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Genuinely curious how you feel about the Apollo missions. Do you think they were bad or that it would have been better if we had not done them?

• dekhn 2y ago
  From the perspective of propaganda and establishing US dominance (responding to USSR's impressive gains), it certainly had value, and it's an epic thing that stands as one of humanity's greatest technical achievements. From a scientific perspective, I don't see it as tremendously better than having done a robotic exploration, except that at that time, we didn't really have the knowledge or technology to build complex semi-autonomous vehicles that could return samples. I know folks have argued that having a geologist physically on the moon made a difference but I don't see that as sufficiently impactful. Other folks will argue that in addition to the direct scientific achievements of apollo, running the project generated a wide range of side technologies that had much wider applicability, but IMHO, those things probably would have been invented (or other things invented) by non-space funding for materials science. While I generally think sending any human into space (LEO or elsewhere) is a waste of time and money, if I am speculating about a science fiction future, I think it's imperative that humanity become multi-homed (fully independent settlements) but as a species we don't have the political will or resources to achieve that.