4 ms·

>"It feels a bit like we're sitting here with this 'money' abstraction and pretending that energy research is too expensive, when realistically, governments acr

by nickff 11y ago

>"It feels a bit like we're sitting here with this 'money' abstraction and pretending that energy research is too expensive, when realistically, governments across the world have the might to make clean energy the next Apollo project. Why aren't they? That would be a fantastic legacy for any president/prime minister/whatever." Apollo wasn't very successful. I say this as someone who is personally an aerospace nut, and owns every space or aviation documentary he can get his hands on. Apollo succeeded in getting a dozen men to the moon, but it did not succeed in promoting the exploration of space, or creating a great deal of technological innovation which benefited the populace at large (for the amount of money spent). Apollo was also very unpopular, except for a little while between Apollo 9 and 12. Most of the population would have been happier with a new refrigerator or air conditioner, and those appliances would probably have had a better lasting impact (for a number of reasons).

drcross 11y ago
Sorry to sound harsh but your point doesn't meaningfully contribute to the discussion at hand. We knew what he meant.
- nickff 11y ago
  The proper way for you to indicate this sentiment is to downvote my post, and avoid commenting, as per the Hacker News guidelines. From the number of up and down votes this post is getting, it appears that many people agree with you, but even more disagree. My point was that governments are unlikely to support 'moonshots', because the 'moonshots' are unpopular, as well as being bad investments.
  - magicalist 11y ago
    > The proper way for you to indicate this sentiment is to downvote my post, and avoid commenting, as per the Hacker News guidelines. Eh, I'm hoping dang will come by and detach the comment. It was a pretty classic middlebrow dismissal. "No need to read the comment! Someone compared something to the apollo project!", and etc. > My point was that governments are unlikely to support 'moonshots', because the 'moonshots' are unpopular, as well as being bad investments. There are other categories of public sentiment than popular and unpopular. It's not at all true that we don't fund things to the tune of tens of billions of dollars per year in the face of public lack of attention and apathy (and, actually, sometimes approval).
    - nickff 11y ago
      I have heard many people say that a 'green energy Apollo project' is necessary, and I am pointing out why Apollo is a bad example. I did not intend to dismiss the parent's ideas, though I disagree with a few of them.
      - perucoder 11y ago
        don't sweat it. not all, but lots of people here expect to be treated with kid gloves and get outraged at even the mildest criticism
    - bbcbasic 11y ago
      http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissals-so-tempting/ http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissal...
      - kbarcher 11y ago
        Not very interesting, unless one thinks that the only goal in life is to make money.
        bbcbasic 11y ago
        ?
- escape_goat 11y ago
  The only way that I can think of to respond to a derailing comment in an effective and meaningful manner would be to engage its substance while synthesizing it with the underlying topic of the thread. Otherwise one is just perpetuating the obfuscation of the original topic of conversation. Whether the Apollo project was "successful" depends on how one views its nature and objectives; germane at least insofar as whether this is a plausible model for research as a strategic state investment, whether such action would be possible or effective, as contrasted with the alternative course of reframing the context in which undirected economic activity was occurring so as to induce a similar degree of investment and subsequent change in the commonly used technologies. So what nickff is actually saying is that when considering the Apollo program as a model for the response to the CO2 crisis, it would be important to understand the ways in which it failed the putative goal of human expansion into space. I think that he would view the Apollo program as analogous to the discovery by Americans that the Chinese had succeeded in generating a net gain of power for a few minutes from a research fusion reactor. Responding to this by declaring that the US would build the first commercially functioning fusion reactor "not because it was easy, but because it was hard" might go a long way towards quelling the moral panic brought about by the appearance of Chinese ascendency and American decline, but it might be problematic insofar as sustainable and optimal investment in energy (source) research was considered.
  - deathhand 11y ago
    As a self described "space nut" how can you fail to see the investment in innovation without the immediate return on ROI that the program brought? That's what makes the Apollo program special. We did something outside of the capitalism system but was funded from it, to achieve something no other company would even touch. That's where the magic lies.
stegosaurus 11y ago
I agree in some ways, but I think energy research is different, because if it actually works it directly results in stuff for everyman. The actual goal of Apollo was 'put a man on the moon'. Which is super cool, but obviously not all that directly useful. By contrast, a program whose explicit goal is to make batteries better, or make solar more efficient, or bring fusion reactors closer to production, or even just generically 'do some energy research' is a lot more obviously 'good'.
- nickff 11y ago
  Governments have a record of being very good at collecting and spending money on extraordinarily expensive projects, but are very bad at making things cheaper and more affordable.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - stegosaurus 11y ago
    I don't think 'affordability' is the relevant metric here. I'm talking about EROEI - the viability of doing it at all. Private enterprise can play the capitalism game and make it cheaper. But it won't invent breakeven fusion to begin with. The risk appetite just isn't there at that level of investment.
    - spdionis 11y ago
      Interesting insight: maybe capitalism optimizes progress but ultimately brings society to a local maximum. It is possible we will get stuck and need another system to advance further, by going through regressions first.
      - stegosaurus 11y ago
        I think the way to look at it would be to imagine that you are optimizing some utility function which incorporates some mean and some variance. The risk of going for a clean energy project is massive. It can fail completely, it could work but not return much profit, there are lots of ways it can go wrong. However - the problem here is that the 'do nothing' state is not static utility. Do nothing results in everything going to shit, with very little variance. Our capitalist systems aren't really set up to deal with that, it's a tragedy of the commons. That's why you need things like taxes on oil - to force the utility function to accommodate bad things.
labster 11y ago
> Most of the population would have been happier with a new refrigerator or air conditioner, and those appliances would probably have had a better lasting impact (for a number of reasons). Except for the tons more CFCs this would have put into the atmosphere, and CO2 produced from running non-replacement unit. Refrigeration would likely be net positive to quality of life, but it has drawbacks as well as benefits.
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
Why should space programs have any benefit for the populace in terms of transferable technology? Joe Public has no need for an ultra powerful rocket engine and the technology that runs that doesn't really have a place in his car or waster/dryer combo. The "technology transfer" argument has always been a bullshity way to get laypeople to support NASA. It has a dubious reality and no space program should have the goal of creating non-space innovations. How successful would SpaceX be if we had them worry about making the next velcro or whatever? Not very. It should just be a good space program. Funny I don't see this this weird standard applied to the Soviet space program, which sites like HN and reddit applaud uncritically. Also I completely disagree with the top-down central planning argument you're suggesting. If we threw this kind of money at a better fridge, the government would have created a $10m fridge made by a dozen military contractors and each part made in each of the 50 states. You can't just throw money at every problem at expect wonderful results. The history of government spending proves this. The government is only good at large scale edge cases. Everything else is best served by private industry, free markets, capitalism, etc. There's a reason the Soviets were sending spies by the boatload to copy US chip and industrial designs. They just couldn't create this level of innovation via the top-down command method you think magically works. If anything, Apollo is a tremendous success on so many levels. Its amusing that you consider putting a dozen men on the moon to be a "meh" accomplishment. I've noticed a lot of younger people have this strong anti-NASA view which is ahistorical and overly critical. Its a shame this level of angry contrarianism is in style as it diminishes the amazing accomplishments NASA was able to do, usually under strict budgetary concerns with endless political meddling.
Retric 11y ago
Depends on what the goals are. Among other things Apollo was also really expensive propaganda with a lasting impact. In that context it worked well. 50 years later and the US is still the country that put a man on the moon where probes are generally forgotten outside of Voyager. Energy research similarly has a lot of indirect value outside of simply changing local emissions. By reducing costs you can push world wide adoption through economics not just politics. And create economic incentives to keep improving things over the long term. That's a lot of leverage and well past what direct spending on 'clean' energy could have achieved in the 1980-2000 timespan.

