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Re: 1. I think the America of Theseus mindset is a bit troubling. A lot of people like to identify with achievements that they played no role in. Based on zer
by Waterluvian 1y ago
Re: 1. I think the America of Theseus mindset is a bit troubling. A lot of people like to identify with achievements that they played no role in. Based on zero expertise whatsoever, I have a sense that this is a bit self defeating. To be born a winner, to be taught you’re a winner… how can that be healthy?
Today’s America scores zero points for its accomplishments of the past. But I think one way it can be a good thing is the, “we’ve done it before, we can do it again” attitude. Which is somewhat opposite to “we already won!”
- itsnowandnever 1y ago100% - given the resources we have, America is far underperforming at the moment
- knowitnone3 1y ago[flagged]
- gpt5 1y agoI really don't get this sentiment. 80% of orbital launches last year were Americans. The USA hasn't been this dominant in the space race since the 60s.
- timschmidt 1y ago99% of those were SpaceX
- gpt5 1y agoExactly. The US private space industry is thriving and profitable. That's exactly what makes it so efficient and dominant.
- Waterluvian 1y agoCapitalism is incredibly efficient this way and it really should be appreciated as being such an advantage. I wonder if it’s not a free advantage though. I suspect there’s a risk that it might diminish the ability to accomplish projects that aren’t compatible with capitalism. Ie. ROI isn’t sufficiently short term, ROI is socialized, no ROI at all, excessive risk. An open question as I really don’t have an answer either way: what’s the last mega project the U.S. succeeded in completing that wasn’t directly tied to a short term business plan? Something for future generations or a major environmental project or a transportation or infrastructure project, etc.
- QuadmasterXLII 1y agoI mean, falcon 9 reusability is a decent example, if 13 years from work starts to reusability is proven commercially viable counts as a long term business plan.
- harimau777 1y agoThe private space industry doesn't belong to the US, it belongs to the billionaires. We might even be better to have no one advancing space travel than to have only the billionaires doing it. At least then they can't find some way to use it to screw us over.
- parineum 1y agoSpaceX isn't a billionaire.
- mysecretaccount 1y agoClearly the poster is saying that SpaceX is "the billionaires". SpaceX is majority owned by billionaires.
- harimau777 1y agoIt's not a billionaire but it is owned by a billionaire.
- monooso 1y agoGenuine question, is it profitable because of government contracts?
- iknowstuff 1y agonah Starlink is the money printer
- ls612 1y agoSpaceX exists because of commercial resupply but that was still a good deal for the government since it was cheaper than the shuttles or buying extra Soyuz cargo launches.
- rowanG077 1y agoI don't know. I also don't know why that is relevant. Just because a business is selling a good or service to the government doesn't mean it's not competitive, dominant, efficient or really anything.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- zm262 1y agoUS dominates with SpaceX internet project. For moon landing it's far behind at this point.
- briandw 1y agoFar behind who? China still doesn’t have a Falcon 9 competitor, let alone Starship.
- m4rtink 1y agoThez certainly have some Falcon 9 clones in full scale testing - would not he surprised if they have it working in a year or two, there is just too much money on the table.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- zdragnar 1y agoAmerica cannot possibly win the space race again, because it has already been won. The first to get there has already happened. The idea that we need to land on the moon once a generation just to say that we are as good at landing on the moon as our parents is absurd.
- Waterluvian 1y agoIt’s just as absurd today as it was in the 60s. It’s an artificial challenge that focuses attention, with the goal of exercising government, industries, academics, etc. and maybe learn and invent a few things along the way. Yes, yes, Cold War and all those theories. But it had and can again have this greater effect. It’s kind of like a FIRST Robotics Challenge for nations. The specific goal really doesn’t matter and can just as well be different than the moon. That’s not the interesting part.
- harimau777 1y agoExcellent point! I'd add that it also serves to inspire regular people and get them interested in science. Unfortunately, I think that's the problem with some of the rhetoric like "the green revolution will be the next space race!" For better or worse, solar panels aren't as inspiring to most people as space is.
- heavyset_go 1y agoA lot of money and time were behind the space race propaganda arm that got people excited about advancements in space technology. If the same resources were put into popularizing advancements in energy, you'd see more excitement. As it is, there are kids growing up excited about environmentalism like there were kids growing up excited about space.
- anigbrowl 1y agoNo. Kids are not stupid. You can appreciate environmental innovation while also recognizing that it is fundamentally, qualitatively different from doing difficult things in space. Do you look at the Mars Rover and say to yourself 'big deal, we have cars right here on Earth'?
- whtrbt 1y ago_America of Theseus_ is a great shorthand for what you're describing. Did you just come up with it then?
- fsckboy 1y agoAmerica of Theseus is a great phrase, quite apt for describing "the American Experiment" and the numerous ways America reinvents itself. but I don't see how this usage of it provides any discernable meaning. Ship of Theseus is more a question than an answer, so saying "America of Theseus, therefore 1969 or any connection to it is irrelevant" doesn't follow.
