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> We’ve already beaten China to the moon by 56 years, 3 months, and some change. And counting Of course, but there a few things to consider. 1. This is a new

> We’ve already beaten China to the moon by 56 years, 3 months, and some change. And counting Of course, but there a few things to consider. 1. This is a new race. The olympics happen every four years to see which nation is the current best. It seems it’s time to find out again. 2. The last time the US was dominant was 56 years ago. That’s three generations. Based on SLS and the comments here, it seems extremely unlikely the US is still dominant. Let’s find out.

bluGill 1y ago
What is the point of winning though? We could be doing other things in stead, and I'm going to submit that they are more valuable (you are of course welcome to disagree - this is an opinion). Personally I hope no human lands on the moon again. I like telling my parents they are so old humans walked on the moon in their lifetime (last human left the moon December 1972 - before I was born). There is no value in this statement, but it is still fun.
- heavyset_go 1y ago
  The electronics we're typing these comments on were only rapidly miniaturized originally to be small and light enough to shoot into space. There are second, third, etc order effects to things like a space race.
  - alistairSH 1y ago
    Sure. So let’s do something useful and new. We know how to go to the moon - it’s just a matter of money (and political will). If there’s something else to do on the moon, let’s be clear that is the objective.
    - tcmart14 1y ago
      I do agree with this. If we are returning to the moon just to say we did, as a space lover, I do have an issue with this and can't really get on board. I am hoping we have some other larger goal in mind, like maybe are back to the idea of a permanent moon base and a potential jump off point for other projects or we have a list of long term moon experiments to do. But yea, it just isn't exciting if we are going there to take a couple pictures and just to rub it in the face of China or India or some other nation. We've already done that.
      - jcgrillo 1y ago
        The goal could be simply to learn how to do it again, since almost everyone who actually has done it--on any level, be it engineering, management, manufacturing, flight crew, ground crew, etc--is dead. That's a totally worthwhile exercise if it's actually a serious goal to explore further.
        bluGill 1y ago
        We have plenty of people working on space - we go to Mars with robots all the time which is harder than the moon. We have a space station (though it is nearing end of life). We have all the needed knowledge it is just applied elsewhere. There will be some things to learn about the moon that are different but not much.
        jcgrillo 1y ago
        Apollo made about a half dozen crewed trips to the moon (quantity deliberately left vague to account for quibbling over technicalities). They made it a relatively reliable, repeatable affair. My point is that organization--the team of people who have done that no longer exists. So until another team starts doing it again, we just don't know. Theoretically it's very probably achievable, but theory absent experiment doesn't really mean anything.
        bluGill 1y ago
        There is value in experience, but for something like this I'm going to submit that the larger value is in learning to spin up teams that do something completely different. IF you were talking about building a good public transit system the value is in building a team and keeping it running. However this is - for all we know - just a one off show and so there isn't value in getting experience. The people looking at Mars have value in experience, and there may be value in robotic moon missions, but so far as I can tell human missions are just for showing off and should be treated like a one time show off and then get rid of the team for another 50 years.
        1y ago
    - heavyset_go 1y ago
      I'm all on board for doing something useful and new, my comment was not in support of having a space race for the sake of having one.
    - rkomorn 1y ago
      I actually think getting the political will, money, and execution together would be the part that would be a noteworthy show of force (and I'd argue being unable to get it done would be equally noteworthy in the other direction).
      - bluGill 1y ago
        Fair enough, but IMO there are better places we should be focusing on getting political will together if we want to focus on something big.
        rkomorn 1y ago
        Yes and no, I'd say. Going back to the moon is big but it's also pretty self-contained, in a way. It just costs money (and doles a bunch of it out to the contracted companies). It's also mostly time-boxed. Healthcare, worker's rights, voting rights, infrastructure, etc, are all more important (so I agree with you there), but also all have way more consequences that are wider-ranging and longer-term (which I'd say contributes do the political dysfunction around those topics). This should be an "easy win" by comparison, and the "PR" impact of success (or failure) will be significant. Edit: that said, if you gave me a magic wand to pick any one of these topics for the US to succeed at, it wouldn't be going to the moon.
      - alistairSH 1y ago
        But a show of force for who? We're not in the middle of a Cold War. Are we trying to upstage India or China? And could we get the same political ends via something more useful/with better returns?
        rkomorn 1y ago
        For everyone (including India and China). Could we get the same ends via something more useful? In theory, sure, but it seems pretty evident that the answer in practice is no, since our congress has mostly been gridlocked for the past 16 years.
    - anarticle 1y ago
      I would like to point out it is not a sure thing, rockets explode all the time. It is fantastically dangerous. The matter of factness of the shuttle shows how good the program was, but we still had two explode completely.
      - alistairSH 1y ago
        Sure, I didn't mean to imply space is easy. It's absolutely not. I just want to get a return on investment. And up-staging India and China for the sake of it probably doesn't give much return.
  - dmvdoug 1y ago
