Batteries are also getting cheaper and cheaper

This is why a major part of the solution is electric vehicles. Why put batteries in a warehouse and then run vehicles on petroleum when you can put batteries in a vehicle, install twice as many renewables because you now have more demand for electricity, and then charge the vehicles when generation is a large percentage of rated capacity and still have enough to run the rest of the grid when it's a smaller percentage?

And they are the only real solution. Demand fitting production is never going to work unless we give up all the autonomy.

Concrete has entered the agentic era

A good abstract would have helped.

NASA is something like the third biggest space program in the US

I think in general space exploration is a great use of taxpayer money, but the artemis program doesn't seem great from either a "science per dollar" or "novel accomplishment per dollar" standpoint.

If the goal was just to flex on the rest of the world I would've much rather we focused on going somewhere new or returning to the moon in a more sustainable way

"returning to the moon in a more sustainable way"

Isn't this the point of this mission? If your point is "it shouldn't take this much money", then I agree. But also point to almost everything else.

Each Artemis launch costs something like $4b (that's the incremental cost of a new rocket, it's much higher if you amortize the design costs).

IMO the program is not optimized for cost or sustainability, it's optimized for creating jobs in various congressional districts. Of course that provides a certain amount of political sustainability to the so-called Senate Launch System.

I just don't see a future where NASA can afford multiple SLS launches per year to maintain a continuous Lunar presence

> Each Artemis launch costs something like $4b

Early launches, yes, because SLS is a garbage heap. Later ones, almost certainly not.

Unless you meant post SLS later ones by e.g. Starship and New Glenn 9, in which case they will certainly be much less.

I think that is the point, but whether this mission will actually do that is rather unconvincing.

After (and if) Artemis III lands on the moon and brings home the astronauts there seems to be very little planned on how we actually get to the moon base which NASA is claiming this will lead to, let alone the manned Mars mission that is also supposed to follow.

In other words, I think NASA is greatly exaggerating, and possibly lying, about the utility of this mission.

> there seems to be very little planned on how we actually get to the moon base

There is a lot of research going into in situ construction methods and even nuclear power plants on the moon [1]. (Which would be necessary to bootstrap eventual indigenous panel production [2].)

To me it’s encouraging to see this fundamental work being attacked than an endless sea of renderings. The reason you aren’t seeing heavy detailing, despite construction slated to begin with Artemis V, is we’re waiting for the launch vehicles. (“Any exploration program which "just happens" to include a new launch vehicle is, de facto, a launch vehicle program” [3].)

[1] https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-department-of-energy-...

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00971-x

[3] https://blog.matt-rickard.com/p/akins-laws-of-spacecraft-des...

> This effort ensures the United States leads the world in space exploration and commerce.

> “History shows that when American science and innovation come together, from the Manhattan Project to the Apollo Mission, our nation leads the world to reach new frontiers once thought impossible,”

> Under President Trump’s national space policy

I smell politics and American exceptionalism, not science. There are a lot of could-bes in these statements as well, I have serious suspicions that these goals are not serious engineering. I am 99.999% certain that NASA will not build a nuclear reactor on the moon this decade, nor even the next decade. NASA is not giving me any signals they are capable of that.

> I am 99.999% certain that NASA will not build a nuclear reactor on the moon this decade, nor even the next decade. NASA is not giving me any signals they are capable of that

You don’t think NASA and the DOE, together with Lockheed and Westinghouse, can build a reactor? Why? The major technical issues were largely de-risked with the 2022 solicitation.

They’ve changed it so III isn’t landing. That will be IV apparently.

I feel like these missions are just paving the way for billionaires to have a new vacation spot.

The cost of the 10ft poles (at least in the US, SK might have different pricing), is drastically higher than the panels themselves

Or at least consistent opinions

It seems it'd at least getting consistently bad opinions on it.

Cheap home solar installations usually have a disconnect- do they not use those in larger scale installs?

I'm also surprised they aren't using batteries to capture overproduction. They've been clutch in the US, and we're not exactly pushing the envelope of green energy nowadays

Vox Day isn't any better

I think it’s less bad, but understand that I don’t exactly mean that as an endorsement. The lesser evil’s still pretty awful. It’s just that the greater evil here goes above and beyond.

He was a big Qanon guy at one point too

I've designed some basic parts in Tinkercad and openscad but have never really been able to grok Freecad or Fusion. Is there a good resource for making that leap? Just the explosion of menu bar options is a lot

I really like Mango Jelly Solutions on YouTube but DeltaHedra is very good as well.

Fusion is very easy to learn. If you can use tickercad.

Just draw sketches, learn to extrude, push pull, and it all depends on how good you are at sketching in 2d, setting up constraints, workflow is simple and it works most of the times but when it doesn't work, it's pain.

I am pretty sure fusions workflow sucks but I can't put my finger on why. I am still waiting for a better product which is also free and opensource.

Maybe llm vibe coding will unlock this finally. Where bunch of people come together to take up parameterized 3dmodeling.