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The USSR had just beat the US to put the first man into space. The same USSR that was killing political dissidents en masse and building an arsenal of terrifyin

The USSR had just beat the US to put the first man into space. The same USSR that was killing political dissidents en masse and building an arsenal of terrifying nuclear weapons. John F. Kennedy set out the ambitious goal of putting a man on the moon before the end of the decade, and then he was assassinated. People wanted to make that happen. So they did. There hasn't been a lot to inspire people to work for the government like that lately.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> same USSR that was killing political dissidents en masse and building an arsenal of terrifying nuclear weapons One more factor: decolonisation created new countries. That created a unique competition for ideological supremacy.
thriftwy 2y ago
> killing political dissidents That's a funny perspective. USSR just before that time mostly killed communist apparatus members¥ and with them innocent people. In such an environment, there naturally won't be too many dissidents, so I don't think they registered. They did kill a lot of supposed sympathiers of pre-Soviet Russia, though. ¥ As they say, internal competition is the most fierce one.
- keiferski 2y ago
  Are you forgetting that the USSR took control of about a dozen other countries during and after the war? That led to events like Katyn, which had nothing to do with communist dissidents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre
somenameforme 2y ago
While this is how this story is regularly retold it's not quite accurate. Polling around the Moon program tells that while there was a large minority of people vehemently in support of it, the overall response was mixed, and NASA was generally seen as a good target to cut funding from. [1] I think there are lots of parallels between the Moon landings in the 60s and the idea of colonizing Mars today. In particular, most people don't think it's possible, and so they think it's a waste of money. The Apollo program only received majority approval once we landed on the Moon. People also tend to dramatically overestimate the cost of achieving great things in space. Polling suggested people thought the Moon missions were taking up about 22% of the budget. In modern times it's down to less than 0.5%, and that's with NASA blowing tens of billions of dollars of pork projects like the SLS. Overall support for the Moon program only began to steadily rise in the years after human spaceflight was defacto completely cancelled by Nixon, and people were able to coolly reflect on what a ridiculous and important achievement that was. [1] - https://www.space.com/10601-apollo-moon-program-public-support-myth.html https://www.space.com/10601-apollo-moon-program-public-suppo...
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  According to your own link, the thing people don't like isn't space exploration, it's paying for it: > "When you divorce it from the numbers and you ask people if they like NASA and spaceflight, people say yes," Launius told SPACE.com. "75 to 80 percent are in favor." Because obviously; people don't like paying for anything. If you ask someone without a lot of surplus in their life whether they'd rather have the money themselves in tax cuts or benefits or they want to spend it on astronauts, they want food on their table. Especially when they're overestimating how much the space program costs. But the question was, did people want to work for NASA? And then you get to select your idealists from the >75% in favor of the space program.
underlipton 2y ago
No, it just aligned with elite interests ("If they can put nuke platforms above our heads and we can't put some above theirs, it doesn't matter how much better our economy runs, in theory.") There were plenty of people who would have loved to have put their energy and expertise towards a climate change moonshot, but our incredibly powerful corporate interests and the legislators that they own didn't want it to happen, so it didn't. Also, you remove that second S and first R from that second sentence, and it would still be true. Our entry into the space race wasn't a matter of unmatched moral nobility.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > There were plenty of people who would have loved to have put their energy and expertise towards a climate change moonshot, but our incredibly powerful corporate interests and the legislators that they own didn't want it to happen, so it didn't. The problem with "climate change moonshot" is that the answer isn't really a single target or anything suitable to a government spending program. You get the result you want by doing a carbon tax and then refunding fully 100% of the money to the population as a dividend so the tax doesn't trash the economy. Then people reduce carbon to avoid the tax. Hybrid and electric vehicles become more attractive than gas (especially to people who drive more), diesel rail lines get electrified, coal power plants get shut down as uneconomical and replaced with solar/wind/nuclear/hydro, people replace furnaces with heat pumps, etc. You don't have to order anybody to do anything in particular or figure out how it should be done for them because everybody wants to avoid the tax so they do it themselves. The reason that doesn't happen is the reason you say -- the oil and coal industries have captured too many legislators. But even if you had the votes, the way to fix it still isn't "NASA for climate change", it's just pricing carbon.
  - underlipton 2y ago
    No, trying to financially engineer incentives to make all of those things magically happen would not have worked. They tried that with broadband rollout and healthcare and got middling results, at best. Public/private partnerships are a fool's gold standard and it's time to stop getting burned by that scam. We wanted the government to get directly involved. To fund and empower a federal agency to hire workers, plan projects, requisition resources, and execute at a massive scale, as had NASA worked in the 60s, or the WPA in the 30s. I know that this terrifies certain people, and I revel in their terror. Things that are bad for their craven interests are good for the rest of us.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> same USSR that was killing political dissidents en masse and building an arsenal of terrifying nuclear weapons One more factor: decolonisation created new countries. That created a unique competition for ideological supremacy.