by nickff 11y ago

drcross 11y ago

Sorry to sound harsh but your point doesn't meaningfully contribute to the discussion at hand. We knew what he meant.

nickff 11y ago
The proper way for you to indicate this sentiment is to downvote my post, and avoid commenting, as per the Hacker News guidelines. From the number of up and down votes this post is getting, it appears that many people agree with you, but even more disagree. My point was that governments are unlikely to support 'moonshots', because the 'moonshots' are unpopular, as well as being bad investments.
- magicalist 11y ago
  > The proper way for you to indicate this sentiment is to downvote my post, and avoid commenting, as per the Hacker News guidelines. Eh, I'm hoping dang will come by and detach the comment. It was a pretty classic middlebrow dismissal. "No need to read the comment! Someone compared something to the apollo project!", and etc. > My point was that governments are unlikely to support 'moonshots', because the 'moonshots' are unpopular, as well as being bad investments. There are other categories of public sentiment than popular and unpopular. It's not at all true that we don't fund things to the tune of tens of billions of dollars per year in the face of public lack of attention and apathy (and, actually, sometimes approval).
  - nickff 11y ago
    I have heard many people say that a 'green energy Apollo project' is necessary, and I am pointing out why Apollo is a bad example. I did not intend to dismiss the parent's ideas, though I disagree with a few of them.
    - perucoder 11y ago
      don't sweat it. not all, but lots of people here expect to be treated with kid gloves and get outraged at even the mildest criticism
  - bbcbasic 11y ago
    http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissals-so-tempting/ http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissal...
    - kbarcher 11y ago
      Not very interesting, unless one thinks that the only goal in life is to make money.
      - bbcbasic 11y ago
        ?
escape_goat 11y ago
The only way that I can think of to respond to a derailing comment in an effective and meaningful manner would be to engage its substance while synthesizing it with the underlying topic of the thread. Otherwise one is just perpetuating the obfuscation of the original topic of conversation. Whether the Apollo project was "successful" depends on how one views its nature and objectives; germane at least insofar as whether this is a plausible model for research as a strategic state investment, whether such action would be possible or effective, as contrasted with the alternative course of reframing the context in which undirected economic activity was occurring so as to induce a similar degree of investment and subsequent change in the commonly used technologies. So what nickff is actually saying is that when considering the Apollo program as a model for the response to the CO2 crisis, it would be important to understand the ways in which it failed the putative goal of human expansion into space. I think that he would view the Apollo program as analogous to the discovery by Americans that the Chinese had succeeded in generating a net gain of power for a few minutes from a research fusion reactor. Responding to this by declaring that the US would build the first commercially functioning fusion reactor "not because it was easy, but because it was hard" might go a long way towards quelling the moral panic brought about by the appearance of Chinese ascendency and American decline, but it might be problematic insofar as sustainable and optimal investment in energy (source) research was considered.
- deathhand 11y ago
  As a self described "space nut" how can you fail to see the investment in innovation without the immediate return on ROI that the program brought? That's what makes the Apollo program special. We did something outside of the capitalism system but was funded from it, to achieve something no other company would even touch. That's where the magic lies.

