Vast New Stores of Water Reported on the Moon

Re:Vast New Stores of Water Reported on the Moon by q7xvh97o2pDhNrh on Friday April 14, 2023 @02:31AM (#35566199)

You know, they used to say the same thing about big mountains, right?

Here's a slightly older take on it from that era:

"""

People ask me, 'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?' and my answer must at once be, 'It is of no use.'

There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behaviour of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation.

But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron...

If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go.

What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to live. That is what life means and what life is for.

"""

(That's from George Mallory, for the curious.)

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Re:Vast New Stores of Water Reported on the Moon by gnarbarian on Friday April 14, 2023 @02:32AM (#35566208)

you get it.

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Re:Vast New Stores of Water Reported on the Moon by HopenHeyHi on Friday April 14, 2023 @02:43AM (#35566271)

So does William Shatner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU2ftCitvyQ

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Re:Vast New Stores of Water Reported on the Moon by someweirdperson on Friday April 14, 2023 @03:17AM (#35566479)

> """[...] What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. [...]""" (That's from George Mallory, for the curious.)

For many who are climbing the highest mountains that sheer joy turns into literal end if life. Wikipedia is trying to collect a list of them [0].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_died_clim...

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Re:Vast New Stores of Water Reported on the Moon by Intermernet on Friday April 14, 2023 @04:31AM (#35566971)

Which is fine. As much as it's a cliché to say "they died doing what they loved", most people die in absolutely horrible circumstances. Death is death. I've had a few friends die mountaineering, BASE jumping, climbing etc. and once I've grieved I actually admit that they did, in reality, die doing what they loved. I may miss them, and call them selfish for engaging in dangerous activities, but I respect and admire the drive to push limits that border on the impossible. There are many more deaths that are purely senseless, easily preventable and just as tragic. No one other than the friends and family of those people seems to care or comment on the circumstances of those deaths.

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Re:Vast New Stores of Water Reported on the Moon by brookst on Friday April 14, 2023 @08:47AM (#35568954)

For many people, loss of life is not the overriding concern.

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Re:Vast New Stores of Water Reported on the Moon by jiggawatts on Friday April 14, 2023 @03:23AM (#35566510)

There's adventure you fund yourself, and then there's adventure that taxpayers fund to the tune of several trillion dollars.

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Re:Vast New Stores of Water Reported on the Moon by Chathamization on Friday April 14, 2023 @12:21PM (#35571294)

Yeah, if a huge chunk of DARPA's budget was spent sending people to climb mountains "Because it's there," people wouldn't be happy. The NASA budget for aeronautics is 1/8th the budget devoted to sending people into space "because it's there." Yet the aeronautics research is much more likely to have an actual positive impact on people's lives.

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