I agree that these kinds of missions are needed but this isn’t really comparable to Apollo 8. Apollo 8 made it into lunar orbit, this one is just doing a fly by. In a lot of other ways it’s an improvement. Much safer, carrying more people in comfier conditions with better video cameras and even bringing women and non-americans. Not just test pilots either, but actual scientists. It’s a representation of what’s changed since Apollo for both better and worse. NASA has much less of the USA’s budget than it did for Apollo, and things took much longer. It’s also been stated that the next mission won’t make it to the surface as it was originally planned, but is instead going to be testing the lunar Landers in lunar orbit. They are relying on Blue Origin and SpaceX to not just build but also launch and transport the Landers into lunar orbit. It’s very different to how things were done back then. If this was like the Apollo programme and they started at the same time we would have landed multiple times by now probably some years ago. Apollo really was a crash development program.
Absolutely worth it. This is a test mission equivalent to something like apollo 8. A dry run for going to the moon and actually landing it.
I’d wager it would be incredibly unsafe to go to the moon without a mission like this.
I agree that these kinds of missions are needed but this isn’t really comparable to Apollo 8. Apollo 8 made it into lunar orbit, this one is just doing a fly by. In a lot of other ways it’s an improvement. Much safer, carrying more people in comfier conditions with better video cameras and even bringing women and non-americans. Not just test pilots either, but actual scientists. It’s a representation of what’s changed since Apollo for both better and worse. NASA has much less of the USA’s budget than it did for Apollo, and things took much longer. It’s also been stated that the next mission won’t make it to the surface as it was originally planned, but is instead going to be testing the lunar Landers in lunar orbit. They are relying on Blue Origin and SpaceX to not just build but also launch and transport the Landers into lunar orbit. It’s very different to how things were done back then. If this was like the Apollo programme and they started at the same time we would have landed multiple times by now probably some years ago. Apollo really was a crash development program.
land on the moon to do what? You said it’s absolutely worth it so i expect you to absolutely know what this mission is about.