thriftwy 2y ago

> killing political dissidents That's a funny perspective. USSR just before that time mostly killed communist apparatus members¥ and with them innocent people. In such an environment, there naturally won't be too many dissidents, so I don't think they registered. They did kill a lot of supposed sympathiers of pre-Soviet Russia, though. ¥ As they say, internal competition is the most fierce one.

keiferski 2y ago
Are you forgetting that the USSR took control of about a dozen other countries during and after the war? That led to events like Katyn, which had nothing to do with communist dissidents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

somenameforme 2y ago

While this is how this story is regularly retold it's not quite accurate. Polling around the Moon program tells that while there was a large minority of people vehemently in support of it, the overall response was mixed, and NASA was generally seen as a good target to cut funding from. [1] I think there are lots of parallels between the Moon landings in the 60s and the idea of colonizing Mars today. In particular, most people don't think it's possible, and so they think it's a waste of money. The Apollo program only received majority approval once we landed on the Moon. People also tend to dramatically overestimate the cost of achieving great things in space. Polling suggested people thought the Moon missions were taking up about 22% of the budget. In modern times it's down to less than 0.5%, and that's with NASA blowing tens of billions of dollars of pork projects like the SLS. Overall support for the Moon program only began to steadily rise in the years after human spaceflight was defacto completely cancelled by Nixon, and people were able to coolly reflect on what a ridiculous and important achievement that was. [1] - https://www.space.com/10601-apollo-moon-program-public-support-myth.html https://www.space.com/10601-apollo-moon-program-public-suppo...

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
According to your own link, the thing people don't like isn't space exploration, it's paying for it: > "When you divorce it from the numbers and you ask people if they like NASA and spaceflight, people say yes," Launius told SPACE.com. "75 to 80 percent are in favor." Because obviously; people don't like paying for anything. If you ask someone without a lot of surplus in their life whether they'd rather have the money themselves in tax cuts or benefits or they want to spend it on astronauts, they want food on their table. Especially when they're overestimating how much the space program costs. But the question was, did people want to work for NASA? And then you get to select your idealists from the >75% in favor of the space program.

underlipton 2y ago

No, it just aligned with elite interests ("If they can put nuke platforms above our heads and we can't put some above theirs, it doesn't matter how much better our economy runs, in theory.") There were plenty of people who would have loved to have put their energy and expertise towards a climate change moonshot, but our incredibly powerful corporate interests and the legislators that they own didn't want it to happen, so it didn't. Also, you remove that second S and first R from that second sentence, and it would still be true. Our entry into the space race wasn't a matter of unmatched moral nobility.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> There were plenty of people who would have loved to have put their energy and expertise towards a climate change moonshot, but our incredibly powerful corporate interests and the legislators that they own didn't want it to happen, so it didn't. The problem with "climate change moonshot" is that the answer isn't really a single target or anything suitable to a government spending program. You get the result you want by doing a carbon tax and then refunding fully 100% of the money to the population as a dividend so the tax doesn't trash the economy. Then people reduce carbon to avoid the tax. Hybrid and electric vehicles become more attractive than gas (especially to people who drive more), diesel rail lines get electrified, coal power plants get shut down as uneconomical and replaced with solar/wind/nuclear/hydro, people replace furnaces with heat pumps, etc. You don't have to order anybody to do anything in particular or figure out how it should be done for them because everybody wants to avoid the tax so they do it themselves. The reason that doesn't happen is the reason you say -- the oil and coal industries have captured too many legislators. But even if you had the votes, the way to fix it still isn't "NASA for climate change", it's just pricing carbon.
- underlipton 2y ago
  No, trying to financially engineer incentives to make all of those things magically happen would not have worked. They tried that with broadband rollout and healthcare and got middling results, at best. Public/private partnerships are a fool's gold standard and it's time to stop getting burned by that scam. We wanted the government to get directly involved. To fund and empower a federal agency to hire workers, plan projects, requisition resources, and execute at a massive scale, as had NASA worked in the 60s, or the WPA in the 30s. I know that this terrifies certain people, and I revel in their terror. Things that are bad for their craven interests are good for the rest of us.