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Originally Posted by Ungoliant
Well yeah, but that's semantics. Whatever the reason, they failed to advance our manned space program the way everyone would've envisioned after the moon landing and then eventually left us without one.
What the hell else were they going to do? They already went to the moon multiple times. Everything worthwhile they already did there. They flew into orbit to the various space stations many times.
It's orders of magnitude more expensive and risky to go to Mars, another worthless rock. There's nothing there. Everyone knows there's nothing there.
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People are excited about this because for the first time in a long time it feels like there's someone with a real vision for the future and just enough independence from all the political crap to actually get us somewhere.
People are excited because they weren't born during the earlier space program. Unfortunately they aren't going to do anything they haven't already done.
It was worth going to the moon, for strategic purposes especially. We didn't want the Soviet Union setting up missile platforms there. But we found it was made of the crap we thought it was, no more mysteries.
Mars, not so much. It's much farther away, nobody is going to put missile platforms on it. We've sent enough robots to know there are no mysteries there either, Matt Damon movies notwithstanding.
Sure, it could make a jumping off point for longer exploration, but not until someone invents an Epstein drive. Traveling with current technology takes the better part of a year. It's ridiculous to go anywhere from there other than back to earth.