5 ms·

It was great we had space races during the cold war (and the fact it was cold). Now we have no more space exploration and just hot wars in Syria. No troops on

by ck2 11y ago

It was great we had space races during the cold war (and the fact it was cold). Now we have no more space exploration and just hot wars in Syria. No troops on the ground - wait what, Russia is in Syria? Troops on the ground! Hey I know, let's give Russia millions of dollars to fly American astronauts to the space station because we can't do it ourselves because we drove NASA's budget into the ground, that will teach them.

merpnderp 11y ago
The wars today pale in comparison to the "cold" proxy wars that were fought between the USSR and the USA in Latin America, Asia and Africa during the space race. The effects of those wars nearly half a century ago are still being dealt with today.
- tosseraccount 11y ago
  Countries that backed the US like South Korea and Chile are democratic and prosperous. Countries that back the USSR like North Korea and Cuba are Orwellian nightmares.
  - pampa 11y ago
    those russkies! how dare they spy on every person in the world and invade iraq under false pretense! oh wait...
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - pjc50 11y ago
    > Chile Apart from all the people tortured and "disappeared" by Pinochet?
    - bzbarsky 11y ago
      Let's put numbers to this, because I find people (myself included) often react to things like this without having looked at what was actually going on. The high-end estimates according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet and the links from it are that about 3,200 people were killed, about 30,000 tortured, about 80,000 interned, and about 1000 disappeared but are not known to have been killed (some of these definitely left the country, though). The official numbers accepted in Chile today are a bit lower (about 10-20%) than the above. That's over the 17 years 1973-1990. The population of Chile at the time is around 10-13 million people according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Chile#Population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Chile#Populati... Let's take the lower 10 million number as our total population, to make our per-capita numbers as bad as we can. If you assume that all the people who were interned were interned at the same time (not likely), that's an incarceration rate of 800 per 100,000. Which is, I agree, fairly high when I look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera... -- Cuba has an incarceration rate of 510 per 100,000. But again, this is assuming that all of the 80,000 people who were interned were in prison for all 17 years, which is unlikely. The execution rate, based on the numbers above, is somewhere between 30 and 40 per 100,000 over the 17-year timespan overall; I haven't looked into what the distribution over time looks like, but the average is 2-2.5 per 100k per year. For comparison, though it's harder to get data on Cuba because the government won't exactly allow an investigation, estimates are that somewhere between 8,000 (totally documented) and 140,000 (with some guessing) Cubans were killed by the Castro regime for opposing it, over the course of about 50 years. During this time Cuba had a population of about 7-11 million people (it grows over time). Taking the very lowest end estimates for the number killed and the highest-end population estimates, that gives us an execution rate of about 80 per 100k, for a time average of 1.6 per 100k per year. So the Pinochet regime was at most 1.5x as murderous as the Castro one, and we've totally stacked the deck in favor of Cuba any way we could here. Accepting that there are pretty much _any_ appreciable deaths in Cuba that are not in that "totally verified" list of about 8000 would easily put Cuba ahead in this weird competition. The 30,000 torture victims in Chile, though, that's just inexcusable. I can't find any useful data for Cuban equivalents, so let's assume nothing like this happened in Cuba, for the sake of argument. The upshot is you were more likely to be tortured in Chile, about equally likely to be imprisoned both places, possibly a bit more in Chile, and probably more likely to be executed in Cuba. And of course today Chile is a much nicer place to be than Cuba in all sorts of ways related to freedom of speech and whatnot....
