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It made 14x as much for the US economy (including inspiring American children, excluding inspiring other children/nations). Can that sort of success ever be con
by tobylane 15y ago
It made 14x as much for the US economy (including inspiring American children, excluding inspiring other children/nations). Can that sort of success ever be considered a waste over a long enough timeframe?
- yummyfajitas 15y agoOver the short term, that's a great success. But over the long term (e.g., 50 years), it's only a 5.4% return. The S&P or DJIA, for example, had 7% returns over the same timeframe. (Of course the two are not directly comparable, I'm just pointing out that "14x returns over unspecified timeframe" is a faulty argument.)
- arunbahl 15y agoI think the inspiration point is a great one, if difficult to quantify. The American space program fostered a scientific literacy and pop-culture faith in the pursuit of engineering for surmounting important problems. And despite being a national program in a Cold War context, the success of the Apollo missions was bigger in scope than the US - it was a victory for all humans. We'd do well to cultivate these attitudes again.
- tsotha 15y agoThe kind of accounting you need to do to arrive at that 14x figure would get you arrested if you put it in a corporate quarterly report, and anyway it totally ignores lost opportunity costs.