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Everytime I witness the relics of the "Space Age" it takes me a few days to shake the feeling that we might be living in a new "Dark Age". Where the scientific

Everytime I witness the relics of the "Space Age" it takes me a few days to shake the feeling that we might be living in a new "Dark Age". Where the scientific & technical accomplishments of the past seem implausible---contrasted against the modern era challenge of trying to make a reliable & resilient API service---were it not for the documented evidence of their occurrence and these relics left behind to marvel at.

alistairSH 8y ago
10 years ago, I might have agreed with you. But, with SpaceX and other private companies venturing into space? I feel like humans are doing pretty well.
- Shivetya 8y ago
  Far too often people fail to see the world for what it is. The use of space is expanding so much and that if anything people are tuning out accomplishments because they are not eventful anymore. For some the end of the shuttle program was a downer but it was probably the single best thing to have happened to NASA in decades. the Shuttle program if anything held NASA back. The investment alone made it near impossible to not use it and the cost of using it doomed money for other development. Now we have Space X with a record number of launches, China going to the dark side of the moon, and even more private corporations reaching for space. We still have cooperation with Russia not withstanding all the political strife caused by their leadership. The EU has had great missions recently and even India is moving forward.
  - DigitalWheelie 8y ago
    While I'm no fan of wasteful NASA spending, it feels wrong to explore for profit rather than curiosity.
    - thelastidiot 8y ago
      It was never for curiosity at the beginning but for military goals.
    - skookumchuck 8y ago
      Is it so noble to lose money?
      - JetSpiegel 8y ago
        Putting people on the moon was "lost money"? Only in the strict sense that money flowed into NASA from the Federal budget and did not flow back.
        gbear605 8y ago
        Of course, a lot of that money did flow back, since it went to people who paid income taxes.
    - bdamm 8y ago
      Profit is the foundation of truly sustainable human activity. Christopher Columbus was in it for the money, too. Government can only spend what profit creates, so even government programs like NASA ultimately are feeding from the trough of profit.
- im_down_w_otp 8y ago
  I look at it through the lens of what they had available to them in terms of adjacent technology and capability compared to the present day. For example, when I stand in front of an SR-71 Blackbird and consider that it was created w/ slide rules & Friden mechanical calculators. When sophisticated automated design and analysis tools like FEA and CFD were still far, far away. It conjures a narrative for me, true or not, that they seemed to do so much with so little, and by contrast we seem to do so little with so much. Which results in a crude emotional response that is some hybrid of awe & despair. Then a few days goes by, and I snap out of it.
  - exoesquitur 8y ago
    I think the newish perception that risk is unacceptable plays a part. I'm glad to see the "safety above exploration" mindset giving way a bit. Accidents are going to happen. Pioneers in dangerous endeavors understand this. It's good to see society remembering it as well.
    - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
      Whose risk? If we're talking risk of astronauts and test pilots, certainly--they know the dangers and they've decided it's worth it. My worry is that people who think "move fast and break things" is a good business strategy are now starting to move into transport, medicine, and other fields where the lives of random citizens are on the line.
      - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
        >Whose risk? Anyone's risk, even if there's no risk at all. Post on Reddit about how you replaced your own water heater and people will wag their finger at you for not having a licensed plumber do it all (as if the plumber would stop by the next day to check for leaks). People get off on trying to score virtue points virtue signaling about risk (not just on the internet, in real life too). The Christmas tree (or do I have to call it a holiday tree because the "risk" of offending someone is too great) across the room from me might spontaneously catch fire. It probably won't happen so I don't care, that won't stop some anonymous stranger on the internet telling me I should use modern LED lights because they run cooler. I understand not playing fast and loose with people's lives but the likelihood and magnitude of a possible bad outcome required to stall things has been getting smaller and smaller over the years and it makes getting anything and everything done more time consuming and costly. Before you could just put up a Christmas tree in the office if everyone wanted to, now you have to figure out if anyone could hypothetically be offended. Before you could just build a road or a bridge and deal with the environmental impact as it happens, now you have to do a study and account for the whereabouts of every drop of rainwater that will fall on whatever you're building before you even break ground. There is a risk of a potential bad outcome inherit to everything. Somehow society has perverted itself into thinking that risk is a binary and all risk is bad and not work it.
- codeulike 8y ago
  Yep. For example, the cost per kg of putting something into space using the Falcon Heavy is about 40 times cheaper (per kg) than using a Space Shuttle was.
- dv_dt 8y ago
  We are both more advanced and more behind. The only human capable space system right now is the Soyuz? (first flight 1966) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(spacecraft) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(spacecraft)
  - FlyMoreRockets 8y ago
