alt.hn

4/2/2026 at 10:32:29 PM

Why Doesn't Anybody Realize We're Going Back to the Moon?

 https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/04/artemis-moon-launch-trump/686661/

by paulpauper

4/2/2026 at 11:21:28 PM

I grew up admiring the Apollo mission and the likes.

Nowadays, I recognise that it is heavy engineering, but I am not so impressed by the fact that we are throwing so much resources at something that we already know we can do. In fact, we have had humans surviving in space for decades now. It's costing a lot, it's not bringing much.

But more than that: we have much more important problems to solve, starting with our survival. Sure, sending robots to Mars is interesting, for science. Sending people to Mars is useless. Hoping to become an "interplanetary species" is preposterous. Thinking that Mars is "just a next step, but we'll go further" is absolutely insane.

Life is literally, measurably dying on Earth (the current mass extinction we are living in is happening orders of magnitude faster than the one that killed the dinosaurs). We have a huge energy problem, and more and more global instability.

Sure, watching four humans happily travelling to the Moon in a spaceship that literally does not need them is fun, like watching the Superbowl. And like for the Superbowl, there are big fans for whom it is the most important event of the year. However, most people don't care. We're not in 1969 anymore, now it's just a matter of wasting enough money for some people to have the time of their life.

by palata

4/3/2026 at 12:10:34 AM

> we are throwing so much resources at something that we already know we can do.

No, "we" knew how to do it with 10x more money and people on the board, in a very unsafely manner. It was a few times muscle flex and thats why it stopped.

Making entire thing routine, cheap and safe is something else, and "we" don't know yet how to do that, or we would have at least few scientists constantly on the Moon.

It's a difference between running a marathon and dropping dead, and doing it all the time.

> we have ...[other]... problems

This kind of thinking is nonsensical. With so many people around, there can be arbitrary group of people working on any kind of problem, without them needing to point to other groups as doing imaginary problems. You talk like unless everybody works on solving specific problem, its not going to get solved. Life simply doesn't work that way, mythical man month explained it well why for one, and then, you can't know what unexplored spaces bring (maybe game changing discoveries).

by majkinetor

4/3/2026 at 12:29:17 AM

I am not sure what you are trying to say. So people should be ecstatic about it because "it's almost the same thing, but this time the people having fun onboard are not taking remotely as much risk (other than NASA sending them knowing that the heat shield is unsafe), and the whole thing is a lot cheaper"? And then should we invest billions do go there in 3 days instead of 6, and expect that people will be impressed?

> With so many people around, there can be arbitrary group of people working on any kind of problem

Sure. It's just that this particular group of people does it with taxpayer money, and it's measurably not very useful. That money could go to... I don't know... feed people? Just one example.

> You talk like unless everybody works on solving specific problem, its not going to get solved.

Actually, if you read a bit about the problem that I am mentioning (i.e. our survival), I think it's relatively clear that "solving it properly" is impossible (that ship has sailed), and "solving it badly" will require sacrifices from pretty much everybody alive. We literally need everybody to change their lifestyle in order to have more chances of survival. And even that will not prevent very bad things from happening to most people.

And I am saying that being pretty optimistic about it. A shortcut is simply "we're pretty much screwed". And if you don't realise it, it's probably because you don't really understand the problem.

by palata

4/3/2026 at 2:08:20 PM

> That money could go to... I don't know... feed people? Just one example.

Or even keep it in NASA and do something where we actually learn something new. It's crazy to me that we've still only sent one craft to Neptune and it was nearly 40 years ago.

by padjo

4/3/2026 at 3:29:48 PM

Yeah, I suppose it is as if we had stopped at the Wright brother's first flight.

"Hey, humans flew, cool, now let's get on with a Great War or something…"

While there are many very bad problems on the Earth, this is something that can make me feel a little better about mankind, perhaps give me hope? And I think I would be less happy if we were not doing it.

by JKCalhoun

4/3/2026 at 8:55:40 PM

> I suppose it is as if we had stopped at the Wright brother's first flight.

I disagree. Building planes had obvious potential. "If I could fly like a bird, then I could go much faster to some places" seems like a straightforward one.

What is the obvious useful consequence of sending humans to the Moon? To me this is more like teaching a monkey to fly with a paraglider. It's very impressive and very cool, but I don't know that it brings more than that.

But in the spirit of the ONE argument I see over and over around here, I guess it would be something like: "by teaching monkeys to fly paragliders, it helps us design paragliders for lighter people, and because those trained monkeys were so expensive, we may develop new, safer fabrics that could then be reused in many places. If the brilliant people who work on this project were not doing this, they would probably be bureaucrats or financiers, and nobody would EVER work on developing new fabrics".

Well... I'm not convinced.

by palata

4/3/2026 at 2:33:23 PM

Everyone has a right to feel about this however they please. In my opinion, it's an extravagant waste of shared government resources, from a state that is underserving it's citizen's basic needs. I for one am angry at the billions of dollars and engineering capacity put into a vanity project that doesn't improve the daily lives of anyone besides people selling rockets.

by ottah

4/5/2026 at 10:06:05 PM

Perhaps, but I'm more angry at the 100+ billion gone to fraud in California. This is very far down the list of government "waste" to be worth giving an ounce of outrage about.

by Ferret7446

4/3/2026 at 12:59:12 AM

I’m not sure I’m following. Do most people not care because of the environment? Because that’s certainly not the case. Most people don’t care about the environment either.

Plus, do you not have any other interests besides the state of the world? No interest in entertainment or sports or tech news at all? I doubt that if you’re on HN.

My bet is that you wouldn’t care even if the world was objectively better than ever. You’re just coming up with excuses for why you don’t care. It’s fine if you don’t care, but it’s certainly not because of the state of the world. Otherwise you wouldn’t have any interests at all, including HackerNews.

by Gagarin1917

4/3/2026 at 5:41:50 AM

>Most people don’t care about the environment either.

