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		Not news: Most Americans opposed to massive government spending. Fark: On the Apollo space program (slate.com)		42
		More: Interesting, Apollo program, Americans, scientific laws, space exploration, New America Foundation, lunar landing, space race, Sputnik

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notmtwain		2012-05-16 05:32:43 PM

It does seem a little late to restart it.

MaudlinMutantMollusk		2012-05-16 05:35:26 PM

What a f*cking idiot

Ed Finnerty		2012-05-16 05:43:43 PM

You know what was a huge waste of money?

The Revolutionary War.

Contrabulous Flabtraption		2012-05-16 05:54:21 PM

Most Americans oppose government spending until the day comes THEY need to go to the moon.

Some 'Splainin' To Do		2012-05-16 06:12:00 PM

I'll be the first to say that it's awesome that we've been to the moon, and I'm glad we went, but the cold reality is that the reason that Apollo ultimately petered out was because it was primarily a political stunt meant to show up the Russians.

Once we did that, planted our flags, and played a little golf, there was nowhere else to go because it was never intended to be about anything else.

If we want to go back to the moon, we need a better reason than "Yay, space!"

The dream is a great motivator to get people to go there... once. We need a better reason, and it needs to make economic sense, if we want to go back and stay there for the long run.

OtherLittleGuy		2012-05-16 06:24:28 PM

We wasted a shiatstorm of money through the Marshall Plan. Decades later, they're all going into default.

SlothB77		2012-05-16 06:49:48 PM

Oldnewsissoexciting.jpeg

ShawnDoc		2012-05-16 07:22:03 PM

Some 'Splainin' To Do: If we want to go back to the moon, we need a better reason than "Yay, space!"

The dream is a great motivator to get people to go there... once. We need a better reason, and it needs to make economic sense, if we want to go back and stay there for the long run.

Go space-mining!

Gratch		2012-05-16 07:39:12 PM

Fano		2012-05-16 07:39:24 PM

Avatar was much cheaper to make, and it was even in 3D

hutchkc		2012-05-16 07:48:31 PM

Gratch: Actually getting to the moon doesn't really matter that much. However, the incredible number of scientific advances that come about in the process of figuring out how to get there there are invaluable.

bingo. personally i want to go to the moon/space but it looks like not gonna happen again in my lifetime.

Quantum Apostrophe		2012-05-16 07:50:13 PM

Gratch: the incredible number of scientific advances that come about in the process of figuring out how to get there there are invaluable.

Name a few. I think you'll find that Earth, circa 1960, was a pretty advanced place already and it was mostly because of WWII... We went to the Moon because we were able to, not because we had to invent everything from scratch. Mythology is powerful though.

"While there may be many myths about Apollo and spaceflight, the principal one is the story of a resolute nation moving outward into the unknown beyond Earth." Nostalgia for the Space Age is rooted more in The Jetsons than in reality.

"While there may be many myths about Apollo and spaceflight, the principal one is the story of a resolute nation moving outward into the unknown beyond Earth." Nostalgia for the Space Age is rooted more in The Jetsons than in reality.

"While there may be many myths about Apollo and spaceflight, the principal one is the story of a resolute nation moving outward into the unknown beyond Earth." Nostalgia for the Space Age is rooted more in The Jetsons than in reality.

"While there may be many myths about Apollo and spaceflight, the principal one is the story of a resolute nation moving outward into the unknown beyond Earth." Nostalgia for the Space Age is rooted more in The Jetsons than in reality.

"While there may be many myths about Apollo and spaceflight, the principal one is the story of a resolute nation moving outward into the unknown beyond Earth." Nostalgia for the Space Age is rooted more in The Jetsons than in reality.

It was all just a show, folks.

Some 'Splainin' To Do		2012-05-16 07:52:31 PM

Gratch: Some 'Splainin' To Do: I'll be the first to say that it's awesome that we've been to the moon, and I'm glad we went, but the cold reality is that the reason that Apollo ultimately petered out was because it was primarily a political stunt meant to show up the Russians.

Once we did that, planted our flags, and played a little golf, there was nowhere else to go because it was never intended to be about anything else.

If we want to go back to the moon, we need a better reason than "Yay, space!"

The dream is a great motivator to get people to go there... once. We need a better reason, and it needs to make economic sense, if we want to go back and stay there for the long run.

