It's more than that. The thought of us doing something incredible like establishing a permanent moon base feels more depressing than inspiring these days because enshitification will be baked into it right from the planning stages

That goddamn scandal. The persecution of minorities and the warmongering. The socio-political climate now is far worse compared to the Apollo missions then conducted at the time the US government was unpopular mainly because of the Vietnam War.

The arguments against Artemis aren't surprising as these also mirror the skepticism towards the Apollo program.

The "positives" don't usually translate to any sort of benefit for the average person. Yes, I am aware that there are exceptions to this.

It also wasnt even really a bright spot because it was being actively used as a propaganda story for Trump.

We should have gone to mars by now, but all the funds went to child raping fascists and bombs apparently

Could the same thing be said about the Apollo program in the 60's?

I'm betting a corporate slavery jihad of environmental degradation.

The Expanse sheds one I believe to be a plausible picture of our future, although it seems optimistic on some fronts.

This ^ I get it, the images we are getting back ARE stunning, but is there anything about this mission that demanded a manned spaceflight? Couldn't we/didn't we already do the same thing remotely with the other planets?

I'm glad we're getting back to it, and I'm happy to see anything other "We're sending mice up on the space shuttle... AGAIN!"

But even Artemis IV where they are planning a moon landing has been done.

Let me know when the first colony is formed, then I can get excited.

I was far more excited to see the solar panels in Syria.

NASA is too focused on creating a moon base which is dumb as shit.

Why dumb?

Even if you want a Mars base eventually, it seems like a good idea to get some practice building a similar moon base first. Many of the problems will be the same, but it will be much easier, cheaper, and safer to learn them in a place which is only days away from resupply.

same, i think thats why its not interesting, the WHITE house has created so many distractions that the nasa isnt even that noticable, just a temporarly headlines that would be instantly forgotten in a few days.

Advancements in space can advance humanity on Earth. Like practical solar panels were first created for a satellite. There are experiments that need to be done in low G or zero G like for material science, a permanent moon base could accelerate those advancements. Also experiments on bio printing living cells have been done on the ISS, zero G makes it easier to scaffold the cells into a structure. Maybe a moon base makes it easier to grow organs on an industrial scale.

One of the ways it could benefit humanity is to offload the destruction of our environment in pursuit of rare earth metals, natural gases, to a moon or planet where the environment does not support life.

Strip mining and fracking are actively and rapidly destroying our planet. Stopping those activities here would be a massive improvement to our chances of survival on Earth into the future.

There are an endless number of problems here on earth. However while we can make a difference, establish a trend, we can never fix them. It’s a losing battle. We fix at least as many problems by improving technology, civilization.

Let’s take refrigerators. There are way too many people without adequate food and there always will be. We can fix the excesses, we can set a trend but we will never end hunger. However technology advances, overall societies become wealthier, and now at least in developed countries almost everyone has access to refrigeration. Trying to help the hungry doesn’t get us there, shifting the whole society forward does.

We may not have concrete ideas how Artemis can shift society forward but in general big technology challenges do

I was also uninterested until seeing the astronauts out there. I saw a comment that sums it up: "turns out, I'm not tired of space. I'm tired of Musk and Bezos and corporate bullshit in space."

I'm still bummed that the mission was reduced to a photographic flyby without any meaningful interaction. There's nothing especially triumphant about this trip as it was already known to be achievable. That makes me assume there's something hidden, such as secret probes, positive PR for the US government in the most heinous of times, more cover up for the epstein files, slapping the orange name on yet more activities despite robbing the NASA budget, etc.

But, for an hour or two spread across the last few days, it was still beautiful seeing 4 humans being genuine people. They even got the "end of vacation" sad feeling 24 hours before return. I can't decry the loss of NASA funding and be disinterested in this. I have to beleive this mission will inspire the next generation there's still something valuable in bigger projects with cooperation and scientific endeavors. I don't think we'll match the power of the first lunar landing anytime soon, but from the Apollo and Shuttles to now, we've just been subjected to corporate spaceflight and dick swinging competitions about whose craft docks more often. For just one more time, we don't have a billionaire's name visibly attached.

Yeah I've been thinking maybe this is it -- it's still technically impressive and I have nothing but admiration for the teams who have pored their sweat and tears into making sure it's safe and reliable, but it's kind of a 'so what?' moment.

If they landed and did stuff that was more complex than we can send robots to do it would have been pretty awesome!

Yeah, but the point is to test the technology which will eventually get people back onto the moon, set up permanent off-Earth habitation, etc. Which in turn will/could be part of future steps for further-reaching exploration. I still think it has value as a building block.

what is even the point of it?

No one's been on this spacecraft design while it's in space before, and it's got some kinks that need to be worked out (like the issues with the toilet); it's a shakedown flight to figure out what goes wrong when people are actually on board. That's not really all that sexy compared to a moon landing, but testing your support systems in practice really needs to happen before you do more ambitious things with the craft.

Yep, I am definitely more excited by space science news. I'd say I'm just more mature now and interested in more grounded "pure" science, but it wasn't too long ago that I was giggling like an idiot as we watched the 2 falcon heavy boosters landing back on their dual pads at KSC, so I don't think it's entirely just a loss of child-like wonder (though it's wearing thin these days, gotta admit).

It's impressive in the sense that it's the second time they launched a mostly clean sheet heavy-lift rocket. It took spaceX dozens of exploding rockets before they could even think about putting humans on one. Just getting something that insanely complex working the first time is kind of incredible, and I say this as an engineer who works on much simpler things that almost never work perfectly the first time.