  - scott_karana 11y ago
    After the coup in Chile killed their probably-democratically elected leader Allende, they got Pinochet. How is that a win? And how about the US support of Mujahadeen Afghanistan during the USSR's invasion? Or South Vietnam? Or the monarchies in Saudi Arabia or Iran? It's not such a simple dichotomy. The US and the USSR have both fucked up a lot. -- (Also, it was the support of the Chinese in Korea that swayed the outcome, not the USSR.)
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - tosseraccount 11y ago
      Stalin set up the North Korean dictatorship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_the_Korean_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_the_Korean_War
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - scott_karana 11y ago
        Yes, just like the USA, the USSR was involved in the partitioning and occupation of Korea. However, their lack of direct involvement in the following war was one of the big reasons that the Chinese Communists and Soviets parted ways. It's much more accurate to say that the Chinese support of North Korea made it what it is today. Not Soviet.
        tosseraccount 11y ago
        Not directly involved ? China and Korea produced the tanks and MIGS and flew the combat aircraft ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_the_Korean_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_the_Korean_War Stalin's fingerprints are all over the North Korean state : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Il-sung#Leader_of_North_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Il-sung#Leader_of_North_Ko...
  - iamcurious 11y ago
    Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor
    - tosseraccount 11y ago
      Please see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea
pavel_lishin 11y ago
> Now we have no more space exploration What? http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/ http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/ https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/all-systems-go-for-nasas-mission-to-jupiter-moon-europa/ https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/all-systems-go-for-nasas-... http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/dawn/ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/dawn/ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/juno/ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/juno/ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/mars-science-laboratory-curiosity-rover-msl/ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/mars-science-laboratory-cur... http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/cassini-huygens/ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/cassini-huygens/ > let's give Russia millions of dollars to fly American astronauts to the space station because we can't do it ourselves Oh, shit! Nothing is worse than nations cooperating^ to explore space! And it's not like we're working on any way to do it ourselves: http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/05/18/spacex-has-aggressive-schedule-leading-up-to-crew-flights/ http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/05/18/spacex-has-aggressive-s... ^ Yeah, this is technically unfair, because it's not so much cooperation as a literal lack of ability, coupled with Russia's occasional vague threats to block America's astronauts from getting to the ISS. It just felt good to say it.
- zipwitch 11y ago
  Space exploration of this sort has a long lead time. We're reaping the fruits of year and years of labor with most of those. Cassini started in the Eighties and launched in 1997. New Horizons was greenlit in 2001 after a decade of work and launched in 2006. Dawn was intitially greenlit 2001 and finally launched in 2007. Curiosity started in 2004 and launched in 2011. Juno was greenlit in 2005 and launched in 2011. The Europa Mission will, presuming no delays, launch in 7-10 years. In between there is very, very little. (One asteroid sample return mission, and one Mars lander. Nothing beyond the asteroids until the Europa mission, and nothing greenlit for afterwards.)
  - fapjacks 11y ago
    Yeah, exactly! The saddest part of all this beautiful discovery and imagery is that we are about to be thirsty for more, and there are hardly any new robots in the pipeline. So sad.

