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Comment by izzydata

7 hours ago

People are struggling to afford every day life and we are surrounding by crazy things every day like cellphones talking to satellites in space. On any objective measure it is definitely amazing to send humans to the moon, but there are more pressing issues for most people right now.

If we as a species had more of our ducks in a row we may be able to better celebrate this as the achievement for humankind that it is.

28 comments

izzydata

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someothherguyy  4 hours ago

For some numbers:

The Artemis program has an estimated cost of 93B since 2012 [0].

As a comparison:

"Between 2020 and 2024, $771 billion in Pentagon contracts went to just five firms: Lockheed Martin ($313 billion), RTX (formerly Raytheon, $145 billion), Boeing ($115 billion), General Dynamics ($116 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($81 billion). In comparison, the total diplomacy, development, and humanitarian aid budget, excluding military aid, was $356 billion."[1]

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#cite_note-NASA...

1. https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/economic/us-federa...

lurking_swe  6 hours ago

people have been struggling to afford every day life for decades. So that’s nothing new. Unless only people in the 1st world count as people lol.

You’re either emotionally consumed by the human struggle or not, it’s a personality thing - in my opinion. You’re allowed to be poor and a nerd, unless I missed the memo. I’ve met poor and wealthy people that are excited by space.

  • didgetmaster  5 hours ago

    Struggling to meet our basic needs is not a recent phenomenon. It has been a part of the human condition for millenia, not just decades.

    Some people think that if we can just eliminate our 'struggles' by building AI tools to do the hard thinking or robots to perform all our labor; that civilization would become some kind of utopia. I don't believe that. Progress happens when we do hard things.

arscan  6 hours ago

I don’t think people are spending their time on more pressing issues. I think they are just are hooked on an endless stream of content that is built for addiction and is always within arms reach.

verzali  1 hour ago

America has spent more than the equivalent of Artemis blowing up yet another middle eastern country for no good reason. I know which I'd rather get the money.

remarkEon  5 hours ago

I see that "whitey on the moon" is back.

If it makes you feel better, the amount of money the United States spends on space is a very small percentage compared overall entitlement spending. There is always going to be some level of inequality, so your maxim that we should only spend money on space exploration when those problems are solved just isn't workable. The enormous amount of money the United States spends on "solving" inequality and poverty begs the question of if that's even an effective or efficient allocation of resources in the first place.

  • Eisenstein  2 hours ago

    1. Do you think that it is the mission that is misguided, or the methods, in "solving" inequality and poverty?

    2. What would you rather the money be spent on?

raverbashing  6 hours ago

Yeah your life must really suck if you only care about immediate hurdles and pains without making room for hope or creativity

bluegatty  6 hours ago

nah, it just seems like that on Twitter. We have more prosperity by far than we've ever had in history, this is a time to celebrate.

We have our 'ducks in a row' more now than in the 1960's when we went to the moon because of a cold war and nuclear annihilation / escalation.

My grandparents were born on farms with no electricity, plumbing, there was no real 'police' no social services, no healthcare, no antibiotics, 10% of children did not make it past age 1. That's in living memory.

Despite the insanity on the news, it's mostly drama, and we still have more people coming out of abject poverty than ever.

We have 'modern world problems', they are real problems for sure, but they are of a different scale entirely.

Frankly, it may never even get that much better as we may be hitting diminishing marginal returns on 'progress' - we now have to figure out how to live 'long lives and stay healthy'.

It's a fine time to go to the moon.

  • izzydata  5 hours ago

    It is a fine time to be going to the moon, but we could be doing multiple productive things at the same time. It just doesn't surprise me that there are so many people that are not caring so much about this.

    • bluegatty  5 hours ago

      We are doing multiple productive things. Zillions of them.

      They are like 50 companies making robots right now that will soon do a lot of work.

      There are advances in many fields.

      Headlines are dominated by something else, the 'news' is not a good reflection of reality.

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