They will start caring when it stops feeding them.

by tonyedgecombe

4/3/2026 at 9:16:43 AM

By then it will be a bit late.

by orwin

4/3/2026 at 10:08:46 AM

> You’re just coming up with excuses for why you don’t care.

I do care, as in "it's really cool" and I wish I could do it, too. I grew up being passionate about Apollo and the ISS.

But then I realised that the ISS is extraordinarily expensive and really doesn't bring much (still I would love to go!).

Worse even: the more popular space programs get, the more likely it is that SpaceX and the likes succeed in commercialising space and polluting more and more while doing it.

And another thing I have realised is that other people passionate about human spaceflights usually either don't give a shit about the fact that we are destroying the conditions of our survival or don't understand how bad the situation is. Look at the comments here on this topic: when someone questions the fact that manned space missions are scientifically useful (nobody ever denies that they are super cool), they get downvoted very fast. Nobody ever engages in a constructive discussion of "why they may, actually, be useful", other than by saying "but look, a fraction of the money we put into space programs helped develop some things that we could have developed without the space program, but I want to believe that we may have not developed them or much slower".

I do have hobbies indeed, but they don't involve throwing away billions of taxpayer money.

by palata

4/3/2026 at 10:12:59 AM

A big difference from 1960s and 70s in US is that 60s and 70s were a time of hope. Today that hope is not there. I am a scientist and I am stoked about moon missions. But I can see why todays people won't care about it much. Today mesaaging around space feels like rich peoples hobby and war weapns more than science.

Just see how stoked people were about JWST

by ghighi7878

4/3/2026 at 3:00:56 PM

The 1960s and 70s were extremely turbulent, chaotic times in the US - the Civil Rights era, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, multiple high-profile assassinations, etc. Apollo 8 launched at the end of 1968, which was a famously challenging year with many disruptive events.

Of course we have many challenges today as well, but I don't think the political environment is unprecedented. One could easily have argued in the 60s that we should be focusing on civil rights, ending the Vietnam War, etc. instead of going to the moon. In fact, much of the messaging around space in the 60s that allowed those missions to happen was based around "war weapons" and the Space Race with the Soviets.

One could argue the Apollo program itself was responsible for creating a lot of the hope you mention.

by npilk

4/3/2026 at 3:14:15 PM

> A big difference from 1960s and 70s in US is that 60s and 70s were a time of hope.

That’s… not true at all. You’re not a history guy, are you?

by Gagarin1917

4/3/2026 at 11:06:52 AM

There's no scientific reason to go back to the moon though.

It's just American chest thumping. I am interested in space, I would prefer we are spamming drones to explore the solar system. But science is boring.

by expedition32

4/3/2026 at 11:57:11 AM

Artemis is chest thumping. Sending robots on the other hand, very cool and interesting.

by ghighi7878

4/3/2026 at 3:17:43 PM

I thought the same thing. School kids would be interested if there were a space drone they could see and control from the classroom. This is definitely possible and far cheaper than Artemis. If we wanted kids to embrace STEM, you could have these available to every classroom year round.

by dtagames

4/2/2026 at 11:49:57 PM

> it's just a matter of wasting enough money for some people to have the time of their life.

That's such a cynical viewpoint. We are not doing this so that astronauts can have fun.

Yes, we have been screwing up our planet. On that note alone, we should develop capabilities to access resources beyond our planet. We could have made that same argument before we had the capability of launching satellites ("why are we wasting resources sending something to space that can only beep while people are dying of hunger?"). Nowadays, they are crucial if we want to have a chance at saving what remains of our planet.

Moon missions may not give an immediate benefit, but we have always benefitted from scientific and technological advancements from space missions. I doubt it's going to be different this time.

I'd certainly prefer countless more moon missions than a new aircraft carrier.

by outworlder

4/3/2026 at 12:04:23 AM

> That's such a cynical viewpoint. We are not doing this so that astronauts can have fun.

Don't get me wrong: I would totally love to be in their shoes, I completely understand why they want to do it.

> Nowadays, they are crucial

This is the typical "we need to do it because it's hard, and we don't know what we will learn from it, and BTW there are things we developed for the space program that got into civilian use" argument.

But it is flawed. For one, we know a lot more today than we did in the 50s. It would be like saying "in the past, they thought that the Earth was flat, so who knows, maybe tomorrow we will realise that humans are capable of telekinesis". The truth is... "most likely not".

> we have always benefitted from scientific and technological advancements from space missions. I doubt it's going to be different this time.

Let's play a game: you're not allowed to read about it. Off the top of your head, what technological advancements did the different space programs bring? Gemini? Apollo? Soyuz? The space shuttle? Mir? The ISS? And if you manage to give more than one correct answer to that, do you genuinely believe that it wouldn't have been possible to develop that technology without the corresponding space program? I doubt it.

It's like saying that we needed to spend billions developing a race car in order to improve the stability of a skateboard. Technically, that is wrong, so the only argument I heard to defend the idea was something like "because brilliant people would be interested in developing a race car, but if it wasn't possible, instead of improving skateboards, they would be bureaucrats or financiers". Not very convincing.

> I'd certainly prefer countless more moon missions than a new aircraft carrier.

Agreed. But that's not a justification for spending billions sending humans in space for their own pleasure (and not without risk) and for the pleasure of all the nerds who enjoy working on that (and I count myself as part of those nerds).

by palata

4/3/2026 at 8:33:01 AM

> Off the top of your head, what technological advancements did the different space programs bring? Gemini? Apollo? Soyuz? The space shuttle?

Tang

by lurquer

4/3/2026 at 4:47:57 AM

While I agree with the sentiment that sending manned missions to the Moon is kinda useless, unfortunately diverting those money to "noble purposes" is an utopia because that's not how things work.

