Comment on we are creators
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 2 months ago
And fifty years later we still mope around in low earth orbit. Progress had slowed down a lot since the billionaires took over.
The reason why spaceflight stagnated for 50 years is because IT can in the middle of it.
All the smart people went to build computers instead of rockets, and now we have smartphones and the internet.
Now that IT is stagnating (enshittification), smart people will probably go back to spaceflight.
All the smart people went to build computers instead of rockets, and now we have smartphones and the internet.
I work in software, most of my peers are not spacefaring material. The issue is budget and ability/desire to do things that are bold instead of sending robots up there.
Sure, but is bet some of them would be pretty useful for programming fuel pump controllers or navigation systems. Neil Armstrong flew Apollo 11, he didn’t design or build it.
No, they would not. The kind of software development done in aerospace is very, very different from the commercial industry at large. Writing 20 lines per week might be considered a breakneck pace because of all the formal verification that needs to be done on every single line.
They followed the money. The US Congress saddled NASA with a mandate for a Shuttle without funding it properly. The Russians never even developed crewed rockets that could do anything interesting beyond LEO. Everyone else wasn’t doing much until the last decade or so.
There have long been plenty of smart people at NASA, and they’re wasted on poor funding and management. It has nothing to do with IT.
The bigger issue is that there isn’t much point to having humans in space.
After the Wright Brothers flight, aviation took off because aviation is genuinely useful. First it was mostly for delivering mail, but that was an incredible change. Instead of a letter taking weeks to get somewhere it would take days. Places that used to be completely isolated from communication now had an easy way to keep in touch. Then with passengers aviation you had something that changes the world in a positive and measurable way.
Humans in space is extremely expensive and there really isn’t much worthwhile to do up there. Sure, you can do some science experiments about how zero gravity affects something, and learning things is useful, but there’s no obvious immediate payoff. If going into space made your bones stronger and not weaker, space travel would have developed massively because there would be a reason for millions of people to go to space for the health benefits. Or, if ballistic travel made sense economically, there might be rockets that cut the travel time from New York to Melbourne down to a couple of hours. But, having to get all that mass above the atmosphere means that it’s far too costly to make economic sense.
People talk about mining asteroids or the moon, but there really isn’t much that’s valuable up there. The moon is mostly made of cheese [wait, my sources need updating] lunar regolith, which is composed of elements that are just as common on earth: silicon, aluminum, calcium, magnesium, iron, etc. But, on earth you don’t have to deal with the difficulty of processing it on another celestial body, nor do you have to deal with the spiky, unweathered nature of regolith that means it destroys space suits and machines.
The only reason the US landed on the moon with humans in the first place is that it was in a dick measuring contest with the USSR. Now that the cold war is over, nobody’s willing to pay for something that useless.
The problem is time.
You’re just considering human spaceflight. Keeping humans alive and more importantly sane for years is very different to sending a probe somewhere, and we’ve been getting better at the latter
That’s why getting to the moon permanently is so important. Once we get in situ resource utilisation going, the rest of the solar system becomes much more accessible.
KSP taught me that, shame we don’t have a lower mass minty moon.
What are you talking about? Everyone was a capitalist back then as they are now. The space race was as much a capitalist conquest for glory as it was beneficial for technology/science.
In the USA we wasted time, money, and media resources going to the moon while black people were treated as less than citizens and millions were living in abject poverty. Not much has changed on that front for the countries entire history. What good did the moon landing do for the average man?
Same with the USSR. As people starved and lived under a dictatorship, the ruling class wasted the countries money by getting into a dick measuring contest.
The billionaires have taken over since capitalism and colonialism became the status quo in the 15th century. Most of the technological progress since then is guided by capital and not something noble.
In the USA we wasted time, money, and media resources going to the moon while black people were treated as less than citizens and millions were living in abject poverty. Not much has changed on that front for the countries entire history. What good did the moon landing do for the average man?
I’m sincerely wondering if you’d like an answer to your question. I can provide you the science perspective, if you like, not to mention a political one. Not interested in an emotional debate here, you’re entitled to your point of view and your polemic, if that’s all you prefer.
