4 ms·
It's like the Olympics, you have to win the basketball gold medal every 4 years or accept that somebody else is better than you at that game. Every medal can be
by pmontra 1y ago
It's like the Olympics, you have to win the basketball gold medal every 4 years or accept that somebody else is better than you at that game. Every medal can be the last one forever. Sports are sports, not being good at other matters can have substantial consequences. Maybe landing on the moon is not one of them but the degree of technology and organization that it requires is certainly a proxy of the general standing of a country.
- mathw 1y agoTrue, however if you want to be great on the world stage and have people look at you and say "wow they can do amazing things" I'm not sure landing on the moon really has much value. The obsession with beating China there this generation is certainly not very healthy, especially when it's built on a moon landing system that was primarily designed to keep space shuttle contractors in business. Want to impress the world? End poverty. Advance cancer treatment. Build a viable nuclear fusion power plant. Make an HIV vaccine and sell it affordably across the world. We could be done with the Cold War-era rocket-waving.
- snapcaster 1y ago>Want to impress the world? End poverty. China didn't _end_ poverty but they did lift hundreds of millions of people out of it and i've literally never seen anyone outside of China give them props for it
- qcnguy 1y agoReally? I've seen the opposite. They get way too many props for it given that the main reason China was so poor to begin with was their own cultural history. You shouldn't get credit for solving a problem you created for yourselves.