Japan's space agency suspended a planned launch on Monday of an H-IIA rocket that was to carry a moon lander into space, according to operator Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI).
Earth is not fucked, but having a proper moon base makes key technologys a necessity, like really large scale co2 scrubbers. Also, the moon is basically a new gold mine for Helium-3, which is going to be very important in the future.
Having large scale co2 scrubbers makes a huge difference on earth as well.
This is a fair argument against Elon Musk's dream to colonize Mars - it is indeed an escapist fantasy. But with the recent and upcoming moon missions, the involved parties (government orgs!) are quite clear that they're not doing it out of a false belief that they can make a self-sustaining colony. That stuff is over a century away. Only billionaires and their simps believe it lol.
JAXA was planning to start SLIM’s moon landing in January-February 2024 after Monday's launch, aiming to follow the success of India's Chandrayaan-3 lunar exploration mission this month.
The rocket was also carrying an X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) satellite, a joint project of JAXA, NASA and the European Space Agency.
H-IIA, jointly developed by JAXA and MHI, has been Japan's flagship space launch vehicle, with a success rate of 98% since 2001.
However, after JAXA's new medium-lift H3 rocket failed on its debut in March, the agency postponed the launch of H-IIA No.
Japan's recent space-related efforts have faced other setbacks, with the launch failure of the Epsilon small rocket in October 2022, followed by an engine explosion during a test last month.
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