11 ms·
Of the 12 men who walked on the moon, six are still alive, the youngest, Charlie Duke is 81. Aldrin, the oldest, is 86. Its becoming less and less likely we'll
by sizzzzlerz 10y ago
Of the 12 men who walked on the moon, six are still alive, the youngest, Charlie Duke is 81. Aldrin, the oldest, is 86. Its becoming less and less likely we'll have someone back on the moon before these men are gone. That is a goddamn tragedy.
- dragonwriter 10y agoOn the scale of tragedies that are currently occurring or for which there is a significant threat of occurring in the near future, the possibility that there might be a period of time with no living humans who have walked on the moon is so trivial as to trivialize the entire concept of "tragedy" by using that term to describe it.
- maxerickson 10y agoTragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die. ― Mel Brooks
- gist 10y agoAgree. And a similar thing happens when the word hero is bandied about. Example: - Jump on train tracks (when it's not your job) to save a complete stranger even though it might leave your own family without you: HERO! - Fireman runs into burning building to save people? HERO! (Even though that is the job description).
- robotresearcher 10y agoBut 'be a hero' is pretty much the job description of a firefighter. See also 'badass' for special forces and 'brainy' for scientists. It's not wrong to describe them that way even if it's all in a day's work.
- barking 10y agoThat depends on the fire service. The FDNY fight fires aggressively. I know of other fire services where the number 1 priority is firefighter heath and safety, ie above that of the potential victims of fires. They still like to run marathons in their fire kit and play on the hero rep at every opportunity though.
- freehunter 10y agoIf all the firemen die, who will fight fires in the future? If you're in a town of 3,000 people, there are a very limited number of potential firemen you can have. If they die rescuing someone, dozens of others die because there is no one else to rescue them.
- mulmen 10y agoIn many rural settings there is no dedicated fire department and it all operates on a volunteer basis. Around harvest time it was expected that the neighbors would have their tractors standing by hooked up with discs to till the crops and build fire lines. Dedicated fire fighters aren't the only people who can put out fires.
- freehunter 10y agoMy town doesn't even have dedicated firefighters. Everyone is a volunteer. And the guy saying that they're not a real firefighter unless they choose to die in a structure collapse is sickening to me.
- mindcrime 10y agoThe FDNY fight fires aggressively. I know of other fire services where the number 1 priority is firefighter heath and safety, ie above that of the potential victims of fires. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. Saying "we make aggressive interior attacks and perform primary search" is fine, but you don't do that when you see signs of imminent structural collapse on arrival. All firefighters take risk, but it's a calculated risk. Now granted, the line is somewhat subjective and different departments do have different policies but still... I don't know of any department that preaches the idea that you display no judgment at all, and wantonly waste your life.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoThe way word "hero" is used, it pretty much excludes paid professionals by definition. You could argue that society doesn't need heroes but trained experts instead, but that's an orthogonal discussion.
- baddox 10y agoAt least both of those are examples of people saving lives. To be analogous with the parent commenter's tragedy claim, if need to claim to be a hero for something like complimenting someone's socks.
- mulmen 10y agoSo I guess nobody actually deserves a Medal of Honor then?
- baddox 10y agoThat medal is specifically for people who go above and beyond the call of duty, meaning their act of heroism was not simply the job they signed up for.
- unethical_ban 10y agoOn the scale of HN stereotypes, you're "pedantic off-topic guy". But you could be a woman. And it's more of a 2D scale.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoI don't think GP wanted to compare this to various real tragedies. Hyperbole is a figure of speech. That said, whatever you point to, you can always find greater tragedies. I don't think such comparisons would help much here.
- stormbrew 10y agoIf I get a paper cut, that hurts. If I'm shot, that hurts. That these are different in scale and scope doesn't mean they can't share a (vague) label. Tragedy exists at many scales.
- bbcbasic 10y agoIt dilutes the word though. Like how "awesome" used to mean something.
- bshimmin 10y agoLitotes (Mercutio's "a scratch, a scratch, marry, 'tis enough") and hyperbole have been figurative techniques used for thousands of years.
