The only good summary of the Chinese moon mission will end with the sentence, "and so after billions of wasted hours, and a nation furious at an incompetent and corrupt government, they gave up, and after three weeks of national unrest, the CCP was no more."
totally agree, but I recently read about the advantages of having a steel construction and a few other things that differentiate Starship from the Space Shuttle and it's pretty well thought out. The TLDR is the space shuttle's aluminum construction + complex geometry + tile attachment mechanism made everything unreliable, expensive and time consuming. Having a stainless steel frame with uniform curves that tiles can be bolted on should be way better.
www.cbsnews.com
Mars is just another shell of a planet. While I understand the necessity of stretching our legs, until a monster improvement occurs in our ability to transit space, ends up being a massive sink for funding. Getting the general populous behind it is going to take some work when most currently think NASA has been a huge waste of tax payer money. Ironically. "Fuck the Russians" doesn't hold water. Yet is still used politically. There needs to be another propaganda campaign that actually focuses on the benefits, beyond the existential.
I do agree with you, but the question is not how much would it cost to go to Mars, or anywhere else, but why should we go there. Harvesting ressources ? Is our goal as a species to colonize as much worlds as possible ?