I would. The literature the other commenter provided really did not help me understand the benefits of it. Both articles they listed focused on how much of a cultural and political achievement it was. However, as I pointed out, that perspective leaves out a large portion of our population.
The science achievements sound good. We learned the origin of the earth and moon and NASA invented a few good gadgets like wireless headsets- obviously good contributions. But I don’t see how those outweigh the cons of the Apollo program.
It cost so much money and distracted the populace from the very real issues going on at the time. It was a great propaganda victory.
Politics reply:
What good did the moon landing do for the average man?
Directly, immediately? In the 1960s? Aside from the people employed working directly or indirectly on space efforts? Almost none. Is that really the answer you’re looking for, though? Scientific knowledge can take decades or even centuries before it improves our lives tangibly. But I think you know that, so I won’t argue with you about it.
Concerning the waste of time, money and attention - LOL there was the Vietnam war, too. I’d argue was less beneficial to humanity than Apollo. I am only raising this point because I think it’s unfair to place blame for lack of social progress at the feet of scientists, or a sub-set of scientists. We’re collectively responsible.
Otherwise, I generally agree with you. The Apollo program was not conceived or executed to benefit science. But Apollo did mobilize science irrevocably. “Planetary science” as a discipline, community and way of thinking didn’t exist before Apollo. Very few people, even in the science community, were comparing planets and learning something from that before about 1970. Ditto for environmental science - and did that community, too, barely existed before Apollo. Even though that field got a headstart due to people like Rachel Carson.
Would you have improved social conditions for anyone by cancelling Apollo/Gemini in, say, 1964? I’m not so sure about that. 1968 certainly implies otherwise. I’m here to tell you that exploring neighboring worlds is a social good because you learn the parameters of your own environment, parameters you MUST keep an eye on to keep Earth habitable. But that social good is a joke if people can’t walk down the street without worrying about ICE raids. So yeah, you’re right, racial hatred obviates this beautiful and essential realization that we’re connected to a bigger universe. Would you have the scientists of the world hide their knowledge away because we live surrounded by ugliness? All I can say to you is that we live here too, and this fight is ours as much as yours.
Science reply:
We learned the origin of the earth and moon and NASA invented a few good gadgets … But I don’t see how those outweigh the cons of the Apollo program.
It’s a lot broader and more subtle than just the origin of the Earth and Moon. Apollo rewrote your geology textbook. Not the lunar geology text - the one for Earth. And not just the chapter about origins. This tends to get obscured because there was another revolution going on in Earth science at the very same time - a little thing called plate tectonics.
Direct results from Apollo, corroborated by old Soviet and modern Chinese automated landers:
Indirect result from Apollo:
Of the three direct results, two sound obvious. Naturally Earth is hot inside; where does lava come from? Of course space rocks can bang into us; what would stop them? None of this, however, was evident certain to a huge number of geologists, physicists, or chemists in the 1960s (or '70s, or even '80s… some people never change their minds. They just die). And when most workers in a given field are against you, progress tends to be rather slow. Walter and Luis Alvarez had a hell of a time convincing people that an asteroid strike could have ended the Cretaceous, not to mention the dinosaurs - I mean, there isn’t even a crater in the Yucatan, it’s flat down there! (LOL That debate still isn’t over, even today…)
As far as I can see, direct result #3 (about planetary evolution) hasn’t entered the zeitgeist yet. Yes, people are (wisely) alerted to climate change, but that’s just a little tweak compared to the immense environmental changes that we know took place on Venus, Mars and Earth - and I’m just talking about the ones that have occurred since complex life emerged here, not the ones from billions of years ago.
And that indirect result? I still know a number of scientists who hem and haw and won’t quite agree that Earth’s environment doesn’t suddenly end 100 km up. The Voyager probes show us how bad the radiation is when you get far enough away from the Sun, and I don’t know if you even do Voyager without Apollo. But Apollo, uniquely, shows you something else - the Sun hasn’t always protected us from that bigger dose of cosmic radiation that the Voyagers see. Sometimes that heliospheric shield shrinks, and the planets get a lot more radiation than we do today. And that’s just one of the synergistic results, there are more.
