[elmerfud]

This is very sad news. I realize there is a lot of criticism to be said around the Artemis program. Those who criticize it aren't wrong. Like a lot of NASA projects following the Saturn V It turned into an overly politicized thing. Instead of just giving them a goal and giving them money and letting them do what was necessary to achieve it.

The space shuttle was an interesting thing but ultimately was a patchwork of politically motivated parts that in hindsight wasn't that successful of a space program. Artemis having to build on some of this just carried forward the same problems.

What makes me sad about this is that roughly 50% of the population was not alive the last time people stepped on the moon. I count myself among those I missed it by one year. Although I would not have remembered it at the time. Even at the time of the shuttle NASA should have been working to test interesting and non-financially viable technologies to release into the commercial market. Now launching rockets into space is fully a commercial endeavor. I think there's still a great role for NASA. Because there are some plausible technologies that will never be financially viable to research and develop without them. Let NASA partner with some of these places but develop things like aerospike engines and other technologies that have promise but are too far away from a commercial realization to be viable at this point.

I want to see people go to the moon again. Artemis was a big waste of money but I wanted it to send people back to the moon even if it was just to remind people that as a nation and as a world we should aspire to great and impossible things. That we should look up instead of looking down and inward all of the time. I wanted Artemis to prove out some of these technologies and then on the next trip it can go on a a SpaceX rocket or someone else's.

[johnbarron]

>> I want to see people go to the moon again.

Its pretty clear China will do it and on schedule.