    Nah, that’s false. Miniaturization was already underway before the Space Race. The space program absolutely benefited from it, yes. But NASA wasn’t at the forefront of those developments.
    - heavyset_go 1y ago
      I was talking about rapid miniaturization, not just miniaturization in general, which I agree was underway before any space development. NASA literally had departments and budgets dedicated to miniaturization.
      - dmvdoug 1y ago
        I’ll give you an example: the technology in the Instrument Unit on the Saturn V, which was the computer that controlled the Saturn V during launch, was largely derived from System/360. By technology here I mean things like the Unit Logic Devices (ULDs) out of which the logic boards in the Launch Vehicle Digital Computer (LVDC) were made. No surprise, I suppose, given that it was contracted to IBM’s Federal Systems Division.
        m4rtink 1y ago
        Sure, but compare density of a s360 mainframe and the Apollo Guidance Computer - they pumped a lot of money into integrated circuits just as they weee becoming viable to hit their size, mass and power targets. Sure, this would likely have happend anyway, but possibly later with all related knock off effects.
        bluGill 1y ago
        > Sure, this would likely have happend anyway, but possibly later with all related knock off effects. What are we missing because they did that though? Or what came latter? There is no way to answer this. It is easy to see what happened because of effort, but not what you didn't get (or got latter) because to focused on something else.
    - 1y ago
- harimau777 1y ago
  To me, a significant part of the value presented by space exploration is the way that it inspires society. I think that whatever else we would do instead would need to be equally inspiring. Honestly, I can't really think of something comparable.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    So lets focus on genetics and see if we can get fire breathing dragons instead. That should be just as inspiring
    - m4rtink 1y ago
      Humans with feline features!
      - bluGill 1y ago
        There are a lot of options, but they are hard to think of... I was really hoping someone could come up with an idea along a completely different line.
        m4rtink 1y ago
        Sure, but might as well start with the basics and iteratively go from there. :)
UltraSane 1y ago
Sending humans to the moon is just burning money though. It isn't useful at all.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- excalibur 1y ago
  That does seem to be the trend these days. See: AI proliferation, cryptocurrency.
  - marcellus23 1y ago
    > That does seem to be the trend these days These days? The space race was 50 years ago.
    - excalibur 1y ago
      Burning money is the trend these days. The first time around, the space race was expensive, but not entirely unnecessary. There were real strategic advantages at play.
tw04 1y ago
>Based on SLS and the comments here, it seems extremely unlikely the US is still dominant. Literally every other nation is trying to catch up to Space-X and is nowhere close. An American company, based in American, primarily staffed by American engineers. I don't know by what measure you'd say that the US isn's still far, far ahead but I don't know of any other country currently re-using rockets dozens of times. What did I miss?
- harimau777 1y ago
  Personally, I think it matters whether its achieved by a private company versus by society. That's especially the case when the private company is so closely tied to someone who hates and alienates so much of society. I don't think that I could view a win for Musk as a win for anything that looks like my chunk of the US. There's also the fact that part of NASA's mission is to share their knowledge with the public.
  - tw04 1y ago
    >Personally, I think it matters whether its achieved by a private company versus by society. How exactly are you making the distinction? Space-X wouldn't exist without governemnt funding. CATL sells launches to commercial entities as well as servicing the government. Official ownership? Because China seems to think a lot of what Space-X is doing can only be accomplished by the commercial sector and is funding startups in China to do the same thing. https://spacenews.com/chinas-landspace-secures-state-backed-funding-for-reusable-rockets/ https://spacenews.com/chinas-landspace-secures-state-backed-...
    - tclancy 1y ago
      Who any profits go to would be an easy first measure.
    - vkou 1y ago
      > China seems to think a lot of what Space-X is doing can only be accomplished by the commercial sector and is funding startups in China to do the same thing. That's how China's been running their economy for decades. Every few years, the government sets a direction everyone should row in, and generally lets private firms figure out which one of them will get there fastest.
contrarian1234 1y ago
Do the Chinese view this as a race...? I've seen no indication that they see it in these terms. They've been pretty low-key about their progress. To me it looks like the US obsession with reframe everything in terms of a "new cold war". From the US perspective, in end you look stupid if you lose, and you look stupid if you just spend a ton of money to repeat what you did last time
- oreally 1y ago
  In world history, it's a common case that the number 1 is always inclined to stay at number 1 while beating down would-be contenders. China has always been insular, and they don't think about space glories that much at the moment. It would take a couple more generations for them to care about something like that.
  - contrarian1234 1y ago
    I just think it's about framing. "Glory" can exist without comparing yourself to others. When they built the three-gorges dam they probably weren't thinking "our dam is better than those American dams". It's just impressive in its own right They can be working on going to space without constantly bringing out the proverbial measuring tape to compare themselves to the US. I'm not totally in the loop with the Chinese zeitgeist, so my post was a genuine question. Maybe they are comparing, maybe not. Both seem sensible reactions
    - oreally 1y ago
      Well if anything the general chinese working culture is to keep your head down and work diligently. If they do have to compare it's because of how connected everything is nowadays. The US comparatively does boast a lot more that it's a bit of a meme on chinese social media.

