NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

It also ignores the fact that empires can decline.

(Although I think the moon landing is ridiculous there is no scientific reason for it).

It’s more about establishing a permanent base or some operational capacity, not allowing China to dominate that aspect.

And yes, it’s probably also about certain aspects of anxiety and probably some panic about the prospect of American decline after so many decades of squandering everything and letting itself both be bled dry and run off a cliff by a subversive element within.

What do you mean "there is no scientific reason for it"?

The space race was not a scientific endeavor either. It was driven by a political need.

It was to prove that your economic system could muster the correct machinery to get to the moon. Once we got to the moon, nothing significantly changed scientifically, but politically it was a bombshell.

The act of getting the moon now is, once again, not a scientific endeavor. It is once again a holistic test of whether the country still can do it.

And from the looks at it, maybe not. America is not all aligned like we were during the Cold War. Then again, the stakes during the Cold War seems higher.

There is little useful knowledge to be gained from being on the moon.

There's very little _scientific_ motivation to send humans to do science instead of robots. Robots don't need to eat or drink (much more efficient payloads) and don't expect to survive the mission.

The motivations to send humans to other bodies at this time are political; to prove who is and isn't a superpower of the 21st century.

Just to take your point further, imagine if China establishes a base on the moon while the US is unable to do so. How is that (world wide) discussion going to look like?

Is there anyone that thinks robots that we can do a 99% robotic mission on the moon and get value from it? I think it would be easier to create a permanent human moon settlement. Doing autonomous robotic missions is really hard at the moment even if they are just 20min away from humans. Even cutting grass is non trivial.

>after so many decades of squandering everything and letting itself both be bled dry and run off a cliff by a subversive element within

After everything is all said and done, I wonder if it would be possible to build out a data project tracking the people and the decisions that led to the outcome and also where all the wealth went. I guess this is impossible because too many people are unnamed figures just doing their part succumbing to inertia.

You made a big leap there from “robotic missions” to “autonomous robotic missions”, which I think very few think is realistic in the near-term. Some limited autonomy exists as a force-multiplier, sure, but pretty much all robotic space missions are still basically controlled remotely by a human.

Wouldn't, for example, a radiotelescope on the far side be scientifically valuable? It would be shielded from Earth's noise by a huge mass of lunar rock.

:Once we got to the moon, nothing significantly changed scientifically, but politically it was a bombshell.

A lot of commercial tech was spun off from Apollo, and generated a bit of GDP a for a good while.

It really was a race - you can find the original space fligh plans before the race started and they look much more sane and sustainable.

Incremental progress via building up infrastructure, including space station in Earth and Moon orbit, paving way to a lunar surface base. Also ways to make this affordable were explored, including reusable first stages, etc.

Then all focus switch to racing the Soviets and and anything that did not contribute flags and footprints on the lunar surface ASAP was skipped, opting for the fastest possible solution at all costs.

So no wonder that after the race was won, it was hard to do a meaningful followup with the architecture chosen.

One might even argue we would be further along space infra wise if the race did not happen or involved other objectives (possibly even including in space military buildup by both sides).

Americans would be paranoid and xenophobic, but Americans are always paranoid and xenophobic, especially where China is concerned.

But this isn't the 1960s and the US has burned through its goodwill and ruined its credibility. I think the rest of the world would rather have a Chinese base on the moon than an American one.

As an American, is this really a true statement (“I think the rest of the world would rather have a Chinese base on the moon than an American one.”). I can no longer tell what our global reputation is.

What they mean is all the spinoffs of getting there do not count. Microelectronics, computers, leaps in materials science, massive advances in medical and health sciences, and techniques and processes for very-large-scale project planning and implementation hardly count as benefits, especially if you don't count them as benefits.

After all, what have the Romans ever done for us?

Not one dollar was spent in space during the first space race.

People are paranoid and xenophobic, but People are always paranoid and xenophobic, especially where <their historic foe> is concerned.

Yes, you've removed the context of my comment and restated it in general terms. I don't know what the point was, though, given that the context of this discussion is specifically American politics and culture, but good on you.

Now try again, except imagine everyone is a horse.

I can only speak for my small sphere of awareness: it’s very poor. The above sentiment is apt. There’s been a big change in attitude around me over the past few years. “Wait, what again makes China worse than America? What makes it the enemy? Why aren’t we working with them more?”

Why would that need bodies? Are there people manning JWST?

Maintenance would be orders of magnitude easier.

JWST is actually a good example. The (slow) unfolding of the telescope was a long-term nail-biting experience, because even very trivial problems that could have been easily fixed with a screwdriver or a finger poke on Earth could doom one of the most sophisticated pieces of scientific equipment ever produced.

