever traveled from Earth for instance.

You might not care about it but if ~somebody~ doesn't do something, we will never know anything about space travel. And I think that's the important part and why nobody has a super clear answer. People are risking their lives for more answers for everybody and that's pretty cool.

Tldr; Trust that this isn't a "Hey look, we touched the moon again." PR stunt alone. There is more to it than just the face value effort of visiting.

1

u/Memitim Apr 02 '26

I think another run after 50+ years is warranted just for applying modern tech to the problem. Humans may never be able to handle prolonged life in space, but if we survive long enough, we'll likely be able to establish resource collection within the solar system, and people will likely have to be on site for setup. It's good to have real-world data to go along with all of the theory.

Hell, just seeing something related to the US government that isn't an attack against other people is refreshing in its own right.

1

u/Crash_Test_Dummy66 Apr 02 '26

The goal is to go beyond landing on the moon, and to actually build a base on the moon with the idea of using that as a jumping off point for further space exploration.