- Waterluvian 1y agoI think it’s apt because the Ship of Theseus as a thought experiment is unanswerable. It’s both. It’s neither. America does keep reinventing itself. It has few of the same parts as before, but it still resembles some concept of “America” in many ways. In that way it is the same ship. But is it the same ship? Can it win a space race today that a previous manifestation of America could? Maybe it’s not the same ship and what it could do in the 60s it can no longer do today. I certainly don’t think it’s a question that demands an answer. Perfectly valid to choose not to show up to the starting line. But having run that race under the same banner generations ago doesn’t tell us much about the America today.
- ordu 1y agoMy comment is borderline off topic, but I just can leave it at that. Sorry. > I think it’s apt because the Ship of Theseus as a thought experiment is unanswerable. It is answerable, you just need to go meta a little. You can argue that the Ship of Theseus doesn't exist (and didn't existed) because it is just a lot of wood. You can use reductionism further and say that wood doesn't exist, it is a bunch of atoms or quarks or whatever. The ship is just a leaky abstraction people are forced use because of their cognitive limitations. But if it is an abstraction, not a "real" thing, then I see no issues with the ship existing (in a limited sense) even after it changed all the atoms it consists of. The other approach is to declare that a ship is not a thing, but a process. Like you do when talking about people, who change their atoms all the time, but they still keep they identity in a "magical" way. If you see people as a process, then it doesn't matter how often it replaces its matter with another matter. Like a tornado, which exists while exchanging matter with environment all the time and still being the same tornado. Or like a wave on a water surface, it doesn't have any atoms moving like a wave, but still a wave exists. > It has few of the same parts as before, but it still resembles some concept of “America” in many ways. It doesn't matter if there any old parts left, what matters is a continuous history. > But is it the same ship? It is the same ship, but its properties are changing over time. Like when people become older, some of them become wiser for example, some become physically weaker. > But having run that race under the same banner generations ago doesn’t tell us much about the America today. Yeah, with this I can fully agree. BTW we don't know was the Ship of Theseus becoming better or worse after repairs, but I'd bet that its maximum speed was changing due to repairs.
- naasking 1y ago> A lot of people like to identify with achievements that they played no role in. They arguably footed the bill.
- eru 1y agoAre you suggesting people eg born after 1980 footed the bill for the Apollo programme?
- zdragnar 1y agoTo the extent that the government runs on debt, that's something of a given.
- eru 1y agoDebt just shifts resources around in the present, but can't magic new resources into existence. (Unless you borrow from foreigners, which taps resources from outside the country that later have to be paid back. But I'm not sure the Apollo programme was financed with foreign loans?)
- zdragnar 1y agoInterest and repayment of the debt happens in the future. Though the government does sell bonds to individuals and organizations, much of the financing comes from the federal reserve.
- eru 1y agoThe federal reserve only 'prints money'. It doesn't create any real resources. If one part of society sells bonds to another part of society, no real resources from the future have traveled back in time.
- rayiner 1y agoMy first job out of law school was at a 176 year old law firm. New lawyers were socialized to identify with the past achievements of the firm, like helping J.P. Morgan build the railroads. There was a good reason for that: it socializes people to adhere to a culture and practices that have proven to be effective. You’re right that, if overdone, it can lead to complacency. But if you treat every generation as a blank slate, you abandon the valuable capital of experience.
- nothercastle 1y agoEstablished on 176 years of lying cheating and graft. That’s definitely a legacy. Rail was AI and dot com of the 1800s.
- rayiner 1y agoI expected that comment for J.P. Morgan, not rail… so upvote for you.
- nothercastle 1y agoRail pioneered modern financial scams. I say modern because before that there were similar schemes in other areas like trade expeditions but the historical and written records on those are less complete and recent
- jrnng 1y agoValdez, AK railroad history is interesting. Also violent.
- qcnguy 1y agoThe South Sea Bubble would like a word.
- nothercastle 1y agoYep just more limited written and legal record there
- phyzix5761 1y agoThat's every country though. Just read the regional or national newspapers of other nations.
- safety1st 1y agoThis gets back to why there is a "we need to start making things in America again" sentiment. We made a national policy decision and underwent an economic transformation based on financialization and globalization. Kept the design and services aspects of our greatest companies in the US but the nuts and bolts of manufacturing and assembly went overseas, relying on patents and IP law to control production from afar. This approach was always going to have holes in it and sure enough we're now facing a difficult and uncertain endeavor, for example, to ever be able to make the best chips in the world on American soil again. (Or as in the headlines today, to source and process rare earths for all manner of production.) It turns out that, surprise surprise, there was tons of process knowledge and tons of capacity for innovation in the people who were closest to the actual work of production, now those people are no longer American and couldn't care less what America can and cannot do. So we're in a bind. Americans keep claiming they can build all the things but they haven't actually done so in many years. There's no way to solve the problem other than to try, and that entails clawing back as much of the people, processes and materiel as you can by whatever means you can until you start cobbling together some genuine innovation. My gut tells me enough of the political class supports the idea that the financiers will just have to get used to capitalizing a lot of production on domestic soil again, politicians will of course be happy to print billions more dollars of free money and hand it to them for this.
