YHK - yet another hacker news clone

A rough guide for going back to the Moon

41 points gmays 1 day ago 57 comments

Planktonne 5 hours ago | parent

It's hard not to see this as a consolation prize. In 1969, we went to the moon.

In 2026, with all the benefits of a tech industry that has become ever more powerful, with endless money poured into innovation, our 'rough guide back to the moon' is an AI model that maps it. It's powerful and impressive, of course, and doubtless very useful to researchers, and space exploration is not a priority--all of that is true, sure.

But to have the fruits of 50+ years of technological progress result not in going back to the moon, or onto other challenges, but just a refinement in looking at the moon. Is this the best giant leap we can muster now? So much innovation and yet we lack a capability we used to have.

I know there are all sorts of ways to explain this away, but it still makes me sad.

1970-01-01 4 hours ago | parent

The goal is entirely different.

Apollo - Cold war. USA must do it before Russia and win the space race. Money is not a restriction. USA did it before Russia and won the space race.

Artemis - Prove a multi-national program can function under financial, economic, political, and even technical restrictions. We can't simply land and observe, it needs to be a team effort under a tight budget.

https://www.planetary.org/charts/apollo-vs-artemis-spending

abcd_f 4 hours ago | parent

> won the space race

Some of it.

Not first to the space, not first to the Moon, not first in human spaceflight, not first in spacewalk, etc.

1970-01-01 4 hours ago | parent

That remains a ridiculous argument. The thing about a race is you can always think of excuses for not winning. Plans for Mars were being met by all accounts, however Nixon still cancelled them because the Apollo victory was so decisive.

asdfasvea 3 hours ago | parent

Thats a ridiculous comment. The thing about the space race is we were getting are ass kicked, then said 'Oh the finish line is actually this. Oh look we kicked your ass "

It was like we lost the first 9 events of a decathalon and then won the 1500 and declared ourselves the winner.

1970-01-01 3 hours ago | parent

You're supporting the USA decisive victory with this take. We are not disagreeing on the winner.

bee_rider 2 hours ago | parent

Actually, in Russia do they have a pitch for where they’d rather draw the finish line? I admit it is probably influenced by having a US upbringing, but “landing on the Moon” does seem like a natural finish line for a space race.

The move of picking an advantageous finish line is easily countered by… picking an obvious successor finish line. If they’d stuck a base on the moon that’d have been a pretty compelling “actually, here’s the next finish line.”

Maybe they have some space-station based claim.

roryirvine 1 hour ago | parent

But the finish line did keep changing: first satellite in orbit, first living mammals in orbit, first human in orbit, multiple humans in orbit, spacewalk, moon landing, human moon landing, planetary landing, space station, reusable space plane, modular space station.

I think both sides broadly agreed on all of those as their "next big goal" (with slight question mark over the space plane, as you could reasonably say the Soviet programme was purely reactive).

The race ended after the fall of the Soviet Union (with the Challenger disaster being an additional factor), not because it had been definitively won.

bryanlarsen 1 hour ago | parent

Russia has the first finish line -- Sputnik. You can pick a successor finish line to diminish the American accomplishment, but Russia will always have that first one.

rtkwe 3 hours ago | parent

IMO he stopped it because Russia wasn't meaningfully threatening to field a Mars mission. The end was always artificial and if the USSR had beat the US to the Moon maybe we would have gotten a race to the first "permanent" base on the Moon or spacestation or even a rush to Mars. That's the point of the "did the US really win the Space Race?" question, it's about how the finish line was essentially always the next thing the USSR hadn't done yet.

somenameforme 2 hours ago | parent

Nixon cancelled them because he was increasingly worried about a catastrophic accident and felt it could damage his political career and ambitions. Seriously. [1] If he only knew... Outside of that you're correct. We were already set for progress onto Mars. In a parallel timeline where one man's political ambitions, and myopia, didn't override the interests of an entire species - we could already viably have multiple parallel civilizations scattered throughout the solar system, and perhaps already be flirting with abstract concepts of moving beyond just the solar system. We're left with our timeline, but hopefully people 60 years from now might look back at us more fondly for our actions of today, and tomorrow.