Actually getting to the moon doesn't really matter that much. However, the incredible number of scientific advances that come about in the process of figuring out how to get there there are invaluable.

With respect, I've always found that to be a poor motivator. For one, people tend to chronically overestimate the amount of spin-off technologies that we got out of the program (a common mistake is to think that velcro came out of the space-race, as an example). When you crunch the numbers, the GDP boost that we got from spin-off tech didn't really offset the cost of going to space in the first place.

It can also be noted that if basic research is your goal, then it's better to just throw a ton of money at every brand of scientific research without trying to tie it directly to space tech. Projects like the LHC are just as good at providing that kind of thing.

I want to emphasize that I am not saying that there isn't value in spin-off technologies. There is! But I think that it's just not solid footing to stake your case on spin-offs if you want a permanent space presence. Again, we need a solid, sustainable, and economically sensible reason to go into space, with the dividends being tied directly to that endeavor.

Indirect profitability doesn't cut it as an argument (which can be proven by the observation that people have been making that argument since the 60's, and it didn't stop us from having a long, long interregnum). We need a better rationale that doesn't just recapitulate an old pitch that's never, ever managed to sell the program on any sort of long-term basis.

CygnusDarius		2012-05-16 07:53:52 PM

"These were no mindless, brainwashed Daemon-worshippers like those we`d fought before, herded forward as gun-fodder by their Traitor Space Marines masters. This group was trained, well-equipped and knew exactly what it was doing. they appeared out of nowhere on both sides of the column, and went straight for the heavy armour. Four of the main battle tanks had tracks blown off before enough infantry could dismount to stop them, and then they just fell back into the ruins of the city. It took us more than an hour to get the column rolling again, and by the time we reached our rendezvous, the battle had already started."-Colonel Johann Adronia (Alpha Legion IA)

J. Frank Parnell		2012-05-16 08:19:11 PM

Quasar		2012-05-16 08:23:59 PM

This is Obama's fault, right?

Theseus		2012-05-16 08:24:52 PM

Some 'Splainin' To Do: I'll be the first to say that it's awesome that we've been to the moon, and I'm glad we went, but the cold reality is that the reason that Apollo ultimately petered out was because it was primarily a political stunt meant to show up the Russians.

Once we did that, planted our flags, and played a little golf, there was nowhere else to go because it was never intended to be about anything else.

If we want to go back to the moon, we need a better reason than "Yay, space!"

The dream is a great motivator to get people to go there... once. We need a better reason, and it needs to make economic sense, if we want to go back and stay there for the long run.

So, here is the thing. Eventually the Earth will be uninhabitable by humans. It may be in 10,000 years, or it might be next Tuesday due to a massive asteroid. If we want our species to survive, we must do what humans have been doing since our birth, and this is expand. We've expanded across oceans and huge bodies of land, we've expanded to the harshest environments on the planet, we expanded (kinda) to visit the moon.

But the moon isn't enough to save us, especially if the end of the world is due to something with the Sun itself. This project doesn't need to be done in our lifetimes, but that very idea is what keeps people from feeling like they should invest money into such things. There likely won't be an immediate benefit for us, or even our children. We need massive engineering solutions to overcome many of the problems. But we should be starting soon, and it shouldn't just be the United States. In the same way that CERN is a shared resource, there ought to be a shared space colonization program so that the burden is spread, but also to ensure that the people that end up on board the colonization ships don't represent just one culture but many.

Mercutio879		2012-05-16 08:38:07 PM

Theres more to it than the admittedly tiny tech spinoffs. The space program is and was aspirational. It shows to the world how powerful the US is far more than an aircraft carrier and a fleet of F-22s.

way south		2012-05-16 08:40:40 PM

Difficult times come and go, and it's the achievements you look back on fondly.
Without Apollo, the 60's and 70's would have been remembered as the decades of violence, war, failure and suck. Probably punctuated with the communists orbiting and/or landing on the moon.
The engineers who built the cushy life we have now would have probably gotten influence, training, or other benefits from NASA. Much less the money they were paid.

I wonder if either political party could have survived that.
...or what's coming, if they can't provide a future path for this nation.

enforcerpsu		2012-05-16 08:56:16 PM

I don't care what measley portion of the budget it was, or how people say they don't get anything out of it.

