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Why do they keep calling it "historic". There's noting historic about it.
by hoseja 4y ago
Why do they keep calling it "historic". There's noting historic about it.
- ForHackernews 4y agoIt's the first human-capable spacecraft to leave near-Earth orbit in half a century. That's historic in my book.
- sebzim4500 4y agoIt was historic when it was done the first time. Doing it again after taking a break is not historic.
- _joel 4y agoIt's gone further from Earth than any other human capable vehicle.
- dotancohen 4y agoI don't know of any other non-Military program that had cost $93,000,000,000 dollars. Surely that's a significant historic first.
- ForHackernews 4y agoThe US social security program cost more than 7 times that much, only for last year. If you can't think of any others, I suspect you need to adjust your own perspective.
- dotancohen 4y agoI had no idea. If that is the case, then why do people argue that we shouldn't be going to the moon until all humans on Earth are fed and have homes? Over the past ten years the cost of an Artemis mission was 1/70 the cost of social security - and that price will go down every mission as the R&D phase is done. Would an additional 1.4% funding to social programs really solve hunger and homelessness?
- trollerator23 4y agoWell, this is paying for those NASA and big contractors to have a home and food, so there.
- yamtaddle 4y agoSocial Security is a public pension system, and is necessarily huge since it serves hundreds of millions of people. It's often excluded from budgetary analyses because it tends to throw everything out-of-whack, and the money that flows into it is separate from ordinary taxes, so isn't available for the general funds anyway—the way it's set up, Congress can't simply redirect Social Security spending to other purposes through anything like the ordinary budget process, they'd have to modify Social Security itself first, then probably weather a torrent of lawsuits.
- Maken 4y agoThe Northeast Corridor high speed retrack is planned to exceed $100 billion. Records are made to be broken.
- eesmith 4y agoIt's definitely in rarefied territory, but that alone does not make it a significant historic first. The US Interstate Highway System cost $535 billion in 2020 dollars, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System . The Apollo project cost $165 billion in 2021 dollars, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program .