[002445]

There are 5 items on that list:

- Digital Flight Controls

- Food Safety

- Space Blankets

- Quake-Proofing

- Rechargeable Hearing Aids

This list does not impress me at all and I find it hard to believe we wouldn't have come up with those 5 items + a lot more without spending billions to go to the moon.

It's cool to go the moon but just like all things government is involved with, it could've been done a lot cheaper without involving bureaucrats.

[jacobmischka]

The space race literally made the semiconductors that currently run the world useful and affordable. Without it we might be using tiny vacuum tubes to this day.

[7e]

You forgot the /s.

[jacobmischka]

On my second sentence maybe, but not the first.

[HenryBemis]

I will just pick this one to set (some) record straight

> Rechargeable Hearing Aids

Apparently you don't have a family member that has hearing problems, making it difficult for them to have a 'normal life'. I have one. I remember buying a €4k (a few many years ago) pair of hearing aids and see the tears coming down when one was able to hear again.

I see this as a prosthetic leg. You lose a basic function, this technology helps go back to having a slightly better life. Some stats on the matter. DDG returned US statistics on the top results; I believe these can be proportional for all other countries.

https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/quick-statistics...

-About 28.8 million U.S. adults could benefit from using hearing aids. (HB Note: isn't that 9% of the population? - that's a big number - almost 29 million people??)

-Among adults aged 70 and older with hearing loss who could benefit from hearing aids, fewer than one in three (30 percent) has ever used them. Even fewer adults aged 20 to 69 (approximately 16 percent) who could benefit from wearing hearing aids have ever used them.

-As of December 2019, approximately 736,900 cochlear implants have been implanted worldwide. In the United States, roughly 118,100 devices have been implanted in adults and 65,000 in children.

[002445]

You are correct that my family members do not need hearing aids. But I am also not saying hearing aids are useless. I am just saying it is not worth going to the moon for.

Since it would've been cheaper to not go to the moon and let a private company step in to provide the need there would have been more resources to spend on improving more lives than were improved now.

[onion2k]

The research necessary to make a better hearing aid (improved batteries, noise cancelling circuitry, miniaturization of electronics, etc) cost billions. I imagine it was inevitable that the research would have happened eventually, but it would have taken longer and it would have been patented and expensive to license. It's very likely that the hearing aid industry wouldn't have had the resources to buy in the necessary tech to make a cost effective product until several decades later than it has. They might not even have done it by now if we hadn't reached the moon.

It's all speculation of course, but if you look at the rate of technological advancement pre-Moon landings compared to post-Moon landings, it does look a lot like the Apollo programme was an inflection point.

[HenryBemis]

You are reversing it. We didn't go to the moon to create/improve hearing aids.

But it was an effort that cost X amount of dollars, and since then it has helped 20-50-100 (?) million people globally to have a better life, go shopping, talk with friends and loved ones, listen to music, etc.

Not everything is about being profitable on day1. But if we do put a price tag to everything.. think of the jobs/profits/dividends/taxes created by the "hearing aids" industries. We now have 20-50-100 (?) million people that are 'more' integrated to society. That generates money to recover the 'losses' of the moon efforts.

https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/hea...

-The global hearing aids market size was $6.47bn in 2020.

If you run this number for the past 30-40-50 years, it adds up. And now add the $bn that the (hearing aids) users contribute to the global economy by integrating more/better to society.

I see this as a win-win. We explored the moon. We improved people's lives here on earth.

[neatze]

It is easy to look back in time and say what could have been done better, practically easy when you're not involved in process at all, what so ever.

[002445]

It is actually very easy to predict these things, if the people in charge are not the ones paying the bills it's not going to be worth the money.

[neatze]

Prove me wrong make a predication now here, nostradamus.

[fho]

I guess it is easy to make trivial predictions about the near future ... something like "computers will get faster", "batteries will become energy denser".

Something like "food will become safer" is trivial only in the most generic sense. It's entirely possible that something that we eat today will be found carcinogenic tomorrow and people will still take ages to accept and act on that new knowledge.

At least in my part of the ivory tower I see a strong shift away from meat, even my and my SOs parents (in their 60-70s) have (on their own behalf) cut out most of their meat consumption.

So if I had to make a Nostradamus prediction, I would bet on real meat becoming a pure luxurious item, something that only gets brought on the table for special occasions, over the next ... 50 years.

[mgoetzke]

It also inspired many engineers and software developers to become what they are, develop new methods etc.

[stjohnswarts]

Not really since r&d don't provide quarterly returns for years sometimes decades. Government funding science is a good thing and obviously there is some waste but the net positive is far greater. Capitalism is good, but so is working together as a society (aka government) to develop new tech is also good. It's not a zero sum game despite what libertarians would have us all think.

[002445]

Despite what you think about what Libertarians think, the term that is relevant here is opportunity cost. Not zero sum games.

[woleium]

Shhh, don't mention the PTFEs

[reader_mode]

>It's cool to go the moon but just like all things government is involved with, it could've been done a lot cheaper without involving bureaucrats.

This libertarian tilt is soo yesterday :)

Following the market and money signals alone leads to such amazing "innovations" as bitcoin and crypto -> people betting the next idiot will be left holding the bag and burning tons of energy and hardware while at it. Plus wasting a bunch of engineering hours on pointless endevours.

Or such amazing innovative endevours as Ad optimisation and network tracking.

Sorry but following money alone leads to some pretty pathological scenarios and results in a shitty society. I used to like libertarianism, the "don't touch me if I don't touch you" foundations and the logical framework is neat - but it just doesn't work out in reality - at least it doesn't lead to a world I'd like to live in.

[002445]

The surge of Bitcoin is a reaction to the endless money printing of the federal banks that has been started well over 10 years ago. This has put the interest rates to 0 or even -0% all over the world causing people to pull out their savings and putting it in anything that has a chance of beating the inflation rates.

It is not libertarian economics but keynesian economics that drive people to bitcoin and other bubbles.

Libertarian economics is not "soo yesterday", accepting bad policies from bureaucrats is.

Ps. if ads are the worst thing in your life then your life must be pretty good. Maybe install an ad blocker.

[reader_mode]

Ads are not the problem - harvesting the most talented CS people to work on ads is - this is the kind of innovation your ideal system leads to. Personally I'd rather live in a society that values going to mars. Subjective I know, but I only have one life to live, I don't live in the general case :)

Bitcoin is an extreeme example of something that's built in to markets - you're trying to guess how much someone will be willing to pay for an asset and this leads to natural bubles - it stops being about determining the value of something and it starts being about playing the market. You can spin whatever rationalizations you want arround it - bitcoin is the most degenerate manifestation of this. If you find a market full of idiots willing to buy bullshit and pump it's valuation, if the idiocy is strong enough that it wont easily go away, you have a really good incentive to join in and prosthelytize to grow the bubble more, even if you don't beleive it - just the fact you beleive there will be more idiots buying in makes it rational for you to get in.

And if you skip out on trading on it you'll be punished with below avarage returns.

[002445]

And your solution to "the problem" of other people freely choosing where and what to work on is what? You choose?

Let's agree to disagree on politics. Just let me know if you're ever about to be chosen as Supreme Chairman of the Party so I know what country to avoid.

[reader_mode]

It's better to realign the incentives to make sure you don't end up in pathological scenarios. The reason why tech companies find investing in this so lucrative is because these markets have so much winner-takes-all scenarios. You don't need to strawman it - governments are dealing with these kinds of secnarios, it's not ideal but better than doing nothing.