    Actually, the Soyoz is boosted by pretty much the same rocket that launched Sputnik in 1957. It was first developed as an ICBM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-7_(rocket_family) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-7_(rocket_family)
  - gandhium 8y ago
    No, China putting their taikonauts to space using chinese rockets.
freehunter 8y ago
There were people toiling in the golden era of the Space Race doing menial things of no lasting value as well. The idea that some people have of the best minds of our generation being wasted just focusing on ads and APIs and worthless things is silly. It's like some people pretend that no one is working on space ships, sustainable energy, electric cars, extending the human lifespan, genetic engineering, quantum computing, memristors, real-time communications platforms to remove national boundaries, etc, all of the stuff that is actually changing the world and is actually happening right now. We're not in a dark age. If anything we're in the brightest age we've ever been in. So much cool shit is happening, so much groundbreaking and future-shaping research is occurring, and the very nature of what it means to be human is evolving faster now than it has in thousands of years... and the coolest thing about it is, so much is happening that people are able to forget about it. People are able to set aside the idea that they're holding the entire world in their hand, wirelessly, with chips as powerful as the most powerful desktops running silently, obeying their every command as they connect to the World Wide Web and complain to everyone around the globe that we must surely be in a dark age because we don't have government-sponsored space shuttles anymore. And that communication may very well be bounced off a satellite placed into orbit by a private company with a launch that is so commonplace that it's not even announced on TV anymore. Dark age indeed.
- skookumchuck 8y ago
  Being able to find an answer to any question by talking to a device in my pocket - pretty incredible! Being able to talk to anyone in the world thru a device in my pocket - pretty incredible!
  - bigiain 8y ago
    Being tracked to resolution of about a meter anywhere on the planet by 3rd parties collecting the data for marketing - pretty, ummm, something... Being able to have my conversations remotely listened to by pretty much any nation state with a few million to spend with zero-day-phone-"forensics"-vendor-de-jour - pretty, ummm, something... :sigh:
pjc50 8y ago
I'm concerned about the possibility of a "Dark age", but not because of the people toiling in the API mines; rather that voters fed by conspiracy theorists and anti-science lobbyists will turn away from enlightenment and towards violence.
starpilot 8y ago
Dark age, but we just have pocket supercomputers connected to a global network containing all knowledge in human history.
- mhandley 8y ago
  And yet my 18 year old son has never known a different world. The easy availability of information is just how it always was to him. He can't really conceive of how hard it was to find out something. We've around 4000 books in our home, covering all manner of topics - what would have been a small town library in times past. But still Google is easier and faster. We live in amazing times, and we don't even notice.
  - Santosh83 8y ago
    Thousands of books at my home too, some dating to the mid 19th century. The immersion of books still can't be bested by handheld devices. Also despite the Internet, the local library has remained quite popular, and ironically, among the young students. Taking notes from a big textbook on a table is still easier on the hands and eyes than scrolling and squinting through the same text on a 5-inch screen.
  - gbear605 8y ago
    To turn it around a bit, consider the things that you had growing up that your parent didn't have. Depending on your age - microwaves, television, computers (not the internet, but having these devices that do work for us), telephones.
- InclinedPlane 8y ago
  I was with you there until the last bit. The internet does not contain anything remotely like "all knowledge in human history". The closest thing to that would be all books and printed matter plus all audio and visual recordings. The internet does not contain all of that, not even a tiny fraction of all that. It probably will in the future, but it's going to be a while.
  - 8y ago
etrautmann 8y ago
There are incredible scientific advancements happening right now, using state of the art technologies. A few examples around me daily: brain machine interfaces, CRISPR and gene editing, protein engineering, etc. If you feel like you're working on something menial, do what you can to point your arrow in a direction you find meaningful. Often times, fields like biology desperately need people with technical skills that want to work hard on important problems.
buboard 8y ago
I think the bigger question is metaphysical: Why are we not inspired by space travel anymore? Even dystopian scifi is no longer popular. Elves and medieval magic are the main sellers.
- krapp 8y ago
  In literature, maybe (and mostly because of Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings) but space travel themes are still big in tv, film and video games. Of course, in real life, space travel got boring. We couldn't afford the lunar colonies or spinning orbital platforms or missions to Mars we all thought we would see in a few years. It was only in Star Trek and Star Wars that space offered endless variety and new frontiers, but reality offered nothing but dust, and the billions of dollars we were spending flying people to go stand on the dust started to seem like a wasted effort.
eecc 8y ago
On the other hand, that generation spent their best minds in what essentially was a pissing contest over how many times could one could pulverize their adversaries over. Not a great investment either... Got us some selfies from the Moon though. Pretty neat

alistairSH 8y ago

10 years ago, I might have agreed with you. But, with SpaceX and other private companies venturing into space? I feel like humans are doing pretty well.

