[amannm]

> we have not succeeded in replicating that milestone

it's hard to succeed at something you aren't even trying for in the first place. the moon landing was funded during the cold war where ICBM adjacent knowledge was required in the face of an existential threat. it wasn't solely for the benefit of shared global human knowledge/progress or whatever. for the US, there's a lot more to lose than gain in terms of "face" by attempting a victory lap against the rest of the world. executing any sort of manned moon or mars mission won't be taken seriously by the US until there's real political/economic pressure to do so (in the form of maybe China laying down a roadmap to land on mars or something).

[rendx]

Actually, I'm glad they didn't. There are finite resources available, and it may be a less popular opinion but I think it can be used in better ways than to explore Moon more.

[wolfram74]

If we'd put more efforts into settling space, the demand for photovoltaics would have been higher. That might have pushed us down the learning curve faster and PV might have started turning coal power plants into stranded assets in the aughts or even the 90's instead of the teens. It's a tough what-if to model.

[bumby]

I'm saying this as a former aerospace worker, but this logic was always lost on me. If something isn't worth doing for it's own sake, then I don't think it's worth doing. If we want better PV, we should prioritize developing PV irrespective of a space program. The idea of tangential benefits strikes me as just looking for a silver lining on otherwise indefensible reasoning.

[Miraste]

No one embarks on enterprises of this scale for their own sake, they do it because it's profitable. Sometimes the R&D needed to bootstrap new technology isn't profitable, even if it would be once developed. The only way to force organizational structures (e.g. the government) to do this development is to tie it to another goal, like beating the USSR. This was the case with a lot of other technologies we got out of the space program.

The hardest part of any progress is the social engineering.

[bumby]

>The only way to force organizational structures (e.g. the government) to do this development is to tie it to another goal

I’m usually pretty much against the “The ends justify the means” philosophy. It’s just too easy to rationalize doing bad things as a way to a potentially good result.

I don’t think the profit motive needs to always be aligned, but the value system does. In this case, the US valued “beating” the USSR for existential reasons. Whether it was profitable or not didn’t factor into the equation much.

[throwaway290]

I think the point is there would probably be many positive side effects and discoveries on the way somewhere that we should be going anyway. Some consider space and becoming interplanetary not just worth doing but completely imperative.

Sadly it would be such a long way no politician is incentivized to get behind it. Also people can be jerks so while you're busy with this someone could just start a war with you.

[bumby]

>I think the point is there would probably be many positive side effects and discoveries on the way

My issue with this is that it's so nebulous it can be used for practically anything. And that, in turn, makes it an argument of limited value.

[throwaway290]

Read the sentence to the end?

[bregma]

Ah, yes, the old fallacious trope of "if they didn't spend the money on X they would have spent it on Y". It is, of course, true as long a Y is luxury yachts or maybe the enforcement of personal power such as weapons of mass destruction.

Even today there is very little effort to end poverty or cure cancer but trillions spent on massive manly flexes and the accumulation of every-increasing personal wealth by ever decreasing numbers of individuals. Since we haven't spent the money here on Earth to explore the moon in the last 50 years do we have any proof we have spent it on the better ways instead?

[inglor_cz]

"there is very little effort to end poverty or cure cancer"

Social spending tends to be the most important budget item across most of the West and cancer is being attacked from all sides, with significant improvements. It is nevertheless a really complicated set of diseases (I recommend "The Emperor of All Maladies", an interesting book on cancer).

If this is "very little", I am not sure what would satisfy you.

[Miraste]

Cancer treatment spending is astronomical, but cancer research spending is indeed low. It's less than $5 billion per year across the entire planet, and funding has been declining year-on-year [0]. That's less than Twitter's annual revenue (before recent events). Seems like "very little" to me.

[0] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2...

[saiya-jin]

> Even today there is very little effort to end poverty

Why would powers 'in power' ever even attempted that? Yes it looks nice on the paper (just before the elections), but if you do primary-school math there are few obvious benefits for the ones on the rich side, and many drawbacks. Drawbacks that electorate notices immediately.

Cheap chinese (or anywhere else) electronics, clothing, heck almost anything. Almost everybody wants that, even posh Swiss folks I interact daily with, which put a lot of emphasis on quality over quantity, save here and there and go for the cheapest stuff available, at cheapest store possible.

If you want to see real effects of cca equality go to places with strong middle class, ie Nordics or Switzerland (where I live). Very different than pyramid bubbles like ie Singapore, at least as per my colleagues feedback. You can afford significantly less than in cheaper neighbors, services cost a small fortune. Yes even Luigi fixing your drain will send you eye-watering bill, he still lives in same expensive society like rest of us and wants to send his kids to same university like you. The cost of stability and semi-equality is not small. I am still up for it due to overall positive effects on society and its future, but not everybody automatically is - focusing just on numbers can easily sway people towards different opinions.

