[lamasery]

I think nobody cares about the moon thing because 1) they aren't landing, and (this one's more for people who are paying some attention to this stuff to begin with) 2) it's basically the same mission they already ran on auto-pilot, but with people on board, so... I dunno, hard to get excited about some very-expensive passengers on an automated ride.

I mean, part of why they cut the Apollo program short was because nobody cared back then either, after the first ~2 landings, so they muddled on a while longer but support simply vanished in a hurry. It'd be surprising if people started caring more now. I suppose if we land people on the moon it'll be a bit more of an event than this one (the landing, not the launch) but I'd expect interest to plummet again after that. Hopefully they have better-selected video feeds for the landing than they did for this launch, I had my kids watch it and it was bad enough I think I'll have trouble getting them to sit down for another NASA launch stream.

[fhdkweig]

I'm interested in it as a means to an end. Supposedly this is to get ready for a lunar base. I would love to see that in my lifetime. Also, while it is not a mission objective, I want to see a space elevator which currently we can only do on the moon. Due to the lower gravity and slower spin, it is possible to make a space elevator out of Kevlar rope, which we can reliably make in bulk.