by ck2 11y ago

merpnderp 11y ago

The wars today pale in comparison to the "cold" proxy wars that were fought between the USSR and the USA in Latin America, Asia and Africa during the space race. The effects of those wars nearly half a century ago are still being dealt with today.

tosseraccount 11y ago
Countries that backed the US like South Korea and Chile are democratic and prosperous. Countries that back the USSR like North Korea and Cuba are Orwellian nightmares.
- pampa 11y ago
  those russkies! how dare they spy on every person in the world and invade iraq under false pretense! oh wait...
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- pjc50 11y ago
  > Chile Apart from all the people tortured and "disappeared" by Pinochet?
  - bzbarsky 11y ago
    Let's put numbers to this, because I find people (myself included) often react to things like this without having looked at what was actually going on. The high-end estimates according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet and the links from it are that about 3,200 people were killed, about 30,000 tortured, about 80,000 interned, and about 1000 disappeared but are not known to have been killed (some of these definitely left the country, though). The official numbers accepted in Chile today are a bit lower (about 10-20%) than the above. That's over the 17 years 1973-1990. The population of Chile at the time is around 10-13 million people according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Chile#Population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Chile#Populati... Let's take the lower 10 million number as our total population, to make our per-capita numbers as bad as we can. If you assume that all the people who were interned were interned at the same time (not likely), that's an incarceration rate of 800 per 100,000. Which is, I agree, fairly high when I look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera... -- Cuba has an incarceration rate of 510 per 100,000. But again, this is assuming that all of the 80,000 people who were interned were in prison for all 17 years, which is unlikely. The execution rate, based on the numbers above, is somewhere between 30 and 40 per 100,000 over the 17-year timespan overall; I haven't looked into what the distribution over time looks like, but the average is 2-2.5 per 100k per year. For comparison, though it's harder to get data on Cuba because the government won't exactly allow an investigation, estimates are that somewhere between 8,000 (totally documented) and 140,000 (with some guessing) Cubans were killed by the Castro regime for opposing it, over the course of about 50 years. During this time Cuba had a population of about 7-11 million people (it grows over time). Taking the very lowest end estimates for the number killed and the highest-end population estimates, that gives us an execution rate of about 80 per 100k, for a time average of 1.6 per 100k per year. So the Pinochet regime was at most 1.5x as murderous as the Castro one, and we've totally stacked the deck in favor of Cuba any way we could here. Accepting that there are pretty much _any_ appreciable deaths in Cuba that are not in that "totally verified" list of about 8000 would easily put Cuba ahead in this weird competition. The 30,000 torture victims in Chile, though, that's just inexcusable. I can't find any useful data for Cuban equivalents, so let's assume nothing like this happened in Cuba, for the sake of argument. The upshot is you were more likely to be tortured in Chile, about equally likely to be imprisoned both places, possibly a bit more in Chile, and probably more likely to be executed in Cuba. And of course today Chile is a much nicer place to be than Cuba in all sorts of ways related to freedom of speech and whatnot....
- scott_karana 11y ago
  After the coup in Chile killed their probably-democratically elected leader Allende, they got Pinochet. How is that a win? And how about the US support of Mujahadeen Afghanistan during the USSR's invasion? Or South Vietnam? Or the monarchies in Saudi Arabia or Iran? It's not such a simple dichotomy. The US and the USSR have both fucked up a lot. -- (Also, it was the support of the Chinese in Korea that swayed the outcome, not the USSR.)
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - tosseraccount 11y ago
    Stalin set up the North Korean dictatorship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_the_Korean_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_the_Korean_War
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - scott_karana 11y ago
      Yes, just like the USA, the USSR was involved in the partitioning and occupation of Korea. However, their lack of direct involvement in the following war was one of the big reasons that the Chinese Communists and Soviets parted ways. It's much more accurate to say that the Chinese support of North Korea made it what it is today. Not Soviet.
      - tosseraccount 11y ago
        Not directly involved ? China and Korea produced the tanks and MIGS and flew the combat aircraft ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_the_Korean_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_the_Korean_War Stalin's fingerprints are all over the North Korean state : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Il-sung#Leader_of_North_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Il-sung#Leader_of_North_Ko...
- iamcurious 11y ago
  Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor
  - tosseraccount 11y ago
    Please see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea

pavel_lishin 11y ago

> Now we have no more space exploration What? http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/ http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/ https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/all-systems-go-for-nasas-mission-to-jupiter-moon-europa/ https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/all-systems-go-for-nasas-... http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/dawn/ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/dawn/ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/juno/ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/juno/ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/mars-science-laboratory-curiosity-rover-msl/ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/mars-science-laboratory-cur... http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/cassini-huygens/ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/cassini-huygens/ > let's give Russia millions of dollars to fly American astronauts to the space station because we can't do it ourselves Oh, shit! Nothing is worse than nations cooperating^ to explore space! And it's not like we're working on any way to do it ourselves: http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/05/18/spacex-has-aggressive-schedule-leading-up-to-crew-flights/ http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/05/18/spacex-has-aggressive-s... ^ Yeah, this is technically unfair, because it's not so much cooperation as a literal lack of ability, coupled with Russia's occasional vague threats to block America's astronauts from getting to the ISS. It just felt good to say it.

zipwitch 11y ago
Space exploration of this sort has a long lead time. We're reaping the fruits of year and years of labor with most of those. Cassini started in the Eighties and launched in 1997. New Horizons was greenlit in 2001 after a decade of work and launched in 2006. Dawn was intitially greenlit 2001 and finally launched in 2007. Curiosity started in 2004 and launched in 2011. Juno was greenlit in 2005 and launched in 2011. The Europa Mission will, presuming no delays, launch in 7-10 years. In between there is very, very little. (One asteroid sample return mission, and one Mars lander. Nothing beyond the asteroids until the Europa mission, and nothing greenlit for afterwards.)
- fapjacks 11y ago
  Yeah, exactly! The saddest part of all this beautiful discovery and imagery is that we are about to be thirsty for more, and there are hardly any new robots in the pipeline. So sad.