It's Farking science for the sake of science. That's a good enough god Damn reason to go. Its exploration for the simple reason that there is a huge galaxy out there and I want to know what the fark is out there.

CygnusDarius		2012-05-16 09:11:48 PM

enforcerpsu: I don't care what measley portion of the budget it was, or how people say they don't get anything out of it.

It's Farking science for the sake of science. That's a good enough god Damn reason to go. Its exploration for the simple reason that there is a huge galaxy out there and I want to know what the fark is out there.

What if there's mines of bacon somewhere out there?.

J. Frank Parnell		2012-05-16 09:20:09 PM

enforcerpsu: Its exploration for the simple reason that there is a huge galaxy out there and I want to know what the fark is out there.

But what if the universe is actually teeming with life, and Humans aren't really that special at all? What if more advanced races enter our atmosphere every day and don't make contact because they regard us as a bunch of primitives? What if we're to them what monkeys flinging poo are to us?

Would that knowledge enrich your life, or would you sink into a deep depression?

MrEricSir		2012-05-16 09:31:39 PM

If we went back in time and told them an embarrassing percentage of Americans don't believe we ever went to the moon and that it was all a conspiracy, I bet they'd be even less willing to spend money on it.

Plus, all the scientists involved would likely kill themselves.

Old enough to know better		2012-05-16 09:33:44 PM

Personally I'd be thrilled if we found life elsewhere. If would mean that even if we fark up this planet, at least life would continue elsewhere.

I've always wondered how exactly things would be any better if the "That money would be better spent here on Earth" crowd got their way. We already spend billions of dollars fighting hunger and poverty. Would a few billion more even make a dent?

Felgraf		2012-05-16 09:47:46 PM

Quantum Apostrophe:

Oh christ, the psychotic life-extension magic nut is back.

jjwars1		2012-05-16 09:50:13 PM

Theseus: Some 'Splainin' To Do: I'll be the first to say that it's awesome that we've been to the moon, and I'm glad we went, but the cold reality is that the reason that Apollo ultimately petered out was because it was primarily a political stunt meant to show up the Russians.

Once we did that, planted our flags, and played a little golf, there was nowhere else to go because it was never intended to be about anything else.

If we want to go back to the moon, we need a better reason than "Yay, space!"

The dream is a great motivator to get people to go there... once. We need a better reason, and it needs to make economic sense, if we want to go back and stay there for the long run.

So, here is the thing. Eventually the Earth will be uninhabitable by humans. It may be in 10,000 years, or it might be next Tuesday due to a massive asteroid. If we want our species to survive, we must do what humans have been doing since our birth, and this is expand. We've expanded across oceans and huge bodies of land, we've expanded to the harshest environments on the planet, we expanded (kinda) to visit the moon.

But the moon isn't enough to save us, especially if the end of the world is due to something with the Sun itself. This project doesn't need to be done in our lifetimes, but that very idea is what keeps people from feeling like they should invest money into such things. There likely won't be an immediate benefit for us, or even our children. We need massive engineering solutions to overcome many of the problems. But we should be starting soon, and it shouldn't just be the United States. In the same way that CERN is a shared resource, there ought to be a shared space colonization program so that the burden is spread, but also to ensure that the people that end up on board the colonization ships don't represent just one culture but many.

This. Humans will either make this planet uninhabitable or a force of nature will. We need to colonize space.

Mytch		2012-05-16 10:09:57 PM

Helium 3 is a pretty big motivator. It's only a matter of time before people invest in a trip to the moon or somewhere else without a magnetic field to obtain it.

rdyb		2012-05-16 10:43:02 PM

JMytch: Helium 3 is a pretty big motivator. It's only a matter of time before people invest in a trip to the moon or somewhere else without a magnetic field to obtain it.

Nope, sorry. Jack Schmitt's a brilliant guy, but he's wrong about 3He. Lunar ISRU for solar, now, that's a different matter entirely.

Smackledorfer		2012-05-16 11:38:25 PM

Most Americans have no concept of what a small percentage of the budget we put towards space, or of the plethora of tech advances we've gleaned as a result of setting space-oriented goals.

Hell, most Americans believe in a sky wizard.

irving47		2012-05-17 12:34:50 AM

I'm kind of looking at it this way... Cheering like crazy for any private entity to do it, and do it profitably.

