[majkinetor]

> 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).

[palata]

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.

[padjo]

> 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.

[JKCalhoun]

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.

[palata]

> 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.

[ottah]

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.

[Ferret7446]

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.