- eltoozero 10y agoBlack Knight: "Tis but a scratch!" King Arthur: "A scratch?! Your arm's off!"
- mulmen 10y ago"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." --James D. Nicoll
- itcrowd 10y agoI read this quote in the other thread where there was a discussion on the origins of English language and the loss of some characters in the alphabet. In that context, this quote made sense. Apart from the first line, this quote doesn't apply here and frankly makes no sense. Yes, English may borrow (or steal forcefully, apparently) words from other languages, but that does not mean the language internally must not have its purity defended. Devaluating terms to have little meaning (awesome, terrible, fantastic) is not my idea of progress. (Foreign languages on the other hand are a good source of new words which can be introduced, already inflated, into English.)
- mulmen 10y agoIt's a tragedy because of how little we did with the accomplishment. Putting men on the moon could have ushered in a new age of exploration and we could be much farther along the path to being multi-planetary than we are today. It's tragic because it means our future is less bright.
- BoorishBears 10y agoDid we really do "little" with the technology and energy born of the space race?
- mulmen 10y agoTh tragedy is that we didn't continue the expansion of our species off a single planet. Yes, we learned a lot from the Apollo program and later space programs but without more projects like Apollo we won't continue doing so.
- BoorishBears 10y agoSo the work companies like SpaceX are doing can't culminate in something that continues our expansion off a single planet? I mean, honestly I'm not so sure what the huge rush is to expand to another planet when we're having so much trouble with just one. It's not that I don't want to see us move past the boundaries of this planet, but on the list of things I'd want to see before my time is up on this planet, there's plenty of things like the end of world hunger or bringing the poorest people in the world to an infinitely better standard of living that come way before us living on another planet. In the very long term moving to another planet is a way to stave off the end of our species (amongst other positive things), but in the very very long term the odds are we won't live on indefinitely, I think improving the lives of those who come before now and that time is probably the most worthwhile thing we can do.
- mulmen 10y agoYou're making a huge mistake if you think we have to pick between solving social issues and colonizing other planets. Spacex is doing what NASA should have done in the 80s. That's the tragedy.
- enthdegree 10y agoLet alone a "Goddamn tragedy"
- etangent 10y ago> On the scale of tragedies that are currently occurring or for which there is a significant threat of occurring in the near future, the possibility that there might be a period of time with no living humans who have walked on the moon is so trivial No. There is an argument to be made that in the absence of drama occurring up there (space, theistic mythology, etc), people will invent and create drama down here (Earth), except with more dire consequences. Considering alternative timelines, therefore, there is a decent chance that there is a real, though indirect, human cost associated with choosing not to explore. What is the human cost, for example, of boys and girls not being inspired by daring feats accomplished at the edge of possible? Nobody is quantifying it, no research grants are given to study it, but I have almost no doubt that it exists.
- llamaz 10y agoBefore man walked on the moon, no one had walked on the moon, and society seemed to cope.
- etangent 10y agoBefore man walked on the moon, it wasn't long before man first flew in a heavier-than-air apparatus, and before that it wasn't long before nobody has ever set foot on the South Pole. You can keep going. And do define "cope". We had two world wars and we almost annihilated each other in 1962 and then once in the 1980s. No, I'm not saying that if we explored space, world wars wouldn't happen. Yes, I'm fully aware that space exploration is in a way a byproduct of military endeavors. Consider why sports exist. They are also a (cultural) byproduct of military endeavors. Sports bring us a variety of benefits, including things like giving people meaning, making them bond with each other, helping maintain a healthy lifestyle, and lifting many kids out of poverty. There is a role for something like that---for exploring places like space. Consider also human (primate) psychology and how team sports can satisfy urges we would otherwise want to unleash in more destructive way on each other---and do so in a positive, constructive way. I wouldn't be surprised that in an alternative timeline where sports don't exist our newspapers would be filled with a lot more grizzly headlines on a daily basis. Consider now that we're living in an alternative/dystopian timeline where one of the most fascinating sports (exploring the unknown) had mysteriously nearly disappeared. Purely as sport, space exploration would have been of a sufficient benefit to pursue in my opinion. But of course, it is a lot more than just a sport.