In practice if those billions don't fund NASA programs they go into making some billionaires richer, Oracle laying off 30,000 people to fund data centers that will be obsolete by the time they are ready and similar stuff. Not a dime towards noble goals of humanity.

by MichaelRo

4/3/2026 at 10:13:20 AM

Well NASA cut off on environment programs, I guess the money wouldn't have to go very far.

And to be fair, Artemis contributes to making some billionaires richer. Sending humans to space has always been a great PR stunt to convince the people that they should continue accepting that the taxpayer money gets used for space programs. Turns out that in 2026, space programs are more commercial and less about science. SpaceX is all about commercialising space and making... ahem... one billionaire richer.

by palata

4/3/2026 at 4:12:26 AM

The Apollo program had a big impact on the development of integrated circuits, turning software engineering into a real discipline, and fly-by-wire technology. Could this have happened without? Probably yes, these technologies aready somewhat existed, but the program pushed them much harder than they would have done otherwise. Same thing for later space missions, they pushed technology to the limits of the time.

A good example here is solar panels. They were invented before the space race, but for what, why do you need them on earth? We had cheap oil and fossil fuels, nobody cared about renewables. But for the first 50 years after they were invented satellites was what kept them alive, as it made sense to use that technology there. That gave them a real use case, which continued investment and development into them.

I doubt today we would have the same level of satellite technology today if the space race didn't happen, so it's unlikely we would have the same level of solar panels either.

by fy20

4/3/2026 at 10:10:46 AM

> so it's unlikely we would have the same level of solar panels either.

I think you vastly underestimate the amount of work and money that have been put into photovoltaic panels outside the space programs.

by palata

4/3/2026 at 12:51:37 PM

> Yes, we have been screwing up our planet. On that note alone, we should develop capabilities to access resources beyond our planet.

The second absolutely does not follow from the first.

But even if it did it doesn’t justify manned missions.

by adjejmxbdjdn

4/2/2026 at 11:54:09 PM

> the current mass extinction we are living in is happening orders of magnitude faster than the one that killed the dinosaurs

Fascinating. My naive perception of the extinction event was that it was relatively sudden, on a personal rather than geological timescale - decades or maybe generations. But it looks like it might be "_rapid extinction, perhaps over a period of less than 10,000 years_" [0]. Goes to show how unintuitive geological and evolutionary timelines are!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_e...

by scubbo

4/3/2026 at 12:12:59 AM

Yep. We all know that "the dinosaurs disappeared", but very few know how long it took. The dinosaurs were not witnessing the climate warming year after year, by a long shot... What we are witnessing right now is happening exceedingly fast.

by palata

4/3/2026 at 11:23:59 AM

> It's costing a lot, it's not bringing much.

It kinda depends on what you mean by “much”, but we’ve certainly had advances from the ISS in the last decade.

Several experiments with microgravity manufacturing such as ZBLAN fiber optics, 3D bioprinting, and other medical technologies. Microgravity manufacturing can offer some significant quality improvements and prevent settling.

There are other improvements as well. Foundational research is very important and space has a solid track record of delivering science that we turn into very useful technology on earth.

Sources:

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/iss-research/out-of-th...

https://issnationallab.org/press-releases/2024-iss-national-...

by kavok

4/3/2026 at 9:02:57 AM

> at something that we already know we can do

Something that we know we could do. I think of it as the third act of a movie when the main character is pulling himself out of the gutter.

That being said, I agree with you. America has bigger, nearer problems to solve with that sort of money. It reminds me of Gil Scott-Heron's poem about how it feels to struggle while "whitey's on the moon". It was brilliantly used in First Man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVQuqQndsFA

by nicbou

4/3/2026 at 9:09:47 PM

I would rather be watching four humans travelling to the moon than four aircraft carriers travelling to the Gulf.

by ponector

4/2/2026 at 11:15:15 PM

I question the choice of the phrase "to the Moon". I get it, it's technically true, but ~100% of normal people hear that and assume it means boots on the ground. Every single time it gets mentioned, it's immediately followed by a clarification that disappoints the audience. This isn't the sort of marketing choice that a self-confident program makes.

by oconnor663

4/2/2026 at 11:26:14 PM

Exactly. I'm happy to see NASA get back in the game, but this is basically just a test flight. I'll get excited for the next one.

("Hey, kids! We're going to Disneyland! We're going to drive all the way around it before we head home!")

by Zanni

4/3/2026 at 1:07:54 AM

Even the next one isn't landing on the moon. It is still a test flight. Good that they are testing things obviously, but it is hard to get excited about testing...

by trackone

4/3/2026 at 11:19:17 AM

the apollo program had 5 crewed flights, two of which went to the moon without landing. after 50 years of not going there, it is exciting that something is happening. i don't actually care about landing on the moon. i care about what is being tested and learned from these flights, whether they do land on the moon or not.

the moonlanding better be a test for base building for example and not just collecting samples. we can do that with robots already.

by em-bee

4/2/2026 at 11:45:20 PM

Dont forget 4/1 Elon tweeted he was putting a doge coin on the moon. When that does happen in 2027 or 2028 its going to actually explode in price for the hype

by whattheheckheck

4/3/2026 at 2:48:03 AM

I'm annoyed that I find this joke funny.

by noman-land

4/3/2026 at 2:37:10 AM

... and then crash back down again

by JohnTHaller

4/3/2026 at 3:36:45 AM

Seveneves confirmed?

by rationalist

4/2/2026 at 11:16:51 PM

Seems we brought up a similar point at the exact same time. When the subsequent mission actually lands it will attempt the same level of hype

by whycome

4/2/2026 at 11:22:10 PM

So we're re-creating the Apollo 8 Mission 60 years later. 60 years after swinging around the moon, we are going to attempt the feat again. I'm having a hard time getting excited... Especially when some say it may not survive reentry because of politics (https://idlewords.com/2026/03/artemis_ii_is_not_safe_to_fly....)

by eigenrick

4/3/2026 at 2:52:28 AM

> So we're re-creating the Apollo 8 Mission 60 years later.