stegosaurus 11y ago

I agree in some ways, but I think energy research is different, because if it actually works it directly results in stuff for everyman. The actual goal of Apollo was 'put a man on the moon'. Which is super cool, but obviously not all that directly useful. By contrast, a program whose explicit goal is to make batteries better, or make solar more efficient, or bring fusion reactors closer to production, or even just generically 'do some energy research' is a lot more obviously 'good'.

nickff 11y ago
Governments have a record of being very good at collecting and spending money on extraordinarily expensive projects, but are very bad at making things cheaper and more affordable.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- stegosaurus 11y ago
  I don't think 'affordability' is the relevant metric here. I'm talking about EROEI - the viability of doing it at all. Private enterprise can play the capitalism game and make it cheaper. But it won't invent breakeven fusion to begin with. The risk appetite just isn't there at that level of investment.
  - spdionis 11y ago
    Interesting insight: maybe capitalism optimizes progress but ultimately brings society to a local maximum. It is possible we will get stuck and need another system to advance further, by going through regressions first.
    - stegosaurus 11y ago
      I think the way to look at it would be to imagine that you are optimizing some utility function which incorporates some mean and some variance. The risk of going for a clean energy project is massive. It can fail completely, it could work but not return much profit, there are lots of ways it can go wrong. However - the problem here is that the 'do nothing' state is not static utility. Do nothing results in everything going to shit, with very little variance. Our capitalist systems aren't really set up to deal with that, it's a tragedy of the commons. That's why you need things like taxes on oil - to force the utility function to accommodate bad things.

labster 11y ago

> Most of the population would have been happier with a new refrigerator or air conditioner, and those appliances would probably have had a better lasting impact (for a number of reasons). Except for the tons more CFCs this would have put into the atmosphere, and CO2 produced from running non-replacement unit. Refrigeration would likely be net positive to quality of life, but it has drawbacks as well as benefits.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago

Why should space programs have any benefit for the populace in terms of transferable technology? Joe Public has no need for an ultra powerful rocket engine and the technology that runs that doesn't really have a place in his car or waster/dryer combo. The "technology transfer" argument has always been a bullshity way to get laypeople to support NASA. It has a dubious reality and no space program should have the goal of creating non-space innovations. How successful would SpaceX be if we had them worry about making the next velcro or whatever? Not very. It should just be a good space program. Funny I don't see this this weird standard applied to the Soviet space program, which sites like HN and reddit applaud uncritically. Also I completely disagree with the top-down central planning argument you're suggesting. If we threw this kind of money at a better fridge, the government would have created a $10m fridge made by a dozen military contractors and each part made in each of the 50 states. You can't just throw money at every problem at expect wonderful results. The history of government spending proves this. The government is only good at large scale edge cases. Everything else is best served by private industry, free markets, capitalism, etc. There's a reason the Soviets were sending spies by the boatload to copy US chip and industrial designs. They just couldn't create this level of innovation via the top-down command method you think magically works. If anything, Apollo is a tremendous success on so many levels. Its amusing that you consider putting a dozen men on the moon to be a "meh" accomplishment. I've noticed a lot of younger people have this strong anti-NASA view which is ahistorical and overly critical. Its a shame this level of angry contrarianism is in style as it diminishes the amazing accomplishments NASA was able to do, usually under strict budgetary concerns with endless political meddling.

Retric 11y ago

Depends on what the goals are. Among other things Apollo was also really expensive propaganda with a lasting impact. In that context it worked well. 50 years later and the US is still the country that put a man on the moon where probes are generally forgotten outside of Voyager. Energy research similarly has a lot of indirect value outside of simply changing local emissions. By reducing costs you can push world wide adoption through economics not just politics. And create economic incentives to keep improving things over the long term. That's a lot of leverage and well past what direct spending on 'clean' energy could have achieved in the 1980-2000 timespan.