I'd say best efforts I've seen are 'we help you to help yourself', with very variable success, ie large parts of Africa seems to be stuck in some form of vicious circle for decades.

[em3rgent0rdr]

Exactly. Everything has an opportunity cost. And there's diminishing marginal returns on every subsequent moon landing.

[edgyquant]

Resources being finite is the best reason to go up there and start extracting more

[em3rgent0rdr]

Except the Moon only has less-valuable elements than we already have on earth. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Moon#Elemental_...

[edgyquant]

Luckily there is a lot more bodies in space than the moon.

[hutzlibu]

Actually space is (probably) infinite, so there are potentially infinite ressources avaiable, if we choose to invest in the next step, even if that investment only will pay out in the long run.

[runesofdoom]

I am not an astrophysicist, but my understanding is that due to the expansion of the universe and the speed of light, the volume of space we will ever be able to access is finite, roughly that of the galactic supercluster we're in.

[hutzlibu]

For all practical matters, I think it can be considered infinite. (And the theoretical limits might not be fixed either)

But the question is always, how much of that is within our reach.

Currently nothing out of earth on an economical base. So I also see the point we have to set priorities.

But currently there is a big focus on war, rather than climate change etc. and with more crisis, people tend to think even more short term. Space on the other hand can give that long term thinking effect, that can people make consider whether fighting for the limited ressources on earth is the only way. And maybe instead unite forces for benefit of all of mankind (and possibly life itself).

[nonameiguess]

This isn't even close to true. In addition to what the other comment points out about eventually losing causal contact with all parts of the observable universe that aren't already gravitionally bound to the same supercluster as the Milky Way, even something like breadth-first search of the entire local supercluster at near the speed of light would take more time than the local supercluster will still exist. The universe will run out of hydrogen and stars won't exist any more long before you can cover all of even the tiniest portions of infinite space.

[em3rgent0rdr]

No. For all practical matters, accessible space is FINITE, and actually gets smaller all the time due to accelerating expansion of the universe. In about 150 billion years all galaxies outside the Local Supercluster will pass behind the cosmological horizon.

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

[hutzlibu]

"For all practical matters, accessible space is FINITE"

I think, this is what I said:

"But the question is always, how much of that is within our reach."

Currently that is only earth. With some steps up, you can have all the other planets in this system plus the asteroid belt. Step further up and you have lots and lots of other star systems, the cosmological theoretical limits you are citing are not really an issue on the timeframe that matters to us - space tech is and the limits how fast we can make rockets, or find other ways to take a short path.

[amannm]

he probably just meant resources as in tax dollars

[tabtab]

In the 1970's many thought we'd be mining asteroids by now for precious metals, making commercial missions profitable, or at least financially viable.

[adventured]

The particularly informed of humanity are very commonly wrong in their assessments, persistent underestimation, of the speed of change and what actually changes. It's because very few people know how to think effectively.

Failures of extrapolation are most often the cause; not understanding how to think properly, tripping into 2D thinking (extrapolating via some magic forward line, thinking that's how things actually work in reality) and bumping into ignorant logic failures over and over again (associating progress on one thing into broad assumptions that everything of course will progress just like that too, when the things and their potential for progress aren't so tightly bound).

Because X thing progressed rapidly, of course we'll have flying cars in 30 or 50 years. One of the classic failures of ignorant flat thinking of the 20th century. People should ask more questions.

[tabtab]

Nobody has proven that they can predict the future reliably, and I doubt anyone can. They'd be golfing with Warren Buffett if they could. For one, predicting the future requires intimate knowledge of multiple disciplines. A space expert isn't going to understand computer chips well enough, for example.

[sclarisse]

In the 1970s it was also popular to fear grave resource shortages here on Earth. Turning to space was an easy low-imagination solution when you weren’t seriously considering the logistics of how to make it happen. It’s more a manifestation of the fears of the day than anything else.

This shortages haven’t really materialized. If anything we have far too much oil, not too little, and can keep on burning it for a long long time (and suffering consequences). Minerals for your car batteries? We can have lots by just seabed-mining right next to some sensitive ecosystems. Etc, etc.

[ssnistfajen]

The Space Shuttle was developed as a covert weapons program as well, for deploying nuclear warheads directly from orbit to give enemies a much shorter response window. This is why the Soviets quickly developed their own space shuttle program, because they recognized the military purpose behind it.

There's a radical school of thinking of which I don't agree 100%, which is that the Space Shuttle program was a Cold War remnant stuck in a sunk cost fallacy, and set back space exploration for decades since it was extremely expensive and completely limited to LEO and siphoned funds that could've been used for more efficient rockets and modular stations beyond LEO.