Shivetya 8y ago
Far too often people fail to see the world for what it is. The use of space is expanding so much and that if anything people are tuning out accomplishments because they are not eventful anymore. For some the end of the shuttle program was a downer but it was probably the single best thing to have happened to NASA in decades. the Shuttle program if anything held NASA back. The investment alone made it near impossible to not use it and the cost of using it doomed money for other development. Now we have Space X with a record number of launches, China going to the dark side of the moon, and even more private corporations reaching for space. We still have cooperation with Russia not withstanding all the political strife caused by their leadership. The EU has had great missions recently and even India is moving forward.
- DigitalWheelie 8y ago
  While I'm no fan of wasteful NASA spending, it feels wrong to explore for profit rather than curiosity.
  - thelastidiot 8y ago
    It was never for curiosity at the beginning but for military goals.
  - skookumchuck 8y ago
    Is it so noble to lose money?
    - JetSpiegel 8y ago
      Putting people on the moon was "lost money"? Only in the strict sense that money flowed into NASA from the Federal budget and did not flow back.
      - gbear605 8y ago
        Of course, a lot of that money did flow back, since it went to people who paid income taxes.
  - bdamm 8y ago
    Profit is the foundation of truly sustainable human activity. Christopher Columbus was in it for the money, too. Government can only spend what profit creates, so even government programs like NASA ultimately are feeding from the trough of profit.
im_down_w_otp 8y ago
I look at it through the lens of what they had available to them in terms of adjacent technology and capability compared to the present day. For example, when I stand in front of an SR-71 Blackbird and consider that it was created w/ slide rules & Friden mechanical calculators. When sophisticated automated design and analysis tools like FEA and CFD were still far, far away. It conjures a narrative for me, true or not, that they seemed to do so much with so little, and by contrast we seem to do so little with so much. Which results in a crude emotional response that is some hybrid of awe & despair. Then a few days goes by, and I snap out of it.
- exoesquitur 8y ago
  I think the newish perception that risk is unacceptable plays a part. I'm glad to see the "safety above exploration" mindset giving way a bit. Accidents are going to happen. Pioneers in dangerous endeavors understand this. It's good to see society remembering it as well.
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    Whose risk? If we're talking risk of astronauts and test pilots, certainly--they know the dangers and they've decided it's worth it. My worry is that people who think "move fast and break things" is a good business strategy are now starting to move into transport, medicine, and other fields where the lives of random citizens are on the line.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      >Whose risk? Anyone's risk, even if there's no risk at all. Post on Reddit about how you replaced your own water heater and people will wag their finger at you for not having a licensed plumber do it all (as if the plumber would stop by the next day to check for leaks). People get off on trying to score virtue points virtue signaling about risk (not just on the internet, in real life too). The Christmas tree (or do I have to call it a holiday tree because the "risk" of offending someone is too great) across the room from me might spontaneously catch fire. It probably won't happen so I don't care, that won't stop some anonymous stranger on the internet telling me I should use modern LED lights because they run cooler. I understand not playing fast and loose with people's lives but the likelihood and magnitude of a possible bad outcome required to stall things has been getting smaller and smaller over the years and it makes getting anything and everything done more time consuming and costly. Before you could just put up a Christmas tree in the office if everyone wanted to, now you have to figure out if anyone could hypothetically be offended. Before you could just build a road or a bridge and deal with the environmental impact as it happens, now you have to do a study and account for the whereabouts of every drop of rainwater that will fall on whatever you're building before you even break ground. There is a risk of a potential bad outcome inherit to everything. Somehow society has perverted itself into thinking that risk is a binary and all risk is bad and not work it.
codeulike 8y ago
Yep. For example, the cost per kg of putting something into space using the Falcon Heavy is about 40 times cheaper (per kg) than using a Space Shuttle was.
dv_dt 8y ago
We are both more advanced and more behind. The only human capable space system right now is the Soyuz? (first flight 1966) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(spacecraft) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(spacecraft)
- FlyMoreRockets 8y ago
  Actually, the Soyoz is boosted by pretty much the same rocket that launched Sputnik in 1957. It was first developed as an ICBM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-7_(rocket_family) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-7_(rocket_family)
- gandhium 8y ago
  No, China putting their taikonauts to space using chinese rockets.

