[palata]

> If there isn't a space program, the engineers who were inspired to join NASA [...] probably wound up, in the alternate timeline, bureaucrats or financiers.

I guess this is why in this timeline, all engineers in the world are at NASA working on sending humans to space, and everybody else in the world is a bureaucrat.

Do you actually know any kind of engineering that is not happening at NASA? Because it may explain your bias here.

[ben_w]

They did say "or financiers". There's an old quote:

   Finance literally bids rocket scientists away from the satellite industry. The result is that erstwhile scientists, people who in another age dreamt of curing cancer or flying to Mars, today dream of becoming hedge fund managers.

- https://www.ft.com/content/0f788814-3ee0-339d-9680-71d6c7596...

Personally, I'd also add "Big Tech" to the list, as per a more recent quote:

  The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks.

- https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/747678-the-best-minds-of-my...

[JumpCrisscross]

> guess this is why in this timeline, all engineers in the world are at NASA

How does this follow? Are you arguing the Moon programs didn’t increase American engagement in STEM?

The point is the people who worked on a partial solution to a terrestrial problem because they were working on space may not be inspired—or incentivized—to work on that problem directly. We’re willing, as a society, to spend big on the Moon. Spending big on creek maintenance and desal, comparatively, is boring. Yet both benefit from the first.

> you actually know any kind of engineering that is not happening at NASA?

Yes. Have you done any heavy engineering?

> it may explain your bias here

Do tell me, someone who has never worked at or particularly close to NASA, what my bias is here.

[palata]

> Are you arguing the Moon programs didn’t increase American engagement in STEM?

Nope. You are arguing that without a space program, people don't go into STEM and instead become "bureaucrats or financiers". I am saying that this is preposterous.

> We’re willing, as a society, to spend big on the Moon.

No. Society doesn't have a say in how that money is being spent, that's my original point.

[JumpCrisscross]

> You are arguing that without a space program, people don't go into STEM and instead become "bureaucrats or financiers"

I never used such hyperbole. I’m arguing fewer people go into STEM. And the people who do cannot be assumed to work on the projects that matter to you.

> Society doesn't have a say in how that money is being spent

Of course we do. Space programmes are popular. That’s why they get funded.

[palata]

> And the people who do cannot be assumed to work on the projects that matter to you.

That's the case with or without a space program that sends humans to space for the sake of sending humans to space.

> Space programmes are popular. That’s why they get funded.

Space programs are popular because they are cool. The people don't get to vote the budgets, though. Because DOGE did not cut the budget of the space programs does not mean that "society is willing to spend big on the Moon". At all.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Because DOGE did not cut the budget of the space programs

DOGE absolutely tried to gut Artemis [1]. The popularity is part of what saved it. (Weirdly myopic metric for what is and isn’t popular? Since when did DOGE become arbiters of anything.)

[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/g-s1-49451/artemis-moon-nasa-...

[palata]

> Weirdly myopic metric for what is and isn’t popular? Since when did DOGE become arbiters of anything.

Where did I imply that? I said that DOGE not doing something did NOT imply something. Too many negations for you, maybe?