[krapp]

>Regardless of whether this particular mission is perfectly planned, this is precisely the kind of thing that will help humanity outgrow the dark age of war, inequality and climate mismanagement.

You watch too much Star Trek. This is precisely the kind of thing that will benefit the military industrial complex, enrich billionaires at the expense of everyone else, and justify the government raping natural resources like it's a little girl locked in a cage.

No one cares about space any more and no one engaging in space travel is doing so for science anymore. Those days, if they ever really existed, are over. NASA has been cleansed and gutted and purged of wrongthink and now only exists to further the cause of American propaganda and be parasitized by SpaceX and intelligence agencies.

[Larrikin]

I guess we should collectively give up on space. The people at NASA are all doing hard science for that notoriously bloated government salary.

[krapp]

We actually should. By "we" I mean just Americans, though.

Leave the hard science to cultures that still have an educated populace and a government that believes in it. Americans are going to need that money to fund the holy war in Iran over the next decade and to build out Trump's Epstein Memorial ballroom. All that gold filigree is expensive.

If I were a Real Scientist working for NASA I would have seen the writing on the wall and packed my bags for greener pastures once Elon let his pack of groyper skiddie goons slash the department's budget because there were too many brown people on the payroll.

The United States is no longer a serious nation worthy of scientific endeavor, and it won't be again for a very long time. The next person to set foot on the moon won't be an American. These are just the consequences of the choices the American voters have made.

[Larrikin]

Meh, sounds like you are not American so telling people in the US to just give up on everything is boring and self serving.

If you do have a vote in the US, then you have options to try to make things better. Complaining about pedophiles and people on ketamine in the government is a valid (but extremely small) form of affecting change, but the doom and gloom of everyone should just give up helps no one.

[krapp]

I am an American, I do vote to make things better. I have a whole life outside of Hacker News. But if it's valid to express naive, wide-eyed optimism about how space travel will usher humanity into a utopian era of peace and love it's valid to express the opposite. This is an internet forum so neither the cynicism nor the optimism really helps anyone. Pointing out that that doing so doesn't lead to meaningful change is tautological. No one here is affecting change about anything. I'll get downvoted and flagged, the optimists will get upvoted and cheered, the invisible internet points will be tallied and our accounts weighed in the balance and everyone will move on to the next shiny thing.

But yes, for me, all of this is tainted as it must inevitably be seen against the backdrop of the current administration. American space travel, American science and technology, the "American spirit." I can't feel anything but disgust about it and pity for the astronauts and scientists trying to do real work in the context of an administration that only sees them as tools for propaganda.

There was plenty of (I think valid) cynicism about Apollo at the time and JFK had his faults God knows but he didn't rape children as far as I know.