[komali2]

With all due respect, that is the standpoint of a cynic or perhaps nihilist. Which is totally fine, people should have the right to not care about stuff without being judged for it.

However, if everyone was a perfect nihilist, you wouldn't have cheap old cars to drive because nobody would have made cars. You wouldn't have a cell phone, and especially a data connection, if not for the space program. And so on.

So while I don't think it's a problem if some people take your viewpoint, I think it's a problem when everyone does. Somebody has to care enough about the environment to stop rampant capitalism from destroying it so that we have a planet to live on 50 years from now (electric cars, improved public transit.) Someone has to care enough to get humans off the planet so that when it is inevitably destroyed (asteroid, nuclear war, virus, overpopulation) the human race can continue elsewhere.

[inimino]

> cynic or perhaps nihilist

Nonsense. It is a perfectly reasonable perspective for someone who isn't terribly interested in technological development and wants to live practically with what exists today. There's a place for dreaming about Mars, but most people don't. That's fine, and it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with cynicism or nihilism.

[tempestn]

Do you think this comment would be better received without the "Nonsense" intro? It's tough to bring someone around to your way of thinking when you dismiss theirs out of hand.

[saiya-jin]

this is beyond one's personal dreams. only total anarchist/nihilist truly doesn't care about state of the environment where he lives. solarcity - cheap storage of solar energy for daily uses in household - not for everybody, but potentially for billions for sure.

space - indirect windfall of discoveries and improvements made in materials, manufacturing processes etc - it happened in the past with Nasa, it happens/will happen with them and others.

I drive 13 year old diesel bmw that costed 25% of a new one and probably will never buy a new car, so what? Mankind needs people like him, now more than ever.

It's not perfectly reasonable perspective. It's a perspective of an old, grumpy person who only cares about himself, and the world he lives in. Sure, we have plenty of those, but it ain't the best attitude to say at least.

[inimino]

> anarchist/nihilist

You seem to be throwing these around as pejoratives, but neither of these terms has anything to do with this topic.

> doesn't care about state of the environment

Nobody but you said anything about not caring about the state of the environment.

> an old, grumpy person

You have no basis to make such remarks. Plenty of people care about the people around them, their immediate environment, and the circumstances they can personally and directly affect without getting caught up in fantasies about the future.

Wanting to send people to Mars for the good of the species is a fine idea, but your enthusiasm about it doesn't make you any more noble than someone who is simply more practically minded or not as optimistic as you are.

This kind of disrespect for the perspectives of others makes it that much more difficult to achieve the political compromises necessary to make any of these dreams a reality.

[a_plastic_bag]

> You wouldn't have a cell phone, and especially a data connection, if not for the space program. And so on.

Given enough time, it would've been invented regardless. You are right that we probably would be further behind technologically if it wasn't for the space race though.

[nandemo]

> You wouldn't have a cell phone, and especially a data connection, if not for the space program.

Is that so? Can you give me a source?

[lkbm]

The integrated circuit came out of Apollo[1], and apparently the cellphone camera came from NASA's work[2]. Not sure about the rest. We wouldn't have GPS, obviously.

You can credit a lot of stuff to the space program if you want, since all tech is built on other tech, and NASA was a big source of R&D in the 1950s onward.

[1] https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/apollo-ic.html [2] http://www.space.com/10635-space-spinoff-technology-cellphon...

[patrickk]

To continue this train of thought, the entire reason Silicon Valley exists in the first place is because of Department of Defense spending: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo (aka Big Government spending.)

The foundations of the web were laid down by Tim Berners-Lee while working at CERN, a huge, expensive physics research organisation funded by European governments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN#Computer_science

[nickik]

While this is true, its also not the point. Russia and other places have and had tons of programs like it, but they don't have a Silicon Valley.

Government is usually always involved in nearly everything, because they are spending almost 50% of the GDP, and even 100 years ago they spent 20% or so. Other countries its sometimes as high as 70%.

Saying that computers, the web, satellites would not exist without government is a pretty absurd claim. The idea of satellites, networks and all this stuff was around and would have happened. The US was commercially successful, actually uniquely successful in almost all of world history, during a period when federal government spent only about 2% of GDP. During this time tons of innovation, the most in the world, came out of the US.

Tesla is successful not because of government handouts anymore then many other large companies. It of course helps them, just like with any other large company. Elon would be a idiot if he didn't advocate for tax breaks, you have to play the politics game.

[sqeaky]

Governments can't innovate but can absorb a ton of risk (like waging war levels of risk), Businesses can innovate but really cannot take large risk.

When a government absorbs risks by spending on research it can have businesses do the work on the promise the benefit is shared. Christopher Columbus finding America and the companies that launched Apollo both worked this way. It seems to work well in practice.

It is hard to say that we would definitely be this far without Government spending. It is reasonable to make a case we could never leave the planet without an Apollo like initiative. How would the space industry would have gotten started purely in the private sector? Its not like they could have contracted the launches out, there were no launch companies. I don't hold this extreme view but I can see how it could be held.

To go to the most extreme view I can see possible: It is entirely possible that without that spending humanity wouldn't have GPS. It is also possible a foreign power that was hostile could have GPS and use it in war against us. With a few tech changes like that in the worst of these scenarios there could be enough tech lopsided-ness that MAD never worked and one side could have ruined the planet with nukes during the cold war.

[nandemo]

Eh, so IC was invented and commercialized before Apollo, but Apollo was instrumental in accelerating the development of ICs. That's a far cry from "we wouldn't have cell phones without NASA"...

[shaneos]

All satellites for many years were only launched as part of the space race between the US and the USSR. Of course there would be no satellite communication without the space program.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorer_1

[nandemo]

But cell phones aren't satellite phones. Am I missing something? Do cellular networks rely on satellites indirectly?

I'm not talking about GPS, which isn't an essential feature of cell phones.

[takeda]

Yes, satellites can be used when you're making a long distance calls.