Credit: u/mclumber1

Canada might have had a little bit of help, but we went! :)

Canada is the only country to con their way to the moon... Rather the USA is the only buffoon to con themselves.

The ride was in exchange for the arm of the lunar gateway, which is now cancelled, and a thing that cannot be repurposed on the lunar surface.

I feel like this is the culmination of a deal that started with us trading the Avro Arrow for a space program.

Other than nifty pictures from the space telescopes, Velcro, and maybe GPS, have we actually gotten anything cool from playing in space? Not sure any of those were worth burning all that rocket fuel.

Two big categories:

Imaging + weather satellites

Communications satellites

Those have tons of varirty. Hyperspectral imaging for farming, mining, solar farm maintenance, etc. Wildfire monitoring. Ship and other asset tracking. Remote connectivity for search and rescue and high speed internet to isolated areas.

I think there's also a ton of potential for future manufacturing and resource collection up there.

I'm sure some kind of giant arm will end up at the surface base!

Yeah, none of these are worth the environmental cost of all the rocket launches.

Welp, luckily rockets are moving away from solids and toward Methalox and polluting a lot less because of it.

https://everydayastronaut.com/rocket-pollution

What environmental cost is that? Do you even know, or are you gonna have to google it?

Not much point explaining this to a misanthrope. They could be informed that these satellites have saved tens of thousands of lives and they'll keep saying that the environmental impact of sending those rockets to space wasn't worth it

No I don't have exact numbers, but nothing that belches out that much fire and smoke is doing anything good for our atmosphere. The progress of man is a sick joke. I await my downvotes smugly

That is nice to hear

Access to reliable healthcare:

America: No

Canada: Yes

Russia: No

How much fire and smoke is that? How does it compare to, like, one small town's daily car usage? And what is that smoke? Depending on the rocket you're looking at, it could literally be water vapor.

And what about the tens of thousands of lives these satellites have saved? The information we get from satellites is indispensable for disaster relief. Even just the "nifty pictures" we get would be worth it to help emergency services determine where they're needed most, let alone the wealth of information we can use to determine when, where, and how severely a storm will hit days in advance. There's a reason that deaths from natural disasters have plummeted since we started sending cameras into space.

You don't have to be dug into an incorrect position. It's better to have been wrong about something than to be wrong about something.

It's crazy that only one of these countries does not advise their citizens on how to commit suicide

How many more lives have been wiped out thanks to advanced tracking and deployment possible because of those same satellites? How many more planes can fill the skies, or giant ships fill the seas, both absolutely puking emissions and making the weather more extreme, thanks to GPS. No, I don't think I'm so very wrong here. Fuck the progress of man.

Yeah, what have the Romans ever done for us?

How many more lives have been wiped out thanks to advanced tracking and deployment possible because of those same satellites?

Not a lot. Like, certainly less lives than were taken in wars prior to the advent of space travel. Of course satellites help militaries attack specific targets, but humans are gonna go to war no matter what. It might sound cold and evil, but satellites make for efficient warfare, and efficient warfare reduces civilian casualites.

But let's not speculate. Let's take a look at wars by death toll. In the top 100 deadliest wars in human history, the ones that have happened since we started launching useful satellites add up to less than half of the death toll of World War Two alone. Combined into one massive superwar, they wouldn't even get the bronze medal. Satellites don't help armies kill more people, they help them kill fewer.

How many more planes can fill the skies, or giant ships fill the seas

What does that have to do with satellites? We've been launching boats and planes since long before GPS made navigation even easier than it already was. If you want to blame a technology for that, blame the spring-driven clock. We would have launched these boats and planes with or without GPS.

According to my Canadian friends, it is actually:

America: No

Canada: Eventually

Russia: No

he - hem....

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SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!!!!

Sorry im not so worldly, but which one? Iirc canada has moved forward with it a bit, but I could be wrong.

Nah, I don't even get on airplanes, I have less interest in boarding a spacecraft.

The role of assisted suicide in Canadian healthcare is a meme at this point, and Russia has advised their soldiers on where to aim if they're about to be captured by Ukrainian forces

For arguments sake, all 3 countries definitely issued cyanide capsules during the cold war, the US certainly did to u2 pilots, so like, all 3 did at some point.