bluGill 1y ago

What is the point of winning though? We could be doing other things in stead, and I'm going to submit that they are more valuable (you are of course welcome to disagree - this is an opinion). Personally I hope no human lands on the moon again. I like telling my parents they are so old humans walked on the moon in their lifetime (last human left the moon December 1972 - before I was born). There is no value in this statement, but it is still fun.

heavyset_go 1y ago
The electronics we're typing these comments on were only rapidly miniaturized originally to be small and light enough to shoot into space. There are second, third, etc order effects to things like a space race.
- alistairSH 1y ago
  Sure. So let’s do something useful and new. We know how to go to the moon - it’s just a matter of money (and political will). If there’s something else to do on the moon, let’s be clear that is the objective.
  - tcmart14 1y ago
    I do agree with this. If we are returning to the moon just to say we did, as a space lover, I do have an issue with this and can't really get on board. I am hoping we have some other larger goal in mind, like maybe are back to the idea of a permanent moon base and a potential jump off point for other projects or we have a list of long term moon experiments to do. But yea, it just isn't exciting if we are going there to take a couple pictures and just to rub it in the face of China or India or some other nation. We've already done that.
    - jcgrillo 1y ago
      The goal could be simply to learn how to do it again, since almost everyone who actually has done it--on any level, be it engineering, management, manufacturing, flight crew, ground crew, etc--is dead. That's a totally worthwhile exercise if it's actually a serious goal to explore further.
      - bluGill 1y ago
        We have plenty of people working on space - we go to Mars with robots all the time which is harder than the moon. We have a space station (though it is nearing end of life). We have all the needed knowledge it is just applied elsewhere. There will be some things to learn about the moon that are different but not much.
        jcgrillo 1y ago
        Apollo made about a half dozen crewed trips to the moon (quantity deliberately left vague to account for quibbling over technicalities). They made it a relatively reliable, repeatable affair. My point is that organization--the team of people who have done that no longer exists. So until another team starts doing it again, we just don't know. Theoretically it's very probably achievable, but theory absent experiment doesn't really mean anything.
        bluGill 1y ago
        There is value in experience, but for something like this I'm going to submit that the larger value is in learning to spin up teams that do something completely different. IF you were talking about building a good public transit system the value is in building a team and keeping it running. However this is - for all we know - just a one off show and so there isn't value in getting experience. The people looking at Mars have value in experience, and there may be value in robotic moon missions, but so far as I can tell human missions are just for showing off and should be treated like a one time show off and then get rid of the team for another 50 years.
      - 1y ago
  - heavyset_go 1y ago
    I'm all on board for doing something useful and new, my comment was not in support of having a space race for the sake of having one.
  - rkomorn 1y ago
    I actually think getting the political will, money, and execution together would be the part that would be a noteworthy show of force (and I'd argue being unable to get it done would be equally noteworthy in the other direction).
    - bluGill 1y ago
      Fair enough, but IMO there are better places we should be focusing on getting political will together if we want to focus on something big.
      - rkomorn 1y ago