freehunter 8y ago

There were people toiling in the golden era of the Space Race doing menial things of no lasting value as well. The idea that some people have of the best minds of our generation being wasted just focusing on ads and APIs and worthless things is silly. It's like some people pretend that no one is working on space ships, sustainable energy, electric cars, extending the human lifespan, genetic engineering, quantum computing, memristors, real-time communications platforms to remove national boundaries, etc, all of the stuff that is actually changing the world and is actually happening right now. We're not in a dark age. If anything we're in the brightest age we've ever been in. So much cool shit is happening, so much groundbreaking and future-shaping research is occurring, and the very nature of what it means to be human is evolving faster now than it has in thousands of years... and the coolest thing about it is, so much is happening that people are able to forget about it. People are able to set aside the idea that they're holding the entire world in their hand, wirelessly, with chips as powerful as the most powerful desktops running silently, obeying their every command as they connect to the World Wide Web and complain to everyone around the globe that we must surely be in a dark age because we don't have government-sponsored space shuttles anymore. And that communication may very well be bounced off a satellite placed into orbit by a private company with a launch that is so commonplace that it's not even announced on TV anymore. Dark age indeed.

skookumchuck 8y ago
Being able to find an answer to any question by talking to a device in my pocket - pretty incredible! Being able to talk to anyone in the world thru a device in my pocket - pretty incredible!
- bigiain 8y ago
  Being tracked to resolution of about a meter anywhere on the planet by 3rd parties collecting the data for marketing - pretty, ummm, something... Being able to have my conversations remotely listened to by pretty much any nation state with a few million to spend with zero-day-phone-"forensics"-vendor-de-jour - pretty, ummm, something... :sigh:

pjc50 8y ago

I'm concerned about the possibility of a "Dark age", but not because of the people toiling in the API mines; rather that voters fed by conspiracy theorists and anti-science lobbyists will turn away from enlightenment and towards violence.

starpilot 8y ago

Dark age, but we just have pocket supercomputers connected to a global network containing all knowledge in human history.

mhandley 8y ago
And yet my 18 year old son has never known a different world. The easy availability of information is just how it always was to him. He can't really conceive of how hard it was to find out something. We've around 4000 books in our home, covering all manner of topics - what would have been a small town library in times past. But still Google is easier and faster. We live in amazing times, and we don't even notice.
- Santosh83 8y ago
  Thousands of books at my home too, some dating to the mid 19th century. The immersion of books still can't be bested by handheld devices. Also despite the Internet, the local library has remained quite popular, and ironically, among the young students. Taking notes from a big textbook on a table is still easier on the hands and eyes than scrolling and squinting through the same text on a 5-inch screen.
- gbear605 8y ago
  To turn it around a bit, consider the things that you had growing up that your parent didn't have. Depending on your age - microwaves, television, computers (not the internet, but having these devices that do work for us), telephones.
InclinedPlane 8y ago
I was with you there until the last bit. The internet does not contain anything remotely like "all knowledge in human history". The closest thing to that would be all books and printed matter plus all audio and visual recordings. The internet does not contain all of that, not even a tiny fraction of all that. It probably will in the future, but it's going to be a while.
- 8y ago

etrautmann 8y ago

There are incredible scientific advancements happening right now, using state of the art technologies. A few examples around me daily: brain machine interfaces, CRISPR and gene editing, protein engineering, etc. If you feel like you're working on something menial, do what you can to point your arrow in a direction you find meaningful. Often times, fields like biology desperately need people with technical skills that want to work hard on important problems.

buboard 8y ago

I think the bigger question is metaphysical: Why are we not inspired by space travel anymore? Even dystopian scifi is no longer popular. Elves and medieval magic are the main sellers.

krapp 8y ago
In literature, maybe (and mostly because of Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings) but space travel themes are still big in tv, film and video games. Of course, in real life, space travel got boring. We couldn't afford the lunar colonies or spinning orbital platforms or missions to Mars we all thought we would see in a few years. It was only in Star Trek and Star Wars that space offered endless variety and new frontiers, but reality offered nothing but dust, and the billions of dollars we were spending flying people to go stand on the dust started to seem like a wasted effort.

eecc 8y ago

On the other hand, that generation spent their best minds in what essentially was a pissing contest over how many times could one could pulverize their adversaries over. Not a great investment either... Got us some selfies from the Moon though. Pretty neat