Not even: Apollo 8[0] went into orbit around the moon (orbited 10 times), then left lunar orbit to return to Earth. This required mission-critical rocket burns both to enter (LOI) and exit (TEI) lunar orbit. Artemis II[1] is merely doing a "fly-by"; it'll never enter lunar orbit, a much less challenging/risky mission.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8#Lunar_orbit

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_II#Lunar_flyby

by cagey

4/3/2026 at 3:40:24 AM

Thank you for those links. Haven’t read them in a while.

It really makes you appreciate what the Apollo program achieved. Really amazing.

by iJohnDoe

4/3/2026 at 6:09:25 AM

LOI - lunar orbit insertion

TEI - trans-earth injection

For ill-informed people like me.

by k1t

4/3/2026 at 3:47:40 AM

Space race notwithstanding, maybe less risky isn't such a bad idea.

by musicale

4/2/2026 at 11:34:47 PM

This is the first time humans go beyond LEO in my lifetime, so personally I'm pretty excited.

by 0xf00ff00f

4/3/2026 at 1:25:55 AM

I know we're not really supposed to say stuff like this on HN, but: hells to the yeah

by ribs

4/2/2026 at 11:43:31 PM

Sure, you may look at it from that perspective. Or, you could look into it as restoring a capability that we used to have, and potentially enable further, more interesting missions.

I am not _too excited_ about the SLS itself as it looks like a political compromise, just as the shuttle was.

But better late than never.

by outworlder

4/3/2026 at 12:08:36 AM

> and potentially enable further, more interesting missions.

The further we go as humans is Mars, and it's useless. The next star is so, so, so far away that even considering reaching it with "something" requires a revolution in fundamental physics. No need to build rockets for that, just a whiteboard and physicists, I guess.

And saying that we go to Mars is extremely generous. The engineering of the rocket going there is fun, but if you want to send humans there, they have to survive the trip. Including, for instance, eating and drinking and breathing air for the duration of the trip. Those are not solved problems. Chances are that we as a society collapse long before we get to send humans to Mars.

by palata

4/3/2026 at 4:15:16 AM

> Chances are that we as a society collapse long before we get to send humans to Mars.

And possibly even before we make it back to the moon's surface.

by 20after4

4/3/2026 at 12:01:42 AM

I'm just not that jazzed on what we could possibly learn. I can go on a big road trip and eat, sleep (but probably not poop) in my minivan; what does that teach me about moving to a new city or country? I can drive across the country and do a loop around Houston's ring road; that tells me nothing about what it's like to live there.

We could have sent the ship without astronauts to test all the systems and learn the only real valuable question: does this thing work? Instead we get drama & politics, and a much more expensive mission.

by skeeter2020

4/6/2026 at 5:30:54 PM

We’ve already sent it without humans. That was Artemis I.

by qubitcoder

4/2/2026 at 11:54:11 PM

> 60 years after swinging around the moon, we are going to attempt the feat again. I'm having a hard time getting excited...

There was a comedian that had the observation a few years back that we've lost our saw of awe and wonder: he was on a plane when Internet was just being introduced, and it was announced on the flight, but after a little bit it stopped working and they announced 'technical difficulties' and it wouldn't be available.

The guy next to him was like "this is bullshit": how quickly the world owed this guy something that he knew existed only a few minutes before.

As he goes on: often whenever people complain about their flights, it was like a 1940s German cattle car: X happened, then Y happened. And his response is: And then what happened? Did you fly in the air? Did you sit on a chair in the sky? Like a bird, like humans have been imaging since the tail of Icarus (and before)?

Hedonic adaptation is real (which is "fine" as far as it goes, as striving for better isn't a bad thing):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

But given you're invoking history, it's easy how it is to forget the woe that humans lived in just a few decades before Apollo 8, and the incredible strides that happened (and that many people on the planet, even now, have yet to fully experience):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_American_...

by throw0101c

4/2/2026 at 11:59:00 PM

The comedian is Louis C.K.

by tayo42

4/2/2026 at 11:52:37 PM

I thought I'd heard they'd already made changes to the heat shield after the last failure. Hopefully whatever they learn from this trip will be useful for their next one.

by autoexec

4/3/2026 at 12:10:20 AM

So they made a first real test with Artemis I, and it was deemed unsafe because of the heat shield. So they modified the heat shield and didn't bother making a real test with it. "Move fast and break things", I guess?

Sure, they tested it on the ground. But that's what they did for Artemis I, and we know how successful that was.

by palata

4/3/2026 at 6:41:57 AM

According to the article [0] that's been making the rounds, NASA didn't make any changes to Artemis 2's heat shield after getting data from 1's re-entry. NASA did change the trajectory for 2, and they made the compound "less permeable" but that change was made before 1 flew.

[0] <https://idlewords.com/2026/03/artemis_ii_is_not_safe_to_fly....>

by desertrider12

4/2/2026 at 11:50:53 PM

That’s not it. Most people don’t even know what Apollo 8 was.

The average person thinks NASA’s only mission of note was Apollo 11, they don’t even realize there were 5 other landings.

by Gagarin1917

4/2/2026 at 11:26:20 PM

Given how incurious 99% of the elected american government is, the amount of enthusiasm has a very low ceiling.

by cyanydeez

4/2/2026 at 11:41:04 PM

[flagged]

by whackernews

4/3/2026 at 5:11:29 AM

The real answer is that one of a kind single-launch Moon mission is not all that interesting. If you read anyone who participated in the Apollo program (engineers or mission control people like Gene Kranz), everyone knew that the only thing that kept the program afloat was novelty. It's not there anymore. I would say JPL is way too underrated compared to the moon flights, as it's the main reason we know so much about the Solar System.