        Yes and no, I'd say. Going back to the moon is big but it's also pretty self-contained, in a way. It just costs money (and doles a bunch of it out to the contracted companies). It's also mostly time-boxed. Healthcare, worker's rights, voting rights, infrastructure, etc, are all more important (so I agree with you there), but also all have way more consequences that are wider-ranging and longer-term (which I'd say contributes do the political dysfunction around those topics). This should be an "easy win" by comparison, and the "PR" impact of success (or failure) will be significant. Edit: that said, if you gave me a magic wand to pick any one of these topics for the US to succeed at, it wouldn't be going to the moon.
    - alistairSH 1y ago
      But a show of force for who? We're not in the middle of a Cold War. Are we trying to upstage India or China? And could we get the same political ends via something more useful/with better returns?
      - rkomorn 1y ago
        For everyone (including India and China). Could we get the same ends via something more useful? In theory, sure, but it seems pretty evident that the answer in practice is no, since our congress has mostly been gridlocked for the past 16 years.
  - anarticle 1y ago
    I would like to point out it is not a sure thing, rockets explode all the time. It is fantastically dangerous. The matter of factness of the shuttle shows how good the program was, but we still had two explode completely.
    - alistairSH 1y ago
      Sure, I didn't mean to imply space is easy. It's absolutely not. I just want to get a return on investment. And up-staging India and China for the sake of it probably doesn't give much return.
- dmvdoug 1y ago
  Nah, that’s false. Miniaturization was already underway before the Space Race. The space program absolutely benefited from it, yes. But NASA wasn’t at the forefront of those developments.
  - heavyset_go 1y ago
    I was talking about rapid miniaturization, not just miniaturization in general, which I agree was underway before any space development. NASA literally had departments and budgets dedicated to miniaturization.
    - dmvdoug 1y ago
      I’ll give you an example: the technology in the Instrument Unit on the Saturn V, which was the computer that controlled the Saturn V during launch, was largely derived from System/360. By technology here I mean things like the Unit Logic Devices (ULDs) out of which the logic boards in the Launch Vehicle Digital Computer (LVDC) were made. No surprise, I suppose, given that it was contracted to IBM’s Federal Systems Division.
      - m4rtink 1y ago
        Sure, but compare density of a s360 mainframe and the Apollo Guidance Computer - they pumped a lot of money into integrated circuits just as they weee becoming viable to hit their size, mass and power targets. Sure, this would likely have happend anyway, but possibly later with all related knock off effects.
        bluGill 1y ago
        > Sure, this would likely have happend anyway, but possibly later with all related knock off effects. What are we missing because they did that though? Or what came latter? There is no way to answer this. It is easy to see what happened because of effort, but not what you didn't get (or got latter) because to focused on something else.
  - 1y ago
harimau777 1y ago
To me, a significant part of the value presented by space exploration is the way that it inspires society. I think that whatever else we would do instead would need to be equally inspiring. Honestly, I can't really think of something comparable.
- bluGill 1y ago
  So lets focus on genetics and see if we can get fire breathing dragons instead. That should be just as inspiring
  - m4rtink 1y ago
    Humans with feline features!
    - bluGill 1y ago
      There are a lot of options, but they are hard to think of... I was really hoping someone could come up with an idea along a completely different line.
      - m4rtink 1y ago
        Sure, but might as well start with the basics and iteratively go from there. :)