[1] - https://www.planetary.org/articles/1027-when-nixon-stopped-h...

tekla 4 hours ago | parent

This is such a bad response. The space race was to get to the moon. There is a reason the USSR dropped any crewed lunar plans instantly when the USA landed (also they couldn't get the N1 to stop exploding) and went all in on satellites. They also kept the crewed tests secret because they knew they were behind the USA and was embarrassing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AmericaBad/comments/1apgsc9/regardi...

orbital-decay 3 hours ago | parent

>The space race was to get to the moon.

That's either revisionist or ignorant (likely the latter, looking at cheap memes). The term was coined by American journos in the early 50's, and the actual events started in 1955, very publicly. And objectively speaking it never ended until the USSR crashed.

You should probably read something on the Soviet space program (starting with Rockets and People, for example), and the US one while you're at it. The Soviets didn't went all in on satellites. They simply returned to the original ideas Korolev & co had long before Sputnik ever flew, namely LEO modular assembly tech followed by manned circumnavigation of Venus (before the surface conditions were known) or Mars (after that) as a meaningful first step in deep space exploration. Which was pretty pragmatic and long-term thinking, although it's hard to say how realistic it was politically: they would have finished by the late 80's at best and securing the funding without propaganda-worthy progress wasn't a given. Regardless, they succeeded at actual LEO colonization, which was presumably "not space race" (I'm sure Space Shuttle/Freedom being a massive failure and NASA seeking Soviet expertise after the crash has nothing to do with that framing...).

Lunar missions, let alone single-flight ones without modular spacecraft, were a practical dead end and a distraction, the engineers understood that perfectly. The party however got successfully baited by JFK's advisors into the race they couldn't win because they still needed to close the "reverse missile gap" after the US panicked and closed the actual missile gap they imagined existed by building a ton of Titan IIs. The Apollo people were also in perfect understanding that the program had no practical followup and only existed for novelty, see anything written by Chris Kraft and Gene Kranz who were actual participants. STS was a colossal blunder and a setback as well, in practical terms, and it was obvious before the first flight.

The race was never limited to manned missions either. For example most of what we know about the Solar System comes from the JPL, which is hugely underappreciated. The Soviets only succeeded with Venus missions.

JKCalhoun 30 minutes ago | parent

Well, President Kennedy kind of spelled out the finish line.

Although, to be specific, he did not say it was a race, but rather something the U.S. should strive for—even specifying a deadline.

orbital-decay 4 hours ago | parent

>and won the space race

... or maybe just called some convenient events "space race" and refused to notice the others. Like a literal space colony circling above, for example. If you control the framing you control the reality.

next_xibalba 3 hours ago | parent

That’s like saying the goal of the process is the process. It is a recursive definition and a pointless, expensive endeavor.

bluGill 4 hours ago | parent

Going to the moon is a publicity stunt. Been there done that. There are very few good arguments for putting anything on the moon, much less a human (which generally can do much less because all the life support needed can't be put into science). All the arguments for going to the moon need to be considered against everything else we can do - opportunity cost is real, but investing in the moon we are not investing in something else. (including less working hours...) Most of the things we developed for the moon would have been done anyway, and we don't know what things would have been developed sooner if we were not focusing on the moon.

Be realistic. You can support going to the moon. However be honest: there isn't much value from it and there are plenty of reasons to say we shouldn't.

ramesh31 4 hours ago | parent

>"There are very few good arguments for putting anything on the moon, much less a human (which generally can do much less because all the life support needed can't be put into science)."

The arguments are entirely romantic. But then, what exactly is life without romance? That's probably the single greatest loss of modern society; that we've been convinced nothing matters but the material and concrete.

bluGill 4 hours ago | parent

At that point though, there are lots of other romances to peruse. Somebody could go to the moon, but it won't be me. I could however go to my local art museum - at a much smaller costs than my share of sending someone else to the moon, but I'd get more value from my trip to the art museum than someone else on the moon.

