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Putting a man on the Moon is something many view as humanity's greatest achievement, ever. Even if we ignore absolutely everything else, I think this alone make

Putting a man on the Moon is something many view as humanity's greatest achievement, ever. Even if we ignore absolutely everything else, I think this alone makes it worth it. People need to be inspired. It's the spice of life. But if we look the future, the possibilities are even more enticing. Richard Nixon effectively cancelled human space flight after a series of Moon landings. Had he not, we could very well have a civilization on Mars today, industry in space, and who knows what else. I mean there's no realistic argument for why these things should be impossible given what we know today - they're certainly far less to strive for than putting a man on the Moon when starting from effectively nothing. And these achievements are no longer just flag poling, but stand to genuinely revolutionize humanity - to say nothing how inspiring such achievements will be. Perhaps we might live in a world where our grandchildren will again want to be scientists and astronauts, instead of YouTubers.

gessha 1y ago
> Putting a man on the Moon is something many view as humanity's greatest achievement, ever. Because the Americans have such an amazing propaganda department and had to rub it in to the Soviets even after flunking every other “space race”. As for canceling the space programs, if it wasn’t Nixon, it would’ve been done by any of the politicians following Hayek/Friedman economic policies - basically everyone after Nixon.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  It has nothing to do with propaganda. It's such an inherently unbelievable achievement that many have indeed begun to doubt we ever actually even did it. And that doubt is very easy to understand because in modern times many have lost the ability to think big, let alone actually do big things. I mean can you believe we put a person on the Moon, let alone at a time when a "super computer" would have had a millionth of the processing power of that cheap phone in your pocket? It's nothing short of stupefying. It's similar to how we still marvel at how people managed to build the pyramids. There, at least, there can be no doubt that they truly exist - but people have been debating, and aweing, at them for literally thousands of years. The Greeks, no amateurs to construction themselves, were debating how they such a thing could have been constructed all the way back in the 5th century BC! These great achievements are what define humanity. In the blink of an eye on the scale of time, most of every company, person, and thing you know of today will be gone and completely forgotten. The very few things that will stay with us are these grand achievements that define not only an era of humanity, but humanity itself.
IAmBroom 1y ago
> Had he not, we could very well have a civilization on Mars today Well, that's an interesting take. Fantasial, but interesting.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  And how do you think putting a man on the Moon sounded at a time when we'd yet to put a single person into space? Werner von Braun was the head architect of the Apollo Program and viewed the Moon as little more than a step on the way to his vision of colonizing Mars, for which he'd already been working on technical plans with the planned first landings to be in the early 1980s. In fact this is precisely where the Space Shuttle, and to a lesser degree the ISS, came from. They were meant to be tools, with the ISS a very small scale version of the supporting stations planned to come with the Space Shuttle working as a beast of burden during their construction. He retired from NASA once it became clear the politicians were no longer interested in space after winning the space race. As an amusing anecdote, well before he was the head of Apollo, he also wrote a sci-fi book, "Project Mars: A Technical Tale." In it there was an advanced civilization living on Mars headed by a group of ten individuals who were, themselves, headed by "The Elon." --- Those who lack the ability to think big will, unsurprisingly, never have anything big. Because there's no technological point where colonizing another planet, much like landing on the Moon, will ever be easy or simple. Because you're doing something that's never been done before which means there are a basically infinite number of things that might go wrong, and you simply cannot account for all of them. And this always has and always will be the same story. Technology doesn't simply come to us - we make it happen, and without pushing forward we will stagnate.
  - spauldo 1y ago
    You might consider checking out the Weinersmiths' book "A City on Mars." It goes into great detail of what still needs to be developed before we can seriously consider colonizing another world. It's one of the reasons I support manned spaceflight - sending robots is easy but limited, sending people allows for way more flexibility but needs a lot more knowledge and engineering. We'll never develop that knowledge and engineering without actually sending people into space.
gonzobonzo 1y ago
> Perhaps we might live in a world where our grandchildren will again want to be scientists and astronauts, instead of YouTubers. Sending a huge amount of your budget to send people into space because "people need to be inspired" leans a lot closer to YouTuber than science. You're sacrificing the scientific budget for the sake of giving people a spectacle. This comes at the cost of actual technological advancements. Look at the development costs for Falcon and Falcon Heavy, for example, or Starship, and then look at what NASA's spent on the Space Shuttle, SLS, ISS, etc. The actual science, as I wrote in another reply, ends up being far less important than how NASA frames it (and often doesn't end up being used at all). And even in those cases, it's not at all clear that humans in space are actually needed to get the job done.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

