[sperling75]

Agree completely that our space program needs a new significant mission to stay relevant. However, I don't think going to space matters as much as it did last century. During JFK's reign catching up in space with the soviets was more than about going to space, it was about being able to defend the country. Today I think our new Moon Mission should be about solving climate change. That's an issue the country and world need to come together on to solve.

[danblick]

Gerard Degroot argues in "The Dark Side of the Moon" [1] that going to the moon was mostly about (1) allowing Democrats (LBJ and JFK) to score political points by criticising the Eisenhower administration and (2) cashing in on American cultural enthusiasm for space (Buck Rogers, Orson Welles, etc.). Space exploration didn't actually make much sense in terms of defense policy, international relations, or scientific research.

Eisenhower hated the idea of throwing money away on expensive programs that offered poor return on investment and were primarily funded for political reasons (his famous comments about the military industrial complex were made in a speech at the very end of his presidency). He funded development of American ICBM and space reconnaissance programs in the late 50s, but did so separately from space exploration programs. By the time of the Mercury missions we already had mature ICBM and satellite programs and it didn't have much to do with real defense needs.

Even in the late 50s the US was never really behind the USSR in terms of space technology, but for strategic reasons it was sometimes unclear how far ahead the US was (for example, we had extensive photographs from satellites showing Russian nuclear missile launch sites; these indicated that we had far more missiles than the Russians, but at the time the satellites used to collect these photos were still secret, and so the intelligence they revealed was not widely known, even though most Americans believed at the time that America lagged behind the Russians).

Sputnik may have been the first satellite in space, but Eisenhower had intentionally stopped von Braun from launching a satellite even though we were very close to having that capability. Eisenhower was mostly concerned with establishing a precedent that would allow satellites to fly over foreign countries, and didn't mind if the Russians were the first to space if this meant that one of their satellites would establish this precedent instead of one of ours.

(1) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0814719953

[euyyn]

Just from the look of it, without having read the book nor Degroot's critics, looks like a pretty unbalanced viewpoint:

"In the things the we seemed to be behind, we actually were ahead but it was a secret. In the things we irrefutably were behind, it's because we were just waiting for them to set the precedent".

When an argument has such an onanistic appeal to patriots, it's suspect.

[drzaiusapelord]

That book is fairly critical and a far cry from a patriotic tome. If anything, its anti-patriotic and is overly critical of NASA and US space policy while being fairly mum on the Soviet program and not having too much criticism of the costs of the Soviet programs. That book is the anti-Apollo and dismissive of US accomplishments. Sadly, we live in an age where ahistoric claptrap gets popular because internet forum bubbles encourage "alternative" thinking for the sake of being contrarian.

It is also full of dishonestly. The son of one of the engineers claims a interview in the book never happened:

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Side-Moon-Magnificent-American/p...

Also this quote is completely out of context:

"But the final word goes to Eisenhower, who once vetoed Apollo. He reminded Americans that "every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed".

This was in reference to the war machine, not our civilian space program and its disingenuous to apply it to NASA.

Lastly, yes the US could have beat sputnik. Recent declassified memos which seem to be authentic have revealed this possibility. Von Braun had a 4-stage Jupiter-C in 1956. It had the capabilities to launch a satellite into orbit. Apparantly, the 4th stage was left ignored due to political concerns of setting off a arms race, or even a war, with the USSR if a US satellite flew over its country every 90 minutes or so.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey/beating-the-russ...

[euyyn]

> Recent declassified memos which seem to be authentic have revealed this possibility. Von Braun had a 4-stage Jupiter-C in 1956. It had the capabilities to launch a satellite into orbit. Apparantly, the 4th stage was left ignored due to political concerns of setting off a arms race, or even a war, with the USSR if a US satellite flew over its country every 90 minutes or so.

Do we have access to the USSR's declassified materials regarding Sputnik? Can't really assume they launched as soon as they could, given that there existed arguments to hold it.

[flogic]

I agree that we need to solve climate change. It's the single most important issue facing humanity at the moment. Where I don't agree though is the general idea that it's mutually exclusive with space exploration. A common theme is that space research often pays of in advancements down here.

If we actually have a stable outpost on the moon or Mars. We'll likely advance the state of solar systems and energy storage. We'll also likely need research into maintaining a stable biome on said station. And then there is the next generation of scientists that will be inspired. So in a roundabout way, space exploration could help save our butts down here.

[ethbro]

Earth always has been, and in all likelihood will forever be, screwed up. Climate change will never be solved until (to paraphrase a quip from memory) global inequity has been evened out to a level a Pakistani brickmaker would consider prosperity. I don't see countries with higher standards of living making those sacrifices for the greater good of our planet.

I'd sleep much better betting our species on space expansion than on sustainability.

PS: To say nothing of the possibility of peak global output. Maybe we only get one shot at the level of resources and technologies required to seed space.

[kazagistar]

If peak global output is barely enough to colonize, then there is no way any of the colonies will ever reach that level of output, and then whats the point? It should be done sustainably, or it doesn't really matter at all.

