Re: While you were out
> 21 lunar landings, delivering about four metric tons of cargo
I wonder how much of that will be sent to the wrong "address"?
Sad thing is our 'leaders' much prefer to spend far more delivering four metric tons and more of explosives to places like Iran, Ukraine, Venezuala, Lebanon, Gaza and probably soon, Cuba. Those ventures have cost well north of $500bn over the last decade, and that money could be much better spent advancing humanity rather than bombing it back to the stone age. Plus while we waste money making rubble, craters and filling body bags, China & India have been merrily getting on with their own space programs. At least we've managed to do the Cold War thing and slowed down Russia's space program.
Then again, the Cold War encouraged the Soviet Union & Russia to develop their RB-X rocket engines, which we used to be able to use for our own space projects. Then we sanctioned ourselves from those, and incentivised Russia to carry on developing bigger, lounder, faster rocket engines. It might be sharing that tech with China & India, but not us. SpacX & Blue Origin send out press releases about the power of their Raptors, Russia's engines might deliver more thrust and for less money. It's sad we haven't really exploited the post-Cold War peace dividend, and instead chosen to bring the Cold War back. Or maybe there's a cunning plan to get Russia doing that R&D, and hope we can exploit it in the future. Russia has new ICBMs, which probably means new engines, which would be better used on cargo rockets instead of warhead delivery.