IMO the primary lesson we learn from geology is that environments change in time. Please note my use of the PRESENT TENSE in this reply, because none of what I am discussing is forever confined to a remote past - all of the planetary evolution processes I’m talking about can still occur today, and are certain to recur in the future. Geology left the silo to become a much more interconnected science partly because of Apollo - and the thing is, it became a science about THE FUTURE as well as the past.
Apologies for the overly long reply. Apologies to my science people for oversimplifying here.
Both of those focus on political and cultural achievements, which in my opinion, do not help the average man. They were achievements in propaganda and leave out a large part of our population.
I also struggle to see how the scientific achievements required going to the moon (Besides learning about earth/moon origin). The other achievements like wireless tools and head seats did not require a moon landing.
Both of those focus on political and cultural achievements, which in my opinion, do not help the average man. They were achievements in propaganda and leave out a large part of our population.
Might want to work on your reading comprehension.
Technology developed during the Apollo Mission has made everyday life easier – and safer.
That’s the first paragraph from a section on one of those links that’s about technological advances.
I also struggle to see how the scientific achievements required going to the moon (Besides learning about earth/moon origin). The other achievements like wireless tools and head seats did not require a moon landing.
Maybe not, but that wasn’t the question you posed, it’s where you moved the goalpost to. The US went to the moon, that happened already; but there were any number of achievements that resulted in life improvements for everyone while it happened.
What you seem to want to debate is whether it should have happened and your about 60 years late for that discussion.
Thats because the only good progress now is up or positive on the stock markets.
Yeah you’re right, there was no such thing as stock markets until 2010 I heard
Before capitalism was invented in 2010 we were just guided by happiness and the pursuit of science and art and improving our livelihoods 🥰
Since the USSR fell
StaticFalconar@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Fifty years later we have reached mars with drones and created space probes to expand our knowledge of space.
floo@retrolemmy.com 2 months ago
Actually, we first reached Mars with the Viking series of probes in 1976. Then there was a whole lot of time where we didn’t do anything before we started again with Mars in the 90s.
torres@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Damn those Vikings, they’re always first
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
We have even figured out aviation on mars so thats kinda cool :D
Mirshe@lemmy.world 2 months ago
No no, it’s cooler than that. We tried out aviation on Mars to make sure we figured out how to do aviation on Titan.
happydoors@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Goddamn that’s so fucking cool
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Ngl I’m fucking stoked about the potential exploration of the Jovian moons
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Incidentally, that mission was one of those surprising successes. The drone they sent was really barebones so it could tag along on another mission. Nobody expected it to work all that well. It ended up working incredibly well and got used far beyond its planned mission until its rotor blades broke.
Now the team gets to build a real one.
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
Yeah its a great story. I watched the Veritasium vid about it and its so much cooler when you hear the backstory. www.youtube.com/watch?v=20vUNgRdB4o
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 2 months ago
We reached Mars with probes 50 years ago. I’m not in any way trying to denigrate the amazing achievements of the Mars rovers. But the fact remains that a human crew could have done all that and more (like drill a hole) in a few weeks at best.
anomnom@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
And 59 years after landing on the moon we’ve just been watching Space X rockets explode instead of going back on rockets NASA proved it could engineer with slide rules and drafting tables.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Relying on Starship as a moon lander is one of the most hare brained decisions of NASA in recent years. OTOH, it would be perfectly feasible to get a moon mission going using Falcon 9 as the launch vehicle.
nuko147@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Actually the rate of major mission launches and new “firsts” was highest in the late 60s/70s, slowed significantly in the 80s/early 90s, and resumed at a moderate and consistent pace from the mid-90s until today (although today missions became far more complex and focused on detailed science rather than just achieving things).
rumba@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
We need some kind of automated workshop on Mars. Send a boatload of refined materials up there and a small autofactory that can craft marginally useful gear and replacement parts.
GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
First, we need an autofactory. This is not a minor step.
rumba@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
We need a hardened autofactory, capable of self-repair and or serious fault tolerance.
Power, protection, temperature stability, something capable of 3d printing without a lot of finish work. How cool would it be to print a new wheel for a rover and install it? Imagine rovers being delivered batteries and solar panels by mini helis…
It’s sci-fi for now, but not impossible.