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[-] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 62 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Because we're flying to the moon.

Plus from a news standpoint it sells better than to say "around".

Don't get hungup on this, it's just part of the process of eventually landing.

Would you say Voyager didn't go to Jupiter because it didn't land?

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[-] daychilde@lemmy.world 41 points 1 month ago

It's how language works.

We are flying to the moon, not to land on it, but to orbit it. That's still to the moon. We're not flying to the sun, or flying to mars. We're flying to the moon.

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[-] Kolanaki@pawb.social 33 points 1 month ago

Cuz they are going to the moon, they just aren't going to go on the moon.

[-] j4k3@lemmy.world 26 points 1 month ago

Am I visiting (going to) Yosemite, or driving around it?

Did you visit the grand canyon if you did not go to the bottom but only stood on the rim?

[-] CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 month ago

Did you visit the grand canyon if you did not go to the bottom but only stood on the rim?

Yes. Did you visit it if you flew over it on a commercial flight?

[-] PumaStoleMyBluff@lemmy.world 14 points 1 month ago

Much more similar to a chartered helicopter flight, which are quite popular at the Grand Canyon.

[-] CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works -3 points 1 month ago

Maybe if that helicopter were flying 18x higher than the International Space Station.

[-] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Well now I can't see the canyon, thanks a lot

realizes we all have no oxygen

fucking dies

[-] CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago

Well the brochure did state the the helicopter tours and views were "out of this world" so no refunds.

[-] Dave@lemmy.nz 1 points 1 month ago

I guess that depends on how much bigger the moon is than the Grand Canyon.

[-] CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

Well great now my brain is going to waste the next 30 minutes unsuccessfully trying to conceive a joke about mooning, the size of the Grand Canyon, and the size of Uranus.

[-] CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Am I visiting (going to) Yosemite, or driving around it?

Well that depends, did you visit it or drive around it? These are fundamentally different things. Did you go there, enter the park, stay inside the park for a time and leave? Then you went there. Did you never enter the park and literally drove around its perimeter and went back to your starting location? Because that’s driving around it.

We are not going to the moon with Artemis II, we just aren’t.

[-] mech@feddit.org 22 points 1 month ago

When I say I'm going to a football game, I'll sit at some distance and watch it, not walk on the pitch.
Same thing here.

[-] starlinguk@lemmy.world -3 points 1 month ago

Being 5000 miles away you won't see much.

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[-] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 month ago

Because some people in this world are mentally normal and use language in mentally normal ways.

[-] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago

If you went through a Taco Bell drive through, you'd still be "driving to Taco Bell" even though you just drove around the building and never went inside.

[-] Patnou@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

People keep mentioning this but isn't it more of a definition of to and towards?

[-] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

It's more about intention. You went there, you did some stuff, and you came home. It's not like they're going somewhere else and just happened to end up by the moon, the point of the trip is a lunar flyby and they made it. Hence, moon mission.

[-] Phil_in_here@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 month ago

The moon is far away. Like really far away. They ISS is hard to get to, and the moon is 1000x farther away. So, just getting far enough to swoop around and come back is an achievement in its own right.

Also, it is part of a series of missions that will culminate in humans walking on the surface of the moon once again.

[-] theneverfox@pawb.social 7 points 1 month ago

We are going to the moon. Artemis II is going to bring humans further from earth than any human has ever been, and doing a drive by like this is part of the process of landing on the moon

[-] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

doing a drive by

GTA 6: Moon DLC confirmed?!

[-] CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

Further how? I've admittedly not looked anything up but the Apollo missions orbited the moon as well.

[-] mech@feddit.org 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Artemis II won't fully orbit it, it slingshots around it.
Which means it will fly higher over the lunar service, and while it's on the far side will be further away from earth than previous missions.

[-] theneverfox@pawb.social 2 points 1 month ago

They're going higher around the far side of the moon than previous missions, so further from earth

[-] Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 month ago

It's not actually flying per se, more like a very complicated falling with style.

[-] 9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Why would they say we are flying around it when this is a flyby mission?

[-] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It's Apollo 8, but with 60 more years of experience, more computer power than the entire world had at the time, and 10,000x the budget.

They are only going back to what they should have been doing in the 70s. I'm happy they are finally doing it, but I never understood why they abandoned it in the first place.

[-] BananaOnionJuice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 month ago

When you do a free return trajectory around the moon, you first "fly" towards the moon, and then you "fly" away from the moon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-return_trajectory

[-] paraphrand@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

If martians flew around the earth they would be flying to earth.

[-] CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Because it sounds better, more historic, more impressive. I’ve seen several outlets say “travel further from earth than any other humans” and I think that’s the angle that should be taken here since we aren’t actually going to the moon, we are actually going around it, going as far away as we ever have which is incredible in and of itself then returning. Considering what country NASA is located in I doubt the symbolically inflated language is an accident

[-] kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

It's a shuttle run. More literally than usual.

[-] ohulancutash@feddit.uk 1 points 1 month ago

If Ryanair can claim they fly to Paris, there are no limits.

[-] ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 month ago

Cause when dad went to the store to get smokes......

[-] el_twitto@lemmy.world -2 points 1 month ago
[-] betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world -2 points 1 month ago

It's the cover story in case Grok got distracted by white genocide in South Africa while doing burn calculations. Now it can be a successful impact.

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this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2026
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Explain Like I'm Five

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