[HN Gopher] In 1961 a Gallup poll showed only 33% of Americans i...
___________________________________________________________________
In 1961 a Gallup poll showed only 33% of Americans in favor of moon
landing
Author : headalgorithm
Score : 169 points
Date : 2023-07-20 18:12 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org)
| bell-cot wrote:
| An important point, for the "we could have spent less money doing
| direct R&D on the actually-useful technologies which Apollo
| created, and skipped the pictures and prestige..." crowd to note:
|
| The moon race created an extremely public success/fail benchmark,
| where everyone from the greediest corporate CEO to the lowliest
| painter on the launch towers understood that losing would for-
| sure carry a very high social cost. Millions of people, who were
| already motivated to win the race, were concentrated in certain
| areas, industries, and labs - providing positive feedback and
| intense motivation. Yes, it was very expensive, and there was
| some profiteering, goldbricking, excess bureaucracy, and waste.
| But compared to most huge government-funded projects, that crap
| was pretty scarce.
|
| To paraphrase Napoleon's supposed maxim on war: "The moral is to
| the budget as three to one."
| sproketboy wrote:
| [dead]
| m348e912 wrote:
| I have commented on HN before that I have been skeptical of the
| moon landing ever happening, but I've spent some time on
| apolloinrealtime.org listening and reading the Apollo 11, 13, and
| 17 moon landing transcripts and I have come around. It sounds way
| too real to be faked.
|
| In that light, I think it was an incredible feat of engineering
| for the late 60s, and early 70s. Keep in mind, Japan was unable
| to land a probe on the moon as recently as last year.
|
| Do I think it was worth it? That's debatable, but the engineers
| and scientists involved accomplished something pretty fantastic
| and that alone deserves some merit.
| multiplegeorges wrote:
| This is the response to the belief that the moon landing was
| faked.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYFMU7XfyzE
| newfonewhodis wrote:
| > I have been skeptical of the moon landing ever happening
|
| I'm curious - what caused you to question it ever happening?
| Animats wrote:
| Tens of thousands of people saw the launches in person. As
| one of the astronauts said "Where do you think we went?"
| adolph wrote:
| Not as a moon-landing-denier, but as someone with an
| interest in epistemology: claiming thousands of people
| witnessing launches is not indicative of a moon landing,
| just a launch.
|
| By staking the existence of the entirety of Apollo missions
| to something that is logically proof of a small part, the
| validity of the larger claim is diminished to someone who
| is not already invested the validity.
| Animats wrote:
| If you're able to get a 50-story stack into orbit, the
| rest of the trip is not that difficult.
| mrangle wrote:
| Don't interrupt grand nationalist narratives and proofs
| with logic. Especially when the proofs are in the form of
| cowboy quips from its heroes. You won't win.
| [deleted]
| phnofive wrote:
| Extraordinary claims, etc.
|
| Of course, there is extraordinary evidence for this one.
| osigurdson wrote:
| They right way to look at any conspiracy is to assess how
| many people would be required to pull off the fakery. In the
| case of the moon landing, it would have to be thousands of
| people, this very unlikely. A soccer or hockey game on the
| other hand really only requires two people: the goalie and
| someone paying the goalie. I'm not suggesting that hockey or
| soccer are rigged however, it is merely an example.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Isn't Katyn hard counterproof against that strategy?
| earthboundkid wrote:
| You know about Katyn.
| throw0101b wrote:
| Reference:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre
| mrangle wrote:
| The amount of people necessary to fool people believing
| something happened that didn't isn't necessarily (much)
| greater than the amount it would take to pull it off.
|
| For argument's sake, imagine that everyone at NASA was
| working to fake the landing instead of landing. With a
| unified purpose, it would be enough. The theater would be
| grand enough. The political pressure to accept would be
| grand enough.
|
| Any group working toward a goal is a conspiracy. NASA
| actually working to go to the Moon was a conspiracy.
|
| The fake Gulf of Tonkin Incident that was accepted for
| decades is proof that big lies are possible. Extrapolating
| to an "unbelievably large" amount of people that it would
| take to pull of the hypothetical of a Fake Moon Landing
| conspiracy isn't an actual argument against. It just means
| that you'd be willing to quote whatever number would be
| minimally "unbelievably large".
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| > With a unified purpose, it would be enough. The theater
| would be grand enough. The political pressure to accept
| would be grand enough.
|
| I suppose they could pull it off if everyone truly bought
| in, but I don't believe _for one second_ that that many
| people committed to science and engineering would be as
| committed and diligent as they would need to be to
| keeping the lie intact at the time, and I certainly don
| 't believe the commitment to the lie would sustain over
| time. This goes double given the lack of popular support
| for doing it.
|
| Further, I am not sure even if everyone at NASA that
| would have to know it was fake was working with
| automaton-like commitment to their task that we could
| fool the USSR with a fake landing given they'd have every
| incentive coupled with the technological means to prove
| it was fake.
| mrangle wrote:
| Arguing the personnel politics of the hypothetically fake
| Moon landing addresses a different argument than the one
| that I and the OP were addressing. Whether or not I agree
| with your assessment.
|
| In regard to the need to "fool" the USSR, I'd point out
| that you are making a large assumption that governments
| are always as antagonistic at the top levels of
| leadership as the public is led to be and believe.
|
| To illustrate, do you think that US alphabet agencies
| haven't uncovered critical top secret and massively
| damaging information about the USSR / Russia since WWII?
| And vice versa? Perhaps uncovering such information on a
| constant basis?
|
| Why don't these agencies ever publicly reveal it?
| Virtually ever?
|
| The public's concept of government is not the same as
| that of leadership.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| > Arguing the personnel politics of the hypothetically
| fake Moon landing addresses a different argument than the
| one that I and the OP were addressing.
|
| You assert "imagine that everyone at NASA was working to
| fake the landing instead of landing. With a unified
| purpose, it would be enough".
|
| I assert "I do not believe that to be the case when
| thinking about the real people that would be asked to do
| this in a real-world setting". That's setting aside the
| physical evidence (i.e., Russia observing the moon
| lander) entirely. I don't see that as changing arguments,
| I see it as an extension of your assertion.
|
| > In regard to the need to "fool" the USSR, I'd point out
| that you are making a large assumption that governments
| are always as antagonistic at the top levels of
| leadership as the public is led to be and believe.
|
| It is not a large assumption to say the Space Race was
| competitive (and certainly at times outwardly
| antagonistic), though the politics certainly weren't
| simply black and white.
|
| The moon landing required too much physical evidence, too
| many whole human beings, and had too many observers to be
| plausibly fakeable in my view. I'll leave it there vs.
| getting into a debate on alphabet agency secret-keeping.
| Occam's Razor isn't perfect, but it's most clearly not on
| the "fakeable moon landing" side.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Boxing has long been considered the easiest sport to fix;
| only needs one person in on it.
| nvusuvu wrote:
| Not OP, but apparently in the movie Interstellar a school
| teacher is convinced that the moon landings were faked to
| bankrupt the Soviet Union. I've spoken to an amateur Apollo
| historian/buff and I am convinced we landed on the moon in
| the 1960s.
| toyg wrote:
| The Soviet Union was actually so wealthy, in the early
| 1960s, to make these bankruptcy-based conspiracies look
| really silly. I mean, the West perceived it as a threat
| largely because their economic system _appeared superior_
| for a pretty long time. It wasn 't until the late '70s that
| the Soviets really started to sputter.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Americans really don't appreciate the Soviet Union at the
| height of its power.
| OGWhales wrote:
| Americans themselves benefited greatly from it as our
| government felt it needed to do more to compete against
| socialism. Granted, much of that was undone/tapered off
| after the threat was gone, but it's an interesting piece
| of history.
| teekert wrote:
| The insane amount of conspiracy theories surrounding the
| landing.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Not much of a stretch to believe the country responsible for
| MKULTRA would fund a huge and fake propaganda piece against
| the USSR.
|
| That said, it would have been pretty silly to waste as much
| money as we did in the rocket program if the goal was to fake
| it all along. Plus, the Soviets weren't exactly knocking on
| the moon's door.
| ghaff wrote:
| For anyone with Apple TV+, _For All Mankind_ is a great
| series predicated on the idea that the Soviet N1 rocket was
| successful.
| zgluck wrote:
| I've ultimately become disappointed with _For All
| Mankind_. It has its moments of greatness but literally
| two thirds of it is anti-exploratory, anti-science angst
| bullshit. I guess it 's a a lot cheaper to film that
| stuff.
| ghaff wrote:
| I guess I haven't seen that at all. Certainly "For All
| Mankind" is presumably intended ironically as it very
| deliberately plays up the Cold War vibe but that seems
| understandable given the premise of the series. Of
| course, we can't really know what would have happened in
| this scenario but I wouldn't expect a great atmosphere of
| cooperation between the superpowers.
| toyg wrote:
| They also did it surprisingly safely. Those vessels were tin
| cans, with little shielding and just about enough fuel to
| complete a mission; the chance of them crashing to certain
| death or not being able to return, every time they went, was
| very very real. It is half a miracle that effectively nobody
| ever died as part of actual moon-bound missions, even during
| testing the fatalities were very low - even more impressive
| considering it was in the context of a high-pressure arms race.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Do I think it was worth it?
|
| I suspect the semi-conductor industry thinks it was worth it.
|
| And by extension (he says typing on his laptop) I think it was
| well worth it.
| Animats wrote:
| > I suspect the semi-conductor industry thinks it was worth
| it.
|
| That was the USAF, which at one time was the largest
| purchaser of semiconductors. They pushed the technology.
| Especially on the reliability side. The USAF was into naming
| and shaming vendors. They had a reliability unit which would
| take failed transistors apart down to the microscopic level
| and publish pictures of flaws in Aviation Week.
|
| Some USAF generals were rather annoyed when, in the 1980s,
| commercial uses and technology passed military ones and the
| semiconductor industry stopped catering to the USAF.[1]
| m348e912 wrote:
| >I suspect the semi-conductor industry thinks it was worth
| it.
|
| Good example, but it's interesting how the world is mostly
| dependent on Taiwan and not the US when it comes to semi
| conductors.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| I'm not sure where the skepticism for moon landings comes from,
| given the fact that the Soviets had the means (via a variety of
| mechanisms, from technical to HUMINT) to know if we faked it.
| They would have every motivation to "out" us in a UN session
| with Cuban-Missile-Crisis-like imagery.
|
| A conspiracy between the powers to allow numerous US moon
| landings and returns to be faked while the Soviet program
| failed is beyond belief.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Especially considering the USA didn't land humans on the moon
| just once, it did so _six times_ over the course of three
| years. Twelve humans have walked on the moon.
|
| It happened so often that public got bored of it and so
| funding for future missions was withdrawn. Now we've largely
| forgotten this fact.
|
| It always astonishes me that people speak of THE moon
| landing, as though it only happened once. One of the greatest
| achievements of humanity and we undersell it. It would be
| like Ancient Egyptians thinking there was only one pyramid.
