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Oddly enough, the applicable quote is from The Martian: "We built a lunar lander from scratch in seven years." Hard things get done by people who try to do th

Oddly enough, the applicable quote is from The Martian: "We built a lunar lander from scratch in seven years." Hard things get done by people who try to do them. Seriously, it's his own money.

eutectic 10y ago
Assuming this refers to the Apollo Lunar Module, landing on the moon was an engineering challenge based on known science, and it still cost an obscene amount of money for questionable benefit. This is a relatively small sum being spent on a project for which very little of the basic science is in place. It may be his own money he's spending, but everyone else is also free to give their honest opinion that he's throwing it down the drain.
nickpsecurity 10y ago
You realize that project cost billions of dollars with insanely huge teams of smart people working with established principles of physics, chemistry, and so on rather than mostly unknowns in neuroscience? No practical comparison between this and Apollo despite me wanting an Apollo-style effort put into certain problems we face. Including understanding the brain although maybe communications infrastructure, cheap computing, and MOOC's first. That will give us more brains for Apollo-style endeavors.
- robotresearcher 10y ago
  > [Apollo] cost billions of dollars I looked it up - around $20.4B in 1960s dollars, so $160B today. $20B per mooon landing. Not counting Mercury or Gemini. http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1579/1 http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1579/1
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Wow. Much higher than I remembered. It's like the brute force approach to getting something done except the force is sheer dollars and labor focus on one goal.
- the_watcher 10y ago
  Did you read the article? Where Johnson anticipates $7-10B in funding to get anything out the door? He's investing $100M of his own money to get things started. The point is that the reflexive negativity here is simply astonishing, again, given that we're all communicating via technology that, less than one century ago, would be considered pure magic.

Oddly enough, the applicable quote is from The Martian: "We built a lunar lander from scratch in seven years." Hard things get done by people who try to do them. Seriously, it's his own money.

eutectic 10y ago

Assuming this refers to the Apollo Lunar Module, landing on the moon was an engineering challenge based on known science, and it still cost an obscene amount of money for questionable benefit. This is a relatively small sum being spent on a project for which very little of the basic science is in place. It may be his own money he's spending, but everyone else is also free to give their honest opinion that he's throwing it down the drain.

nickpsecurity 10y ago

You realize that project cost billions of dollars with insanely huge teams of smart people working with established principles of physics, chemistry, and so on rather than mostly unknowns in neuroscience? No practical comparison between this and Apollo despite me wanting an Apollo-style effort put into certain problems we face. Including understanding the brain although maybe communications infrastructure, cheap computing, and MOOC's first. That will give us more brains for Apollo-style endeavors.

robotresearcher 10y ago
> [Apollo] cost billions of dollars I looked it up - around $20.4B in 1960s dollars, so $160B today. $20B per mooon landing. Not counting Mercury or Gemini. http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1579/1 http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1579/1
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Wow. Much higher than I remembered. It's like the brute force approach to getting something done except the force is sheer dollars and labor focus on one goal.
the_watcher 10y ago
Did you read the article? Where Johnson anticipates $7-10B in funding to get anything out the door? He's investing $100M of his own money to get things started. The point is that the reflexive negativity here is simply astonishing, again, given that we're all communicating via technology that, less than one century ago, would be considered pure magic.