Also, not a lot of tech from Apollo was reused after its termination, and this program is very similar. Original Soviet plan (orbital assembly and Venus/Mars flyby) and SpaceX's one much later were/are a lot more pragmatic, as they led to a lot more practical tech and infra even if not fully realized (orbital stations and heavy reusable launchers).

by orbital-decay

4/2/2026 at 11:45:20 PM

> The Apollo program was the triple-back-handspring exclamation mark on a century of American technological transformations, during which Americans had electrified their cities, filled their streets with cars and their skies with airplanes, split atoms, and invented digital computers.

And look at America now. Erratic, belligerent, applying tariffs on a whim, threatening to annex Canada and Greenland, threatening to leave NATO, alienating itself from allies.

Don't underestimate the reputational damage America has done and is still doing to itself.

by breve

4/2/2026 at 11:55:04 PM

During the Apollo missions, the US was melting babies in Vietnam, amongst other war crimes.

Young men were being drafted, taken from home, and forced to kill people across the world.

African Americans were fighting for basic rights and equality.

A President, a major Presidential candidate, and the most prominent civil rights leader were all assassinated.

It’s not like Apollo was happening during the golden age of America or something…

If you actually do appreciate Apollo, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to appreciate Artemis.

by Gagarin1917

4/3/2026 at 2:33:43 AM

Don't forget blowing up boats we think might be drugs and then purposely killing the survivors on the orders of the self-proclaimed US Secretary of War. "no quarter, no mercy"

by JohnTHaller

4/3/2026 at 5:30:39 PM

> "no quarter, no mercy"

Which is exactly how him and his friends should be dealt with by the courts.

by vkou

4/3/2026 at 5:34:58 AM

Used to love space stuff, although some of it was horrible (old enough to remember watching the challenger blow up on TV as a pre-teen). Don't really understand this moon effort. Space is uniquely hostile to humans, our tech just isn't ready IMO and probably won't be for 100 years. Our personas certainly aren't ready - I can tolerate far more isolation than most people, I often go 1-2 weeks without any real human contact at all, routinely go days without speaking to anyone. And yet the idea of living on a moon or mars colony gives me serious pause for the isolation it would involve. Space station has a different problem in that i'd be wanting to push people out of the airlock after a few weeks, or eject myself that way.

Anyway this moon trip seems totally pointless. I can get why other countries want to land there but for the US, moon expeditions have zero value, especially when we are burning so much money on stupid wars and and the same time cutting healthcare and food support for citizens.

by trashface

4/2/2026 at 11:12:57 PM

We do. But the relative purchasing power and command over purchasing essentials for a middle class life from 1969 to now has shifted so dramatically people are not comfortable enough to care.

by Avicebron

4/2/2026 at 11:35:50 PM

I don’t know why this is down voted but I think this is the answer for the majority of people.

by mikelitoris

4/2/2026 at 11:19:56 PM

Been there; done that.

This whole thing is nerd fantasy come to life but its not particularly useful and right now the world for most people is about trying to figure out how to deal with the cost of everything thanks to a poorly planned war against Iran.

by voidfunc

4/3/2026 at 4:51:13 AM

When Apollo 8 went up in December 1968, the US was near the peak of its involvement in the expensive and poorly planned Vietnam war, inflation had been rising in the US for three years and had hit 7.2% in October, the doomed, corrupt, and paranoid Republican president-elect had ran on lowering the price of hamburgers and medical care but was actively trying to manipulate the Supreme Court's composition behind the scenes, Israel was bombing its neighbors, control over the Panama Canal was being contested, the Hong Kong Flu epidemic was winding down, popular news was gripped by a kidnapping story involving a celebrity, and the NTSB was struggling to explain why so many passenger aircraft were being involved in fatal crashes and collisions with ground structures

by starkparker

4/3/2026 at 12:50:36 AM

This just isn’t true, people have tons of interests beyond “things that are useful” and “trying to figure out how to deal with the cost of everything.”

I’m almost certain you have genuine interests beyond your financials, and enjoy entertainment in general.

The fact is, the vast majority of people (and perhaps yourself) never actually cared about space or space exploration. I think most of this dismissiveness comes from people thinking they SHOULD care, and need to rationalize why they don’t.

by Gagarin1917

4/2/2026 at 11:22:47 PM

> the cost of everything thanks to a poorly planned war against Iran.

The war in Iran doesn't help at all. But it's a much broader problem.

by Avicebron

4/2/2026 at 11:45:09 PM

Yeh how are we all going to keep the air con on full blast and get our food delivered to our doorstep through summer!

We’re all a bunch of idiots man let some of us go to the moon for gods sake.

by whackernews

4/2/2026 at 11:15:44 PM

The language is weird about it. Because it’s not a landing. Most people don’t think of Apollo 8 as “going to the moon” — for the public, that’s Apollo 11.

by whycome

4/2/2026 at 11:23:25 PM

That, and most people don't care about the Apollo missions that happened after Apollo 11.

Hell, nobody knows the name of the third guy who did not get to set foot on the Moon with Apollo 11.

by palata

4/3/2026 at 2:33:52 AM

> nobody knows the name

I didn't have to google for it to know - Mike Collins. I also knew the the name of the third guy to walk on it - Pete Conrad, and what he said getting out of the LEM (perhaps not precisely): "That may be a small step for Neil, but it was a big one for me"

Can I have my prize now??

by zabzonk

4/3/2026 at 7:50:46 AM

Everybody understands that "nobody" doesn’t literally mean "nobody"

by thiht

4/2/2026 at 11:55:55 PM

Most people don’t care about Apollo 11 period.

They know it happened but they have zero interest in it or the history.