Government.... Meh. Not so much.
Proponents quickly point out we get velcro and tang, and other cool advances...
I want to know what we got out of the last... say... 10 years of the shuttle program that NASA is reasonably sure we wouldn't have come up without the program.
After all, it was basically being run with 1970's equipment and very little "new" was being developed... Except for maybe hippie-resistant foam for the fuel tanks that killed 7 people...

NINDroog		2012-05-17 12:53:49 AM

Huge fan of the space program, but it's not that lack of funding that get's me. It's the lack of vision. Neil DeGrasse Tyson made this point, and I think it's valid. Being fiscally responsible in times of lean is one thing, but that's not what is going on. We are looking backwards as a society, we want to make things like "the good old days", and it's crap. I'm not saying we should ignore previous values and accomplishments, simply that we are using the past as an excuse to not confront difficult problems today. Sadly, this is why we axe things like the space program.

/IMHO

kg2095		2012-05-17 02:01:02 AM

Quantum Apostrophe: Gratch: the incredible number of scientific advances that come about in the process of figuring out how to get there there are invaluable.

Name a few. I think you'll find that Earth, circa 1960, was a pretty advanced place already and it was mostly because of WWII... We went to the Moon because we were able to, not because we had to invent everything from scratch. Mythology is powerful though.

"While there may be many myths about Apollo and spaceflight, the principal one is the story of a resolute nation moving outward into the unknown beyond Earth." Nostalgia for the Space Age is rooted more in The Jetsons than in reality.

"While there may be many myths about Apollo and spaceflight, the principal one is the story of a resolute nation moving outward into the unknown beyond Earth." Nostalgia for the Space Age is rooted more in The Jetsons than in reality.

"While there may be many myths about Apollo and spaceflight, the principal one is the story of a resolute nation moving outward into the unknown beyond Earth." Nostalgia for the Space Age is rooted more in The Jetsons than in reality.

"While there may be many myths about Apollo and spaceflight, the principal one is the story of a resolute nation moving outward into the unknown beyond Earth." Nostalgia for the Space Age is rooted more in The Jetsons than in reality.

"While there may be many myths about Apollo and spaceflight, the principal one is the story of a resolute nation moving outward into the unknown beyond Earth." Nostalgia for the Space Age is rooted more in The Jetsons than in reality.

It was all just a show, folks.

Scratch-resistant lenses
Freeze-Dried Food
Athletic Shoes
CAT & MRI Technologies
Cool Suits (warn by race car drivers, nuclear reactor technicians, shipyard workers, people with multiple sclerosis, and sufferers of hypo-hydrotic ectodermic dysphasia)
Cordless Power Tools

Link

way south		2012-05-17 06:39:21 AM

J. Frank Parnell: enforcerpsu: Its exploration for the simple reason that there is a huge galaxy out there and I want to know what the fark is out there.

But what if the universe is actually teeming with life, and Humans aren't really that special at all? What if more advanced races enter our atmosphere every day and don't make contact because they regard us as a bunch of primitives? What if we're to them what monkeys flinging poo are to us?

Would that knowledge enrich your life, or would you sink into a deep depression?

I think that would be a good thing, actually.
Proof that we have room to grow as a species, and that the galaxy isn't just a giant death trap.

Jlop985		2012-05-17 07:04:24 AM

proteus_b		2012-05-17 07:09:22 AM

enforcerpsu: It's Farking science for the sake of science. That's a good enough god Damn reason to go. Its exploration for the simple reason that there is a huge galaxy out there and I want to know what the fark is out there.

Actually it had nothing to do with science for the sake of science. Think more along the lines of "science for the sake of giant farking missiles".

Nem Wan		2012-05-17 08:35:29 AM

TFA: The people currently telling the story of the Space Age were young in the 1960s. The world is a much simpler (and often much rosier) place through the eyes of a child.

If only the basis for policy would be, "what will our children think was a good idea for the rest of their lives?"

jfarkinB		2012-05-17 09:08:02 AM

Well, if you start from the premise that everybody worthwhile is going to be raptured away before Earth runs out of anything important, sure, it's a waste.

On the other hand, if you *ahem* expect lifespans to increase substantially over the next few hundred years, you might want to be thinking about where to put all those folks who won't be going into the crematoria.

rwfan		2012-05-17 09:35:30 AM

proteus_b: enforcerpsu: It's Farking science for the sake of science. That's a good enough god Damn reason to go. Its exploration for the simple reason that there is a huge galaxy out there and I want to know what the fark is out there.

