By all rights, this should be something I am deeply passionate about. I’ve been in tech/engineering my entire adult life and was obsessed with NASA as a kid. I even live on the east coast of Florida and can sometimes see the launches/landings over the ocean. But I just… don’t care at all. I’m not suffering from depression or any other malaise, and generally things are fine. But I haven’t clicked on a single link or looked at a single image. I know this has not been the case for many, many people, so I’m wondering what might be different about this launch (or really the whole program in general), and curious if anyone else has found themselves feeling the same.
Nah, it’s way easier to send a satellite to take a look.
It’s impossible to secretly launch enough payloads to build a moonbase in the first place. Every launch has to pass through low earth orbit and rockets are shiny. There are too many eyes on the sky to go unnoticed. Even then, there’d be radio chatter between the Earth and Moon, and satellite redirection from the far side. You can encrypt radio signals, but they can’t hide.