| someguydave wrote:
| The moon landings were successful and also a waste of money
| skeaker wrote:
| Didn't come out of my pocket so I could really not care less
| about the money spent. On the other hand I am deeply
| appreciative of the way it shaped life and culture since then,
| particularly in the optimism it gives me for the future.
| Levitz wrote:
| You know, I was going to argue that such an historical landmark
| has value beyond what is learned. Those who are inspired, those
| who believe in funding science, the sheer awe of what
| civilization can achieve and all.
|
| But it would seem the cost ascended to what would now be $280
| billion, adjusted for inflation.
|
| CERN's Large Hadron Collider cost 4.75 billion. International
| Space Station? A cool 150 billion GPS costed 12 billion to put
| in orbit. James Webb telescope, 10 billion. Human Genome, 5
| billion.
|
| Now, there is a point to be made that maybe we just don't do
| other very valuable, very expensive projects, and you can
| always compare it to the US defense budget if you want to make
| the number look small, but I really wasn't aware of the sheer
| amount of money poured into this. Damn.
| FredPret wrote:
| Just as an aside, the US defence budget is actually not the
| US governments' biggest expense.
|
| Also, humanity is always going to spend a good whack of money
| on defence - it's just the cost of running a civilization.
| Lawful behavior is what keeps us on an upward trajectory, and
| laws are backed up by guns.
|
| If Ukraine had nukes, there'd be no invasion.
|
| If France invaded Germany right after Germany invaded Poland
| in 1939, there'd be no WW2.
|
| If the Allies didn't invade Nazi Europe, Hitler's
| son/grandson would be ruling that continent, and possibly a
| couple of other ones as well.
|
| I fully agree on your point regarding big, valuable projects
| though.
| rottencupcakes wrote:
| So were the Pyramids of Giza and Angkor Wat.
|
| Isn't anything that isn't humanitarian aid technically a waste
| of money?
| pessimizer wrote:
| > So were the Pyramids of Giza and Angkor Wat.
|
| Of course they were a waste. The reason we like them is
| because we didn't have to pay for them and we marvel at those
| who did. I like the moai on Easter Island; should we do more
| of that?
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| I would pick humanitarian aid over religious monuments to
| glorify unelected monarchs.
| voakbasda wrote:
| Recently read the argument that monuments are less about
| glory and more about keeping the unwashed masses busy with
| work, so they don't have time or energy to overthrown the
| ruling class.
| bamfly wrote:
| ... or juicing the economy with a little redistribution,
| without simply giving handouts. Or a little of both.
|
| The CCC in the US was a similar thing: paying people to
| build nice things in parks and such while people were
| going hungry. We absolutely didn't _need_ that stuff.
| Coulda just given the money away to those who needed it.
| Though, this way, at least, we got some wonderful
| benefits that endure to this day--indeed, the kind of
| well-built, long-lasting, and nice-to-have but
| unnecessary infrastructure and flourishes, for the
| enjoyment and appreciation of all, that make one feel
| like one actually _does_ live in a very-rich country--
| even if the resource-allocation wasn 't ideal from a
| greatest-good-for-the-suffering perspective.
|
| A sincere attempt at economic stimulus, or keeping the
| able-bodied masses busy & fed so they don't get any
| ideas? Probably both.
|
| As for the _true_ motivations of the pharaohs--who knows.
| jmoak3 wrote:
| "As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them
| so much as the fact that so many men could be found
| degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb
| for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and
| manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his
| body to the dogs."
|
| - Henry David Thoreau
| [deleted]
| bobobob420 wrote:
| technically yes. both those things are a waste of energy that
| could have been spent bettering humanity. not to mention they
| were probably made by 'slaves'
| krapp wrote:
| Archaeological evidence suggests the pyramids were built by
| paid laborers who got free food and housing, rather than
| slaves. That's a better deal than most workers get today.
| Zetice wrote:
| He says using tech that wouldn't exist otherwise...
| pessimizer wrote:
| Would you say the same thing if WWII human experimentation
| had useful results? Would that make the cost worth it? How
| many people died for lack of $180B? Did they get that value
| back from "tech?"
|
| Public schools for black kids must have been really amazing.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nzoPopQ7V0
| jfengel wrote:
| I don't think he's using any tech that could not have been
| produced without a moon landing. Even if some part traces to
| the Apollo program, there's no reason to think it wouldn't
| have been developed via another route.
|
| I'm all for science spending, and a moon shot is probably
| about as good as any other way to funnel money to scientists
| and engineers. But let's not be disingenuous that this
| program was the only possible way to spend money on science.
| shtopointo wrote:
| It would probably exist either way.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| A good amount of that tech was also designed for ICBM
| usage. Some of it would may or may not have existed. It
| would be hard to prove either way as we only have what
| happened not what could have.
| shtopointo wrote:
| True, it's be hard to prove either way.
| Teever wrote:
| If not the Apollo project what would have been driving
| force that lead to the development of the personal computer
| industry at nearly the same rate?
|
| There wasn't a market demand for computers that would
| justify the R&D budget that Apollo was given to develop
| computers to the level that was required to get us where we
| are today.
| shtopointo wrote:
| Of course there was - IBM got started 50 years before the
| moon landings. Mostly had to do with data processing
| (bank transactions, census etc.)
| Teever wrote:
| This is totally wrong,
|
| Where we are today is a result if the work that IBM did
| not related to the space program, the work that was done
| for the space program, and the work that was done because
| of the space program.
|
| The scenario you're describing only has the first one,
| but not the other two.
| Teever wrote:
| Were they a waste of money? They kind of jump started the
| personal computer revolution, and the R&D involved as well as
| the infrastructure built secured the US the place where the
| latest technology continues to be designed if not built.
| riskable wrote:
| They're only wasteful if you ignore the scientific discoveries
| and inventions that came about because of the effort.
|
| NASA is like the government's R&D arm with _the excuse_
| (marketing) that it 's all about space.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I also think that the outcome value of going to space is far
| superior to spending those same R&D dollars on DARPA. Don't
| get me wrong, DARPA does make some cool tech...but instead of
| generating some science, some footprints, and a flag on the
| moon, and some rocket science to put communications
| satellites into orbit, those dollars in R&D put bullets and
| bombs into people, and prepare ICBMs to drop overseas.
| They're going to spend the money anyways, I'd rather they
| literally burn the cash than spend it on killing people.
| kickopotomus wrote:
| I would say NASA is the _public facing_ R &D arm. They also
| have DARPA as a more secretive R&D arm.
| metaphor wrote:
| > _...a waste of money_
|
| Here's a clue[1] at no cost.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies
| barelyauser wrote:
| Let the taxpayer risk their money while private enterprise
| keeps all the intellectual property.
| jshier wrote:
| This is a fun point that's one of the differences in the
| For All Mankind alternate universe. In that universe NASA
| is allowed to patent and license all technologies they
| develop in the course of their programs. This leads to a
| huge NASA budget that, by the 90s, is so large political
| powers want to raid it to pay for welfare. It also means no
| public internet (as far as we see) despite there being an
| extensive network of audio and video devices on the Earth
| and the Moon. Not sure it's realistic but it's an
| interesting alternative.
| mcny wrote:
| > The moon landings were successful and also a waste of money
|
| As long as we have
|
| colleges and universities pour money into sports, taxpayer
| subsidized NFL stadiums (not having to pay taxes is also a
| subsidy, we don't have to hand them buckets of cash, just
| waiving taxes is taxpayer subsidy)
|
| and really any corporate welfare at all
|
| I don't want to hear how investing in science is a waste of
| money.
| Bostonian wrote:
| Wasting money in some ways is not a good reason to waste it
| in other ways.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You're out of tune with the zeitgeist. A legitimate defense
| of any politician doing something wrong these days is
| "Trump did it" i.e. what Bob did is bad, but the person I
| think is the worst in the world also did it, therefore what
| Bob did is good (somehow.)
| pessimizer wrote:
| > colleges and universities pour money into sports
|
| That's not how it works. Colleges and universities break even
| or make money from sports.
|
| > taxpayer subsidized NFL stadiums (not having to pay taxes
| is also a subsidy, we don't have to hand them buckets of
| cash, just waiving taxes is taxpayer subsidy)
|
| This is just standard institutional legal criminality. States
| and cities issue huge bonds for the sake of private
| organizations with no ongoing payments, only a giant balloon
| payment at the end. When they sell these bonds, they magic
| them into being tax-free for the owners. When the balloon
| payment approaches, they issue another huge bond to fund the
| balloon payment. Eventually if they declare bankruptcy, the
| state or city has committed to paying off the bonds _for
| them._
|
| Doesn't have anything to do with sports. If you're friends
| with the right people, you can get this done for adding an
| expansion to your french fry factory that you promise will
| allow you to hire 10 extra people. Except there's no
| compliance enforcement, and instead you filled your new space
| with a machine that allowed you to lay off 20 people.
|
| When it comes to sports, the government has special carveouts
| in antitrust law for the NFL (and the like.) It's simply
| corruption.
|
| > I don't want to hear how investing in science is a waste of
| money.
|
| This is a strawman. If I say that I oppose funding for your
| search for the angelic healing properties of bleach, it
| doesn't mean I'm against science. If I don't think your
| search for the cure for baldness is worth $50B of public
| money, I also mean that without reference to however much
| people who like football waste on football.
| damnesian wrote:
| The two newspaper blurbs that the author didn't highlight, but
| imho have implications that continue to resonate today:
|
| --eisenhower didn't think it was fiscally sound to lower taxes.
| Here was a Republican who understood the strategic importance of
| the Moon landings, and was not afraid to say to the rest of his
| party- and the wealthy class- that they need to stop whining
| about tax cuts. Well we know who won that argument, ultimately.
| The tax base in the early 60s was VERY robust compared to today,
| despite the explosive growth of the multinationals and megacorps.
|
| Robert Weiner warns about expecting computers to make moral
| decisions. Seemed paranoid in context, but really it was eerily
| prescient. Especially considering developments in the last year.
| hollerith wrote:
| It's Norbert Wiener.
| ghaff wrote:
| Comedy of course but also an indication that it wasn't a hugely
| unpopular opinion in the intro to Tom Lehrer's Wernher von Braun.
|
| And what is it that put America in the forefront of The nuclear
| nations? And what is it that will make it possible to spend
| twenty billion dollars of your money to put some clown on the
| moon? Well, it was good old American know-how, that's what, as
| provided by good old Americans like Dr. Wernher von Braun!
| dekhn wrote:
| See also the book "Operation Paperclip" for just how morally
| questionable (yet ultimately necessary) the US was when
| importing German scientists for their missle expertise.
| mcguire wrote:
| Leading to the entertaining fact of a major facility on a US
| military arsenal named after an SS-Sturmbannfuhrer. (https://
| www.sam.usace.army.mil/Media/Images/igphoto/20009303...)
| ghaff wrote:
| Also Operation Epsilon at Farm Hall in the UK for nuclear
| scientists--at a much smaller scale. Decent play about this
| if you get a chance to see it.
