← Back to context

Comment by idiotsecant

4 days ago

I guess probably we should stop spaceflight until we can go back in time and buy you a textbook.

Spaceflight is cool. Its a awesome thing that people can exist outside our gravitational well. We don't need to solve every possible problem before we do anything cool.

Almost all of what makes spaceflight “cool” today is inherited excitement and nostalgia, most of it unearned by the current generation of space endeavors.

Apollo was a humanity-defining undertaking. Repeating the same 60 years later with outdated technology at outrageous costs for pork barrel spending, while far superior launch systems have been available for a decade, is about as far away from being “cool” as I can imagine.

The average ESA environmental observation satellite is a lot cooler (and a lot more important) than this launch.