By all rights, this should be something I am deeply passionate about. I’ve been in tech/engineering my entire adult life and was obsessed with NASA as a kid. I even live on the east coast of Florida and can sometimes see the launches/landings over the ocean. But I just… don’t care at all. I’m not suffering from depression or any other malaise, and generally things are fine. But I haven’t clicked on a single link or looked at a single image. I know this has not been the case for many, many people, so I’m wondering what might be different about this launch (or really the whole program in general), and curious if anyone else has found themselves feeling the same.
This is why the moon is critical. Going to mars or wherever will be insanely expensive compared to the little moon trip. To make it at all affordable, you don’t just need one of the new reusable launch vehicles but you need to use local resources as much as possible. Let’s prove our ice mining and habitat construction
Consider spending tens of billions of dollars just sending water to mars, and hope you don’t screw up the schedule when an “emergency” resupply is nine months. Same for air. And food. So much more for fuel. No one is going to spend that. But if you can use local resources for fuel, water, air, radiation shielding, and grow at least some of your own food, you’re more resilient and much much cheaper.
The mining isn’t likely to be useful for sending anything back to earth - way too expensive. Space mining is all about making space affordable, and we’re talking about really fundamental things to mine.
I agree that moon stuff is a critical first step to doing anything in space, but my point is that I don’t think sending humans will ever be the best way to do anything.
Bots are just so cheap and effective and disposable by comparison.
How many decades more research and development before we can safely establish a permanent base on mars, and in that time how much more effective and reliable and deployable will bots become?
Eventually the calculation will be: we can afford to do a manned return trip to Mars, or we can afford to solve cold fusion by doing whatever thing with a bot, or something similarly amazing.