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I don't think Jared Isaacman is interested in PR stunts. He actually seems to care about the science and exploration parts of NASA. Actually, he seems to care about all of NASA.
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The $20 billion dollar moon base didn't seem like an announcement grounded in reality, although maybe that was less a PR stunt than the fact that NASA must (literally) shoot for the moon to stay politically relevant.
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> The $20 billion dollar moon base didn't seem like an announcement grounded in reality

While I can't comment on the cost per say, there are both military and capitalistic reasons for the race to the moon.

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is there?
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- Deep space surveillance

- Logistics Hub

- "Get there quickly and set legal precedent"

- Resource extraction (helium-3, gold, platinum, etc)

- If moon dust can be converted to oxygen reliably, the first company or country to set up shop on the moon can sell that service to countries and commercial entities.

- Unique manufacturing and science activities because of the low gravity

- "Space Tourism"

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Isaacman definitely did not pass up his golden opportunity on Pesach to light the most epic menorah the world has ever seen!
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I read enough HN to know what it is -absolutely- true. HN comments, including this thread, often just read like BlueSky screeds half the time the US, US government or Sam Altman/Elon Musk/etc are mentioned.

They all deserve criticism, but when that's all a thread turns into when these items come up, well the discussion becomes very hollow and partisan really quickly.

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There are users or bots that post political headlines on here with an obvious one-sided bias and do it to farm points, similar to Reddit. It'd be nice to have an impartial forum but it always seems to devolve into an echo chamber.
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> There are users or bots that post political headlines on here with an obvious one-sided bias

So, humans that are extremely upset with the current state of things.

> and do it to farm points

I'm sure some do, but have you seen how many people across the US have been having protests? People are pissed.

I'm pretty sure your analysis of the motivations would not at all be accurate with such a blanket statement.

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Your statement that it's humans and dismissing botted activity is a blanket statement, whereas I never used absolute language.

If it's a human getting up and rushing to to write about promoted ragebait content devolving a forum into an echo chamber, of course someone takes the bait and lists grievances in hysterical language unsolicited. Such emotionality is totally uncalled for on a tech forum, and proves my point.

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> Such emotionality is totally uncalled for on a tech forum

Only when the robots fully take over. It's one of many things that separate us from the machines. Dismissing emotions is dismissing humanity.

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Maybe I can ask ChatGPT to reply to this concern trolling because apparently I can dismiss humanity very easily that way. "hey grok give tip this person over the edge on this AI-induced psychosis screed."
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And from my side of politics it seems like every thread about that group has a handful of dick riders who will stand for zero criticism of their cult leaders.
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