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It feels like the death of American ingenuity. We've fallen from the era where we sent echoes to our neighbours and the stars. When we found clearings in jungl

It feels like the death of American ingenuity. We've fallen from the era where we sent echoes to our neighbours and the stars. When we found clearings in jungles and turned them into monuments to humanity. The time when we put our best foot forward and reached ahead, into the future, racing towards a brighter tomorrow for humanity. I mourn for what has been lost. The American century wasn't punctuated by a war, but by callous neo-mercantilism and disregard. The fall of America's aspirations from the heavens to the bottom of a sinkhole.

cal5k 6y ago
You're joking, right? 2020 is a year where SpaceX flew humans to space for the first time ever on a commercial vehicle, we created and started to distribute a vaccine for a never-before-seen virus in under a year, and we began to hook rural people who've never had access to high-quality internet up via a constellation of thousands of micro-satellites in LEO. Sure, not everything is rosy, but we're still capable of some impressive feats of engineering. Oh, and AlphaFold made an incredible leap in protein folding prediction. Like, a true "paradigm shift" in one of the most historically intractable problems in biology.
- zx14 6y ago
  If you want to assign countries to companies or divisions of companies, I think Deepmimd is (still) more representative of British ingenuity.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
    > I think Deepmimd is (still) more representative of British ingenuity. It’s kind of like the strategy in World War II: combine British ingenuity (DeepMind) with America. resources(Google).
- sho_hn 6y ago
  Technology-wise, the vaccine you mean was developed in Germany by a German company. Pfizer is the manufacturing partner and did logistics for clinical trials (except in China, where Fosun licensed it). $445 million in funding came as a grant from the German government, the rest from licensors. The German government has split another ~300 million or so on two other companies also working on vaccines. The US government did not contribute any funding to Pfizer's license. I'd rather say it's a cool example of international collab and winning together than an American exceptionalism narrative ...
Troller8989 6y ago
Do you realize other countries were involved in all of those "American accomplishments"? And that those other countries contribute to, as much as America if not more, for those goals? Jeez, the American bubble is far smaller than I expected.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
valuearb 6y ago
This is your take on the day before SpaceX attempts to fly the worlds first fully reusable spacecraft to 15 km and land it? That if successful will put larger payloads into space at less than one hundredth the cost of the Space Shuttle, and enable manned deep space missions to Mars and beyond? Just weeks after Apple unveiled the worlds fastest CPU core running on only 15 watts (with credit to a Brit architecture)? If you look at the world through a filtered lens, of course you only see what you want to see.
- neves 6y ago
  Maybe his take is after the USA didn't manage to contain an epidemic, used its power to steal medical equipment from other countries, developed a marvelous vaccine that will sell at a high price for other countries after vaccinating itself.
  - valuearb 6y ago
    Like I said, the world is what you filter it to be.
  - mixedCase 6y ago
    >Maybe his take is after the USA didn't manage to contain an epidemic Combined with the crucial failure of China that kept it under lid for too long, and followed by most of the rest of the world who also failed to contain it. > used its power to steal medical equipment from other countries, What are you talking about? > developed a marvelous vaccine that will sell at a high price for other countries after vaccinating itself. Good thing the world is capitalist by nature and we have two more (cheaper) vaccines ready to go, and Moderna will have to lower its price or sell it to those who are willing to pay them a premium for whatever reason. Right? And I'm not sure if this is even a thing, but even if it is, what is your problem with each country requesting their labs to provide for their host nation's citizens first, specially in a case where all labs AFAIK received funding in some form by taxpayers?
    - neves 6y ago
      This is what I mean: USA Divert masks of other countries: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/03/mask-wars-coronavirus-outbidding-demand https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/03/mask-wars-coro...
admiralspoo 6y ago
Uh, no. Arecibo was quite a low priority for the NSF/NASA for good reasons -- there are other, better, telescopes and facilities to fund.
- Natales 6y ago
  No doubt. But how many scientific tools also become cultural icons? in an era where we need more young people becoming passionate about science and space, the loss of Arecibo feels like the loss of the Challenger to many.
  - khuey 6y ago
    Should we really be allowing James Bond movies to choose where we spend our scientific resources? Just in the telescope domain the James Webb Space Telescope should finally launch next year and if it works will be an enormous step forwards.
  - foolfoolz 6y ago
    who?? if not for goldeneye no one would even know this thing existed
    - Natales 6y ago
      I was thinking of Contact actually.
- bmitc 6y ago
  If it was deprioritized, which it seems it was, it was still done in a disappointing and rather eye-opening manner. Just letting an expensive and important scientific instrument deteriorate and just collapse is not the same as properly deprioritizing and decommissioning it.
AWildC182 6y ago
So many people commenting about Spacex and such but I feel they're missing the point. This marks the end of an era where publicly funded science was driving the frontiers of human knowledge faster than ever before. We went from having never left the ground under power to the moon in 65 years. 65. Years. And in the subsequent 51? We've gotten really good at making cheap electronics and our consolation prize is a low cost-to-orbit with no concrete plans to do anything extraordinary with it. Cool. This feels truly like the end of an empire.
- rland 6y ago
  Not only that, but all of the cheap electronics/computers that we have now are because of the money spent on Apollo.