Actually it had nothing to do with science for the sake of science. Think more along the lines of "science for the sake of giant farking missiles".

If there was a military need for the huge lift capability of the Saturn-V it would still be around. The only purpose for the Saturn-V was to get men to the moon.

Personally I think the robotic missions provide way more bang for the buck. I would prefer spend money on a lot more of them rather then sending people back to the moon or mars but if enough people are willing to pay for manned missions, I would be in. If SpaceX, or some other company, can build it, I bet the 45% (or whatever) of American taxpayers that are willing to fund it could afford it. IIRC the cost of the Apollo project works out to be about the take of the top 5 grossing Hollywood movies. If you make it a world wide effort I think we could easily afford just like we can easily afford to go to the movies even though not everyone goes to every movie.

rwfan		2012-05-17 09:47:06 AM

rwfan: IIRC the cost of the Apollo project works out to be about the take of the top 5 grossing Hollywood movies. If you make it a world wide effort I think we could easily afford just like we can easily afford to go to the movies even though not everyone goes to every movie.

Nope, I did not recall correctly. I guess I was looking at the cost per landing not the cost for the entire program: Each lunar landing thus cost $18 billion in 2010 dollars. And I think that works out to be around the gross of the top 15 movies.

OnlyM3		2012-05-17 10:18:12 AM

So where did this myth of national unity around the space race come from?

Simple. The media's Camelot myth. Next question.

Geotpf		2012-05-17 02:04:47 PM

kg2095: Quantum Apostrophe: Gratch: the incredible number of scientific advances that come about in the process of figuring out how to get there there are invaluable.

Name a few. I think you'll find that Earth, circa 1960, was a pretty advanced place already and it was mostly because of WWII... We went to the Moon because we were able to, not because we had to invent everything from scratch. Mythology is powerful though.

"While there may be many myths about Apollo and spaceflight, the principal one is the story of a resolute nation moving outward into the unknown beyond Earth." Nostalgia for the Space Age is rooted more in The Jetsons than in reality.

"While there may be many myths about Apollo and spaceflight, the principal one is the story of a resolute nation moving outward into the unknown beyond Earth." Nostalgia for the Space Age is rooted more in The Jetsons than in reality.

"While there may be many myths about Apollo and spaceflight, the principal one is the story of a resolute nation moving outward into the unknown beyond Earth." Nostalgia for the Space Age is rooted more in The Jetsons than in reality.

"While there may be many myths about Apollo and spaceflight, the principal one is the story of a resolute nation moving outward into the unknown beyond Earth." Nostalgia for the Space Age is rooted more in The Jetsons than in reality.

"While there may be many myths about Apollo and spaceflight, the principal one is the story of a resolute nation moving outward into the unknown beyond Earth." Nostalgia for the Space Age is rooted more in The Jetsons than in reality.

It was all just a show, folks.

Scratch-resistant lenses
Freeze-Dried Food
Athletic Shoes
CAT & MRI Technologies
Cool Suits (warn by race car drivers, nuclear reactor technicians, shipyard workers, people with multiple sclerosis, and sufferers of hypo-hydrotic ectodermic dysphasia)
Cordless Power Tools

Link

But all of those things would have eventually been invented if there was no space program.

Hyjamon		2012-05-17 02:34:29 PM

Some 'Splainin' To Do: Gratch: Some 'Splainin' To Do:

I want to emphasize that I am not saying that there isn't value in spin-off technologies. There is! But I think that it's just not solid footing to stake your case on spin-offs if you want a permanent space presence. Again, we need a solid, sustainable, and economically sensible reason to go into space, with the dividends being tied directly to that endeavor.

How about we talk about how extra-terrestrials (which we will soon brand as extra-terroristerials) have developed space balloons and we must do everything we can to capture Orbital Bin Laden. That we are now engaged in the war on extra-terroristerials and we must take them out before they take out our satellites causing us to miss the season finale of American Idol.

Just create a war on something in space, let the American public lose their shait over moon dust particles poisoning the air or something, and then we would have all the funding in the world for it.

[NPH_would_you_like_to_know_more.jpg]

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