Die USA sind jetzt in Gefahr

is there any real need to send humans to the moon?

we already achieved the symbolic value of doing it once.

why not just send robots and focus more on bigger milestones like mars?

p.s. for people downvoting, that was an actual sincere question. thank you to those who responded with actual reasons why sending humans back to the moon would be of practical benefit e.g. moon settlement / stepping stone to mars.

Musk made sure of that, he’s already set for Mars. Trump has already started shutting down the moon effort.

Oh, we are going to lose lots of things to China. Better get used to it.

uhh, didn’t the US beat China to the moon by more than half a century?

Oh! Are we actually trying to go to the moon? I assumed the SLS program was just an elaborate jobs scheme for Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

Been there done that.

Let’s send someone to mars if we want a real challenge.

Half of the United States population appears to be drug and alcohol addled and barely surviving. I think we’ll be ok if China gets to the moon 60-70 years after we got there.

Better yet, we could send thousands of robots & extraplanetary satellites which could accomplish hundreds of times more useful science than risking lives just to burn human bodies to shreds with the guaranteed radioactivity & zero-gravity bone loss.

If the US already went to the moon, what sort of race is this?

We should be trying to figure out the Mars Sample Return problem not sending fragile humans to the moon. Seriously! What is the point other than getting higher quality photos from the surface of the moon? We can do so much with Rovers and we don’t have to worry about getting them „home“.

> The US is now at risk of losing to China in the race to send people back to the Moon’s surface

Only one country is going **back** to the Moon.

The other is attempting to do it for the *first time*.

I wouldn’t say „now at risk“, more like it gave up the mantle back in line 2006 or 2012. If you look at China’s achievements in infrastructure, energy investment, science investment, and industrial production for things like ships, and even reduce those by an order of magnitude due to propoganda, they’re still absolutely on track to outpace the US.

Remember in the Space race of the 50s and 60s, the Soviets built one big rocket essentially and used that to achieve all their firsts, while the US built a new rocket for each achievement. It meant that when it came time to build the rocket to the moon, for the US it was an iterative next step (to grossly oversimplify). For the Soviets it was back to the drawing board after nearly a decade. The Soviets would never launch a mission to the moon.

To return to the moon in the next decade would require far more money than the goverment is willing to spend, or required steady investment since like 2006. Since we wasted trillions on the GWOT, and had to spend a few more trillion on Covid, there’s not much left to go to space.

Prediction: China will go to the moon, and Elon’s privatized Space X will not go to Mars in a hundred years

At risk? lol.

Maybe some Americans still believe it but they aren’t the world’s top player in space anymore.

China will beat Americans back to the moon. It’s not even a question. They’ve succeeded in every one of their objectives in space for over 15 years now. They have clear plans and are on track to go to the moon. They’re even due to send up a robot soon that will test 3D printing bricks using lunar regolith.

Meanwhile Americas a crumbling shithole speedrunning fascism being led by the single dumbest human to ever grace the human race. Who just cut NASA’s budget. A NASA that has a frankly stupid mission plan with Artemis, no clear funding beyond Artemis 3, which will be delayed well past 2030.

Nah, I look forward to watching a HD moon landing in a few years with my kids. Sure we will need subtitles but at least it will happen.