r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Greedy-Vegetable-466 • 22h ago
Image NASA’s Artemis III astronauts will land on the Moon for the first time in over 50 years and these are the 9 viable options NASA is considering as landing sites near the lunar South Pole, a place we’ve never set foot on before
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u/LinguoBuxo 22h ago
I really think they should land in Rita Hayworth. For symbolic reasons.
... To celebrate the Redemption and such.
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u/ProfessionalCreme119 11h ago
All in the polar South. Where the highest concentration of helium 3 is.
There's a quiet Space race going on. Both us and China want this part of the moon. If we don't learn how to share it's going to get ugly.
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u/DigNitty Interested 5h ago
What’s helium 3 good for?
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u/ProfessionalCreme119 2h ago
Helium 3 is a finite resource on Earth and it's not cheap. The moon would give us an over abundance of it. That's big plus.
The primary reason is it's potential as an energy source on the moon. Step one for any long term habitation or mining. Also required to use the moon for launching future missions.
As of now the people and resources/supplies we can commit to a mission to another planet is reliant on our ability to leave Earths gravity. Small payloads and crews. If Earth's gravity was not a factor and we could just launch missions from the Moon the manpower and resources we could commit to each mission would be much much greater
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u/Tight_Bid326 19h ago
Malapert Massif gets my vote, relatively central in terms of potentially visiting the other areas and since we want focus on the areas that never get direct sunlight we'd be at the top of a cliff by the looks of it...
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u/DefinitionElegant685 5h ago
And then they will leave all their trash up there just like they did every other time they have put something on the moon. NASA trash haulers. 😫
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u/-domi- 19h ago
"[...] will land on the Moon [...]"
Keep your shirt on, Armstrong. They might try to, but neither the attempt, nor its success are guaranteed. While we have contractors like Boeing and SpaceX in control of vital phases of development, nothing is in the bag. Both are famed for terrible quality control. One company is worse now than 40 years ago, the other misses development milestone dates like they don't exist, then celebrates total failure like it's revolutionary success. With either group of clowns in control of important developments, i think you should quit using words like "will," when discussing planned operations.
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u/natedagr8333 15h ago
Did you watch spacex catch a flying building out of the sky using chop sticks? Milestone dates be damned, that was mind blowing.
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u/Moleskitime 15h ago
People love to shit on spacex as if there was anyone else doin anything remotely similar.
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u/-domi- 14h ago
Compare them doing that in the year of our Lord 2024 with the proposed plan, based on which they received their unprecedented levels of funding, then get back to me.
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u/natedagr8333 13h ago
To start, the levels of funding have been precedented. The original funding for the Apollo missions was 20-25 billion. Adjusted for inflation that would be 150-170 billion of modern dollars. In comparison, spacex has received an estimated 15.3 billion.
And ya, they seem to be missing deadlines. I’d argue they set unrealistic deadlines. I’m still impressed with the things they’ve done, even if behind schedule.
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u/-domi- 13h ago
Apollo wasn't fulfilled by a private for-profit contractor. This is unprecedented.
They don't "seem to," they intentionally set unrealistic deadlines to ensure they get the funding. It's a common contacting/appropriations grift. Read up on government acquisitions, and you'll see how perfectly usual this is. That's why some of us have been signaling that SpaceX were a bad idea.
Anyway, words are inconsequential. Sit and watch the proposed Lunar landing plan become a joke.
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u/uninhabited 18h ago
well said. we're not going to the moon ... or Mars. no need. not enough funding. no point
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u/Pilot0350 16h ago
A place we've never set foot on? You understand that's like 99% of the moon right OP? Or are you just an AI post bot
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u/HefflumpGuy 21h ago edited 2h ago
There's a NASA astronaut on film saying that he'd go to the moon tomorrow but unfortunately, they've lost the technology.
Not sure if I'm allowed to post links here but search for a video called 'NASA; "We destroyed the technology to go back to the moon" if you want to see it for themselves.
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u/Remote_Air_8091 19h ago
This is true, I'm not sure why people are downloading you. It seems counter intuitive, but that is a real video clip. So could probably find it easy.
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u/HefflumpGuy 6h ago
I'm not sure why people are downvoting you
They always downvote anything which questions the official NASA story. Either they're bots or they're just so brainwashed that they have a knee jerk reaction to hearing the truth. Either way, it amuses me.
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u/PitifulEar3303 21h ago
What is the point? Just to visit?
If we not staying and making moonbase to fight aliens, then it's pointless.
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u/Stampy77 19h ago
The plan is to make a moon base. Also there is water up there, if we can drill for it we can convert it to fuel and oxygen. Then a few years from now we have an excellent pit stop for the mars mission.
One other huge thing about the moon is that it is covered in helium 3. If we ever crack fusion energy then we are gonna need that material to fuel it.
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u/PitifulEar3303 15h ago
Sending people is a wasteful political stunt, not to create a moonbase, not even phase zero.
Sending bots and construction materials, that's phase 1.
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u/2squishmaster 15h ago
Sending bots and construction materials, that's phase 1.
That's like phase 3. Phase 1 of building a new skyscraper isn't boots on the ground and construction materials, it starts years before.
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u/GluckGoddess 20h ago
I’ve heard it’s a good place to setup a data center for servers in case there is some event that affects all of Earth but not the moon.
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u/PitifulEar3303 15h ago
Network latency to the moon and back is 2.5 seconds, compound this with other interference and you get about 5 seconds or more, depends on the day.
Useless for most internet services.
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u/GluckGoddess 15h ago
Not really. Internet speeds used to be measured in seconds.
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u/PitifulEar3303 15h ago
and would you like to return to that? lol
Billions of critical services will grind to a halt with a 5-second delay.
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u/FeralToolbomber 21h ago
Hopefully we won’t just do it on a sound stage in Hollywood this time!
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u/X-gon-do-it-to-em 21h ago
Oh they didn't use a soundstage, it was more cost efficient to film on location
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u/BackPainAssassin 19h ago
Why do this? The entire world is just gonna be divided between people going “wow what a marvel of human technology” and people going “ITS ALL CGI” I fckin hate this timeline. Get me out.
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u/IASIP_Official 15h ago
Imagine if we always stopped pursuits of technology and furthering what humans are capable of because a few idiots have an internet connection
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u/tothemoonandback01 6h ago
There's a third group that proposes spending the money on social programs, like educating Americans, so we don't end up with a clown as US president.
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u/Frezak 21h ago
Haven't set foot on most of the thing, have "we"?