[ethbro]

Resources, especially outside of a gravity well, and a new Frontier Thesis.

[DanielBMarkham]

"Earth always has been, and in all likelihood will forever be, screwed up."

Agreed. Not only screwed up, but screwed up in multiple ways. Throwing more money at the dozens of money sinks here does nothing to significantly help ensure our long-term survival. It might be the right thing to do, and over time continuing to do things like this may mean that mankind enters into some new wondrous universe free from pain and suffering. But right now, right here? We need an insurance policy. We need to get the hell off this ball of mud.

Want to know why the space program never went anywhere? Because back in the 60s and 70s, people said exactly the same thing "We need to spend our money on earthbound problems"

We've spent trillions on those problems. They are still here. In fact, the places we've made the most progress are the places we didn't try to fix.

I'm not in favor of a new huge national mission. I think a huge national goal to decrease LEO launch costs by 99.9% or more would be worth spending tens or hundreds of billions of dollars on. But heck, if we narrowed our focus to just that, we could probably get it done a lot cheaper than if we went down the mission creep road again.

[ethbro]

To be accurate, we did go to the moon and do the other things.

The other things at the time happened to be ensuring people weren't lynched for the color of their skin and ensuring Vietnam didn't fall to communism on the current administration's watch.

[DanielBMarkham]

We did the other things. You are correct.

Care to go back to that porch in the Appalachians that LBJ sat on when he declared his war on poverty -- a war that has cost trillions -- and take a look at the results?

Or heed Bono, when he states the obvious that dumping money on things because they are politically important is a counter-indicative factor of success of the effort. In fact, just look at the evidence.

Political systems exist for political reasons.

The danger, as I have outlined it, is that instead of spending money in some kind of mathematical way, we behave as humans always have, and spend money based on immediate pain or rewards.

That's fucked. We need to leave. Now.

[streuselpie]

If you can't sustain a a huge, rich, self-repairing ecosystem, what are your chances of getting one of the ground where there is none, and then sutaining it?

Are we really sure this isn't just a bunch of rationalization because really, we ought to confront the people who carve up resources and people? Going to the moon, even colonizing the whole Milky Way is completely uninspiring compared to something like bringing war criminals to justice, rather than celebrating and comforting them. So yeah, if we can't do the serious things, I guess toy stuff is all we're stuck with.

[geocar]

I believe we can sustain a huge, rich, self-repairing ecosystem, but I don't think we should want to:

Building the capability to get into space will be hard.

Building the capability to get into space while trying to preserve the self-repairing ecosystem of the Earth that birthed us, may be much harder, and might be impossible.

If a catastrophic event is truly inevitable (and whether it's an asteroid, or too many cows is irrelevant to me), then getting into space is absolutely essential for our species long-term survival, and a conversation about sustaining our ecosystem really needs to be about how long we need this ecosystem to last us: At the current rate of pollution, it's very possible the earth will never become uninhabitable to humans simply because humans aren't yeast.

That being said: A more measured conversation about increasing quality of life by reducing pollution isn't necessarily in conflict with the goals of getting off the planet. It'd just be nice to have that conversation instead of the polarizing one that most people seem to want to have about climate change.

[ethbro]

> Going to the moon, even colonizing the whole Milky Way is completely uninspiring compared to something like bringing war criminals to justice

I'm all for creating as much justice and sustainability as we can with an efficient amount of effort, but still for stopping short of perfection. In a thousand years, which of your options is going to matter more to our future descendants?

[madaxe_again]

You're going to need to look beyond NASA for earth sciences for the time being - there's about to be a certain change in the US that has already said earth science research is to be scrapped.

The new moon mission will likely literally be a moon mission, as the incoming change has alluded to.

Honestly, not sure what the future is for NASA, other than perhaps the past, and a return to primarily propaganda rather than scientific activities.

Can downvoters please explain which of these facts they disagree with?

[nnq]

As a non-american I still think that climate change is the wrong problem for the US to focus on, and space exploration and colonization goals are better targets.

The US has a huge concentration of wealth and brainpower. Neither of those are what's need to solve climate change. You'd need an army of Mahatma Gandhis and the new breed of "social entrepreneurs", not of Einsteins and Oppenheimers.

And you know, that concentration of wealth and brainpower is actually one of the problems that would have to be solved to solve climate change: India and China and soon Africa and all the other poorer countries will keep not giving a fuck about climate change and polution if it helps them pull up their living standards. Those CO2 and methane taxes: they'd rather fight a nuclear/chem/bio war than pay them! Only thing that would incite a more global cooperation towards reducing climate change would be a massive global redistribution of wealth.

And that would mean the end of US as an economic superpower among many other things.

So imho, US should shoot for the stars while you still can and raise the standard of the international space race at all cost! ...cause after the next either world war or "global redistribution of wealth" there might not be enough concentration of brainpower and wealth left to do these things, and the human race needs some kind of plan B!

