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It's very tough to explain to someone who hasn't worked on large multidisciplinary projects with mandates to push some sort of boundaries like in exploration, s
by civilitty 8y ago
It's very tough to explain to someone who hasn't worked on large multidisciplinary projects with mandates to push some sort of boundaries like in exploration, science, and technology. This isn't some theoretical discussion by futurists, there is ample evidence that these kinds of ventures have systemic effects that touch literally every person, socioeconomic class, and daily activity. Academia and private industry have pathological problems with compartmentalization that have a real impact on the exchange of ideas and progress - entire companies like Toyota have risen to the "top of the world" based solely on their ability to open up communication between line workers, robotics engineers, and designers under a common vision. To Toyota that vision is their emphasis on quality control, for NASA and Apollo it was the mandate to beat the Soviet Union to space and to the Moon. Just the act of bringing so many different engineering, scientists, and other people together to work on a single problem like going to the moon allows them to tackle issues that were intractable to each of them individually. Many problems, especially as technology develops, require a solution that is novel across several different fields.
These mandates are powerful. The mandate to defend the nation led to radar and telecommunications, transistors, and many other technologies in use by almost everyone. The mandate to make it to the moon led to a revolution in material science that is now part of every car and phone, it allowed us to map the world and put it in half the world's pocket, and even created a whole new field, systems engineering, that is dedicated to the science of managing gigantic projects spanning thousands of engineers, scientists, manufacturers, and so on. The Human Genome Project, another massive multibillion dollar venture unlocked the human genome to the world for the first time and is directly responsible for much of the biotech boom in the last few decades.
As for "many people don't know that we went to the moon", I'm not so sure that's actually true. Carl Sagan wrote in the Pale Blue Dot in the 90s:
A scientific colleague tells me about a recent trip to the New Guinea highlands where she visited a stone age culture hardly contacted by Western civilization. They were ignorant of wristwatches, soft drinks, and frozen food. But they knew about Apollo 11. They knew that humans had walked on the Moon. They knew the names of Armstrong and Aldrin and Collins. They wanted to know who was visiting the Moon these days.
You're underestimating the biological human desire for exploration - it is a basic evolutionary survival mechanism.
- omegaworks 8y agoWe need a mandate to solve the climate issue and create a sustainable economy on this planet. We humans have a biological human desire to remain alive and eat food. I would argue that that is a stronger innate, biological human desire needed for basic evolutionary survival then that for exploration.
- hutzlibu 8y ago" I would argue that that is a stronger innate, biological human desire needed for basic evolutionary survival then that for exploration" I would argue both is interconnected. With exploring new areas, whether on earth or on mars, new potential spots for human life gets found/get made inhabitable. And even though human sustainable colonisation on mars is far away, we need to start sometimes. Maybe just to make it a serious vision, to give people perspective whi say humankind is doomed anyway as we cannot grow indefinitely ... we can. But for sure there is lots of potential on earth, like the deserts or the sea (ground), before mars becomes a serious alternative ... nut it is all interconnected. Progress in one area of sustaining life in extreme conditions, benefit other areas. Besides, there never was a time, when there was no hunger on earth. Now while it would be nice to achieve this, I don't think it is smart to stop everything else until we get there ... if we even can get there.
- omegaworks 8y ago>Besides, there never was a time, when there was no hunger on earth. We produce enough food, now, to feed every human being on this planet. In fact we make 17% more food per person today then we did 30 years ago, even with the population increasing over that time period. [1] Ending hunger is an achievable goal. >I don't think it is smart to stop everything else until we get there Again, no one is saying we "stop everything else until we get there." 1. https://www.oxfam.ca/there-enough-food-feed-world https://www.oxfam.ca/there-enough-food-feed-world
- hutzlibu 8y ago"Again, no one is saying we "stop everything else until we get there."" It sounds a bit like it. Because also the main problem with this thought is, it requires a different distribution mechanism. Socialism for example. And or managed economy. Because today food gets produced the capitalistic way. To make money. Not a charity. Poor people don't have money. So if there is a charity to buy enough food and able to distribute it to everone ... ok. But many tried, and you could argue it disrupted local food economy (charities bringing in free food, nobody bought from the local farmers anymore, they went out of buisness, simplified but happened)... and therefore increased the need for food delivery etc. Also, as cruel as it is, the less hungry people, the more people who need food. In other words, the problem is complex and not simpel. So those who feel the need to solve it (I do a bit actually) should do it. But others who want to explore the mars .. should do that. Both is important. But maybe mars is actually simpler, than sustainable solving world hunger. Btw. people also like electricity, houses, cars, education ...