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NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

(www.cnn.com)
404 points voxleone | 1 comments | 21 Oct 25 12:58 UTC | HN request time: 0.228s | source
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dtj1123 ◴[21 Oct 25 13:44 UTC] No.45655736[source]▶
Remind me why we need to get to the moon again?
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nilamo ◴[21 Oct 25 14:11 UTC] No.45656050[source]▶
Why must there be a NEED? Why did we ever send ships across the ocean to explore? Where was the need? People like doing science, and so we're doing science.
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pfdietz ◴[21 Oct 25 14:13 UTC] No.45656074[source]▶
That was (for the western hemisphere) mostly to steal gold and silver from other civilizations. Oh, and to grow addictive drugs for export, like in Virginia. It was never done for other than banal reasons, although I'm sure pious rationalizations were offered to make people feel better about the ongoing genocides.
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kreetx ◴[21 Oct 25 14:58 UTC] No.45656639[source]▶
Wasn't it to discover alternative trade routes and also to show physically that the world is round? I think they didn't know that there were usable land to grow tobacco when they started.
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mrguyorama ◴[21 Oct 25 20:50 UTC] No.45661529[source]▶
Humans have demonstrably known the world is round since at least ancient Greece.

Columbus claimed it was radically smaller in diameter than previous calculations, and was begging for funding to go around the other side of the world to get a good trade route to India and China for trade goods. He was following some bad math, and adding his own worse math to the mix.

People were sure he was going to die, because they did not bring enough provisions to actually go around the world.

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1. pfdietz ◴[21 Oct 25 21:06 UTC] No.45661710[source]▶
Amusingly, Spain famously did set up trade to China through the New World. Silver was mined in South America and taken to China (or to the Philippines), traded for silk and other luxury goods, which were then taken back across the Pacific, over land to the Atlantic, and then on to Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manila_galleon