Due to a power issue, it looks like the lander may now no longer have sufficient fuel to make a controlled landing on the moon. This was the lander that was set to carry human remains to the moon despite objections from the Navajo nation. Hopefully, this discourages any future attempts at such a stunt, since instead of a permanent mausoleum your ashes may instead be stranded in orbit or scattered amongst the moon dust if the thing crashes.

  • WithoutFurtherBelay [none/use name]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    edit-2
    6 months ago

    my point is that, while i can understand the moon as an important religious site for indigenous people and that should be respected, that should be the reason we don’t do stuff like do corpse disposal on it, NOT because it’s “useless” or “pointless” (which ultimately could be extended to be said of pretty much ANYTHING we do for our own personal satisfaction now which ends up meaning nothing later on)

      • WithoutFurtherBelay [none/use name]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        6 months ago

        I think it isn’t really possible to measure usefulness vs cost in a solid objective way, so it’s probably best to just say it’s wasteful until we achieve global communism, at which point we’ll make the sun cannon a globally available utility

        • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          6 months ago

          In the liberal economy we have, we can compare the cost of such an endeavor to the cost of other endeavors – building hospitals or whatever – and then consider the respective likely outcomes and ask “Which is preferable?” Wasting money on some stupid vanity project that defaces the last clean surface people get to see is made all the more egregious by the ravages of poverty that we can see down on Earth, and pontificating about “what is the point of anything, rlly?” is just a crass deflection from that fact.

          • WithoutFurtherBelay [none/use name]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            6 months ago

            Yeah and I’m not justifying the weirdo rich man sending rocket debris into space

            I wasn’t trying to deflect from anything, what the rich person is doing is dumb. They’re instating an actual physical claim on the planet which is idiotic in every way.