Or in my case I just went to my local high school marching band competition, and got to hear some great music. YMMV on what you find more romantic.

edgyquant 3 hours ago | parent

People want to go to the moon, you could make your same argument for lots of things humans have done but at the end of the day science is not the reason 99% of people care about or want to colonize space. People have a desire to colonize space

dabluecaboose 2 hours ago | parent

I've heard a lot of arguments against human space exploration, but "We could put that energy into working less" is probably one of the more out-there arguments that's hard to take seriously.

tempfile 2 hours ago | parent

Work is a necessary evil. If it is not necessary, then it is just a regular evil. There are no credible arguments that going to the moon is necessary, or supports some other necessary goal.

Of course by work, I mean work directed by somebody else to serve their ends, in exchange for money to live your own life. If we could afford to have people work five hours a week and still maintain a functioning society, then surely it is a moral obligation for us to do that. If you decide you want or need to do some kind of voluntary work to keep your mental health intact, so much the better. And if those happy people want to voluntarily commit some of their energy to going to the moon for no reason, then good for them.

I really cannot imagine taking your position. Working less is the pretty much the only thing we should be putting energy into.

MiloLeo 1 hour ago | parent

> If we could afford to have people work five hours a week and still maintain a functioning society, then surely it is a moral obligation for us to do that.

I wonder what this would look like. I feel like nearly all of mankinds greatest achievements are due to our current structure of employment or at being forced to do something at the behest of someone elses ends.

fodkodrasz 1 hour ago | parent

> I feel like nearly all of mankinds greatest achievements are due to our current structure of employment or at being forced to do something at the behest of someone elses ends.

like out-of-control global warming, depletion of freshwater reserves, destruction of soil, mass surveillance, extremely uneven distribution of resources. I mean all previous innovations which were supposed to allow working less somehow never materialized in working less, and the quality of life improvements are greatly questionable, basically keeping the production-consumption machinery takes up all the surplus it produces, while depleting the resources we have.

The great achievements we have are much like the Moai statues on the Easter Island.

classified 59 minutes ago | parent

> There are no credible arguments that going to the moon is necessary, or supports some other necessary goal.

“the superfluous is highly necessary”

– Voltaire

Exoristos 3 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

somenameforme 2 hours ago | parent

I think this sort of view is quite myopic. In general space has practically infinite everything - land, resources, energy, and more. It has the potential to enable, in turn, infinite expansion of humanity. But we're not going to get to the endgame without playing the opening first.

The path to international air flight began with often suicidal attempts to flap our arms with various instruments attached and act like birds, with many thinking we'd never go anywhere beyond that. With space we're already a bit more advanced, yet we're far from where we need to be - and the only way we're going to get there is by going out and starting on a very long journey.

We didn't do anything in 1969. Landing on the Moon and leaving a flag is like seeing the Wright Flyer go 260m, waving a Mission Accomplished banner, and then quitting with that as the state of art of flight - a mildly interesting novelty that was, at best, a proof of concept.

dfgknionio 1 hour ago | parent

Even if you think a space industry is useful in general, there is no reason for humans to be involved. Robots are superior to humans for this application today and will only become more superior in the future.

fodkodrasz 1 hour ago | parent

Why pursue space exploration if all we can do is send robots there? The only meaningful thing for humanity is sending Humans to places.

Gathering more resources so the overlords can have more humans enslaved with shinier golden handcuffs, who can consume more so number line goes up is not a meaningful goal to pursuit, and robotic-only commercially rationalized spaceflight has only this to offer.

Scientific discovery, so we can have better simulations about things of no use or effect on us? Why? Taking people to places and utilizing the resources there, and building a more resilient humanity is a worthy endeavor, and while robots are useful for that, ultimately human spaceflight (or interplanetary/interstellar travel) is he goal, not having only a space industry.

dfgknionio 1 hour ago | parent

What is the point in having a colony of maybe dozens of people completely dependent on shipments from Earth? Building a self-sustaining colony is so far outside the realm of possibility that it isn't worth thinking about, and building a symbolic outpost servers no practical purpose.

wavemode 1 hour ago | parent

> space has practically infinite everything - land, resources, energy

The Earth has more land than mankind will ever need. The Earth has effectively infinite energy from the Sun. And most of the resources we need are derived from biological matter, which Space lacks.

