this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (5 children)

And fifty years later we still mope around in low earth orbit. Progress had slowed down a lot since the billionaires took over.

[–] StaticFalconar@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Fifty years later we have reached mars with drones and created space probes to expand our knowledge of space.

[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 1 day ago (2 children)

We have even figured out aviation on mars so thats kinda cool :D

[–] frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Incidentally, that mission was one of those surprising successes. The drone they sent was really barebones so it could tag along on another mission. Lots of people thought even doing that was a waste of launch mass. Nobody expected it to work all that well. It ended up working incredibly well and got used far beyond its planned mission until its rotor blades broke.

Now the team gets to build a real one.

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[–] Mirshe@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

No no, it's cooler than that. We tried out aviation on Mars to make sure we figured out how to do aviation on Titan.

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[–] floo@retrolemmy.com 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Actually, we first landed on Mars with the Viking series of probes in 1976. Then there was a whole lot of time where we didn’t do anything before we started again with Mars in the late 90s.

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

We reached Mars with probes 50 years ago. I'm not in any way trying to denigrate the amazing achievements of the Mars rovers. But the fact remains that a human crew could have done all that and more (like drill a hole) in a few weeks at best.

[–] anomnom@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And 59 years after landing on the moon we’ve just been watching Space X rockets explode instead of going back on rockets NASA proved it could engineer with slide rules and drafting tables.

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Relying on Starship as a moon lander is one of the most hare brained decisions of NASA in recent years. OTOH, it would be perfectly feasible to get a moon mission going using Falcon 9 as the launch vehicle.

[–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 0 points 1 day ago

SpaceX had a brilliant track record for safety with their novel reusable rocket boosters. Even the first couple of Starship prototypes were incredibly successful, massively exceeding mission goals.

Unfortunately Musk seems to have entirely lost the sauce and is killing all of his companies, diving into conspiracy nonsense while finding an incredibly unpopular election campaign, hitting the federal government and tanking the economy by single handedly raising the national unemployment rate through expensive and unnecessary layoffs. And during that same time Starship has become incredibly unreliable with prototypes not only failing to reach orbit but even exploding on the pad before attempting liftoff.

Meanwhile competitors are popping up around the world trying to recreate SpaceX's falcon rocket boosters, and many are starting to achieve success. Musk could have owned space but instead gestures wildly at everything and nothing in particular

Musk should have stepped down from all of his companies about 5-10 years ago and let them continue on without him. Maybe he'd run a funky tiny/manufactured home startup to try to "disrupt housing" or an online healthcare startup to try to "disrupt healthcare" or maybe he'd be running a drone startup to "disrupt warfare" or maybe he'd just sale off into the sunset impregnating as many women as he can convince to carry his kids while shitposting away on twitter

[–] frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The Falcon series would be very limited for a moon mission. The Saturn V could get 47 metric tons into a trans lunar injection. Falcon 9 can get about 27 metric tons into GTO--not even to TLI (which isn't even listed in public information I could find, though one random Reddit post claims 3 metric tons). The Apollo lander was 17 metric tons, and it could take two people and a rover for a little tour on the surface. We can maybe shave some of that weight off with a new design, but probably not by half or anything really significant like that.

If we want to go back to the moon, it should be for more than taking pictures and picking up some rocks. You may not even be able to do that with a Falcon rocket.

NASA doesn't exactly rely on Starship for this, though. SLS does technically exist. It's just expensive, took far too long to build, and should probably be written off. Bezos might have something coming up, but who knows. Still relying on another space billionaire either way.

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It wouldn't be a one shot mission, of course. SpaceX have proven that they can launch a bunch of those in quick succession. That would still be a fraction of the cost of the idiotic SLS.

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[–] 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The problem is time.

You're just considering human spaceflight. Keeping humans alive and equally importantly sane for years is very different to sending a probe somewhere, and we've been getting better at the latter

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's why getting to the moon permanently is so important. Once we get in situ resource utilisation going, the rest of the solar system becomes much more accessible.

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[–] DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Thats because the only good progress now is up or positive on the stock markets.

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[–] alcibiades@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (17 children)

What are you talking about? Everyone was a capitalist back then as they are now. The space race was as much a capitalist conquest for glory as it was beneficial for technology/science.

In the USA we wasted time, money, and media resources going to the moon while black people were treated as less than citizens and millions were living in abject poverty. Not much has changed on that front for the countries entire history. What good did the moon landing do for the average man?

Same with the USSR. As people starved and lived under a dictatorship, the ruling class wasted the countries money by getting into a dick measuring contest.

The billionaires have taken over since colonialism became the status quo in the 15th century. Most of the technological progress since then is guided by capital and not something noble.

— I forgot to add that most of the technological progress in the 20th century happened because we were so hellbent on murdering one another that we had to come up with new and efficient methods. Your concept of “progress” is skewed in favor of the same systems that you want to dismantle.

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[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago

There was this graph about the time between major inventions, going back to agricultural stuff 10.000 years ago, and it like halvened each X years quite reliably, we are in the part where in some years it might touch like minutes. Interesting.

[–] Midnitte@beehaw.org 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Orville Wright (of the Wright brothers) also only died 21 year prior and was able to fly on a jet before his death.

