The unmanned craft was due to make a soft landing on the Moon's south pole, but failed after encountering issues as it moved into its pre-landing orbit.

It was Russia's first Moon mission in almost 50 years.

The spacecraft was scheduled to land on Monday to explore a part of the Moon which scientists think could hold frozen water and precious elements.

Roskosmos, Russia's state space corporation, said it lost contact with the Luna-25 shortly after running into difficulties.

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[–] bitsplease@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah between all the other alternatives I think strip mining the moon is pretty OK. It's not as good as doing nothing - but I'd rather do it on a body with no ecosphere instead of destroying habitats

[–] GoosLife@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Why is it not as good as doing nothing? What benefit is there to not doing it? I mean, I could get surface preservation and keeping the moon pretty for the sake of humanity... But it sounds like there's any inherent value in not doing it?

[–] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You know those pictures taken from the Moon of the Earth? The ones where you can barely make out big islands like Cuba?

No one on the Earth will know anything is going on up there unless they have a very powerful telescope.

[–] GoosLife@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, that's true. We would be talking about terraforming projects on an enormous scale, unlike anything we've seen before.

What I'm saying is just that, if it came to that, I can understand wanting to preserve the surface of the moon, for sentimental and/or historical, human reasons, even though preserving the surface also doesn't provide any real, practical benefit.

[–] bitsplease@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not arguing we shouldn't, but the "ideal" scenario with any natural resource is always to preserve it in my book

But this is certainly a case imo where the upsides would outweigh the downsides

[–] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why? I can point out reason why preserving some wetlands is a good thing by pointing to plants and animals and humans. Something is only good because something benefits from it. Nothing is intrinsically good or bad.

It is a dead lifeless airless rock in space. Who suffers if a billionth of a percent of it is used for something?

[–] bitsplease@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I think you're entirely misunderstanding my meaning and sentiment, given that I don't disagree with anything in your comment