- mlrtime 1y ago100% Agree and it would never happen if not for some major changes. People want their cheap stuff made somewhere else.
- safety1st 1y agoIt's OK for people to want cheap stuff. But to me when I see the insistence that to get it cheap it has to be made somewhere else, I think that belief comes from cynicism and from ignorance of history. Like, the whole story of the Industrial Revolution is that we invested continually in technology, training, process and plant, and the cost of producing things as measured by both dollars and labor decreased by orders of magnitude. It never stopped. It kept on working right up until we stopped trying and shipped production overseas. In fact even though they have cheaper labor and don't care as much in some of these overseas locations, usually it STILL happens. Technology, training, process, machinery, all get better, per unit cost of production just keeps on falling. Bring it back to America and focus on these four things and it will happen in America again too. The failure to see this comes from putting the bean counters in charge. A bean counter can't model innovation. They don't know if and when a 10x cost reduction is going to happen somewhere in the industry and then spread. It's not their job to know, and they don't care. They see they can slash a cost by 20% right now by sending those jobs and factories offshore so that's what they do. In most industries in America today the cost of production is still getting cheaper, but what's ballooning is management and administrative costs. They've grown so much that consumer prices are actually going up even as the cost of the essential process of producing the thing has gone down. That's the bean counters replicating. It's all smoke and mirrors and lies. The forces that drove industrialization never stopped working. End the IP regimes, actually make stuff again, fire the bean counters, create competition for the consumer dollar in places where it was all acquired and consolidated into oblivion. The innovators will step in, deploy the next generation of plant, train the next generation of workers, stuff will get cheaper, and wages will actually be decent to boot because new and better processes create demand for new and scarcer skills.
- nicoburns 1y ago> To be born a winner, to be taught you’re a winner… how can that be healthy? The entire mindset of separating the world into "winners" and "losers" in the first place seems unhealthy to me.
- tonyhart7 1y agoonly country that has capital,knowledge,politics,cultural etc can do this because they has so much resource they can spend an multi billions effort on intangible things like this
- mlrtime 1y agoOn a specific topic where the entire point is a race? The point of a race is to win. Have you worked for a company where they never win at anything? Been in meetings where people want to hear about 'wins'? Maybe you don't, but I do. I like to work for a winning team.
- nicoburns 1y agoThat there is a competitive race is part of the assumption. That there is value in winning this race at the expense of other competitors is an assumption. That there will always be "losers" and we can't create a scenario where "everyone is a winner" is an assumption. An alternative perspective on both space races, companies and life in general would be a collaborative one. I like to work on a productive, effective, successful teams, but I don't view that in terms of "winning" and "losing".
- andai 1y ago>Today’s America scores zero points for its accomplishments of the past. By the same logic, also no moral burden for its transgressions? (Not making a claim one way or the other, just noting an asymmetry.)
- dotnet00 1y agoFor the transgressions that the current generation had no influence in and can't meaningfully change, yeah, I think they mostly get a pass. Though "zero points" is also probably a bit too harsh. I think Americans should be proud of their peoples' past accomplishments, but should recognize that they're distinct from their own accomplishments and kind of irrelevant to the current race. The current space race is really just about the US trying to show that it isn't in decline, that it's still more capable than a rising China. So, "my grandfather was alive when America set foot on the Moon, so we've already won!" is kind of a sad statement.
- DrScientist 1y agoIsn't the point we've been - and we've learned there really isn't much there and it's not worth the effort? Even at the time people suspected that - but at least there was a chance of finding something unexpected. As to the knowledge is has been done, and therefore could be done again - sure that's valuable, but that knowledge belongs to the whole world not just to America. And in terms of national prestige or uniting goal - wouldn't it be better to have a goal to create a long term sustainable energy economy for example. I think that has more strategic value than putting a man back ( or women for the first time ) on the moon.
- greesil 1y agoBoots on the moon! Maybe we will want that helium 3 since it looks like fusion has a shot.
- DrScientist 1y agoIs it really easier/cheaper to colonize the moon, set up Helium 3 collection, and transport it back, rather than use Deuterium/Tritium? Also while He-3 doesn't produce radio-active by products, doesn't the reaction require much higher temps than a D-T one? Perhaps it might be wise to get one working first before investing too much in a moon shot.
- greesil 1y agoNo of course not. Helium 3 is a joke. I mean, it'd be nice not to make nuclear waste of the reactor walls. But maybe not billion dollar nice.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]