[throwanem]

> The Space Shuttle was developed as a covert weapons program as well, for deploying nuclear warheads directly from orbit to give enemies a much shorter response window.

You need to cite this.

While NASA's own history ("The Space Shuttle Decision", pub. no. SP-4221) describes the way in which the STS design was rescued from cancellation through Air Force-requested modifications to support satellite-capture missions which after Challenger never materialized, I have never seen any reference in any source to support the idea that the Shuttle was designed to serve as an orbital bombardment system in direct violation of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.

[ssnistfajen]

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3855/1

Why do you think Outer Space Treaty will matter in event of a hot war between two nuclear superpowers? NPT was signed a year earlier and it has been continuously violated by signatory powers to this day.

[throwanem]

Your own source describes the idea that this was a program design goal as a "myth," and clarifies that it was born of a Soviet capabilities analysis suggesting that this theoretically could be done with the Shuttle, not that there existed any evidence that it was intended.

On the latter point you have your causation backward. The intent of treaties like the Outer Space Treaty was to reduce the likelihood of a hot war by interdicting the use of technologies that would destabilize the strategic balance.

[ssnistfajen]

Treaties work until they don't, and what can cause an escalation is future knowledge beyond our abilities to predict. In event of a hot war, none of these treaties would've mattered.

[throwanem]

Obviously. Again, the point of the treaty is to make it less likely things will go that far. Otherwise, why bother with it at all?

[qbasic_forever]

Huh? I've never read about the shuttle being developed to deploy nuclear weapons. The idea of launching a warhead with the shuttle, which itself requires an immense amount of resources to leave the launch pad, only to just send the warhead back down to earth instead of just... launching the warhead from a slim little ICBM that a submarine is carrying... doesn't make a lot of sense. Warheads aren't designed to sit orbiting in space waiting to launch either--their payloads are constantly decaying and only have a limited service life. I can't see it ever making sense to not launch them from subs under the ocean.

AFAIK the shuttle was intended to be a "tow truck" for satellites, able to launch and service them in low Earth orbit. Many of those satellites were for spying and espionage.

[ssnistfajen]

Why do you think shuttles can "tow" satellites but not warheads? Shuttles can stay in orbit for weeks so they are reserved for when tensions are high. Launching anything from the surface will be almost immediately detected, giving opponents far more time to respond than something that immediately begins re-entry the moment it is deployed from orbit.

[qbasic_forever]

If you're going full fantasy thinking (since launching weapons from space would violate every weapons treaty both the US and USSR signed) the shuttle would have been an enormous and obvious target as it orbited Earth. The shuttle could have easily been knocked out by an ICBM and sub orbital weapon detonation--it had no real way to avoid it even if it knew weapons were being launched at it.

If you're arguing there's some need for faster response than a nuclear sub launch, launching nuclear cruise missiles from B2 bombers makes far more sense than lugging warheads up to low orbit. We have more B2s than we ever had shuttles.

But it just does not make sense vs. submarines as a launch platform. Three or four shuttles worth of weapons is nothing compared to a single Ohio class nuclear sub (20 missiles alone, and there are 18 of those subs in the US Navy).

[ssnistfajen]

Fantasy thinking? Good joke.

You are not getting it. You simply are not getting it. That's okay though, conventional thinking is overly predominant after all and it's okay that you can't escape from it.

Also, treaties mean jack shit. Both countries pledged ultimate elimination of nuclear armament in NPT and look at where we are now? Do you think any treaty will matter if a hot nuclear war breaks out between two nuclear powers? Pure naïveté is what you have.

[dotnet00]

This is ridiculous logic. Sure, the Shuttle was technically capable of carrying a nuclear weapon since well, it could carry payloads. But it wasn't specifically designed for that purpose, just as how the Falcon 9 isn't designed specifically to carry loitering nuclear weapons either, but is perfectly capable of doing so.

If the US wanted to station nukes in orbit, they wouldn't do something as dumb as putting them up using a crew. They'd do what any sane person would do and put them on an uncrewed nuclear rated vehicle (ie the Delta/Atlas rockets). It would be way cheaper, and most importantly, would get around the concern of risking the crew.

If the concern was only launching them when tensions are high, the US has a 'rapid launch availability' program for launch providers to be paid to be always available for emergency launches. The Shuttle was essentially incapable of a similar rapid availability due to how delicate it was.

On top of all that, what exactly do you think a ~30 minute early nuke launch (compared against ICBMs) would accomplish against the only two targets the US has been in any position of potentially going to nuclear war against? The number of nukes (optimistically ~14) that a Shuttle could carry can't take out Russia or China's retaliation framework on its own.