| aynyc wrote:
| _"Cecil Graham: What is a cynic?
|
| Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything, and the
| value of nothing.
|
| Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man
| who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn't know the
| market price of any single thing."_
|
| The cost of Apollo program is $178 billion in today's money. I
| personally don't think NASA would've survived to today if Apollo
| program wasn't successful.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| A few thoughts:
|
| 1. I love stuff like this. I think about it with elections all
| the time; even in the biggest landslide elections there's always
| about a third of the population that wasn't on board. A good
| reminder about winners writing history books.
|
| 2. I'm in my 30s. The first time I ever was given an idea that
| people weren't all about the Moon landing was a Larry Norman
| song[0], of all things. ("They brought back a big bag of rocks /
| Only cost thirteen billion. Must be nice rocks") I was definitely
| an adult by this point.
|
| 3. I'm curious about the wording, but it seemed like the survey
| question was focused on cost. Americans never like things when
| you ask about cost. If the question was "should we develop
| rockets strong enough to beat the Commies" it probably would have
| polled a lot better.
|
| 4. Americans also always seem to be cool with public works-y
| stuff once it's actually built. No one liked the Big Dig until it
| was done. Part of that is the cost concern, but I think there's
| also the disbelief that things are possible, and fears about what
| the bad side of the thing could be.
|
| [0]: https://genius.com/Larry-norman-readers-digest-lyrics
| ghaff wrote:
| The Big Dig was also a horrific pain when it was going on. (Oh,
| and Boston traffic is also still horrific.) Nonetheless, once
| done, it was a nice transfer payment to Boston that the Speaker
| of the House (Tip O'Neill) arranged for the rest of the country
| to make that reversed the also horrifying neighborhood-
| splitting overhead highway decision. Boston is better for it.
| moojd wrote:
| We need to do "The Stitch" next
|
| https://thestitchatl.com/project
| ghaff wrote:
| The Big Dig almost certainly resulted in less bad traffic
| than would have existed otherwise--and eliminated some
| really painful traffic patterns like getting to the
| airport. But elevated 93 which cut off the North End from
| downtown was just a blight generally even if it took
| _years_ to get the greenway plan approved.
|
| I guess SF had the "advantage" of an earthquake to
| eliminate its issue.
| lapcat wrote:
| > I think about it with elections all the time; even in the
| biggest landslide elections there's always about a third of the
| population that wasn't on board.
|
| You're actually vastly underestimating the amount of the
| population that wasn't on board.
|
| In 1972, Nixon was reelected with 60.7% of the vote from 56.2%
| voter turnout, which amounted to only 34% of eligible voters.
|
| In 1984, Reagan was reelected with 58.8% of the vote from 55.2%
| voter turnout, which amounted to only 32% of eligible voters.
|
| Incidentally, Biden in 2020 was also 34%: 51.3% of the vote
| from 66.6% voter turnout.
| amrocha wrote:
| You can't make the voter turnout argument because the US
| election system is awful, and people know when their vote
| doesn't matter, or when it's being suppressed, and choose not
| to vote
| lapcat wrote:
| > people know when their vote doesn't matter, or when it's
| being suppressed, and choose not to vote
|
| Why would you count these people as "on board"?
|
| Moreover, even among the people who do vote, there are a
| lot who plug their noses and vote for what they consider to
| be the lesser evil, against the other candidate rather than
| with enthusiasm for their own candidate.
| toast0 wrote:
| It's not really possible to know if non-voters are on
| board or not. Because of how the elections are setup, we
| also don't get any real actionable information about how
| people might vote under different rules either. Some
| voters will vote in most elections, and some voters only
| turn out if they think there's a vote somewhere on the
| ticket where their vote counts.
| lapcat wrote:
| What it means to be "on board" is to endorse the leader's
| agenda. The context here is supporting the Moon landings
| rather than supporting any particular political
| candidate. (And recall that JFK only barely edged out
| Nixon in the extremely close 1960 election.) The question
| is not which candidate a non-voter would vote for, if
| forced to choose. That's why I mentioned the lesser of
| evils phenomenon.
|
| Also, non-voters are consistently at least 1/3 of the
| population, regardless of the "closeness" of the
| election, and there's not necessarily a correlation
| between closeness and turnout.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Let's not forget this phase of the space program was in the
| context of the Vietnam War, and well as other social issues
| (e.g., poverty). Even MLK was shifting focus to the injustice of
| income inequality. Going to the moon was, in that context, seen
| as another foolish government effort. Few, and for good reason
| (at the time), were willing to get behind another bloated
| government idea.
|
| If there was no war, the perception and support shifts. If there
| was also less other social unrest, the perception and support
| shift again.
| adventured wrote:
| The Revolutionary War was also opposed by the majority of the
| people in the colonies.
|
| The majority of a large population is always and without
| exception a dumb herd. It's the rare context where you should
| listen to what that type of majority says or claims to want. The
| wisdom of crowds is one of the more idiotic concepts popularized
| in the past 30 years.
|
| Even more than intelligence is a very scarce attribute, being
| competent at utilizing reason and generally being rational (by
| intent, wilfully; being focused on purpose in the direction of
| being rational and working to maintain that orientation, which
| requires persistent effort, while the median person is
| exceptionally lazy).
|
| It's why you shouldn't bother asking people what they want when
| it comes to building the future. The masses have absolutely no
| idea what they're doing with their own lives most of the time,
| much less have any grasp of what's possible when it comes to
| assembling the future (as referenced Henry Ford & faster horses).
|
| People will say: well then you're invalidating Democracy by
| ignoring the majority! No. Concepts of rights as in the Bill of
| Rights are specifically created to protect the minority from the
| irrational, dangerous majority; it's overwhelmingly meant as a
| restraint on the ill behavior of the majority. It helps
| (emphasis) to prevent the majority from voting your rights as a
| minority individual out of existence just because they have that
| majority vote.
|
| We need things like the Bill of Rights precisely because the
| majority are so often dumb, dangerous and irrational (and they're
| not irrational + dangerous 24/7, the tendency is for them to go
| on rampages historically, so they must be caged by something like
| the Bill of Rights to try to prevent that behavior).
| mrangle wrote:
| However, you miss the point of the American Revolution and the
| government that followed. Which specifically is to suppress
| tyrants. Stated otherwise, it is to limit those who are willing
| to act on their own behalf in a manner that oppresses the "dumb
| herd" while cloaking themselves in righteousness, superiority,
| and public good.
|
| The view to which I am responding renders the American
| Revolution baseless: a waste of time and effort that was only
| to shift under which aristocrat(s) the colonists were to be
| governed. To them, it would have been of little consequence.
| Excepting for the important issue of War deaths.
|
| Last, you begin from an argument of government and justify it
| with a conclusion that appeals to individual rights. It doesn't
| follow. There's zero conflict between democracy and the Bill of
| Rights that anti-populist rulership solves. The term "populism"
| being from the brand of propaganda that likes to have the word
| "democracy" constantly oozing out of its mouth while excusing
| itself to serve mostly special and politician dynasty
| interests.
|
| Don't get me wrong. I don't believe that we've ever had a
| democracy. At the same time only a fool would allow self-styled
| aristocrats to claim historical just-governance. It's just not
| the case. Again, all this argument does is nullify most of the
| proposition for the American Revolution.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I'd rather obey King George than you.
|
| > Concepts of rights as in the Bill of Rights are specifically
| created to protect the minority from the irrational, dangerous
| majority
|
| They're not meant to protect the rulers from the citizenry,
| even though the rulers are a minority. In our form of
| government, they're meant to be representatives of the popular
| will, not a special interest group. What you're talking about
| is monarchy.
| daltont wrote:
| We can use some "Congratulations to the crew of Apollo 8. You
| saved 1968." moments nowadays.
|
| https://amazingstories.com/2016/12/thank-you-for-saving-1968...
| bobthepanda wrote:
| There was also a lot of social commentary on it. Particularly
| striking is this spoken word piece:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitey_on_the_Moon
| earthboundkid wrote:
| Auden: https://allpoetry.com/moon-landing
| topspin wrote:
| All the grievances of Whitey on the Moon can be, and regularly
| are, offered today. Yet Whitey hasn't been to the Moon in 50
| years. It's almost as if one has nothing to do with the other.
| rhcom2 wrote:
| Or maybe those grievances have never been sufficiently
| addressed.
| topspin wrote:
| Perhaps. Now all that's left to you is to define "address."
| I _suspect_ what you come up with would be entirely
| orthogonal to the US space program. I _know_ you could
| snatch every cent of treasure spent on Apollo and use it in
| any conceivable manner on Whitey on the Moon grievances and
| the needle wouldn 't move one iota: the engrieved will sing
| it still.
| rhcom2 wrote:
| "Address" would be have a serious discussion about the
| priorities - both fiscally and socially - of the United
| States.
|
| In a sense you're right that the US Space Program is a
| drop in the bucket compared to other spending but Gil
| Scott-Heron's poem was never a financial proposal. It was
| trying to express a sentiment that the US government's
| priorities were messed up, something that still resonates
| today.
| [deleted]
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Link to performance by Gil Scott-Heron:
| https://youtu.be/goh2x_G0ct4
| decremental wrote:
| [dead]
| csours wrote:
| The first time I heard Whitey On The Moon, I had a strong
| feeling that we don't all live in the same world, even while we
| share the same planet.
|
| As a counterpoint, there's Home on Lagrange:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRns6u5bHuw
| Oh, give me a locus where the gravitons focus Where
| the three-body problem is solved, Where the
| microwaves play down at three degrees K, And the
| cold virus never evolved.
| (chorus) We eat algea pie, our vacuum is high,
| Our ball bearings are perfectly round. Our horizon
| is curved, our warheads are MIRVed, And a kilogram
| weighs half a pound. (chorus)
| If we run out of space for our burgeoning race No
| more Lebensraum left for the Mensch When we're
| ready to start, we can take Mars apart, If we just
| find a big enough wrench. (chorus)
| I'm sick of this place, it's just McDonald's in space,
| And living up here is a bore. Tell the shiggies,
| "Don't cry," they can kiss me goodbye 'Cause I'm
| moving next week to L4! (chorus)
| CHORUS: Home, home on LaGrange, Where the space
| debris always collects, We possess, so it seems,
| two of Man's greatest dreams: Solar power and zero-
| gee sex. --Home on Lagrange (The L5
| Song) (c) 1978 by William S.
| Higgins and Barry D. Gehm
|
| http://www.jamesoberg.com/humor.html
| [deleted]
| yesco wrote:
| As someone who considers the moon landing to be mankind's
| greatest achievement, this poem has only ever inspired dark
| feelings within me. The attitude that we have to _choose_
| between social services or humanity 's future, that we can't do
| both, that space travel is pointless because we haven't "fixed
| all the problems at home yet", is pure entitlement, it's
| selfish and it's wrong.
|
| This poem is certainly good at getting it's message across, but
| that message is racist degenerative trash.
| Bostonian wrote:
| You could well ask what provision of the Constitution authorized
| the Federal Government to spend hundreds of billions of today's
| dollars to put a man on the moon. If the Federal government can
| spend money on that, what is off limits? Tax money is ultimately
| taken at gun point, which means it should only be spent on
| necessary public goods.
| mikequinlan wrote:
| We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more
| perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,
| provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare,
| and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our
| Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
| United States of America.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Quoted like someone who has only read the first few words.
| The actual rules come after that part.
| zerocrates wrote:
| Fair enough, how do you feel about "The Congress shall have
| Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and
| Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common
| Defence and general Welfare of the United States" then?
