Quit Your Bullshit!

The tech isn't "lost" as in we don't know how to do it. The tech is "lost" in the sense that we spent billions building giant single use rockets, then shut down the factories to move on to other projects.

If we wanted to turn around and build the exact same thing, we could. But all it would accomplish is sticking a couple people on the moon for a few days again. We already did that, and we don't want to waste the money it would take to repeat the stunt.

What we want is sticking people on the moon for a few months at a time, for a fraction of the cost. Which requires different tech and different rockets. We also want it safer, and more repeatable. None of those things can be done with the old equipment.

Yeah, the issue with the old moon landing tech is that the success chances were so low. It was worth it to them when it was the first, but now that it's been accomplished, there is less reason to take something that only has a 50/50 chance of working. Now, we want the odds of a successful complete trip to be at least 99%, ideally much higher. That is a much higher burden on the technology. I mean, consider the percent chance of a successful launch alone so far.

In 2023, there were 210 out of 222 successful rocket launches, about 95%. That's just launch, the part we have the most practice with... once it leaves atmosphere, the number of things that can go wrong dramatically increases. Granted, that includes a lot of unmanned launches, which have a lower burden of safety. So far in the entire history of manned rocket launches, the success rate has been 98%, have to assume including only more recent data would probably pull that up a bit. If launch alone is barely hitting 99%, how many people are gonna sign up for something much more complicated, with much less motivation than they had in the 60's.

The tech isn’t fucking lost FFS. It’s in NASA, TRW and my grandfathers fucking brain. This is like interstellar level of denial.

Most have spent a considerable amount of time looking for "sources" to confirm their belief, and have talked in length about it to an unreasonable amount of people around them: family, friends, colleagues,...

The cost of admitting they've been idiots and fooled the entire time would be very very high on them. Denial is cheaper.

The problem is once someone feels special or makes money from repeating conspiracy theories or pseudo science claims without any effort other than listening to some crackpot for a few minutes they have incentive to ignore or reject facts of reality based on experimentation that disagree with their professed opinions.

We are all susceptible to confirmation bias, but if you don't know what it is or how it works pointing it out won't change their confidence in the evidence supporting their conclusion and multiple other conclusions.

You're talking to someone with less educated views than you'd find in a fifth grade science class and trying to use objective facts gathered with a methodology they don't understand to show them they're wrong, but the only engagement they are demonstrating they are capable of are mockery or the very long task of building a scientific understanding from the basics up.

As an astronaut who's been to Mars five times, I think people who lie about their careers are just embarassed by how little they've accomplished in life.

As someone who's worked on IT support for brain amputees, I can tell you that it happens often

as someone with 84 years of experience in non-royal psychology, i can tell you that this sort of thing happens all the time.

It's a desperate attempt to win with an argument of authority: "Trust all the nonsense I spill, I'm an engineeeeeer!!"

Not only videos, there's a fucking livestream from the ISS.

https://www.youtube.com/live/wG4YaEcNlb0?si=9q8t1i9d7xgsFFqo

It's conveniently not showing video right not due to signal loss when I'm making this comment.

Like the earth, my jokes are usually flat.