That’s why the average person doesn’t cares now. They never actually did.

by Gagarin1917

4/3/2026 at 12:18:21 AM

Well the comparison is not what people think about Apollo 11 right now, but what they thought back then.

Back then, it was a big event that made the news worldwide.

Artemis II launched yesterday, and my non-engineer relatives and friends don't even know it happened (they don't even know it was planned).

by palata

4/3/2026 at 12:22:58 AM

It WAS global news, I assure you. Every major news agency and local news channels talked about it.

People don’t get their “news” from news agencies anymore, though. They get it from their social media algorithms, and if they have no prior interest in anything space or tangential to space, they won’t get news about it.

And if they did hear about it, it probably didn’t connect whatsoever, and their brain filled it away in the same place as “city bus makes successful stop at bus stop.” Because they couldn’t care less.

Culture is far less centralized, for better or worse.

by Gagarin1917

4/3/2026 at 6:26:49 AM

I disagree, I work with a bunch of Gen Zs who live in TikTok and talk in meme-slang, and several of them stayed up late to watch the launch.

They're not anyway interested in spaceflight but they still got the news

by dingaling

4/3/2026 at 12:07:54 AM

I read something along these lines yesterday, to paraphrase: "Saying we're going back to the moon is like driving across the country, circling Hoboken and telling your friends about your trip to NY City".

by skeeter2020

4/3/2026 at 12:45:00 PM

What exactly are we supposed to get excited about?

- The headline mission “Going to the moon” was done 60 years ago - Any scientific research could be done better and cheaper with robots. No humans required. - If it’s supposed to be a step forward in space travel, well, it’s just a step forward. Let’s get real space travel going and people might be excited for that. - If it’s the technological progress then we are seeing a lot of technological progress all the time. It’s questionable that any of it is making our lives better.

So, what are people supposed to be excited about?

by adjejmxbdjdn

4/2/2026 at 11:27:41 PM

"Back to the moon" sounds deceptive since we're not actually going to the moon, we're just sending a rocket around it. An actual moon landing will get a lot more attention. What's far more impressive about this launch to me is that it will be the farthest out into space people have been. I think the NASA PR team would have done better making that the headline rather than all this "to the moon!" talk

by autoexec

4/2/2026 at 11:17:31 PM

Everything that has made my country great has been or is being destroyed. The life I have tirelessly worked for is a shadow of the life my parents and grandparents had. I realize we're going to (orbit) the moon, and I think it's great, but I'm tired. Why would I even talk about this thing?

by happytoexplain

4/3/2026 at 11:14:49 AM

The US is currently involved in a war that is directly impacting my life.

Not very interested in seeing Americans celebrate and do the usual jingoism to be honest.

by expedition32

4/3/2026 at 12:52:44 AM

Do you honestly only ever talk about how your country has been destroyed and how shitty your life is compared to your parents?

If so, I’m genuinely sorry for you. I hope you can find joy somewhere everyday. If you do already do that, then why not Artemis as well?

by Gagarin1917

4/2/2026 at 11:35:06 PM

It's going to get a lot worse over the next 20 years https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrmERlHUqBk

by greenavocado

4/3/2026 at 3:07:47 AM

- i agree your country is slowly and steadily descending into autocracy and the reading and math skills of the average american have hit all time lows and what not but this predictive history dude is an absolute nutjob.

- He conveniently hides facts that might be against his narrative.

- there is an alarming increase in such youtubers that want to present a narrative while ignoring facts that may be against it. this is a very scary trend

- i have stopped watching and unsubscribed to all types of channels in this niche these days

by vivzkestrel

4/3/2026 at 1:54:47 AM

Very large, critical, assumptions were made in that video ("US/China/Europe will collapse!") and then he hand-waved away when pressed for evidence ("because its obvious!").

by wewtyflakes

4/3/2026 at 2:21:01 AM

IMO these nut jobs aren't really saying anything novel, just obvious stuff in alarmist tones.

Generational churn makes him right in a way.

The olds will die and policy will change.

Google examples of Olde English. We don't write and talk like that. That English Empire "collapsed" in that its population vanished.

The alarmism is unhinged because, well, yeah. That's how it goes. Will they call themselves Chinese or whatever still? Who knows!

by yabutlivnWoods

4/2/2026 at 11:55:08 PM

I knew it was this guy before clicking the link.

by ozgung

4/2/2026 at 11:29:33 PM

Because we are not going back to the moon. A flyby is going to the moon in the same way that driving by the Anaheim exit on I-5 is going to Disneyland.

by lisper

4/3/2026 at 5:18:07 AM

Did Apollo 8 go to the moon?

by joelshep

4/3/2026 at 5:41:25 AM

Nope. Came close, though Apollo 10 came closer. But there's a reason that Apollo 11 is the one everyone remembers.

by lisper

4/2/2026 at 11:49:19 PM

I think there's a war in the middle east. And a circus back home. Think those are hogging the spotlight right now.

by TrackerFF

4/2/2026 at 11:57:55 PM

Would you have been uninterested in Apollo at the time because of the Vietnam war?

Or are you maybe just generally uninterested in space exploration?

by Gagarin1917

4/3/2026 at 5:07:36 PM

There was no social media and high-speed internet in your pocket during the Vietnam war.

We are literally bombarded with information every waking moment of our lives, and consume more highly-emotional information to take a break from too much information.

by sph

4/3/2026 at 6:37:10 PM

Which is why allowing oneself to appreciate something as positive and inspiring as the Artemis Program is so important these days.

by Gagarin1917

4/3/2026 at 3:09:28 AM

It hasn't been very well marketed. NASA lost a lot of their budget and they're not spending so much on outreach. I didn't know it was happening at all until launch day.

by razorbeamz

4/3/2026 at 3:20:01 PM

They should be spending exactly $0 on marketing. They're sending people around the moon in a giant rocket ship. It sells itself.

by ajam1507

4/3/2026 at 5:15:52 PM

>They're sending people around the moon in a giant rocket ship. It sells itself.