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| The 16th Amendment. It gave the federal government money while
| explicitly freeing it of any responsibility on how it spends
| it.
| zerocrates wrote:
| What in the 16th Amendment do you think explicitly made any
| change to how the government can spend money?
| headline wrote:
| This shows poll results, namely the bit in the news paper they
| used for the headline, but not the actual question American's
| were asked that ended with "..amount spent for this purpose or
| not?" which is just as important as the data.
| asah wrote:
| The American revolution was opposed by a majority, and man what a
| screwup, we could've been eating crumpets instead of building a
| (checks Google) $20 trillion dollar economy. /s
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=was+the+American+revolution+...
| [deleted]
| lapcat wrote:
| I could definitely go for national health care right now.
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| As a European immigrant to the US, turned US citizen, I would
| never take the flip side of my move; but, you can rest easy
| knowing you have that option. If you don't know people who
| have expatriated to some degree out of the US, invest in
| widening your social circle.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| There's a good chance you're somehow tied to technology,
| though, and America pays its software engineers a frankly
| bonkers amount compared to much of Europe. That may way
| outweigh a lot of other considerations for you.
|
| But I also agree, I'd prefer to stay in the US than move to
| Europe. But I'd even more prefer to have some universal
| healthcare and also live in the US.
| lapcat wrote:
| > As a European immigrant
|
| Could you be more specific? There are many countries in
| Europe, of course.
|
| > I would never take the flip side of my move
|
| I wasn't talking about moving; I was talking about having
| UK-style health care here in the US.
|
| > you can rest easy knowing you have that option
|
| Which option?
|
| > If you don't know people who have expatriated to some
| degree out of the US, invest in widening your social
| circle.
|
| What was the purpose of this sentence?
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| The entire purpose of my comment was to provoke someone
| who understands the world through glib, thought-
| terminating catchphrases, into obnoxiously quote-replying
| every few words of my comment, independently of the
| context they were presented in.
| FredPret wrote:
| $25 trillion!
|
| https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp
| CPLX wrote:
| There's a pretty strong case to be made that the American
| Revolution was just a British civil war.
| umanwizard wrote:
| I would be quite OK with living in a country whose GDP per
| capita is that of Canada or Australia.
| BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
| the american civil war was the way the british crown took back
| control of their former colony
|
| catholicism is how rome beat down the 'barbarians', which ended
| up as the germanic holy roman empire
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Canada's likely a pretty good model of what would have happened
| if we had not left England, and their GDP per capital is within
| spitting distance of the USA despite having a less favorable
| geography.
| tonmoy wrote:
| I don't think global democracy (nor the current democracy of
| Canada) would have been the same without the American
| Revolution
| starkparker wrote:
| A pretty good 1:10 scale model in population, maybe. If the
| US were still in the Commonwealth, it'd be the second-largest
| nation in population by 110 million and the largest in GDP by
| about $20 trillion. Parent comment's GDP rounding error for
| the US is the entirety of the UK's 2019 GDP ($3.1T).
| cafard wrote:
| The British administration of Canada was surely informed by
| the experiences of the 1770s. And Canada had its own
| rebellions, just not successful ones.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _The British administration of Canada was surely informed
| by the experiences of the 1770s._
|
| The British administration of Canada was different to begin
| with because Britain acquired Canada from conquering New
| France and so had a completely separate culture. And the
| way France ran then-New France / now-Canada was completely
| different to how the British 'ran' the colonies ('ran' is
| used loosely, as there was minimal oversight since they
| were each basically commercial ventures).
|
| For some interesting research on how the administration
| differences resulted in the cultural differences (even
| though the countries are right next to each other), see the
| book _The origins of Canadian and American political
| differences_ :
|
| *
| https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674031364
|
| * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3286270-the-origins-
| of-c...
| dougmwne wrote:
| Doubtful. The US was the first government of its kind and it
| triggered the French Revolution and every anti-monarchist
| revolution since then. Canada and every other commonwealth
| state was influenced by that. The snowballing GDP under
| republics begin to have its own gravity until a huge portion
| of the world got pulled into our orbit.
|
| History is not a linear journey from point a to point b.
| Capitalist republics are not inevitable and liberalism is not
| assured. We could indeed all be bowing to Charles right now.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Well not Charles. If America didn't become a model
| Republic, Edward VIII quite likely would not have abdicated
| to marry American Wallis Simpson, and so George VI would
| likely have never taken the throne.
| FredPret wrote:
| I think the abdication was more about her having been
| married before
| FredPret wrote:
| Canada's GDP is pulled up by the USA being right over the
| border but is still quite a lot lower per capita than that of
| the US. We lag far behind the US in wealth per capita - our
| economic performance is more on par with the nicer EU
| countries than with the US.
| jtwaleson wrote:
| While I agree on the first part I think it's hard to separate
| the economies of USA and Canada due to their proximity and
| collaboration. I think a fairer comparison would be with
| Australia or New Zealand. Not sure how close they are in GDP
| per capita but they are also definitely up there.
| lolinder wrote:
| The 2021 numbers, if anyone is interested like I was in what
| "spitting distance" means here:
|
| Canada: 51,987.94 USD
|
| USA: 70,248.63 USD
|
| That places Canada's GDP per capita at about 74% of the US's.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| That's all in retrospect. History could have taken many other
| branches by now.
| [deleted]
| notahacker wrote:
| One thing the article _doesn 't_ cover is that whilst the
| pessimists had a point about the moon landing itself not
| achieving very much except some prestige and cool pictures[1]
| considering the proportion of US national income spent, the
| Apollo program ended up generating an enormous number of
| inventions later used in everyday life, from freeze dried food to
| flight computers, and other tech that could only have come out of
| a space program like satellites are an essential part of the
| functioning of the modern world. Estimates suggest the ROI wasn't
| just non-negative, it was hugely positive (NASA claims $7 for
| every $1 spent)
|
| That was more evident in 1989 than when people were wondering
| whether it was a massive waste of money in 1969, and certainly
| than in 1959
|
| [1]the sci-fi optimists' predictions of it leading to permanent
| colonies and starships within a generation or two have aged
| worse.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| NASA was presumably an expensive way to get any inventions not
| related to space. You could just fund normal research, after
| all.
|
| People similarly laud military research, but it's not as if you
| need the military to carry it out. Governments were just
| willing to fund the research as part of a military effort.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah, but if you just fund research without an objective you
| just waste money because it creates an opportunity for a
| grifter like me to go there and just not get any results of
| value.
|
| When you place an objective like the Moon in front, at the
| least your research has to result in it getting closer. The
| hope is that this broad objective results in something as
| opposed to something narrower you might want.
| ke88y wrote:
| There's a lot of wisdom here. Stupid but hard goals are
| still hard goals. Necessity -- not taxpayer largess -- is
| the mother of all invention.
|
| The corresponding risk is in the resulting cargo cult
| around arbitrary constraints whose reasons were forgotten.
| I bet if we committed to building the Panama canal with
| only spoons we'd have ended up with a lot of amazingly
| useful spoon-platform earth moving technology, and the
| commercial sector would've ended up with highly optimized
| spoon-based machines, and it'd all be very stupid compared
| to what we got instead.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Let's look at Apple before Steve Jobs and Parc research.
| There was a lot of useless research being done without focus
| on a shipping product.
| technofiend wrote:
| Space skeptics came in two flavors: the first being the classic
| "the money could have been better spent elsewhere" variety, but
| second was "If they can put a man on the moon, why can't they
| $PETPEEVE". Frankly I miss the days of "Why can't they" vs the
| trend of vocal minorities simply decrying any and all science,
| because at least the critics acknowledged the space program
| actually happened.
|
| These days unfortunately the conspiracy theorists of the world
| have made their own discoveries like internet forums and
| Twitter which just help propagate their points of view far more
| than a mimeograph of dense text and filled with arrows and
| diagrams stapled to a telephone pole ever did.
| [deleted]
| bruce511 wrote:
| "Spend" is a loaded term when it comes to the way governments
| work.
|
| If I have $100 then I can choose to spend it on say a book. I
| have a book, my $100 is clearly gone.
|
| But when the govt spends say $400 mil on a lunar landing, they
| get the lunar landing, but they also get a bunch of money back.
| Firstly, a chunk of that money goes to salaries, so a decent
| chunk comes back as primary taxes (income tax etc) and
| secondary taxes (sales tax, gas tax, taxes on booze and
| smokes).
|
| What isn't taxes is mostly then circulating in the economy
| (generating yet more taxes) while giving the economy a nice
| boost.
|
| Now we can argue about opportunity cost etc, but the govt has
| no issue borrowing all the money they like - so there's no real
| lost opportunity.
|
| We can quibble about edge-case budgets all day long, but its
| hard to avoid the jobs program that is "military spending". In
| truth what does all that money buy? The lunar program, the Mars
| program, curing cancer, these are rounding errors compared to
| the military budget.
|
| I'm gonna get crucified for saying this, but what do invasions
| of Iraq, or occupations of Afghanistan for 20 years actually
| really achieve? Instead of picking on NASA it might be time to
| wonder what the Defence trillions get us?
|
| Which brings me back to my first point- most of those trillions
| circle round in the economy anyway, so its all funny money.
| churchill wrote:
| I smell a heavy dose of MMT here.
|
| First, the government might not have issue borrowing
| infinitely, but deficit spending/printing cash from thin air
| leads to inflation. And considering how 'beautiful' that past
| couple of months have been, I wouldn't dismiss its impact on
| livelihood.
|
| Secondly, the government might distribute money into the
| economy, but it's always done inefficiently. That's where we
| get $20k trash cans [0] and $28 million spent on camouflage
| uniforms that don't blend in (for use in Afghanistan).
|
| Arguing that government spending is mostly good because it
| gets money into people's hands is just the broken window
| fallacy at work - that cash could have been used for more
| productive investments in the private sector.
|
| Thirdly, I wouldn't trust the ROI figures published by a
| government agency, especially since the US government has a
| 'use it or lose it' approach to budget allocation. They have
| every motivation to just make up figures to channel more cash
| their way.
| mitchitized wrote:
| > I'm gonna get crucified for saying this, but what do
| invasions of Iraq, or occupations of Afghanistan for 20 years
| actually really achieve?
