The key phrase is "kind of thing". It certainly does matter what kinds of things we focus our attention on as a species. I think you would have to be quite cynical to think that progress in spaceflight over the past 60+ years hasn't had a positive impact.
Global rates of poverty are 83% lower than they were in 1969 when we landed on the moon.
So actually, millions of lives have massively benefited from science and technology. To be cynical in the face of all that is a personal take, not a reflection of the facts.
Vaccines, Mobile Phones, Internet, GPS (How do you think container ships navigate), High yield seeds/fertilizers and the Green Revolution, Weather Satellites, I could go on.
It's really getting tiring repeating this stuff over and over again to the anti-space crowd.
You’re arguing against the misanthrops. To them, nothing humans could do would be good enough. We could end slavery in the West and they’d accuse us of not ending slavery enough.
Vaccines were invented during the moon landings? High yield seeds and fertilizers are due to the moon landings? The internet was invented due to the moon landings?
You didn't provide any citations that show any of the above has lifted people out of poverty. Please go on, and maybe tell us how ships navigated the seas before GPS, sounds impossible.
There are no causal connections between going to the moon and lifting global poverty. In fact, the money spent on going to a dried up satellite could have lifted people out of poverty.
I'm sorry, so now it's not capitalism, technology, or the moon landings, but the cold war context? Could you pick a specific "event" you believe lifted so many people out of poverty, and provide research or supporting documentation?
You don't solve these problems in a single step, but notice how space imagery and analogies pop up every time people try to talk about peace, global problems, mutual empathy, understanding, etc. The Pale Blue Dot, images of Earth from orbit or the Moon, etc. Those are anchors in public consciousness, competing in memetic space with usual divisive, dystopian, hope-draining pictures and soundbites - we need more of them to improve on the big problems, and we absolutely would not have them if not for people actually flying to space.
Or, put differently, space exploration is one of the few things "feeding the right wolf" for humanity at large.
It's crazy to believe that people who believe in one holy book are killing people over another holy book in countries like (but certainly not limited to) Nigeria, while another country launches people to the moon.
But, alas, I agree with you. There's no way out but through I guess.
You seem to be forgetting that the country launching people to the moon is primarily of one holy book and is currently bombing the people of another holy book.
The United States is not a Christian country and is not at war with anyone due to religion. I know you're talking about Iran but Iranian Christians are as affected as Iranian Muslims. Muslim countries in the area have pushed America to continue this war.
I am completely against this military excursion. Just an honest takeaway. A lot of rhetoric in America on religion is due to people's religious trauma. I blame American evangelicals.
Nobody it'll say space exploration will alone solve those problems. But it helps, and can help more - much more, if we go all the way in and establish permanent economic activity and eventually settlements in the space near Earth and beyond.
> if we go all the way in and establish permanent economic activity and eventually settlements in the space near Earth and beyond.
Could you please explain exactly how these would help to stop war and inequality?
As far as I can tell, space exploration is going to exacerbate inequality, for example, by making Elon Musk even more obscenely wealthy than he already is.
> Is the problem inequality or rather poverty? Because those are not the same thing.
According to the OP, inequality: "Regardless of whether this particular mission is perfectly planned, this is precisely the kind of thing that will help humanity outgrow the dark age of war, inequality and climate mismanagement."
> What we've done in space has absolutely helped with poverty. It makes weather forecasts possible, which helps even the poorest farmers.
Are you talking about manned Moon missions or unmanned Earth-orbiting satellites? To use your own words, those are not the same thing.
In any case, poverty is a policy decision, a refusal to redistribute the wealth.
That's part of a general meme shift. 60s tech was defined by a mix of fear, awe, and optimism. Apollo had elements of all three.
There was a confidence underlying all of them. From the New Deal to the late 60s, there was a public belief a better future was possible.
2020s tech is defined by fear, pessimism, and dystopia. The utopian edge has either gone or been replaced by horrific anti-utopian tech - surveillance, manipulation, exploitation, and irrationality.
Tech has become anti-science. Musk's DOGE cut around $1.5 of science funding, science education, and NASA exploration.
The naive sense that a better future is possible, and tech will make it happen, has almost disappeared.
> > The previous Moon missions certainly didn't accomplish that.
> Sparked the environmental movement, to name but one major impact.
It...really didn't. There was a new wave with a different political orientation (less conservative/elite) in the environmental movement roughly contemporary to the space program from—the 1950s through the 1970s—but it was driven by a variety of human driven (nuclear testing, oil spills, etc.) environmental disasters combined with more modern media coverage that occurred in that time than by the space program itself.
I know there are people who try to ignore all that and pretend that the whole thing was just the Earthrise photo in 1968 but much of the development of the new character of the movement happened before Earthrise, and even what happened after generally clearly had other more important causes.
Regardless of what you think of those first shots from Apollo 8, you have to admit they put things into a different perspective for a lot of people. Seeing the whole of the Earth like that moved a lot of people into realizing this planet is worth saving. That one image was a significant moment causing such a spike in people paying attention that it can be forgiven for being confused as the thing. It's not like John Muir needed to see the Blue Marble image to start his movement. It's just so many more people did
> Regardless of what you think of those first shots from Apollo 8, you have to admit they put things into a different perspective for a lot of people.
“Regardless of what you think about X, you must think Y about X” is a particularly tiresome rhetorical device, but its also being deployed as part of a motte-and-bailey argument here.
> It's not like John Muir needed to see the Blue Marble image to start his movement. It's just so many more people did
Blue Marble (1990) is a completely different image than Earthrise (1968), and Earthrise was only adopted as a symbol of the environmental movement because the movement was already ascendant when it came out, not because it was the trigger for it.
Disagree about the change. Even the fact that you know and care enough to argue this on-line is a change that can be attributed to space missions - and it's even more true about the overall global conversation about climate situation, and all activities taken to help with it.