It actually doesn't. It didn't even "sell itself" the first time. Apollo required a massive national propaganda campaign framing the space race in terms of an existential war against communist annihilation to get people to even care - and people still stopped caring once the news stopped being sensational.

by krapp

4/2/2026 at 11:45:20 PM

I just want to say it blows my mind we're likely to literally land on the moon before we get a proper KSP 2

by jbattle

4/3/2026 at 2:37:51 AM

Why? It's very likely we will never get a "proper" KSP 2. And that was pretty clear from KSP 1 through the acquisition to the multiple studio transfers

by Tadpole9181

4/3/2026 at 12:28:35 AM

People think it's a fake show for distraction.

by rtcode_io

4/3/2026 at 3:04:46 PM

To everyone saying "we've done this before" or "we're not even landing" - we have sent humans to the Moon a total of 9 times. This is the 10th. Nobody has been out there in 50+ years. We've only landed on the Moon 6 times, and this mission is a stepping stone to future manned landings.

Do people really feel like "yeah, we went 9 times, that's enough, no need to ever send anyone again"?

by npilk

4/3/2026 at 3:48:30 PM

Not "no need to ever send anyone again" but it's certainly not very interesting at this point. Maybe it's worth the spend, maybe not, but either way I don't find doing something a 10th time very intriguing. It first happened in the 60s. My father isn't even old enough to remember it. Doing the same thing as then, today, is very hard to care about. Might as well tell me that we're inventing a 10th form factor for a vinyl record.

by eudamoniac

4/3/2026 at 3:11:28 PM

Yes, it's dangerous and the benefits of sending people to the Moon and Mars are few.

by ajam1507

4/3/2026 at 2:36:42 AM

We're not going to the moon. We're going around the moon. You wouldn't say you went to Chicago if you drove in a circle around it without entering the city.

by JohnTHaller

4/3/2026 at 10:18:14 AM

It is a major event but only in some terms:

1) it feels like a movie series, sensational, scientific and humane

2) comparing it with the previous attempt 5 decades ago leads to interesting conclusions about our technological progress and limits

3) it's almost useless and I didn't expect NASA and the Congress to pour billions for a 10-day ride

Wish them all good and safe return to home.

by tsoukase

4/2/2026 at 11:19:31 PM

$93 billion over 13 years doesn't feel like a great deal for a program that has started to align around a single person's ego, when most of the US is struggling to make ends meet.

I think Artemis will be cancelled by the end of the year, unfortunately. If the heat shield doesn't hold up as some observers fear/have warned, perhaps by the end of April.

I hope I'm wrong.

by PaulRobinson

4/2/2026 at 11:56:45 PM

> $93 billion over 13 years doesn't feel like a great deal

So, around 7 billion a year?

We are at around half of the total Artemis cost just one month after the Iran invasion. One week of this war finances one year of the Artemis program. Do you think that's a better deal?

Compared to the military spending, that doesn't even register. Maybe you should be mad about that.

by outworlder

4/2/2026 at 11:41:39 PM

I'd rather spend it on high speed rail projects.

by stickfigure

4/3/2026 at 2:36:36 AM

Come and live in the UK :-(

by zabzonk

4/3/2026 at 7:46:12 AM

They didn't say high speed rail projects that get cancelled and downgraded after doing all the hard bits

by siliconpotato

4/2/2026 at 11:29:27 PM

We handed out 300 billion in cash payments alone for COVID stimulus, this is not that crazy especially if you factor in the knowledge and skills put to work and retained.

by gedy

4/2/2026 at 11:52:14 PM

One is real cash going into the hands of ordinary people for everyday purchases, which has proven (in various studies) to have helped parents/families and the financially struggled.

The other is "knowledge and skills" that seem remote and detached from people's lives.

As someone whose life isn't affected much by either of these, I would choose the stimulus every time.

by g947o

4/3/2026 at 12:15:54 AM

The money was not vaporized by aerospace companies, it's largely spent in US on salaries, subcontractors, etc. Not against stimulus but to call out the amount in comparison is reasonable.

by gedy

4/3/2026 at 8:22:24 AM

I think the intent is there. I do not have faith that people, politics or events will cooperate with us. I also think this is NASA's last hurrah before space flight is subsumed by commercial interests, which will be the end of the dream of space science for the common good of mankind.

by drivingmenuts

4/3/2026 at 5:23:07 AM

Humanity did something better (humans on the moon) decades ago and now we are struggling to fly around the moon.

This is not exciting, it‘s embarassing.

Besides that it‘s a massive waste of money and brings no value to humanity, the USA or science. Why is this done again?

I feel like anyone excited about this is weird.

by Traubenfuchs

4/3/2026 at 5:01:32 PM

Maybe if we Americans had proper healthcare, that wasn't getting gutted to fund a pointless war that is both killing people and damaging our own economy, it would be easier to get excited about going back to the moon.

by insane_dreamer

4/3/2026 at 5:34:53 PM

It's hard to get excited about an organization spending ?? on a pointless mission that's happening because of organizational inertia when kids don't have functional textbooks at school.

by Desafinado

4/3/2026 at 12:04:44 AM

There's alot off reasons to not be interested other people are listing them. Space exploration in general has been taken over by billionaires as their hobby becasue they have to much money. I find it hard to care about someone else's expensive toys.

by tayo42

4/3/2026 at 12:13:10 AM

Trump attempted to significantly decrease NASAs budgets and cancel missions so this is happening despite him, and I cant feel joy for this when we are putting people in cages, manipulating stock markets, entering pointless wars, and raising prices of everything while Billionares massively increase their wealth through technically-legal manipulations of the system. This feels like a sad memory of what used to be more than anything else.

by eeixlk

4/3/2026 at 5:09:26 AM

Probably because the first time we did it we were an optimistic country with a good economy and a bright future in front of us?

by mbgerring

4/3/2026 at 5:13:32 AM

Hardly. Remembering the end of 1968, when Apollo 8 made the first manned voyage out of earth's orbit, and orbited the moon:

Newsman Walter Cronkite remembers the year of Apollo 8: "The whole 1960s really culminating in 1968 were the most terrible decade, undoubtedly, of the twentieth century and very possibly our entire history, even including the decade of the Civil War. America was divided as it never had been since the Civil War and by the Vietnam War, by the civil rights fight.