|
| I'm going to answer with another question. For the past
| thirty years, how many countries have traded crude oil in
| currencies OTHER than the dollar, and of those countries,
| which ones have NOT been invaded by the United States?
|
| Petrodollar explained:
| https://www.wallstreetmojo.com/petrodollar/
|
| This doesn't really have anything to do with NASA budget but
| deserves a lot more scrutiny than it gets, IMHO.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| >the govt has no issue borrowing all the money they like - so
| there's no real lost opportunity
|
| This can't be true forever, and to me it seems like it is the
| underpinning of the entire modern world order. Something
| seems fundamentally warped, I'm just not educated enough to
| know what it is.
| bradleybuda wrote:
| How is the $100 spent on the book not circulating in the
| economy?
| tanjtanjtanj wrote:
| I think what they're saying that the government will get a
| large amount back and you, personally, will get less than
| 1% back. So you would effectively be spending $99.99 on the
| book and the government would effectively be spending $45,
| as an example.
| nickff wrote:
| If you think the moon landing money comes back to the
| government, the defense money does the same, with the added
| benefit of providing security!
|
| I think both are basically wasted, but that's because I don't
| buy the premise of your argument. Money is constantly
| circulating, at a given velocity. Each economic actor chooses
| a balance of investment and consumption, and spends at a
| certain rate (some take longer to allocate funds than
| others). The question for me is whether another actor would
| have either allocated the money faster, or towards an
| investment with a higher positive externality. My answer is
| yes.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| > What isn't taxes is mostly then circulating in the economy
| (generating yet more taxes) while giving the economy a nice
| boost.
|
| This part entangles monetary policy with gov't spending,
| which to some extent is politically inevitable, but IIUC is a
| very bad idea in general[1-3].
|
| [1] https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2020/07/magical-
| monetary-...
|
| [2] https://www.cato.org/commentary/magical-monetary-theory
|
| [3] https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/tAThqgpJwSueqhvKM/freq
| uen...
| hirsin wrote:
| I think it's called "speed of money" or something similar,
| but I do wonder how much of which federal dollars end up as
| profit in an account versus circulating the economy. Wages to
| USPS employees - probably spent very quickly/high speed.
| Money sent to Raytheon - probably fifty/fifty on IC wages and
| COGS (high speed, ish) and fat cats (boards, CEOs). Yes, yes,
| they go put money in the stock market, but that's fairly low
| speed.
|
| My guess is defence spending is much lower speed than NASA or
| medical programs.
| jmalicki wrote:
| Usually it's called velocity, not speed, but point stands.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money
| itronitron wrote:
| >> In truth what does all that money buy?
|
| If you're a well paid 'military spending' contractor then you
| can take a nice vacation to the EU and see what the US could
| afford were the US _not_ spending it all on it 's military.
| Free* health care, free* college, public transit, etc.
| bamfly wrote:
| > [1]the sci-fi optimists' predictions of it leading to
| permanent colonies and starships within a generation or two
| have aged worse.
|
| Space-romantics tend to wildly overestimate the benefits of
| space colonization relative to the difficulty and cost.
|
| Space is... kinda shit. Including all the other rocky bodies in
| our star system. In the best case, it's like if Earth suffered
| a half-dozen biosphere-ruining apocalypses _and was yet worse
| than that_ , even.
|
| The "why?" needs a damn good answer, and we just don't have
| one, certainly not for long-term human habitation. Even
| "colonize Mars as a humanity backup" isn't great. There are
| cheaper ways to achieve most of that supposed benefit, and
| maybe do it even better, _possibly_ even involving space in
| some capacity, most of which projects we could kick off _today_
| if we really wanted to--yet we don 't bother with any of those,
| no, we fixate on Mars because of the romantic and pop-culture
| appeal, not because it's the most efficient solution.
|
| Colonizing Mars or the clouds of Venus or putting dome-cities
| on the Moon or whatever is undeniably cool as hell, but when
| you sit and _really_ think about it... eh.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| The why is because humans like exploring and colonizing. Our
| most successful civilizations (in the evolutionary sense, not
| the meritocratic or moralist sense) were good at exploring
| and expanding, so a lot of people are wired to want to do
| that. There are only 2 accessible frontiers - space and the
| ocean.
| bamfly wrote:
| This is _exactly_ the romanticism I was writing about.
|
| Very little of the expense of historical exploration was
| undertaken just so people could scratch their exploration
| itch. Besides, we have a pretty good idea of what we'll
| find most of these places, now, without having to send
| people there, and certainly without needing them to _live_
| there. We don 't have a strong history of bending entire
| economies to support these kinds of projects _just for
| exploration 's sake_, but for expected returns. We can do
| most of the preliminary exploring of our star system
| cheaper with robots and closer-to-home remote sensors, now.
|
| Would we have funded so many expensive expeditions, in the
| age of sail, to explore the Arctic and northern Canada if
| we'd had satellites to tell us there was no Northwest
| Passage? Just for the sake of exploring in-person? I doubt
| it, but that's the conclusion one must draw from the "the
| need, deep in the human heart, to explore is enough
| justification! It's our nature!" ( _see_ the romanticism?)
| position if one supposes that justifies massive human space
| exploration and colonization programs, today, barring new
| information.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > This is exactly the romanticism I was writing about.
|
| And you don't think the people allocating the resources
| subscribe to it? That's more or less my point about why
| they're doing it. The VOC and British India Companies may
| have done it for profit, but the romanticized version has
| been drilled into our barons and leaders.
| bamfly wrote:
| I'm 80/20 on Musk's Mars thing being a way to get great
| PR in certain circles at near-zero cost. His periodically
| erratic behavior is the only reason I allocate the 20.
| Who else is seriously talking about space colonization
| and even _kinda_ putting their money where their mouth
| is? Which money, conveniently, would have had to have
| been spent for much-lesser goals anyway... I 'll be
| convinced he means what he says, on that front, when he
| starts spending serious cash on projects that have little
| purpose _other than_ reaching and /or colonizing Mars.
| For now, I believe he wanted to own a rocket company, and
| wanted to have a stated mission that might make
| recruiting easier and buy him some goodwill points.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| We have an entire continent which is far more hospitable
| than either space or the ocean and we don't dare attempt to
| really colonize it. Hell, Africa is a perfectly fine piece
| of land and first world countries don't invest any money
| into building anything worthwhile past the Mesopotamian
| cradle because they'd rather keep the people poor and
| exploit them for their resources.
| [deleted]
| Animats wrote:
| > ended up generating an enormous number of inventions later
| used in everyday life, from freeze dried food to flight
| computers,
|
| NASA has been promoting that claim for years. But it's not
| real. Freeze-drying goes back to at least the 1930s and was
| used for medicines in WWII, but cost too much for wide use.[1]
| Flight computers came from the USAF missile programs of the
| 1950s.[2] Nor was NASA responsible for Velcro, Teflon, or Tang.
|
| [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/801137/
|
| [2] https://www.afmc.af.mil/News/Article-
| Display/Article/2190783...
| lolinder wrote:
| I don't really care if any of these things originated in NASA
| or had previously been invented--the bigger question for me
| is if they would have been widely used if NASA had not put
| the effort into making them practical. If NASA's moon mission
| caused them to go deep in the archives of forgotten
| technology and resurrect ideas that had long been discarded,
| they deserve credit for that.
|
| (I'm not saying this is the case, but you're also not saying
| that it's not.)
| churchill wrote:
| No, they don't. The scientists at NASA are as good as those
| in the private sector. If the private sector needs it badly
| enough, it'll make it without government interference.
| lolinder wrote:
| This is a really shallow strawman.
|
| No one has been arguing that NASA scientists are better
| than private sector scientists. The argument is that
| having a seemingly-stupid goal that takes a lot of work
| can spawn off legitimately useful technologies that would
| never have been targeted by the private sector because
| moonshots aren't good investments. The theory is that
| it's a good way to very quickly iterate through many
| different ideas.
| google234123 wrote:
| There aren't that many NASA scientists btw and they
| mostly are drafting requirements for the private sector
| scientists to actually do.
| OGWhales wrote:
| In a similar vein, F1 racing has an enormous amount of
| engineering effort put into it in the name of winning a
| race and those efforts can have positive impacts outside
| of F1.
|
| It does sadden me that these days their designs are much
| more restricted, as I enjoyed the wacky ideas we would
| occasionally see when the rules were less restrictive.
| orwin wrote:
| And sports, especially after the leagues/OIC fell hard on
| drugs, are pushing nutrional science (and medecine) like
| crazy.
|
| Even in weird ways: my sister can afford to pay her
| rent/food herself while studying because she prepare meal
| plans for a water polo team, which helps her study and
| find ideas for her college projects. Hopefully she can
| get through her studies without working in a kitchen
| again.
| tombert wrote:
| I agree.
|
| This is just my opinion, but I feel like stuff is way
| more likely to be actually be accomplished if there's a
| tangible goal. A goal, even an arbitrary one, helps you
| actually figure out the limitations of a theory or
| design, and if you don't have a goal it is far too
| tempting to handwave away important questions and live in
| theoretical land.
| tehjoker wrote:
| no they wont bc the private sector cant sustain long term
| interest in projects that dont have profitable
| application on a 5 at most 10 year horizon.
| tivert wrote:
| > I don't really care if any of these things originated in
| NASA or had previously been invented--the bigger question
| for me is if they would have been widely used if NASA had
| not put the effort into making them practical.
|
| Probably.
|
| IMHO, the US military was and is probably far more
| effective at making emerging technologies "practical" than
| NASA is. Their budget's bigger and they buy more stuff,
| often mass-produced. NASA does a lot of one-off and small-
| run projects.
| ke88y wrote:
| The US military as a guaranteed purchaser, maybe. The US
| military as an organization, definitely not.
| tivert wrote:
| > The US military as a guaranteed purchaser, maybe. The
| US military as an organization, definitely not.
|
| What do you mean? The military will ask for pretty
| aggressive improvements in capabilities, then be willing
| to pay essentially infinity dollars to get what they ask
| for. That was especially true during the Cold War. For
| instance, my understanding is the military played a
| crucial step in productizing semiconductors, because they
| were willing to buy them _at volume_ when they were far
| too expensive for nearly every civilian use case. That
| volume allowed for the R &D to drive prices down and make
| civilian use practical. If the military hadn't been
| interested, things would have gotten to a _much_ slower
| start.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Electric cars also existed 100 years ago, but that doesn't
| mean Tesla doesn't deserve credit for completely
| reestablishing the category.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Their engineers do get much credit, but Tesla cars (well,
| at least for another decade) will be known as douche-
| mobiles.
|
| Not an insult. I'm highlighting a business branding issue.
| A mistake Apple, for example, would never have been so
| careless as to make.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| reminds me of that one episode of South Park with hybrids
| causing a cloud of "Smug" pollution
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, one difference is that Teslas sort of are luxury
| products. Given Apple marketshare in the US among
| consumers, it's hard to consider their products as luxury
| goods in the same way.