cal5k 6y ago

You're joking, right? 2020 is a year where SpaceX flew humans to space for the first time ever on a commercial vehicle, we created and started to distribute a vaccine for a never-before-seen virus in under a year, and we began to hook rural people who've never had access to high-quality internet up via a constellation of thousands of micro-satellites in LEO. Sure, not everything is rosy, but we're still capable of some impressive feats of engineering. Oh, and AlphaFold made an incredible leap in protein folding prediction. Like, a true "paradigm shift" in one of the most historically intractable problems in biology.

zx14 6y ago
If you want to assign countries to companies or divisions of companies, I think Deepmimd is (still) more representative of British ingenuity.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  > I think Deepmimd is (still) more representative of British ingenuity. It’s kind of like the strategy in World War II: combine British ingenuity (DeepMind) with America. resources(Google).
sho_hn 6y ago
Technology-wise, the vaccine you mean was developed in Germany by a German company. Pfizer is the manufacturing partner and did logistics for clinical trials (except in China, where Fosun licensed it). $445 million in funding came as a grant from the German government, the rest from licensors. The German government has split another ~300 million or so on two other companies also working on vaccines. The US government did not contribute any funding to Pfizer's license. I'd rather say it's a cool example of international collab and winning together than an American exceptionalism narrative ...

Troller8989 6y ago

Do you realize other countries were involved in all of those "American accomplishments"? And that those other countries contribute to, as much as America if not more, for those goals? Jeez, the American bubble is far smaller than I expected.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

valuearb 6y ago

This is your take on the day before SpaceX attempts to fly the worlds first fully reusable spacecraft to 15 km and land it? That if successful will put larger payloads into space at less than one hundredth the cost of the Space Shuttle, and enable manned deep space missions to Mars and beyond? Just weeks after Apple unveiled the worlds fastest CPU core running on only 15 watts (with credit to a Brit architecture)? If you look at the world through a filtered lens, of course you only see what you want to see.

neves 6y ago
Maybe his take is after the USA didn't manage to contain an epidemic, used its power to steal medical equipment from other countries, developed a marvelous vaccine that will sell at a high price for other countries after vaccinating itself.
- valuearb 6y ago
  Like I said, the world is what you filter it to be.
- mixedCase 6y ago
  >Maybe his take is after the USA didn't manage to contain an epidemic Combined with the crucial failure of China that kept it under lid for too long, and followed by most of the rest of the world who also failed to contain it. > used its power to steal medical equipment from other countries, What are you talking about? > developed a marvelous vaccine that will sell at a high price for other countries after vaccinating itself. Good thing the world is capitalist by nature and we have two more (cheaper) vaccines ready to go, and Moderna will have to lower its price or sell it to those who are willing to pay them a premium for whatever reason. Right? And I'm not sure if this is even a thing, but even if it is, what is your problem with each country requesting their labs to provide for their host nation's citizens first, specially in a case where all labs AFAIK received funding in some form by taxpayers?
  - neves 6y ago
    This is what I mean: USA Divert masks of other countries: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/03/mask-wars-coronavirus-outbidding-demand https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/03/mask-wars-coro...

admiralspoo 6y ago

Uh, no. Arecibo was quite a low priority for the NSF/NASA for good reasons -- there are other, better, telescopes and facilities to fund.

Natales 6y ago
No doubt. But how many scientific tools also become cultural icons? in an era where we need more young people becoming passionate about science and space, the loss of Arecibo feels like the loss of the Challenger to many.
- khuey 6y ago
  Should we really be allowing James Bond movies to choose where we spend our scientific resources? Just in the telescope domain the James Webb Space Telescope should finally launch next year and if it works will be an enormous step forwards.
- foolfoolz 6y ago
  who?? if not for goldeneye no one would even know this thing existed
  - Natales 6y ago
    I was thinking of Contact actually.
bmitc 6y ago
If it was deprioritized, which it seems it was, it was still done in a disappointing and rather eye-opening manner. Just letting an expensive and important scientific instrument deteriorate and just collapse is not the same as properly deprioritizing and decommissioning it.

AWildC182 6y ago

So many people commenting about Spacex and such but I feel they're missing the point. This marks the end of an era where publicly funded science was driving the frontiers of human knowledge faster than ever before. We went from having never left the ground under power to the moon in 65 years. 65. Years. And in the subsequent 51? We've gotten really good at making cheap electronics and our consolation prize is a low cost-to-orbit with no concrete plans to do anything extraordinary with it. Cool. This feels truly like the end of an empire.

rland 6y ago
Not only that, but all of the cheap electronics/computers that we have now are because of the money spent on Apollo.