UltraSane 1y ago

Sending humans to the moon is just burning money though. It isn't useful at all.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
excalibur 1y ago
That does seem to be the trend these days. See: AI proliferation, cryptocurrency.
- marcellus23 1y ago
  > That does seem to be the trend these days These days? The space race was 50 years ago.
  - excalibur 1y ago
    Burning money is the trend these days. The first time around, the space race was expensive, but not entirely unnecessary. There were real strategic advantages at play.

tw04 1y ago

>Based on SLS and the comments here, it seems extremely unlikely the US is still dominant. Literally every other nation is trying to catch up to Space-X and is nowhere close. An American company, based in American, primarily staffed by American engineers. I don't know by what measure you'd say that the US isn's still far, far ahead but I don't know of any other country currently re-using rockets dozens of times. What did I miss?

harimau777 1y ago
Personally, I think it matters whether its achieved by a private company versus by society. That's especially the case when the private company is so closely tied to someone who hates and alienates so much of society. I don't think that I could view a win for Musk as a win for anything that looks like my chunk of the US. There's also the fact that part of NASA's mission is to share their knowledge with the public.
- tw04 1y ago
  >Personally, I think it matters whether its achieved by a private company versus by society. How exactly are you making the distinction? Space-X wouldn't exist without governemnt funding. CATL sells launches to commercial entities as well as servicing the government. Official ownership? Because China seems to think a lot of what Space-X is doing can only be accomplished by the commercial sector and is funding startups in China to do the same thing. https://spacenews.com/chinas-landspace-secures-state-backed-funding-for-reusable-rockets/ https://spacenews.com/chinas-landspace-secures-state-backed-...
  - tclancy 1y ago
    Who any profits go to would be an easy first measure.
  - vkou 1y ago
    > China seems to think a lot of what Space-X is doing can only be accomplished by the commercial sector and is funding startups in China to do the same thing. That's how China's been running their economy for decades. Every few years, the government sets a direction everyone should row in, and generally lets private firms figure out which one of them will get there fastest.

contrarian1234 1y ago

Do the Chinese view this as a race...? I've seen no indication that they see it in these terms. They've been pretty low-key about their progress. To me it looks like the US obsession with reframe everything in terms of a "new cold war". From the US perspective, in end you look stupid if you lose, and you look stupid if you just spend a ton of money to repeat what you did last time

oreally 1y ago
In world history, it's a common case that the number 1 is always inclined to stay at number 1 while beating down would-be contenders. China has always been insular, and they don't think about space glories that much at the moment. It would take a couple more generations for them to care about something like that.
- contrarian1234 1y ago
  I just think it's about framing. "Glory" can exist without comparing yourself to others. When they built the three-gorges dam they probably weren't thinking "our dam is better than those American dams". It's just impressive in its own right They can be working on going to space without constantly bringing out the proverbial measuring tape to compare themselves to the US. I'm not totally in the loop with the Chinese zeitgeist, so my post was a genuine question. Maybe they are comparing, maybe not. Both seem sensible reactions
  - oreally 1y ago
    Well if anything the general chinese working culture is to keep your head down and work diligently. If they do have to compare it's because of how connected everything is nowadays. The US comparatively does boast a lot more that it's a bit of a meme on chinese social media.