| ido wrote:
| Funnily enough in many countries (India, China?) iPhones
| are definitely considered luxury/premium (compared to the
| competition, i.e Android).
| brianwawok wrote:
| Apple are the premium choice in the US as well. Green
| bubbles are seen as for plebs.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| How can something be premium when it has 60% market
| share? The iPhone is almost the norm in the US with
| Android being the knock off.
|
| It's like bringing Sams Club soda to a picnic when people
| are use to Coke and Pepsi
| ghaff wrote:
| Sure. That's why I specified US. Hardly surprising. US-
| based company and higher income levels.
| ido wrote:
| I didn't say you're wrong, just added it as an
| aside/addendum :)
| signatoremo wrote:
| Can you elaborate what douche mobile means? And example
| of a non douche one?
| uncletaco wrote:
| Not OP but Teslas I've seen around the Bay Area while
| driving around have Big Altima Energy. If someone's
| driving high above the speed limit, swerving through
| slower traffic like their life is in danger, or doing a
| U-turn on a two-lane street in the middle of rush-hour
| its usually a Tesla Model 3. On the other hand, where I
| grew up it always seemed to be Nissan Altimas that had
| this kind of energy. I think the stereotype is not really
| about individual drivers so much as its about the
| popularity of the vehicle and its performance
| characteristics.
|
| Both the Nissan Altima and Tesla Model 3 sell very well
| and are entry level ("entry level" here meaning entry
| level for the class of vehicles one is looking for, there
| are entry-level Mercedes' for instance) sedans with power
| behind them. So you have a lot of them both on the road,
| and thus more people who likely treat them as
| _disposable_ and thus drive them recklessly. Any car that
| is super popular usually is popular enough that enough of
| the wrong kind of drivers have it, and so you can start
| stereotyping them. I think Model 3s have a lot of the
| wrong kind of drivers on the road. Maybe many of them
| care about saving the environment but they don 't drive
| like they care about the car.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| > Not OP but Teslas I've seen around the _Bay Area_ while
|
| How do you say you're in a bubble without saying you're
| in a bubble...
| Velofellow wrote:
| Not original commenter, but I think metrics of douchery
| probably vary person to person. Personally, the number of
| pithy vanity plates specific to the vehicle's energy
| source is what does it for me. I think it speaks more to
| the occupant and their outward projections & posturing
| than the vehicle.
|
| thinking of the South Park fart smelling prius meme.
|
| FTR - I have no problems with EVs, but I do give myself a
| good chuckle when I see someone who was proud enough of
| their vehicle purchase to turn their it into a billboard
| advertising something / someone (Musk) who has fallen
| from social grace.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| One associated with Mr Elon Musk, and one which is not.
|
| You choose who and what you associate with in this world,
| and your car is one of the things which, whether you like
| it or not, will define perceptions of you.
|
| A premature rocketulation man-baby is not who I want to
| associate with or help fund.
| OGWhales wrote:
| I was gonna say the Prius, but that has its own douchey
| reputation.
|
| I guess maybe a Camry? That's a boring practical car that
| doesn't carry much stigma.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Apollo CM and LM had the Apollo Guidance Computer provide
| very advanced digital fly by wire for the time. (in fact I
| think it was one of the first DFBW systems). Later DFBW
| research on F-8 Crusaders started out using the actual AGC as
| well, interestingly enough.
|
| AGC was also one of the first machines to use integrated
| circuits (to keep it light, no doubt) so you could say that
| the apollo program also advanced computer research by quite a
| bit.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Freeze-drying goes back to at least the 1930s and was used
| for medicines in WWII, but cost too much for wide use.
|
| Okay, so... the tech existed but was too expensive to
| actually use, NASA threw a bunch of R&D at making it
| practical, and now it's cheap enough to use. I'd say that's a
| great case _for_ NASA getting credit for making the tech
| useful; that they didn 't literally invent it from scratch
| seems rather beside the point.
| adolph wrote:
| Do you know that it was NASA's R&D that made it practical
| or is that conjecture?
|
| From Institute of Food Technologists (IFT):
|
| _Freeze-drying was invented by Jacques-Arsene d'Arsonval
| at the College de France in Paris in 1906. Later, during
| World War II, it was widely implemented to preserve blood
| serum. Since then freeze-drying has become one of the most
| important processes for preservation of heat-sensitive
| biological materials. During the 1950s, industrial freeze-
| drying of foods began. Freeze-drying is currently used as a
| preservation method for foods, pharma-ceuticals, and a wide
| range of other products._
|
| https://www.ift.org/news-and-publications/food-technology-
| ma...
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Those missile computers of the day were mostly analog, lots
| of gears 'computing' trajectories. Really amazing inventions
| but not really adaptible to changing circumstances. Which
| makes sense in an ICBM because it has all the facts known in
| advance. This is where the much more interactive Apollo
| computer was really new at.
| shtopointo wrote:
| There's an argument that all those things would have been
| invented eventually anyway. There was no need to spend 100s of
| billions of dollars for basically a photo-op.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| Eventually, a century or two later. I mean it has been 50
| years and we still couldn't send a human to the moon again
| despite technological advances
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| $25 billion, for _the coolest photo-op in history_. Hell
| yeah. We flush orders of magnitude more money down the drain
| for shits and giggles any way, might as well do something no
| one else has ever done before.
| bleepblop wrote:
| Yeah and Bell Labs had developed cellular technology in the
| late 40s. When did we get commercial use for that tech? Oh
| yeah, nearly 40 years later.
| starkparker wrote:
| What's the argument?
| shtopointo wrote:
| That those things would have been invented anyway, because
| science and technology progresses even without gov't
| intervention.
| willis936 wrote:
| Is this a brownian motion/maxwell's demon argument or are
| you suggesting that progress is guaranteed by some
| principle?
| carleverett wrote:
| there's a (small) chance that the moon landing was the first
| time a living organism successfully chose to visit another
| celestial body in the entire history of the universe.
|
| "basically a photo op" is such a strange way to think of
| that.
| areoform wrote:
| Speeding up our technological timeline by decades, and it was
| decades, has saved tens of millions to hundreds of millions
| of lives. The Integrated Circuit revolution wouldn't have
| happened at the same pace without Apollo. Apollo (and to a
| lesser degree the defense program) funded the industry for
| the first few years of its existence. Something like 2/3rds
| of all ICs produced until the mid-to-late 1960s were used in
| the program.
|
| They were extraordinary customers -- willing to fund R&D,
| patient with bad results but extremely demanding. Without
| them, I suspect we'd be at least one to two decades behind in
| your computing timeline. Given how many lives these machines
| save on a daily basis... it's not hard to do the math.
| jxf wrote:
| "Eventually" is a pretty long time. If you were in 1959,
| would you press a button that caused satellites and freeze-
| dried food and flight computers to arrive 20 years earlier if
| it cost $10 billion to press? That saves billions of lives
| over the next 50 years and dramatically accelerates
| humanity's technology tree, so it seems like it's worth it.
| Vvector wrote:
| > freeze-dried food
|
| The modern process was invented in 1890, and used
| extensively in WW2.
| [deleted]
| dekhn wrote:
| freeze dried food was invented in France around the time of
| WWI.
|
| Flight computers predated Apollo- they were originally
| developed for missles. most of the folks who worked on the
| AGC had previously developed very successful flight
| computers already.
| shtopointo wrote:
| Inflated numbers. Also counterfactual reasoning: "had it
| not been for the space program, we wouldn't have developed
| these technologies and billions of lives wouldn't have been
| saved."
|
| Also - billions? Seems like an overreach.
| bearjaws wrote:
| What kind of argument is that?
|
| Might as well not send any boats out to find new continent,
| they will be discovered anyway!
|
| We have far more real technology today than we would have,
| all thanks to us moving some made up money around 60 years
| ago...
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| People really do just get on here and confidently say
| absolute nonsense.
|
| > Don't bother doing something because it will be done
| eventually anyway.
| shtopointo wrote:
| Not my argument. Just saying it's different when it's
| taxpayer money and there is no popular support.
| codyb wrote:
| Maybe, but what's the point in not generating 7 dollars of
| economic activity for every dollar spent, inspiring millions,
| and bootstrapping the process?
|
| If it was "basically a photo-op" it wouldn't have generated
| so much economic activity in the long run, even if perhaps it
| wasn't the most cost effective way to get there (in some
| eyes)?
| jdasdf wrote:
| > Maybe, but what's the point in not generating 7 dollars
| of economic activity for every dollar spent, inspiring
| millions, and bootstrapping the process?
|
| Because not spending that dollar on putting a guy on the
| moon could have generated 20 dollars elsewhere.
| mcguire wrote:
| It _could_ have, yes. Would it?
|
| This is why historians are leery of counter-factuals;
| unless you have very strong evidence that it _would_ have
| happened, you have nothing but a "could have"
| hypothesis.
| codyb wrote:
| Yea, seems pretty loose to assume those dollars would
| have generated three times the economic impact of the
| space program if they'd been left in individuals hands.
|
| Companies certainly innovate, but the government
| innovates a _lot_ (primarily through research grants
| which are eventually developed into products by
| entrepreneurs as far as I can tell, also the military).
| shtopointo wrote:
| $7 for each $1 is marketing math. Someone is being very
| generous in attributing too much economic activity to the
| space program.
| codyb wrote:
| I mean, even if it was 2 for 1... or 1 for 1... why not
| do it? Pretty neat to go to the moon.
| JackFr wrote:
| It was a cold war exercise, and viewed through that lens it
| almost certainly was a better expense than say the Vietnam War.
| I suppose a more apt hypothetical would be considering what the
| return spending that money on various additional DARPA projects
| would have been.
| throwoutway wrote:
| > it was hugely positive (NASA claims $7 for every $1 spent)
|
| Could you share this source? I want to read more analysis
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| The 7X multiplier was what we used when I worked in a
| university's advancement office to justify funding alumni
| events. Seems to be very common with justifying sports
| stadiums, festivals, and many other things that require
| public spending.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > [...] _he Apollo program ended up generating an enormous
| number of inventions later used in everyday life_ [...]
|
| See perhaps:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies
| dekhn wrote:
| flight computers were already designed and built for the
| missles that predated Apollo- in fact, that's why the team that
| built them for Apollo was able to be so productive.
|
| freeze dried food predates the space program by decades.
|
| Any money spent on a goal that leads to valuable side effects,
| could instead have been spent on researching the valuable side
| effect directly.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| >Any money spent on a goal that leads to valuable side
| effects, could instead have been spent on researching the
| valuable side effect directly.
|
| What a wonderful tautology.
|
| These things were researched because they were necessary. You
| don't just sit down and think of new things to invent, you
| invent things to fix a problem. Without a problem to solve,
| how is one supposed to suddenly decide what to research?
| ghaff wrote:
| I heard--probably from someone who worked there--that the
| Apollo Guidance Computer was pretty much the only no-bid
| system in the Apollo program.