bdamm 12 minutes ago | parent

Ah, but humanity is an expansive and consuming force, as is natural since most forces in the universe are entropy increasing ones. And since amino acids have been discovered on asteroids and tardigrades and fungus have been shown to survive space travel, we can't even say that Space provably lacks biological matter. Expanding (back?) into space is our manifest destiny, and good for the price of real estate too since all of earth becomes a luxury destination.

thrance 12 minutes ago | parent

Radioactive, toxic, dry, low-gravity and anoxic land isn't exactly prime real estate. Even the North Pole is a better environment for humans to live in than the Moon or Mars are.

heaney-555 4 hours ago | parent

You should look into the Artemis program! Not only are we going back, but we're building a base, which will effectively be the spiritual successor to the ISS.

edgyquant 3 hours ago | parent

I’ll have to see it to believe it. Artemis was slow but seemed to be making progress and now things have been shaken up again and plans totally changed. To me that seems like it’s not going to happen

bryanlarsen 3 hours ago | parent

> endless money poured into innovation

The US put 5% of the federal budget into the original moon mission. NASA and SpaceX and the US Space Force combined don't spend anywhere close to that on R&D.

emj 1 hour ago | parent

Pretty sure we are talking about the endless AI money glitch.

Planktonne 1 hour ago | parent

That's part of my complaint. More and more money is poured into 'innovation' across our society, but what do we have to show for it?

petcat 21 minutes ago | parent

I mean, don't we have multiple robots living on Mars right now? And 2 more flying around it?

And even a few more that aren't even in our own solar system anymore...

wat10000 15 minutes ago | parent

A huge variety of tools and technology that billions of people use daily.

What did we ultimately have to show for the money poured into Apollo? I'm a big fan of space exploration but putting twelve people up there for a few days at a time is pretty small potatoes compared to, say, the creation of smart phones or vast improvements in solar power and batteries or a thousand other things that have been done since 1972. I can push a (virtual) button on a rectangle I carry in my pocket and be instantly on a video call with my mother who lives a thousand miles away. And I don't even have to pay by the minute. That's positively magical, and in terms of actual real-world impact on average people it's far more significant than moon landings.

sajithdilshan 3 hours ago | parent

I think the problem is not the technological advancement, it’s the limits of physics which are the same as in today as it was back in 1960s.

We have immense computing power now compared to 50 years ago. But that doesn’t help to escape the gravity well of earth. We’re still using the same chemical rockets to go to space, haven’t invented any new type of rocket drives

ashika 2 hours ago | parent

cough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_rocket_propellant#Metha... cough

sajithdilshan 2 hours ago | parent

It’s still a chemical reaction

pfdietz 1 hour ago | parent

That's a very bad take. Rocket costs are not driven by physics, they're driven by more mundane issues, like single-use hardware. The cost floor dictated by cost of propellant is remarkably low.

anovikov 3 hours ago | parent

There is a dumb ass simple explanation: in about the same time it took to build rockets that took people to the Moon, we figured out that there was nothing to do there for humans. Or anywhere in the Solar System for that matter.

I mean until 1960 people expected to find whole civilisation or at least intelligent life on Venus and until 1964, at least some life on Mars. By then, it was too late to stop Apollo, but already no point to go anywhere else or expand Moon presence.

OroPla 2 hours ago | parent

Saddest part is that all the tech was apparently so utterly useless for anything that NASA lost it.

scrumper 5 hours ago | parent

I read this a bit fast and with half a brain (because I'm in a boring meeting), but I'm not sure what an "AI model" is over just a common or garden model.