We were lucky in the end, but if anything went wrong, the result would be immense frustration and the most expensive piece of space junk per unit of weight.

But in general, you probably don't need human bodies for such maintenance on the Moon, "just" very sophisticated and versatile robot mechanics. IDK what is easier.

It would be less depressing to think about if the questioning was due to a sudden improvement in China (human rights, government, environment etc) rather than due to a sudden decline in the USA.

We're going to spend many, many billions to send food to feed and house people on the moon just so they can go out and turn a screw driver and untangle some wires once in a while.

True, but the situation scales.

Maybe you can save a lot on the equipment itself (because it does not have to be 99,99999% reliable - those extra nines cost a lot) and thus can also deploy more equipment, and instead of a single telescope you can have several farms thereof.

> I can only speak for my small sphere of awareness: it’s very poor.

Ditto. I’m in New Zealand.

>I don't know what the point was, though, given that the context of this discussion is specifically American politics and culture, but good on you.

the point is to exemplify how over-generalized and stupid it is to mention the universal human feelings of xenophobia and paranoia that occur when people witness an adversary during a war-action, land expansion, or anything near those concepts as if it was somehow a uniquely American/Chinese phenomena.

But -- the question asked was 'what will the world-wide discussion look like', not 'How will the Americans respond and feel?'

So, with that in mind, how about an answer to the question asked?

My personal opinion is that there will be a frenzy to remove the groups in power at the moment without much thought of who will fill the vacuum, and then about 40 years of bellyaching from the globe after the cards fall where they may.

Wouldn't you demand the habitation and transportation facilities to be even more reliable than the telescopes? Wouldn't they be even harder to build right due to now needing to incorporate lots of large pressure vessels and windows and airlocks and seals and actual buttons and what not? Plus, all the needed stuff to actually get these people home again?

So not only do we still need to have an incredibly high degree of reliability for core critical parts of the mission, that mission is now massively larger, and it's now human lives on the line if things go wrong.

Can't we still have farms of telescopes if we wanted even if a few of them don't deploy perfectly?

Can't we just have a humanoid robot go and turn the screws for us?

If you want massive returns on medical and health sciences, you get far better returns investing in medical research and public health programs. Same with technology - if you want better materials and electronics, invest in physics research.

I think it's becoming increasingly true for many people - as a Canadian, I've often seen such sentiments expressed ever since the tariffs and Trump's annexation threats. I've also seen a lot of support for a general economic rapprochement with China, at the expense of our relationship with the US (which seems crazy and shortsighted to me). Even for those who won't go that far, I think there's a general feeling that our formally positive relationship with America is tarnished, and can longer be taken for granted in the future.

"Can't we just have a humanoid robot go and turn the screws for us?"

That would indeed be the best solution, if we can build such robots. Notoriously, computers are much better at "thinking" (or simulating thereof) than at folding laundry.

"it's now human lives on the line if things go wrong."

That is quite normal in many professions. Programmers are usually somewhat sheltered, so the very idea of risking your life on a job is shocking to them. But I grew up in a mining town and, well, some people will take that bargain for money. Some people even like the bit of a thrill.

And the USSR decidedly pwned America at every space medal but one. After America won one medal, we decided that was the one that actually counted, we forgot all that happened previously, because the USSR won them, and we stopped doing any more, lest the USSR win them.

If the point was to prove which economic system is better, the outcome was clear: totalitarian dictatorship with a solid education system far outcompetes capitalism with strong government intervention. In fact it seems that the more there's a guy at the top forcing everyone to work towards an achievable goal, the more likely the goal is to be achieved. There are other reasons to dislike totalitarian dictatorships, of course.

Isn't that basically what they did? The moon landing was just a big test of the research.

TL;DR Depends on who you ask, but yes.

i had a conversation with a colleague today - we both said that we'd feel more comfortable to visit China over the US, and for his next vacation where he would have to fly via the US he's now considering to take a different flight-path which avoids the US.

as someone from europe one of my dreams as a kid was to visit the great United States. 20 years later this has drastically changed, still never been to the US, but would now rather visit other places.

people are trying to migrate away from US tech to other alternatives.

just last weekend i was joking with the person i watch Formula1 with - the last race was in the US. anyways, we joked that we used to laugh at races and events being held in Azerbaijan, just because it seemed weird to hold western sports events in dictatorships, similar to the football world cup in Qatar. now a world cup and F1 race in the US feels at least as bad as the other options.

but that's my POV. another friend still wants to visit the US for a third time and wants me to go with him and someone else i now even recently got married in the US.