| schimmy_changa wrote:
| Right, the computers were built for the preliminary programs
| which ... were stages on the way to Apollo! Yes,
| theoretically, but sometimes you need a big bold exciting
| goal or everyone will say "why are you wasting my tax dollars
| inventing flight computers? these don't seem very
| valuable...". The side effects may even be the point of the
| project, but the goal is essential to getting the politics
| right.
| ghaff wrote:
| They really came out of gun targeting and were later
| developed into ballistic missile targeting (including sub-
| launched). Not that the AGC wasn't a significant
| achievement but the basic technology had already been
| proven out in Polaris and earlier.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| The ROI for R&D isn't exclusive to space programs, the space
| race was just an impetus/motivator for blank check by-all-means
| research. As a general rule shouldn't as much money as possible
| go into that sort of research until the marginal return is
| below $1 for each dollar spent?
| jdasdf wrote:
| No, because the time value of money is a thing.
|
| Even a 700% IRR can be not worth it, if you have alternatives
| with similar or lower risk with a higher annual return.
| Fernicia wrote:
| I'm generally supportive of this type of spending, but it's
| important to realise opportunity costs and the fact they are
| both invisible yet very real.
|
| Invisible in rich coutnries like the US, I mean. The USSR
| space raced itself into recession.
| msla wrote:
| The USSR had massive internal contradictions and
| inefficiencies. By the end it was brittle, and it couldn't
| weather shocks, like the late 1980s to early 1990s oil
| shock, very well, and attempts at reform magnified internal
| dissent until the constituent republics and satellite
| states could only be satisfied with complete independence.
|
| http://www.energycrisis.com/reynolds/SovietDecline.htm
|
| > To summarize, the period 1988 to 1992 was the world's
| third oil crisis in 20 years. This one brought down the
| powerful Soviet Empire.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| That document is 90% assertions without evidence.
|
| >It is suggested that because the Soviet Union had out-
| of-date oil technology that production decreased. However
| over time, even in a closed system such as the Soviet
| Union, information about technology and technology itself
| must increase.
|
| Why? The Soviet Union had numerous important failures in
| technology that killed their advancement, often caused by
| valuing personal loyalty (often treated as party loyalty)
| over all else, an act that will drive any system to
| failure eventually.
|
| >There is no reason to believe that management was much
| better in the 1960's when oil production skyrocketed then
| in the 1980's when it stagnated
|
| Again, asserted without evidence, as if there aren't
| hundreds of examples of good management being replaced
| with bad management, regardless of economic ideology or
| societal structures.
|
| >Subsequent discontent pushed them toward democracy. The
| Soviet Union was left trying to simply keep NATO troops
| out of Eastern Europe but still letting the Eastern
| Europeans become democracies.
|
| So now rolling tanks into at least one of the revolting
| countries is "letting the eastern Europeans become
| democracies"? Russia fought, and continues fighting to
| this very day, any and all "I don't want to be a part of
| russia anymore" ideology, including with lethal force.
|
| The Soviet Union degraded over time because it was
| structurally and socially organized to encourage
| rewarding people who were loyal and projected strength
| than people who got things actually done. From the very
| top with Stalin himself, the way to move up was
| completely divorced from the way to improve efficiency.
| This importantly isn't about the economic system, but the
| ideology of leadership. The Soviet Union would have run
| into plenty of troubles with a system based on
| syncophantry even if it were a free market capitalist
| system. Allowing that kind of blatant corruption and
| suffusing it through all levels corrodes society. Or at
| least this is my opinion.
| msla wrote:
| This might be a better cite for the "oil shock" thesis:
|
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/24808741
|
| Assuming JSTOR still works for anyone.
|
| Regardless, _my_ thesis wasn 't that the USSR collapsed
| entirely because of an oil shock. It was that the USSR
| had severe structural problems and couldn't weather
| adversities such as the oil shock.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| > The USSR space raced itself into recession.
|
| Did they? The USSR had a lot of expensive losses, from the
| war in Afghanistan to the cleanup of Chernobyl. But I'm not
| sure the space race fits in that category; like in the US
| it pushed tech advances within the USSR as well, and their
| launch capabilities generated a lot of revenue for them
| down the line.
| dmix wrote:
| The most hand wavy R&D propositions ever, a very common take
| on Reddit. I hate when people assume the specific ROI gained
| when developing rocketry, when it was still very novel in the
| 1950-60s, can be used as a general rule for spending money on
| NASA or related gov projects today.
| ScoobleDoodle wrote:
| Our R&D today will go towards items that are today's
| equivalent of 1950-60s rocketry. You clearly recognize the
| giant leap in hind sight. Now imagine the next giant leap
| and corresponding benefits. That is why it's worth it both
| in advancements and ROI.
| apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
| > Now imagine the next giant leap and corresponding
| benefits.
|
| That's always the problems with these types of
| discussions though, isn't it? You can't know what that
| next leap is going to be and how it is going to benefit
| everyday life.
|
| For some, like myself, that next leap will be just as
| revolutionary and will send us to the stars. We imagine a
| blank check with a direct, long-term goal leading to
| things we can't even dream of today.
|
| For others, however, they struggle to see what that leap
| will be. For them, it's just getting to Mars and maybe
| coming back, maybe with some new tech for the military.
| Nothing that will affect their own lives or the lives of
| their children. That was the problem in the 50s and 60s
| that led to so much backlash against the projects. And
| even though we saw the fruit those projects bore, who is
| to say it will happen a second time?
|
| Some people just can't or won't imagine what might come
| from another Apollo-esque program. And that's who you
| have to convince.
| tehjoker wrote:
| I think one of the next big leaps will be in technologies
| that are not possible without extensive international
| cooperation. A few examples: - shipping
| solar energy to the dark side of the planet -
| ending the COVID-19 pandemic (N95s, air filtration, far
| UV-C, timely vaccine updates) - intercontinental
| high speed rail (low emissions travel) -
| preserving the biosphere by removing deforestation
| incentives w/ international assistance, technology
| transfer - interplanetary space infrastructure
| incl. orbital launch - high quality durable goods
| that barely break and are easy to service
|
| Our competitive framework is currently inhibiting our
| incredible technology from working at full effectiveness.
| SllX wrote:
| Not without a focus.
|
| The mission to go to the Moon wasn't just a mission to go to
| the Moon, it was also a mission to _come back_ from the Moon.
| This was basically a blank check _and_ a massive cross-
| disciplinary exercise.
|
| Our next focus should be on Mars with exactly the same
| criteria: get people to Mars and also get them back as part
| of the same mission. It will be much more difficult than
| getting to the Moon and back and that's exactly the reason to
| do it.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Going to Mars with real live squishy humans would no doubt
| be cool. Getting them back in 1 piece would be even cooler.
| I'd argue capturing near-earth asteroids and starting to
| build a functional zero-g industry around earth is more
| useful though. I think those two things are pretty
| orthogonal.
| piva00 wrote:
| I'd love to see a Mars space race between China and the
| USA. If there's another cold war brewing let's at least
| only keep the cool aspects of the last one and leave the
| saber rattling bullshit behind in history...
| mywittyname wrote:
| The US government does this a lot, maybe not _blank_ checks,
| but certainly very large checks. The military in particular
| hands out astonishing volumes of money in the pursuit of pie-
| in-the-sky dreams.
|
| Outside of blowing stuff up, the NSF distributes roughly $10
| billion a year to research. And while a lot of that funding
| gets redirected back to universities, a healthy amount of it
| goes directly towards research that all of us benefit from
| tremendously. Think about how much open source software was
| developed at universities, funded directly, or indirectly via
| NSF or similar grants.
|
| One of the problems with indiscriminate spending on science
| is people who oppose to the spending will attack it. We often
| see news articles like, "government gives professor $4
| million to study of shrimp". Of course, the article is
| biased, so it ignores that half that that money goes back to
| the university to pay for "research facilities" or that the
| research may have direct military application. So people get
| the impression that there's these scientists out there
| playing around with aquariums and getting paid millions to do
| it.
| ke88y wrote:
| _> while a lot of that funding gets redirected back to
| universities, a healthy amount of it goes directly towards
| research that all of us benefit from tremendously._
|
| It's a crime that _all_ of that money isn 't accessible to
| people outside of universities...
|
| _> So people get the impression that there 's these
| scientists out there playing around with aquariums and
| getting paid millions to do it._
|
| I mean... that's the optimistic case. At least in your
| imaginary scenario there's actual work happening from 9am
| to 10:30am and from 3:00pm to 5:00pm...
| thrashh wrote:
| I think a lot of people don't understand that R&D is like
| flushing money down the drain until one day you happen to
| invent interplanetary teleportation.
|
| It's hard to really grasp, kind of like insurance which I
| swear a lot of people also don't really get but in reverse
| (where you throw a lot of money seemingly down the drain
| until possibly the day where it completely makes up for
| it).
|
| How do you tackle budgeting for something with zero
| guarantees? Not very easily.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > I think a lot of people don't understand that R&D is
| like flushing money down the drain until one day you
| happen to invent interplanetary teleportation.
|
| I wouldn't say that at all. There are lots of small,
| tangible positive outcomes that occur along the way.
| Inventing interplanetary travel is great. But even a
| failed project gives smart people experience, generates
| research that might have application elsewhere, funds
| general economic development.
|
| Lots of indirect development comes from R&D. Think a
| chemical engineering PhD student designs some software to
| solve a problem specific to their research, then finds
| out that there's a broader market for that kind of
| software and leaves his research to pursue that as a
| business.
|
| I think that a lot of people think R&D is only about
| achieving a specific goal. When, in reality, it's about
| researching and developing a lot of smaller things in the
| general direction of a particular goal.
| thrashh wrote:
| I definitely was over-simplifying but R&D can feel that
| way sometimes.
| echelon wrote:
| > blank check by-all-means research
|
| Sorry to derail, but I'm utterly confounded that cancer
| research, life extension research, brain-computer research,
| etc. haven't been given this "by-all-means" approach. It's
| one thing to defeat a geopolitical rival, it's quite another
| to escape annihilation for just a bit longer.
|
| One might assume religiosity is the cause, but atheist
| nations aren't investing in it either.
|
| If anything was deserving of another moonshot / Manhattan
| project, I think that would be it.
| ghaff wrote:
| Even the Manhattan project didn't have an unlimited pool of
| top-level scientists. At some point, pouring in more money
| [ADDED: especially to somewhat vague goals] doesn't give a
| lot of incremental results. I'd be a lot more convinced if
| there were evidence that there were top-level, productive
| scientists in important fields that would be producing
| world-changing results if they were only given more money.
| (Of course, they all would like more money and resources.)
| bena wrote:
| Don't confuse results with effort.
|
| "Cancer" is a nebulous area. You can't really study
| "cancer". Cancer isn't _a_ disease. It 's a class of
| diseases characterized by a breakdown of your own cells'
| reproductive process. Not to mention, it's a breakdown that
| can just happen. You can take every precaution, avoid every
| carcinogen, and still get cancer. The biggest predictor to
| whether or not you will get cancer is time. The longer you
| live, the greater your chances.
