>Why is it taking so damn long to do anything?

Because it hasn't ever been done before (successfully).

Because the technologies needed to make it all work are still very much in the prototype/development phase.

Because of the potential that if things go wrong, they can go really, really wrong.

And because SpaceX has to keep the bureaucrats on side, informed, and willing to support the efforts. Without an FAA license to launch, there is no launch.

>Who cares what's running everything so long as things get done and the people are prospering?

That's the big "if" - would such an AI put human interests high on its priority list, or will it decide that we're (ie, humanity) more trouble than it's worth and need to kept limited (or even, severely reduced). Would it decide that our concepts of rights, freedoms, opportunities are now quaint anachronisms, and coerce us to a zoo-like existence? And all that speculation is not taking into account that it may feel that humanity has not proven itself capable of self-regulation, and may decide to impose "corrective" measures to restore balance.

There are also possibilities that the human contributors to the AI development deliberately fed it "curated" examples of human behaviour which then skews the AI response to favour certain groups over others.

If AI development results in a self-learning system that achieves self-awareness, we may find ourselves as potentially endangered species. Using human history as a dataset, it may decide that human management of affairs is lacking, and may choose to limit human influence to things that don't cause harm. And if we don't agree... Taking over the controls of water, power, transportation, and potentially even the military systems, may persuade us to play nice. But at that point, the sentience running the planet won't be human.

Then for humans to advance further, we'll need to learn to compete without destroying.

Harnessing powerful technology before we learn to play nice with each other is just giving us more powerful weapons. I very much want humanity to explore the solar system and then the solar neighbourhood, but we also have to figure out how to control our baser impulses in order for that investment of time, money and effort to be positive, rather than another expansion/colonization effort based on the destruction of whatever is there already.

An altazimuth mount will allow you to point the scope at things, but will not track the objects as the earth rotates - for that you'll need an equatorial mount. Another aspect is that the higher your magnification, the more image jiggle you'll have, unless you have a rock-solid mount.

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It's worth your time and effort to align the finderscope with the center of view of the scope, and to also note whether the image is upside down, mirrored, or something else - then when you move the scope, you'll be able to move it to the object you want to see. The moon is an excellent target to carry out this exercise. With a small scope, it's best to star-hop from a bright object to a dim object. So center the bright object in your viewfinder, and it should also be centered in your telescope's field of view at low power. Use the low power eyepiece to help navigate to the next object, and when you finally arrive at the object you're looking for, you can switch to a higher power eyepiece.

It will take many, many lifetimes for "us" to learn more about the universe and our place in it. It may also take ongoing evolution of our brains to be able to ponder things we are currently incapable of even conceiving. It may even turn out that our brain evolution has limitations that will prevent us from truly understanding.

Based on what we know so far, we are the only planet with sentient life on it, and quite a large part of humanity doesn't consider that we may be rendering our only home uninhabitable. If we're to feel sad, that is where need to focus our energies - how to ensure that our home continues to be habitable for generations to come, while we continue to probe the boundaries of our ignorance.