I get the achievement here: it's quite difficult to combine data from these various sensors into one. Is the "AI" bit referring to how that integration was done?

metalman 3 hours ago | parent

did not know we have -246°c to play with, which means the potential for the whole set of usefull volitiles is there, not just water/O²/H², and given that there is also the potential for +121°c very close to cold deposits, gives most of the basics for refining a whole host of molecules and compounds. Non of that changing the fact that bieng on the moon for any extended time is going to SUCK , the dust is horrible in every possible way, low gravity will weaken , radiation is heavy, and all of the many other risks will add up to a poor career choice, so the compensation will have to be 1 tour, and retire in guaranteed style. Basicly flying a great big ass laser in a lunar polar orbit and zapping the shaded dark sections of craters while some other satelites watch the resulting gass plumes, and of course carve your initials while no one is looking. The band where there is enough solar exposure for power and cold traps is going to be narrow and dramaticly reduce the number of candidates, which has very likely been figured out years ago, especialy for earth facing spots. Still going to need the heavy lift of multiple starship landings and some kind of 'moon link' satelite network.

hmokiguess 2 hours ago | parent

I'm not gonna lie, I'm closer to a conspiracy theorist and non-believer than I am to trust history on the moon landing stuff. Doesn't help that I wasn't alive when it happened, and that we haven't since gone again. It feels so nonsensical to me, I would love for someone to help me educate myself on it from a more grounded point of view that can satisfy my paranoia. Did we really go there? How come we (as in humanity, any other nation whatsoever) haven't gone again since?

scrumper 1 hour ago | parent

Yes we really went there, quite a few times in the 1970s. We have been again, also several times, with rovers and landers. As for why not humans since then? There's bugger all there to justify the extreme cost (at this time). It's an unpleasant ball made from tiny abrasive dust particles that is more easily explored with robots. The prestige thing is done; until we set up some base there in support of some broader mission (scientific or exploratory) there isn't a reason to send people.

I've put a couple of resources here for you. The first one described the program from a neutral perspective (in line with what you ask - grounded POV to satisfy paranoia): https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/moon-landing/

This one is for people a little further down the conspiracy pipeline, and it debunks the various things that moon landing conspiracists like to talk about: https://www.iop.org/explore-physics/moon/how-do-we-know-we-w...

Both are worth a read!

Finally this is an excellent jumping-off point to understand the Apollo program in more detail, once you're satisfied that it did happen (if you don't think so, you'll reject the source out of hand.) https://www.nasa.gov/the-apollo-program/

The program itself was really, really, really cool and is worth reading about. A truly enormous achievement involving millions of people and an entire country's scientific and engineering capacity.

hmokiguess 1 hour ago | parent

Thank you so much for this, I am super excited for this read, you made my day!

scrumper 1 hour ago | parent

You are most welcome. Enjoy it!

mesrik 55 minutes ago | parent

Also to get the mood and sense how it felt following those flights media outlets back then there is great site

https://apolloinrealtime.org/

I've listened through those flights few times and it still each time takes me back to memories still giving me goosebumps. Especially Apollo 11 when I was nine year old kid listening tiny battery radio all nights at our summer cottage attic.

pfdietz 1 hour ago | parent

The "moon landings didn't happen" conspiracies are, of course, inane, but they come from an understandable place. If moon landings really did happen, how could they just have stopped? There's a disconnect between the event and the consequences.

The resolution is to realize that Apollo was a dead-end stunt, not some universe-altering historical event. The lack of consequences was an inevitable result of the structure of what Apollo was.

nullorempty 1 hour ago | parent

We may be approaching technologically to expanding into the universe but we are certainly not there spiritually. Not to say that we shouldn't pursue this, there are probably war races in space already, but it seems to me that a better path would be growing spiritually before we expand. I wouldn't like to be in a place where we have the technical capability to reach Mars before we learn to live in peace on earth and take good care of our home.

pfdietz 1 hour ago | parent

> spiritually

Going back into space will require doing so with a hard nosed commercial mindset. Things on that scale are done because they are profitable, not because of putatively higher minded considerations.

I think our collective spirit is in the best place it's ever been for actually going into space, it's just not the spirit you were probably imagining.

flobosg 1 hour ago | parent

Tangentially related, these articles by Maciej Cegłowski:

* The Lunacy of Artemis – https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm

* Artemis II Is Not Safe to Fly – https://idlewords.com/2026/03/artemis_ii_is_not_safe_to_fly....

bryanlarsen 1 hour ago | parent

Lunacies 5, 6 & 7 are the only things that make the Artemis program useful. Landing 1t on the moon is an expensive, useless, performative flags and footprints mission. Landing 100t keeps the other moon dreams alive.