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

[Viviennemary]

With this current fuel crisis it's total madness sending a rocket to the moon. What is the point. Nobody is even going to land on the moon. Doubt therei s any oil on the moon.

I kinda get you OP.

I know it’s in our nature to want to explore and advance as a species, but we just have far too much on our plate here which imo should take priority. We’ve got a significant proportion of the world living in poverty or very close to it, and a tiny minority at the top swanning around in super yachts (and designing rockets..) etc with more money than they’ll ever be able to spend. So sort out the injustices and imbalances of the world first (imo not possible until you tackle the cause: basic greed) and when everything is peachy, crack on with your rockets.

Were quite possibly going to annihilate ourselves in the next few decades/hundreds of years anyway because of that greed, so what will having a few chunks of rock from the moon or mars to analyse gain us?

The PP that said eventually our planet will become uninhabitable: even if the worst possible outcomes of climate change come to pass, earth will still be a thousand times more habitable than eg Mars, just because Mars is an incredibly long way from being habitable; it’s got virtually no atmosphere for a start, and a much weaker/non existent magnetic shield: hello stellar radiation…

So sort the world out first, and once that’s achieved, go and play around with rockets. That’s my little coffee fuelled rant.

A little review of how research in space has benefited terrestrial healthcare delivery

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10276356/

The applications are vast.

I'm sure a couple of billion humans consider you living in a nice cosy house with a bed each, a bath and a shower and probably two toilets is overdoing it while they are living in slum conditions on under $3 a day.
But you would probably say that you've worked hard for your money and should be allowed to spend it how you please and that "it isn't a race to the bottom".
Well, that's what the super rich and bods at NASA think about spending their money on space travel etc.
Everything is relative and you being unable to afford fuel for your car isn't their problem at all.
(Oh and Amazon will just increase prices to cover the extra needed for drivers' fuel if too many stop on account of fuel price.)

You do realise that "the bods at NASA" aren't doing this as a whim or because they had a spare day to fill, but because they've been directed to by the elected government of the US, right?

If they put trump and his administration in it with just enough fuel to go one way then I would be in favour.

How small some of your worlds are.

The point is to explore, to gain knowledge, to push human knowledge further. It’s exciting.

Seeing the space shuttle at Kennedy Space Centre made me tearful.

I agree - loved my visit to Kennedy. Everything was just fascinating, especially the mock-up of the first moon landing, and being able to touch that little piece of moon rock!

Me too. Visiting Kennedy was a dream come true for me. Never thought I would be in the same room as Atlantis.

I suspect you would find something to complain about it if it was being done with shoe boxes and the project run by mutant hamsters not humans.

You just don't like the idea of the whole project and are scratching around for a reason to justify this opinion.

Fair enough. We get it.

@LittleBearPad for me it’s more that we have destroyed this planet, why do we need to destroy others

Yes of course. My brother is a rocket scientist (European not NASA), they are a fascinating bunch of people, great at dinner parties. Western governments spend (waste?) eye-watering amounts on all sorts, it's from different funding pots to the funding pots used for saving the planet.

Don't try bringing facts into the thread!

Although to be fair the LH2 is made from methane, i.e. natural gas.

So what about the costs? It'll generate and spur technological change and innovation.

The outer Space treaty says no one owns the moon and other celestial bodies. It also says no military in space.

So what if it's inhospitable?

About 0.34% of total U.S. federal spending, using NASA’s core FY 2025 discretionary appropriation.

It's barely anything in the first place. Stop whining.

But they could only launch in daytime and what about when they’re on the dark side of the moon?

We have not 'destroyed' this planet - the problem is that there are too many people on the Earth - breeding has spiralled out of control. That is why resources are stretched so thinly. What we need is a comprehensive and effective method of limiting the number of children born - particularly in some of the developing countries, but I doubt this will happen.

It still bores me now and I'm in my sixties.

Chris Packham said that if he every pound spent on saving the panda had been spent more widely then the natural world would be a much better place.

I feel the same about space travel.

We haven’t destroyed the planet. We’ve done some stupid things. We’ve also done some amazing things.

Less than 20 years ago I could sit on Exmoor at night and look at a sky full of stars.

Now the sky there is a busy criss-crossed highway of the moving lights of satellites. There's no natural, unmessed with peace to be found anywhere now. Where's all that junk going?

Pandas would be a bit buggered though.

If those who've been in space have to travel to the moon to realise that life and the earth are fragile they aren't looking properly at the world outside your window.

The people who do most to preserve our natural world have never been in space yet they've cottoned on.

Some of you must be dead inside. What a blinkered, petty world view, to think exploration and discovery is a waste. Have you no intellectual curiosity? No sense of wonder?

I think it's fantastic. I loved visiting the Kennedy Space Centre. Our whole house will be following this mission with great interest!

I hope I live to see people walking on Mars.

Imagine - the rocket being filled up with premium unleaded. 😂 Honestly - you cant make this sort of shit up on mumsnet 😂

Perhaps the people who don't want to know more about the universe are busy being unendingly and intensely curious about the things close at hand that some people with their head in the clouds never notice.