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> Why would you want to work on something that'll never work? "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, bu
by JPLeRouzic 4y ago
> Why would you want to work on something that'll never work?
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. "
- YZF 4y agoThere's a difference between hard and feasible though. I love solving hard problems. I want to work on hard problems. I don't want to work on something that I don't believe is solvable. It's a prerequisite for me to intuitively believe something can be done. There was no feasibility question around going to the moon, it was all engineering.
- JPLeRouzic 4y ago> There was no feasibility question around going to the moon, it was all engineering. At the time of Kennedy's discourse, the only US mission (Mercury-Redstone 3, or Freedom 7) was a 15-minute suborbital flight at 101.2 nautical miles high. I guess that in 50 years people will say that self-driving was "all engineering".
- YZF 4y agoI doubt people will say general intelligence or fusion are "all engineering" in 50 years. We'll need some sort of breakthrough. There's the "weak" self driving we already have and there's the "strong" replace a human or outperform a human in any situation which is more like general intelligence. These are very different kinds of problems. I'm not well versed in the details of the space program but I doubt there were many "impossible" steps that required some fundamental scientific advancement. But hey, +1 to the optimism that we'll still be around in 50 years ;)