[Tuna-Fish]

I couldn't disagree with you more.

New Einsteins and Oppenheimers are precisely what's needed to fight climate change. "Social enterpreneurs" will do jack squat, other than make people feel better. The only way to actually beat climate change is to improve the relevant technology to the point where the route to high standard of living is cheaper to do with clean tech. Constantly reducing the cost of solar power, and better batteries mean that we are halfway there.

The job of carbon taxes is not to be the cause of reducing global emissions in the long term. It's to make development of cleaner energy production more economically viable in the short term, to drive investment that way, so that the cost can eventually be driven below fossil fuels.

It's not necessary for some to be pulled down for others to climb up. The rest of the world catching up (and they will) will do nothing to the capability of the the USA.

[phil21]

> I couldn't disagree with you more.

While I try to avoid politics on HN - I'm one data point in disagreement with you.

The only thing to realistically fight climate change is de-population. At least if you want everyone to have a similar standard of living as the "West".

Cleaner energy is something we need - but simple math can tell you that at our current population growth and developmental growth of incredibly poor but populous nations - it only extends the inevitable.

Any environmental program that doesn't make population growth it's first concern is simply a feel-better program in my opinion. It's ignoring the mountain to focus on the molehills.

Anything a future environmental Einstein comes up with will be instantly used to slam the world population right up the the new limit (e.g. the invention of nitrogen fixation).

[nnq]

> "Social enterpreneurs" will do jack squat

You could be right on this. It's probably more about changing politics and rerouting billions and billions, not something doable grass-roots style. But...

Most of the clean-power tech is here now and it works (maybe it needs lots of incremental tweaks, but no breakthroughs), if you just fix the broken economy around it. The price of oil or rare metals shouldn't be artificially lowered just because the big guys found a way to externalize the environmental costs out of it or because it makes sense in a twisted geopolitical way! A plastic cup should fucking cost $10 if it has to and if you can't afford it then buy a reusable glass or metal one. A damn next-gen smartphone should cost $1000 if it this is what it has to cost for the constituents of its battery to be mined in an eco-friendly way.

We're trying to use technology to fix a broken economy and broken world-politics. And it might work!

But think of the opportunity cost of doing this: all the great minds working to shave off an extra cent from solar panel assembly tech could work on basic nanotech research of medical research or ai or space travel. And the advances from these fields could then, maybe, be backported to the solar panel assembly process to make it 1 cent cheaper.

Yeah it probably kind of works this way too, with advances in basic science and tech driven by research directly applicable to clean energy, then later applied to things like space exploration.

But... it just feels totally backwards to me!

Science should be driven by whatever stimulates people's curiosity, whatever makes them dream higher, then later applied to practical problems. Oh, and economy should never be "tweaked" to work in unnatural ways and then later fixed through technology. This feels just wrong and I'm sure (hope? :) ) a disaster will sooner or later come out of it.

Disagreeable as he might be, I kind of like Mr. Trump ideas... though I wouldn't bet they'll translate into anything that works.

[StevePerkins]

I doubt that the downvotes come from people disagreeing with you. Rather, I suspect that the "certain change" references are simply off-putting.

Trump. The guy's name is Trump. Alluding to it, vaguely-yet-obviously, makes it seem like you're trying too hard to sound clever.

[madaxe_again]

No, I was just trying to avoid the downvotes for a potentially viewed as anti- or pro- trump comment - I'm expressing no opinion on him, just an outcome according to his purported policies. I'm not prepared to say whether I think this is a good or bad outcome, just an outcome. Up to others to decide their own view.

[eli_gottlieb]

The election is now being referred to as the "recent unpleasantness". I do agree that not saying "Trump" makes him seem a little too Voldemort for my tastes.

[justinlaster]

He's not being clever. The incoming administration's own statements back his sentiment up. There's going to be more show than science. The incoming administration -- or those making up the incoming administration -- want to use NASA as a propaganda piece, not a problem solving institution.

[wallace_f]

> there is something to be said for the concept that anything directed by science or engineering almost always results in better outcomes than what is directed by politicians

[saboot]

This is less far off the mark than some downvoters will admit. Newt Gingrich is REALLY into going back to the moon, wants a moon base and everything.

[icosoheadroom]

People had the same complaint about the space program in the 1960's. That it was feel good fluff. That it was a boondoggle with no substance.

And if you watch old movies, you'll hear it echoed it many places.

Clockwork Orange has the quote from the wino:

   Men on the moon? And men Spinnin' 'round the earth?
   And there's not no attention paid to early law and 
   order no more?!

I don't really agree. I think it's of profound importance to solve the problem of being able to sustain life in an artificial environment.

If we can confine ourselves within an encapsulated environment, and keep ourselves alive by recycling all biological exhaust, and drawing energy from highly durable, efficient power sources, and/or solar power, we can roll those capabilities into ways of life that dramatically reduce human impact on their surroundings. The two concepts are related, because space travel involves the problem of trying to replicate a sustainable terrestrial environment through artificial means.