- kps 10y agoIt is metonym; it is a symbol of a zeitgeist of backbiting defeatism, where the word ‘progress’ can not be spoken without an ironic sneer,
- nkoren 10y agoIn the long term, there are only two paths that life can take: the stars, or extinction. By not choosing one, we are choosing the other. And yes, that is a fucking tragedy.
- coldtea 10y agoIn the long term there's just the heat death of the universe and extinction.
- Justsignedup 10y agoI think this is pretty huge actually. We went to the moon. We were temporarily a space-fearing species. Shit went down on earth. We're now back to terrestrial only. Hopefully one day we will be a multi-planetary species. "Hope you got a backup plan" -- Giant Space Rock
- beachbum8029 10y agoA small sacrifice to avoid angering the aliens.
- gshubert17 10y agohttps://xkcd.com/893/ https://xkcd.com/893/
- ekanes 10y agoHover over the image. Interesting way to add context and opinion, above an image that's flat/non-opinionated. Nice!
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago> The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.
- oneeyedpigeon 10y agoLooks like we're pretty much at the 5th percentile :-(
- dr_zoidberg 10y agoActualy closer to the middle line, we'd be down to 4 still alive if we were on the 5th percentile.
- bbcbasic 10y agoWe don't need people on the moon. Robots are better.
- mulmen 10y agoWhy not both? For the money we waste destabilizing the middle east we could build a small city on the moon and still have money left over.
- bbcbasic 10y agoThere are enough environmental, economic and social problems we need to solve on Earth first.
- mulmen 10y agoThat's a ridiculous attitude. You could use the same logic to say we should ignore our problems with income inequality until we solve global warming, or vice versa. It turns out there are billions of people on earth with a wide variety of skills and we can do a lot in parallel. At its peak NASA used 4.41% of the federal budget. In 2014 it was 0.5%. We can afford to do more and as we know from experience the payoff is worth the expense.
- bbcbasic 10y agoWell earlier in this thread I heard someone talk about spending money on the moon instead of wars. We all have our own priority order (or partial order perhaps) for how we'd like public money to be spent.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pjmorris 10y agoIn US history (see, e.g. 'A History of the American People', Johnson), environmental, economic, and social problems were often solved by moving in to new territory. If you can think of the Moon as the Eighth continent, it may well be how we solve our present, pressing environmental, economic and social problems.
- at-fates-hands 10y agoWhat would be the reason to go back to the moon? I'm not being sarcastic either, I'm genuinely curious why. To me, it just seemed like landing on the moon was more important than what we could learn from it, or possibly use it as a remote scientific base or something else. It was the idea of simply getting their that seemed the most important. I never thought we had any long term plans for the moon, so it would seem we've already accomplished what we wanted to do.
- jacoblambda 10y agoIn terms of what there is to gain, Habitation of the moon would promote the development of more self sustainable technology, new and improved materials (lightweight rad shielding, cheap building materials such as regolith construction, etc), higher semiconductor yields, and cheaper methods of producing previously very expensive compounds and structures for the pharmaceutical industry.
- throwaway91111 10y agoIIRC the economics of a moon base (which is presumably what you're referring to) don't make sense in terms of fuel costs vs potential revenue. Could you illustrate what a "cash crop" might be for the moon?
- jacoblambda 10y agowell, the moon would likely only serve for research purposes until space faring society is a bit more established. The most likely "cash crop" for the moon would be serving as a drydock for spacecrafts. The low gravity would majorly reduce the cost and remove the size and profile constraints of said spacecrafts.
- throwaway91111 10y agoI think you're interpreting me wrong: the gravity well is the source of the cost. It'd make more sense to land and mine asteroids than the moon.
- yeukhon 10y agoThanks. The starting paragraph made me think he was the last person ever worked on moon alive until now. > Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, died Monday, Jan. 16, surrounded by his family.
- vorg 10y agoThere's 3 possible meanings: * the last of the men who walked on the Moon has died * the last man who stepped onto the Moon for the first time, died * the last man who ever stood on the Moon before stepping off, died Perhaps those last 2 refer to the same person, perhaps not.