but for me and the people around me - yes, the status of the US has taken a hard nose-dive, especially in the last 1-2 years.

also doesn't help to grow up and learn about the US history, by which i mean the overthrowing of foreign governments, global NSA scandals, needless wars for oil, trade wars etc. etc. etc.

no ill will against the average american citizen, but writing this comment made me a bit angry again. your country's government and some parts of the population cause so much pain on a global scale, but y'all seem too isolated and privileged to realize that. add to this that not even US citizens seem to benefit from this, i mean even y'all get swindled.

you know, i still feel like visiting the US. i want to meet the people and get to know the culture which influences my life in a big way. it just feels wrong, almost like visiting Germany in the early 1930s or late 1920s as a tourist. hope y'all calm down sometime, you'll maybe catch me on Route66, in one of the big cities or wherever.

that's kind of the essence of my rant i think. i could list soooooo many places in the US i'd like to see. but right now and since a couple of years, i'd rather not. the world is big, nice places everywhere. y'all have some great marketing, that's for sure.

The US spent 6% of its GDP to land on the moon, much of that money going into military and aerospace companies . It is far more efficient to spend that money on medical, health and physics research directly; the moon landing accomplished political and cultural objectives.

Personally I don't currently like neither China nor America and I would refuse to visit either if my work asked me to go. Both have pretty authoritarian governments right now and I refuse to submit to that.

They're far from the only countries on my no go list though.

I grew up in South Houston. I knew lots of families affected by workplace injuries at chemical plants and refineries growing up (for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_refinery_explosion ). I grew up going to Challenger Seven Memorial Park all the time. I had met a few of the people on the Columbia. Many of my friends had their parents go up in the shuttle afterwards, very clued into the risks involved. The idea of risking your life on a job is not shocking to me, it surrounded me from a young age.

I'm just pointing out the risk of failure and its impacts on the overall program is much higher when we're talking about humans experiencing a massive sudden depressurization event compared to a foil sheet failing to unfurl. If you think its expensive trying to get a foil sheet to reliably unfold once, imagine how expensive it'll be to design a door to properly seal and unseal hundreds of times with sharp, hard, and fine regolith constantly working its way into the seams and hinges and seals. If you think it'll be difficult getting public support after your telescope isn't perfectly functional, imagine the reluctance of funding you'll get when you accidentally kill seven people in a horrific way.

We can do it. Elon landing that gigantic rocket is proof enough.

Whether we can do it faster than China is the question. A question many people are in denial about because of patriotism. Many people can’t handle it if the answer in actuality was that China will be better.

It’s due to a sudden technological advancement and quality of life in China. You cannot discount this, the technological and economic growth China has seen within the last two decades has not been seen in the history of mankind.

Luckily the robot doesn't need to be humanoid. The JWST deploying itself was one large, single-use robot.

Theoretically it would probably be more possible than you may think, but it would likely be a far bigger and more gargantuan project than you think too. We are largely talking about government money, which theoretically would need to have been tracked and accounted for, but just along getting access to that data would be an massive effort in and of itself, with massive interests groups fighting tooth and nail to keep that data secret by hook and crook.

For a bit of perspective, I just saw that James O'Keeffe just published a video yesterday that is related to that topic regarding the 8(a) set-aside fraud that he says amounts to $100 billion annually alone. Having some direct knowledge about that area in particular, I would not be surprised if it was even more than $100B annually, and that's just one of such schemes where I would guess about 80% of the money is full on defrauded by various means and methods, and of the remaining 20%, probably 15% are for things that are simply utterly useless, unproductive, pointless efforts; often even to do work in support of some other agency/department's work that is also utterly useless and inconsequential, i.e., a kind of circular fraud.

In case you are interested in the O'Keeffe video, even though it may be boring to some and utterly shocking to others [1]. Just remember, he is highlighting just one company and one tribe running this scheme/fraud, there are hundreds or even thousands of companies doing exactly that, and that is just one scheme/fraud of several that exist in federal contracting; even beyond just open and blatant corruption and nepotism and fraud you would not believe me if I told you, because you would not be able to square the fact that something so blatant could be occurring without law enforcement doing their jobs.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_CtRCLaSbY

> money on medical, health and physics research directly

What precisely is the difference? Where was space-race money spent that shouls be reallocated? My point is you eventually need to put the research into practice.

Don't think so. People might say that but they haven't really grappled with what it means. China is neither particularly popular nor unpopular, and most people just don't have strong opinions about it because it's hardly ever in the news. But once they invade Taiwan that all changes.

Was one of those medals "number of test subjects killed"?