No Stupid Questions

49980 readers

593 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)

Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.

Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.

Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.

Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.

Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.

Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.

Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.

Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.

Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.

Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

technopagan@lemmy.world

347

Realistically, what do people plan to do on the Moon and Mars that requires a permanent, or long term human presence there? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 days ago by DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

353 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Is it really necessary to send humans to those places just to get the knock-on benefits? Couldn't we do those things directly, without going there?

It seems to me that, today, those who have the money to spend on these endeavors would only do so if there were perceived short-term benefits to themselves. That means they plan to exploit the resources, or increase their own power somehow.

I know the good engineers that make this happen are doing it for the challenge and in the pursuit of knowledge, and I know that's why we poors support it, but that doesn't "pay the bills." What is the motivation behind the money? Why are they really doing this?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

There are so many reason we do these things as engineers. For me, it used to be about having all our marbles in one basket on Earth. But, as I get older, I find the science and engineering are just the better parts of humanity. There's so much nasty stuff happening in the world out there

We launched The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope at the end of August, and I literally cried watching it separate from the rocket. 5 years of my life, and a president who tried to cancel the program, not once, not twice, but three times. All of the work we did at the end of last year under duress of the OMB crap, and NASA cutting 25% of the workforce, trying go defund Goddard.

So, yeah, this stuff isn't just something I do for money, or the challenge. I do it bcz it's my life, it's what makes the bestof humanity, all of the knowledge and hope we have as a species.

Edit: To answer your actual question, the moon is a great jumping point to other parts of the solar system. Launching from the moon has so many benefits over the earth due to our gravity well being so large. As for why we'd do any of this at all. It's a great place to test out living in space, and the technologies we need to do it. If we stay on this rock, we are dooming ourselves eventually. (Whether it's climate change, or a cosmic event, or something else). Right or wrong, people want to go into space, and this is the best way to test out our ability to do that. All the politics aside, we have the technology to go to Mars now. The issue is logistics, and political will stopping us.