gessha 1y ago

> Putting a man on the Moon is something many view as humanity's greatest achievement, ever. Because the Americans have such an amazing propaganda department and had to rub it in to the Soviets even after flunking every other “space race”. As for canceling the space programs, if it wasn’t Nixon, it would’ve been done by any of the politicians following Hayek/Friedman economic policies - basically everyone after Nixon.

somenameforme 1y ago
It has nothing to do with propaganda. It's such an inherently unbelievable achievement that many have indeed begun to doubt we ever actually even did it. And that doubt is very easy to understand because in modern times many have lost the ability to think big, let alone actually do big things. I mean can you believe we put a person on the Moon, let alone at a time when a "super computer" would have had a millionth of the processing power of that cheap phone in your pocket? It's nothing short of stupefying. It's similar to how we still marvel at how people managed to build the pyramids. There, at least, there can be no doubt that they truly exist - but people have been debating, and aweing, at them for literally thousands of years. The Greeks, no amateurs to construction themselves, were debating how they such a thing could have been constructed all the way back in the 5th century BC! These great achievements are what define humanity. In the blink of an eye on the scale of time, most of every company, person, and thing you know of today will be gone and completely forgotten. The very few things that will stay with us are these grand achievements that define not only an era of humanity, but humanity itself.

IAmBroom 1y ago

> Had he not, we could very well have a civilization on Mars today Well, that's an interesting take. Fantasial, but interesting.

somenameforme 1y ago
And how do you think putting a man on the Moon sounded at a time when we'd yet to put a single person into space? Werner von Braun was the head architect of the Apollo Program and viewed the Moon as little more than a step on the way to his vision of colonizing Mars, for which he'd already been working on technical plans with the planned first landings to be in the early 1980s. In fact this is precisely where the Space Shuttle, and to a lesser degree the ISS, came from. They were meant to be tools, with the ISS a very small scale version of the supporting stations planned to come with the Space Shuttle working as a beast of burden during their construction. He retired from NASA once it became clear the politicians were no longer interested in space after winning the space race. As an amusing anecdote, well before he was the head of Apollo, he also wrote a sci-fi book, "Project Mars: A Technical Tale." In it there was an advanced civilization living on Mars headed by a group of ten individuals who were, themselves, headed by "The Elon." --- Those who lack the ability to think big will, unsurprisingly, never have anything big. Because there's no technological point where colonizing another planet, much like landing on the Moon, will ever be easy or simple. Because you're doing something that's never been done before which means there are a basically infinite number of things that might go wrong, and you simply cannot account for all of them. And this always has and always will be the same story. Technology doesn't simply come to us - we make it happen, and without pushing forward we will stagnate.
- spauldo 1y ago
  You might consider checking out the Weinersmiths' book "A City on Mars." It goes into great detail of what still needs to be developed before we can seriously consider colonizing another world. It's one of the reasons I support manned spaceflight - sending robots is easy but limited, sending people allows for way more flexibility but needs a lot more knowledge and engineering. We'll never develop that knowledge and engineering without actually sending people into space.

gonzobonzo 1y ago

> Perhaps we might live in a world where our grandchildren will again want to be scientists and astronauts, instead of YouTubers. Sending a huge amount of your budget to send people into space because "people need to be inspired" leans a lot closer to YouTuber than science. You're sacrificing the scientific budget for the sake of giving people a spectacle. This comes at the cost of actual technological advancements. Look at the development costs for Falcon and Falcon Heavy, for example, or Starship, and then look at what NASA's spent on the Space Shuttle, SLS, ISS, etc. The actual science, as I wrote in another reply, ends up being far less important than how NASA frames it (and often doesn't end up being used at all). And even in those cases, it's not at all clear that humans in space are actually needed to get the job done.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]