politics

That's not true, when we invest in NASA we get those funds back as technological advancements. Velcro for example. Funding the Artemis missions would enable us to build a permanent moon base, providing a new environment for conducting scientific research and preparing us to expand humanity to other worlds.

The first moon race, maybe. They wanted to achieve something before "The Reds" to avoid losing face. But labeling all the research and projects brought by NASA as a waste of money is superficial and myopic.

There are scientific discoveries regarding both the moon and our own planet that only happened because of the apollo missions. The space race was also the catalyst that led to advanced technologies we use every day, like GPS, water filtration systems, and insulin pumps. It also contributed to electrical engineering and material science advancement for miniaturizing electronics, solar cells, digital thermometers and mammograms, digitial imaging sensors, cordless power tools, smoke detectors, fire-resistant material, durable parachute materials, scratch resistant coatings, memory foam, etc.

Even if you're a cynic that has no respect for exploration or scientific endeavor, or minimizes the space race to a "dumb, authoritarian dick measuring contest" (which don't get me wrong, it was also that, at first), the real world advancements that we spawned from these endeavors is pretty crazy. Turns out, when you let scientists and engineers push beyond what people have done before, beyond where they have gone before, and then let them iterate on that process to do it better next time, they can do some pretty amazing things.

And we did that with the technology of the 60's - 80's. We have had 40+ years of advancement now to push our endeavors further, and new challenges in mind for long term settlement, orbital launches, geological research, etc. We can only guess what advancements will come from having the challenges of space exploration pushing tech advancements again instead of the exclusively consumer-driven and military-driven shit we've seen over the last few decades.

Vs the government subsidies to private companies like SpaceX and company for.... space tourism.

The Moon is the only readily available source of truly ancient Earth rocks. If we want to know more about our planet, we have to go to The Moon, and do science.

Thus far exactly one scientist has ever set foot on The Moon. We're going back with a team of scientists and one pilot, rather than the inverse ratio that the Apollo missions had.

Nah it was an authoritarian dick measuring contest that we managed to get a lot of useful science funding from. Neil DeGrasse Tyson is clear on this point at least. Once the Soviets lost interest in the moon, we dropped it.

The complaint is that we shouldn’t need a dick measuring contest to do science. We’ve even had the chance to see what science funding like NASA’s can do now, yet still we can’t bring ourselves to fund it without a dick measuring contest to motivate us. So we’re outsourcing it to the billionaires, who have a dick measuring contest between them that fits the bill.

What’s the next dick measuring contest that this idiotic species will need to latch onto to keep space exploration going?