"Everything seemed to come to a head in '68. There were the assassinations of two of the leaders of the more liberal causes. Bobby Kennedy, shortly after winning that election in California that probably would have put him over the top as the presidential candidate that year, and Martin Luther King, of course, in Memphis, was a terrible blow to the entire cause of civil rights. By the summer of '68 the Democratic convention turned out to be a terrible shambles of violence and counter-violence by the Chicago police... By December the country was pretty far down."

by joelshep

4/3/2026 at 2:27:32 AM

China built out their high speed rail for $300B over about the same period. Artemis is 1/3rd the cost of that. Theres lots of impressive engineering to do thats also cool and useful to ordinary people. Going to the moon is just vanity.

by charlie90

4/3/2026 at 7:37:36 PM

"Why isn't everyone as obsessed as me about my hobbies?"

Well maybe because the context here is not great and we don't have much time and energy to focus on these useless endeavors

by poulpy123

4/3/2026 at 5:56:35 AM

Got some moron in charge taking all progress back 50 years

by secretsatan

4/3/2026 at 3:15:29 PM

Panem et circenses for the space age.

by dtagames

4/3/2026 at 6:52:46 AM

The American passive participation in what is widely considered as a genocide, and an active invasion of another country without a reason are all more spectacular. Overall the world is deeply tired of their shit.

by lifestyleguru

4/2/2026 at 11:35:13 PM

i don't care

by plusfour

4/3/2026 at 7:34:40 AM

Too many other pressing issues on Earth

by erelong

4/3/2026 at 7:07:28 AM

1) nobody's landing on the moon this time

2) the article was an awful piece of hype, that felt like it was sponsored by the Whitehouse.

3) it's hard to see beyond the US imperialism that hangs heavy over space missions. Trump said "the US is winning in space" and he summed up the intent here

4) I might be a nerd but I really don't get the excitement from my fellow nerds. I wonder if they are simply taken in by the hype machine

by siliconpotato

4/3/2026 at 11:30:05 AM

Yeah the flag waving is very off putting. Why would non USians care? It's like the Superbowl.

More interesting is the possible Chinese moon landing. It would be their first and a good gauge to monitor their progress as a superpower.

by expedition32

4/2/2026 at 11:47:52 PM

The basic truth is, the vast majority of people couldn’t give less of a fuck about space and space exploration.

It’s just too abstract, too complicated, and too far away for them to feel connected to it. It’s not attached to national pride (anymore), it’s not connected to tragedy (typically), it’s not connected to celebrities they feel like they know (Katy Perry isn’t involved with this launch)… there’s just nothing for the average person to connect with.

Every other explanation is just an excuse from people who feel like they should care, but never have.

by Gagarin1917

4/2/2026 at 11:38:09 PM

Pink Floyd did it in the 1970s.

by sys_64738

4/3/2026 at 1:08:26 AM

I’m probably going to get downvoted, but two things: Firstly, I thought ok great we’re sending people there again. Finally. I mean we did this in the 60s but cool that we’re resuming I guess.

Secondly I found out we aren’t even try that yet.

It’s really difficult for me to care at this point. I would love to see exciting new developments and sustained efforts.

by tetrisgm

4/2/2026 at 10:54:45 PM

Some people may think it's "Fake news"... Seriously, I guess people are more concerned of the damages and crimes done by the US Trump government and its effects on earth.

by abdelhousni

4/2/2026 at 11:13:21 PM

it is at a minimum, semantic missalignment, as they are most defintly not going " to the moon", but are going to take a huge swing by at a huge speed, because they dont have the fuel to do a burn into a circular LLO (low lunar orbit),and then get home, and are realy just slingshoting back to earth. wish them luck in that though.

by metalman

4/3/2026 at 6:17:45 PM

I just saw the NASA simulation, it is indeed terrific and also risky. I hope they keep safe.

by abdelhousni

4/2/2026 at 11:28:56 PM

Even “real news” these days is insipid and poorly written. For instance, the NYT coverage pre-launch barely communicated the mission parameters.

Today’s article by Peter Baker ( https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/us/politics/artemis-ii-la... ) was yet more political drivel and very light on scientific goals, just a token mention of follow-on missions.

by TimorousBestie

4/4/2026 at 4:56:32 PM

[dead]

by burnt-resistor

4/2/2026 at 11:39:48 PM

[flagged]

by krapp

4/2/2026 at 11:25:36 PM

[flagged]

by hniszionist

4/2/2026 at 11:24:26 PM

we're going back to Moon and going to Mars too on Starship, and it is just a normal roadmap of the SpaceX. And that makes me excited about space future - normalcy of it just being a business, a good profitable business. Where is existence or not of Artemis wouldn't change much our space future.

Artemis program and hardware is a huge government money appropriation program, and even if the program makes it to the landing phase, it would still be an unsustainable one-off with probably even less landings than the Apollo program.

Establishing of Moon bases, commercial travel and development there - it is all Starship (naturally predicated on SpaceX success at getting it to $5-10M/launch - if not SpaceX, somebody else would anyway do it)

As i wrote couple days ago the Artemis/SLS will never be able to get to that commercial level https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47583438

by trhway