Astrobotic Technology says its Moon landing attempt is in jeopardy because of an engine problem

I think there will come a day, probably not too far down the line, where we all wished we paid attention to these issues and took their fundamental elements seriously. This is very much in line with issues that have come up before re: satellite constellations and their pollution of the dark night sky. We NEED to have better regulation of who and what gets to be sent into space, preferably at the international scale, but lacking that then at whatever scale we are able. The current regulatory framework in the US has simply not caught up to the explosion in private spacefaring companies, and so we have ended up in the situation we are in, where there are or shortly will be environmental effects or to worry about. Aside from the environmental effects, I personally don't want to have a situation where satellite constellations outshine natural ones even by naked eye, which could be the case in the future.

Moving away from the topic of satellite constellations and returning to the moon, I think this is an invitation to think about these issues more broadly than "Should the Navajo Nation get to claim the entire moon", as @updawg and @ColorUserPro have understandably framed it, but rather "How do we as a society want to manage space as an environment?". In my opinion, space is an environment, though we typically don't think about it as such¹. This is something we want to consider now, before it is too late, and with the proliferation of private ventures targeting LEO and the moon and everywhere in between that might not be so far in the future. I agree that it does not make sense for a single Native American tribe to somehow get priority on these issues, but at the same time I reject the notion that simply having enough money or the capability to physically place an object on the moon should give that priority, which is essentially the current state of affairs. For those interested, I recommend the short book Space Forces by Fred Scharmen which considers issues like these and others.

^{1 Incidentally, this is a topic I have done a 180 on since using Tildes, thanks in part to a user who I cannot remember engaging me in a thoughtful way.}

I’m just weirded out that these remains were even included in the first place.

The carbon in ashes are so far removed from these people it seems a purely symbolic endeavor to stroke the egos of dead people. Sending personal objects to be enshrined in a time-capsule would be an improvement in my eyes, and even that feels like a waste of resources.

Apparently they took 66 people’s remains, which cost $13,000 per person. That’s nowhere close to being a viable funding source for the $100 million launch, so the price tag is just there to transfer a feeling a prestige.

Space flight was at one point the pinnacle of humanity’s achievements, and these cremated remains of inflated egos cheapen the whole concept. The CEO of Celestis’ response that “no one owns the moon” is such a perfect encapsulation of how privatization of space is already heralding a tragedy of the commons. It’s bad enough we wrecked our own planet, now I can’t even hold out hope for space itself.