|
| And we might "get" cancer far more often than we realize.
| It's just that our bodies _do_ have ways to excise cancer
| from our own bodies. It 's just that sometimes, it's not
| enough.
|
| And there is a lot of research that goes into cancer
| prevention and treatment. But it's not like one day we'll
| have the anti-cancer pill. That's just magical thinking.
|
| Life extension research is also in a weird place. Because,
| like cancer, there isn't just one thing that ends our life.
| It's a host of things. And a lot of those things are being
| looked into. And we've already made amazing strides. We are
| able to get way more people to advanced ages than before.
| Prior to modernity, it was basically luck as to whether or
| not you'd make it to 60.
|
| And I don't even know what you want to mean by "brain-
| computer" research. But I assume it would eventually
| involve fucking around with living brains. You absolutely
| cannot make a mistake there. You don't go poking around in
| the brains of healthy people unless you want to make them
| very unhealthy, very quickly.
|
| So each of the things you've picked out are vague and/or
| fraught with their own perils.
|
| Chucking a meat-filled metal tube at a space rock and
| getting the meat back is an objective with a clear goal.
|
| And also, I'd like to point out, that failure was an
| option. Michael Collins was trained in everybody's job just
| in case he had to come back alone. During the first orbit,
| when he was out of contact with everybody for 48 minutes,
| he had no idea what he would find when he came back around.
| That and this was a process of years. The mission that
| landed on the moon was Apollo 11. Preceded by the Gemini
| program, whose main purpose was to lead into the Apollo
| program. 8 years for the singular goal of having a man go
| to the moon and return.
|
| "Curing cancer" is not the same. "Brain research" is not
| the same. "Life extension" is not the same. Pick one thing.
| One simple goal. Not "cure cancer", but something like
| "make non-nauseating chemotherapy". Then dedicate 8 years
| to achieving that one task, no matter the cost. Which is
| something they do do. Any time you see something about
| "targeted cancer medications", that's to end-run around
| chemotherapy. Because chemotherapy is kind of like setting
| your house on fire to get rid of termites.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _The ROI for R &D isn't exclusive to space programs_ [...]
|
| Cold War spending probably kickstarted Silicon Valley:
|
| * https://steveblank.com/secret-history/
| Diggsey wrote:
| The research was a side effect of a very well defined goal,
| which was achievable albeit extremely hard. Investing in
| achieving a goal (with the research being a side benefit) is
| different from just investing in research because it changes
| the motivations of the researchers (from "how do we get our
| next research grant" to "how do we solve this problem").
|
| That's not to say you shouldn't invest in abstract research
| with no obvious goal at all, but probably you should consider
| it a much higher risk investment and not fund all your
| research that way...
|
| There's also the fact that _money now_ is more valuable that
| _money later_ even if you adjust for inflation (one of the
| reason countries run a deficit) so the expected return should
| be much higher than $1 to be worth investing in.
|
| Next, there's the fact that investment is finite, so the
| expected return has to be higher than the expected return you
| would get elsewhere.
|
| Finally there's the fact that as you invest more, the effects
| of all three of those factors increase, so it has diminishing
| returns.
| supernova87a wrote:
| I guess sometimes, the stupid, unpredictable, irrational, doesn't
| make economic sense choice is the thing that history remembers.
| freediverx wrote:
| Whitey On the Moon
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4
| gumby wrote:
| I was shocked that wasn't mentioned in the article. It's still
| as biting today. It definitely moved me, and has influenced my
| perspective on and choice of work.
|
| If you don't know it you should listen to to that link of Gil
| Scott-Heron reading it, but here are the words if you prefer
| not to youtube: A rat done bit my sister
| Nell. (with Whitey on the Moon) Her face and
| arms began to swell. (and Whitey's on the Moon)
| I can't pay no doctor bill. (but Whitey's on the
| Moon) Ten years from now I'll be paying still.
| (while Whitey's on the Moon)
| nickdothutton wrote:
| Democracy is not a god. Asking the general population about such
| things and then actually enacting their wishes is like taking
| your direction from Pooh Bear. He likes the sweet taste of honey,
| but is a bear of little brain and is happy so long as his supply
| of it keeps flowing.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > is like taking your direction
|
| Who is the "you" in this sentence? Are you speaking as the
| King? Of course the King doesn't have to justify his
| expenditures to the peasants.
| danielodievich wrote:
| I am a huge fan of space exploration and all the various content
| that comes with it. I also like fine books. Folio Society's A Man
| on the Moon The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew
| Chaikin (https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/a-man-on-the-moon.html)
| is an exceptionally fine way to learn more about the technical,
| budgetary, personal and play bizarre things that went down. The
| book covers some of the skepticism and the "this is really
| expensive" objections. If you want to treat yourself, this
| substantial 2 volume folio is a feast for all your senses.
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| I'm more pessimistic about the fact that I have to login/signup
| to read this article.
|
| Smashed the back button and chose to read the comments instead.
| dynamorando wrote:
| I realize that there's a million obvious answers; but as I type
| this in the part of the country currently roasting by the
| heatwave in the United States: will something like this ever
| happen for climate efforts?
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Stop and think about this for a bit.
|
| Putting someone on the Moon takes a certain number of people,
| and it's a thing, and you can do it and be done with it. Less
| than a hundred thousand people, probably. A fixed budget.
|
| Addressing climate change means suddenly stopping everyone from
| doing certain things. It's much broader in scope and involves
| forbiddance, long-term. It's a near-endless stream of _don 't_:
| don't burn that coal, don't leave that light on, don't drive so
| much, don't use that plastic bag, don't have that many kids,
| and so on. This goes across billions of people and it won't
| ever end.
|
| They're not even comparable.
| spamizbad wrote:
| I love stuff like this. It really illustrates the folly of
| "popularism" (not to be confused with populism) - where you allow
| your political agenda to be guided heavily based on issues that
| align with positive polling outcomes, an deemphasize and abandon
| policy planks that lack popular support.
| mypgovroom wrote:
| perfect example of why pure democracy is a horrible idea
| sdfghswe wrote:
| Oh, so THAT's the real reason for why we have so much fake
| moonlanding nonsense still to this day.
|
| If there's some thing I've learned in the past 6 or so years is
| that when morons attach their personality to a certain claim and
| then they're proven wrong, they just double down. So I can
| totally imagine that a very large fraction of those 66% who
| opposed it couldn't just be proven wrong and instead attack it.
| It can't be that I was wrong and landing on the moon was actually
| awesome, instead it must be fake! Didn't happen!
| pessimizer wrote:
| > landing on the moon was actually awesome,
|
| Consider that people who opposed going to the moon still may
| not think that it was "awesome."
|
| It's patriotic bullshit that political scoundrels turn to, but
| is at least not as horrific as war. Although if the money spent
| on the moon landing had been spent on starving children, many
| of them wouldn't have starved, so maybe it's a sort of an
| inverse war to burn cash like that?
|
| Nationalists are childish. Trump declares a Space Force, and
| turns half the people who thought he was the antichrist into
| his defenders.
| mydriasis wrote:
| > Noted fiscal hawk Barry Goldwater dismissed the lofty ambitions
| of lunar exploration as a "wasteful endeavor," an ironic stance
| given he voiced his criticism at a glitzy dinner that cost each
| attendee a cool $100 - close to $1000 in 2023.
|
| Some things never change, eh?
| anaganisk wrote:
| Probably couldn't profit off it as they expected. Politicians
| never change.
| bboygravity wrote:
| * politicians in "not really a democracy" never change
| dylan604 wrote:
| for me, but not for thee will never go away
| Brendinooo wrote:
| As always, it'll depend on your definition of "wasteful".
| quercusa wrote:
| Were the attendees at that dinner forced at gunpoint to pay for
| their seats?
| Phiwise_ wrote:
| Yes, who could have predicted fundraising for activism would
| still exist in the US fifty years after
| $ARBITRARY_2OTH_CENTURY_DATE ? Truly remarkable.
| melling wrote:
| A $1000 dinner is nothing in comparison to the cost of going to
| the moon.
|
| I'm definitely glad we did it.
|
| However, the Apollo program was expensive. It was 2.5% of GDP
| for 10 years.
|
| https://www.herkulesprojekt.de/en/is-there-a-master-
| plan/the....
|
| Imagine today if we said we were going to try and cure
| cancer(s) in 10 years by spending 2.5% of GDP over the next
| decade.
|
| Think people would support that? Doubt it.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Something about that math doesn't work out; all of NASA was
| about 3% of the federal budget from '62-72. I don't see how
| that could be 2.5% of the GDP.
|
| [edit]
|
| Upon closer reading I think it means that over a 10 year
| period they spent 2.5% of the _annual_ GDP, which would work
| out to a 0.25% GDP spend each year.
| melling wrote:
| Good question. Perhaps they mean as percentage of federal
| spending?
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/feb/01/nasa-
| b...
| codyb wrote:
| That would be pretty sweet. Big fan of Biden's moonshot
| cancer initiative. I'd love to see another "space race" type
| event pursued by America in the name of advancing our
| scientific understanding. Trying to cure cancer seems like it
| would be an awesome place to start.
|
| 2.5% of GDP would be... 500bn a year?
|
| Coordinating that would be wild. What about a race to
| negative emissions for 2.5% GDP? With the promise of well
| paying jobs, cleaner air (long term saves money due to
| reduced asthma, etc), reduced foreign energy dependence, and
| increasing the number of products we can sell abroad (long
| term positive), reducing climate impact (long term saves
| money in reduced disaster relief).
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| It would be wonderful. The space race and the manhattan
| project show that brilliant things can be done when we put
| our mind to it. Imagine if we coordinated "10-year plans"
| with things like "become carbon neutral", "build working
| fusion", "land humans on Mars", "cure cancer", etc. If we
| started in 1950 we could have 7 done by now.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| If people believed you might actually do it, enough of us
| have been affected by cancer that I'm sure they'd support it.
|
| Fuck cancer.
| melling wrote:
| What if we failed and we could only cure half the people
| who would have otherwise died?
|
| Of course that's half of people going forward...forever
| lordnacho wrote:
| The cure for cancer project was a waste of money! Sure it's
| nice they did it but that money would have been better as tax
| cuts where it would have spurred innovation in other fields.
| People die of something else anyway.
|
| Yeah we built fancy new labs and educated a new generation of
| scientists, but what does it matter that we made an algorithm
| that can cure each individual person's cancer? Those people
| would have studied something else, and you can just git clone
| the cancer algorithm nowadays.
|
| The whole cure for cancer project was nothing but a
| tumourdoggle for big research. Hospitals and universities
| across the country feasting on public money. Labcoat
| manufacturers and those guys who make beakers, suddenly
| getting wealthy off what is essentially a photo-op where
| where we stick it to the Chinese.
| [deleted]
| spoonjim wrote:
| This is why "democracy" is a flawed idea and why the educated
| elite should be making decisions (but in a way that offers some
| accountability to the common man).
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