To think millions of litres of fuel shouldn't be wasted on sending a rocket to the moon

Because there are too many problems in the world that should take priority. Simple as that.

The only space travel I am in favour of is that horrible cunt Elon Musk making up with Donald Trump and the two of them fucking off to Mars and never being able to come back.

Well all those satellites are helping to monitor climate change. It's data from those that help prove that it's happening. They are also helping you communicate right now. You couldn't watch your tv tonight without items currently orbiting the earth. You wouldn't even know about the problems on earth without all the systems developed for and as a result of space exploration and technology.

Why are you so concerned about the 0.01% of global emissions used for space exploration and advancing scientific knowledge, and why do you think this is unacceptable given that the technological advances that space exploration has provided have already saved orders of magnitude more of global emissions from being produced?

I can't tell if this is serious or not. But assuming it is, what do you truly understand about, I don't know... microbiology, or thermonuclear plastics, or gene therapy, or quantum physics, or engineering?
Just because you don't understand them (and I'm not saying I do - I'd be a very uninteresting guest at a party full of boffins), doesn't mean they don't have any value. You just don't understand what that is.

I am honestly quite shocked at the comments on this thread. Of course most people aren’t scientists but everybody in the UK receives 12 years minimum of free state education including science as a regular core subject so how can it be possible that there are so many adults who don’t understand even the very basics, and who also feel that their opinions on the subject are well-informed enough that they should post about the topic on a public forum!? So that would indicate there must be a large proportion of the population who despite these 12 years of free teaching about these topics are even more clueless than this?!

I knew things were bad given the appalling excuse for “education” that I’ve seen at my children’s school, but the idiotic comments that have been written here today have been beyond shocking.

Of course it uses fuel. How else would it move?

It just doesn’t use the same fuel that you use in your car, unsurprisingly, given the physics involved and that your car needs enough energy to move along the Earth’s surface and a spacecraft needs sufficient fuel to be propelled off the Earth’s surface — counteracting the gravitational force of the Earth pulling it back down — and that the Artemis needs to travel almost 400,000km to the moon and back at a speed of 25,000km/ hr which I presume is a little further and faster than your daily commute.

Why not google for all the day to day innovations/new products that have been discovered due to the space exploration research and development.

Remind me how the hole in the ozone layer was found?

Sigh. It’ll make bugger all difference to climate change.

Another one who thinks it is disgusting spending so much money on space travel when there are so many problems on Earth AND it is also hardly helpful to climate change as well.

I would also like to say in defence of @ViviennemaryI did assume the space mission used actual fuel…

Let’s send all the nasty Nazis up in the shuttle & leave them on the dark side of the moon….
I’m thinking Trump & cronies, Putin, Orban, Erdogan, Rupert Lowe, Farage, Katie Hopkins, Musk... in fact I have a long list!!!

Obvs there will need to be several trips costing ££ billions but it will benefit the Earth in the long run.

All, no doubt, while going to cook their dinners made with foods farmed using technology, which could never be farmed in the quantities to feed them (or indeed grown in the country in which they live and transported to them) without technology.

Then will go to bed under blankets of duvets made using machines, in a bed made using machines, in a house built out of materials made in factories by machines, drinking and bathing in water filtered by machines, and posting about how they deplore it all on the internet using a machine. With their electric lights turned on, no doubt, now it’s getting dark.

All made using ENERGY, fuel. That the evil scientists have harnessed for them using their deplorable science, to give them this very privileged existence so that they aren’t living in a freezing cold cave with many of their children dying at less than a year old and their own life expectancy being 25.

It really is unfathomable that people do not realise how very lucky they are that scientists have saved them from the existence that humans used to have, and the fact that scientists are also our only hope for the future.

A good starting point to understand an overview of human history for a non-academic would be to read Yuval Noah Harari’s books. And maybe, if you want to understand something of scientific progress, have a look into Ray Kurzweil. I remember reading some of his books back in the 1990s when he was still being ridiculed, but now I believe he is finally being listened to and has even done some Ted Talks etc for people who find books too much of a challenge.

Like cows. The farty bastards.

Amen.

You use technology created as a direct result of space exploration every single day.

So not really pointless, is it.

Compared to the millions of pointless journeys done in cars, I’ll take space travel

Perhaps. But if they are anti-science then why are they happy to drive cars, live in heated houses, avail themselves of clean water systems, healthcare and medicines, fly on planes, have any electric appliances in their houses etc?

You cannot pick and choose or blame science for the way that some idiotic world leaders have misused it.

The fact is that most of the people posting here would be dead by now if it wasn’t for science. Those still alive would likely be under 30 and living extremely hard lives and certainly wouldn’t be posting anything on a chat forum because no such thing would exist.

The only solution to the problems with the damage to the Earth’s biodiversity and climate and humanity’s remaining problems of poverty and suffering (already vastly improved by science) is more science.

I’d like to hear what the anti-science people propose as the alternative solution.

Bear in mind that if we abandon all scientific inventions or use of fuel then there will not be enough arable land on Earth to feed the current global population and at least half of people globally will starve to death very quickly. There will be even more pollution because there will be no sewage filtration. People in colder countries will die of cold and people in hotter countries will die from the heat. Food obviously cannot be shipped around because that involves fuel and engines and boats and planes and technology. People will have no medical care so a small cut to your hand or leg may mean you die from an infection. No vaccinations so viruses will spread like wildfire killing hundreds of millions.

It’s idiotic for these people to be posting on the internet using computers and electricity sanctimoniously telling us all that science is bad while they live their cosy lives with central heating and ovens and washing machines and cars and medicines and vaccinations etc.

Mind-bogglingly stupid to blame “science” for some world leaders doing stupid things. The answer is to stop letting stupid people run countries. That’s not an argument for abolishing scientific progress.

How many of these posters would survive a two weeks living off-grid without the creature comforts that science affords to them?

Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen.

4 people, united in vulnerable humanity, taking off to go round the far side of the Moon, the first to do so for 50 years.

I wish them with all my heart a good liftoff, a successful mission and safe return to our grotty little planet home, having actually done something to advance us as a species, because for all the naysayers, it really does.

You could try to understand it.

I imagine you don’t understand lots of things, like most people. That doesn’t make them pointless.

Cavemen developed flints. What’s your point?

Anything to do with space is a big fat waste of time and money. I mean who even understands it? Hardly anyone. Anything you are taught about it is designed to make you feel as small and inconsequential as possible. No benefits. You get a few pictures of rocks. A load of rubbish. A licence to print money.

@ProjectHailMary I imagine that many of the people who aren't 100% behind space exploration are against war too.

For anybody who might like to think a little more about the long-term implications for humanity about why understanding the universe we live in is important, aside from the more immediate problems that humanity faces which only science has a prospect of getting us through:

https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

Scientists have developed weapons, is death just a waste product of that?