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Imagine how much pressure that jet pilot was under. The guy who literally invented flying is your passenger

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[–] cosmicrookie@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago

Time wise, the moon landing is located roughly in the middle between the first image, and now. It happened almost 60 years ago (59).

We have since invented the internet, and a lot of great ways to waste our time

[–] DagwoodIII@piefed.social 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

otoh, people in both eras used gas powered cars, telephones, telegraphs, and manual typewriters. They could both go to movies, ride trains, and take ocean voyages.

A person from 1903 would need a few days to adapt themselves to 1969 technology.

But someone from 1969 coming into 2025 would be lost. Most people in 1969 didn't use credit cards, and had never seen an ATM. They used rotary phones and antenna TV.

[–] bratorange@feddit.org 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Tbh I think the person coming to 2025 would probably have an easier time to adapt culturally, than the one coming to 69

[–] DagwoodIII@piefed.social 0 points 1 day ago

The Stonewall Riots occurred in 1969. Star Trek's controversial interracial kiss was a big scandal a few years before. The movie "The Legend of Nxxxxr Charlie" was shown and advertised all over the country. The movie "Midnight Cowboy" got an X-rating with zero nudity and one off screen man on man blowjob.

Sorry, I think you've got it backwards.

where are my rocket socks?

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Feels like we're going backwards now with like anti-vax stuff. A lot of tech seems to be getting worse for users, too, like IoT gadgets that stop working for remote reasons

[–] truxnell@aussie.zone 0 points 1 day ago

We create tech these days to extract maximum value from the populace, not so much to make lives better

[–] Bo7a@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 day ago (9 children)

And since then - We have found ways to make all travel worse for comfort, more expensive, and more necessary.

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (3 children)

more necessary

I haven’t had a commute in over a decade

[–] EtherWhack@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I think they're referring to how vehicle-centric planning for cities is more common (as opposed to walking or human-powered locomotion, like biking or skating)

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[–] realitista@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Fossil fuels are a hell of a drug.

[–] Steve@startrek.website 0 points 1 day ago

Refined iron is a helluva drug

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[–] W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 day ago (3 children)

It’s easy to see why people thought we would be a lot more futuristic by now.

[–] Klear@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (3 children)
[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It’s just the future sucks

[–] Pringles@sopuli.xyz 0 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I always thought those scifi stories where companies basically rule everything were overblown, but you just see it changing to that in real time.

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[–] RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 0 points 1 day ago

Families taking vacations to Venus and swimming in the seas of Europa futuristic?

We still have ways to go

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[–] PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.uk 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

i have a little tablet in my pocket that gives me access to the sum total of all human knowledge and can contact anyone else more or less anywhere on/around the planet for instant voice communication.

We can take organs out of dead people and put them in living people and have them survive.

I can be anywhere on the planet within 48 hours

We have cars that can drive themselves

We have robots being controlled live(ish) on mars

And there's many more examples

[–] ZoopZeZoop@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Phones can also video call, lead you to just about anywhere you want to go on the planet, and store millions of pictures/videos/writings of a person's personal history. Unprecedented.

Yup, i was in three completely unfamiliar cities in the last month that speak languages i do not speak.

I was never lost once, i was able to learn how to take public transport, and i was able to effectively communicate with people who do not speak english

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[–] frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Forget the moon. We're all within a few generations of the first people who had access to indoor toilets on a mass scale.

[–] exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 day ago (5 children)

India basically introduced toilets in a single generation.

According to this article, in 1993, 70.3% of the Indian population did not have access to toilets. By 2021, the number dropped to 17.8%. So literally more than half the population of India got access to toilets within 30 years.

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[–] simsalabim@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (2 children)

And now we have self-driving cars that are able to kill people without human intervention 👍

[–] ipitco@lemmybefree.net 0 points 1 day ago

we made climate change which is even more effective

[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 1 day ago

Truly the pinnacle of efficiency

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 day ago

All supported by the giant shoulders of some tiny apes that jogged behind fauna for 4 million years, and ate some berries along the way.

[–] kingofras@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Let’s say we went to space. No need to bring landing on the moon in it. That thing with Kubrik still bugs me, and the Cold War was pretty intense.

[–] Zron@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

We went to the moon.

If we hadn’t, the Soviet’s would have been screaming it from the rooftops. The soviets tracked all the Apollo missions themselves, and even had robotic missions going on at the same time as several of the manned US landings.

The Cold War was intense. You think if the US hadn’t made, the soviets would have just let it slide?

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And destroyers.

Just a few months into its reign, the US regime intends to ruin decades of progress in science and space exploration:

On May 30, 2025, the White House Office of Management and Budget announced a plan to cancel no less than 41 space missions — including spacecraft already paid for, launched, and making discoveries — as part of a devastating 47% cut to the agency’s science program. If enacted, this plan would decimate NASA. It would fire a third of the agency’s staff, waste billions of taxpayer dollars, and turn off spacecraft that have been journeying through the Solar System for decades.

Shutting down a working, completely functional mission like New Horizons, in particular, that may just be on the cusp of a huge discovery - it has seen signs of a new, second "ring" to the Kuiper Belt - is the ultimate repudiation of the American self-image as explorers of the frontier. And all of this at a time when the Chinese are just about catching up to "the West" in space science prowess.

As a kid, I never understood what the Romans were trying to say with their Janus myth. Turns out that Orange Janus is simply the god of endings.

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