

Apollo 11 Dismembered - bad_user
http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/apollo-11-dismembered/

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pbz
Good article, but I disagree with his future shock theory. I happen to have
grown up in Eastern Europe. When communism fell you had a flood of new
technology pouring in. The society, from a technological point of view, was
leapfrogging tens of years in a matter of months or short years. He had
computers, color TVs, calculators, more TV time than ever before, all the
electronic appliances you can think of, and so on. People weren't future-
shocked, quite the opposite. There was this general vibe about what new things
the future may bring, a general feel of optimism, of embracing anything new,
especially science and technology.

What was different? Education. The level of science education all the way to
high school, and arguably beyond, was and still is much higher than in the US.
In a way, the brains of most people were more ready to absorb all this new
information. It's like having an athlete train in a closed room for years and
all of a sudden letting him run freely. What we have in the states is not only
muscle atrophy, but also brain atrophy. There are of course pockets of
resistance, but the overall trend is negative. Sadly going back after years,
I've noticed a similar mental laziness taking place even there. When the
hunger for more is fulfilled, complacency settles in...

~~~
Kadin
I agree. I don't think his "future shock" explanation really holds water. If
anything, the last few decades have demonstrated that most people are far more
tolerant of change than they themselves might have even predicted they'd be.

Case in point: cellular phones. I remember when they first came out, first the
wired-in car phones, and then the "bag phones" with the lead-acid batteries.
And almost immediately you had a class of people saying "I hate those things,
I'll never own one." Anyone older than 20 or so can remember a lot of backlash
as phones started to get smaller, cheaper, and more popular. Very few of those
people are still without cell phones. A few holdouts here and there -- I know
a couple, we all do -- but fewer and fewer every day. The vast majority of
people who initially rejected the technology as being too disruptive were
brought around, sometimes grudgingly, into accepting it. The same story
repeats itself over and over with many new devices or technologies.

We tend to vastly underestimate our own ability to deal with change, even very
disruptive change. The whole concept of "future shock" was a manifestation of
this underestimation; it didn't happen this way.

The explanation for the failure of the US space program, I think, is much more
simple and is put forward in one of the comments to the linked piece: during
the Cold War, Americans were content to spend large amounts of money on
Apollo, in order to beat the Soviets to the Moon. Without that competitive
aspect, public interest disappeared.

People are simply not as willing to spend money on pure exploration as they
are on a meaningless competition between nations.

If you could frame the current space program in some sort of nationalistic,
competitive terms -- perhaps versus the Chinese? -- people would probably be
interested again. But since the public perception is that the US "won" the
space race, and that nobody is currently that close (although the gap is
narrowing), large investments like we saw in the past are simply not on the
table.

------
grellas
The political tides of a given era do not necessarily equate with the level of
general intelligence in a society, and the author (I think) stretches it when
he says that we have done nothing since Apollo because we are a nation of
idiots who refuse to give priority to scientific goals.

The moon project was given high _political_ priority because of the cold-war
impetus to outdo the Soviets. Substantial funds were devoted to the project
and the goal itself was specific, symbolic, and achievable (as it turns out,
though the underlying effort was obviously an amazing achievement).

Once that was achieved, nothing of comparable impetus has arisen in the space
program to excite the public imagination in a similar way, and it is the
public imagination that sways political decisions, not abstract judgments made
in the name of advancing "science."

Average people may be largely ignorant of science but they like what it brings
into a society even if they don't understand how it comes about. The American
infatuation with "progress" for the past couple of centuries has largely been
tied to a national pride over scientific achievements and nothing has changed
in this area. A century ago, they were proudly boasting of Thomas Edison;
today, they boast of Silicon Valley.

I would guess that it is not so much an antipathy to science that has caused
politicians to pull back on the space program as it is a general loss of focus
in that program that has caused the public to look at it with apathy. No
public support. No political support. No political support. No "billions in
funding."

The appallingly low level of scientific knowledge in the general population is
real but is likely not (in my judgment at least) the cause of this particular
phenomenon. The author does make his point with great vigor, though, and the
piece is fun to read.

------
jimfl
"We’re having a debate in this country over whether or not evolution is true.
They have half a point- evolution isn’t science, not anymore. Today it’s
technology."

What an excellent point.

------
hvs
We have a government spending trillions of dollars with plans to spend more
and he suggests spending billions more on space travel? The real solution is
to eliminate the regulatory barriers to private space travel and sell off NASA
to interested private parties. The Moon might not be their first priority, but
we would have a much more vibrant space program and the costs for larger
missions would drop dramatically.

~~~
ErrantX
The problem is that they worry foreign companies will muscle into the picture.

Imagine if China landed the first Moon Base in 2020 and was wellestablished
there before the US even landed another astronaut. Highly unlikely BUT the
fear is there - and with that fear comes the other one; strategic habitation
of the Moon establishes something of a superiority over other countries.

Summary: the US govt. will guard NASA as long as it can. It can use it to make
sure that it holds onto much of the tech (or at least controls who makes it).

~~~
philwelch
Can you think of any strategic value to the moon? I can't.

~~~
catfish
Helium-3

In a nutshell human beings have depleted helium reserves on planet earth to
the point that within 20 years we run out. Now you say, big deal, no more
party balloons. But little do you realize that the manufacturing processes for
just about everything super technical requires helium. It's a big enough deal
that both Russia and China are developing standalone robotic systems to
harvest helium-3 from moon rocks where its found in great abundance due to the
suns constant bombardment of the surface rocks which creates the substance.
Helium-3 is also a core ingredient in fusion reactor processes and as such is
required in great quantities to sustain the fusion reactor operations.

<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.08/helium.html>

So there is a strategic value which while not important at this moment, will
likely be a driving force in space economics in 20 years...

~~~
eru
Can't you get Helium-3 from Asteroids (or so) in case someone blocks the moon?

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mixmax
This is one of the best pieces I've read in a while.

Definitely worth your time.

~~~
stcredzero
I agree with all of the points. The knowledge of science across the population
as a whole is decaying in the US. Could've edited better.

~~~
gaius
It's more meta than that. If _knowledge_ was decaying yet _interest_ remained
high, then that could be addressed straightforwardly.

What's happening is analogous to children believing that meat comes from
supermarkets, not farm animals... Accomplishments of science and engineering
are taken for granted. But mobile phones and MP3 players don't grow on
trees...

~~~
tetha
I wonder if this is a general truth, just hiding a bit.

Take, for example, some bad PHP-webprogrammer (or RoR, or whatever). They will
wonder what the hell some 'webserver' is and why you need one and what's all
that fuss about networks, ports, routing, security and such. (Please don't
kill me, I just needed an example for ignorant people in software industries
and this one was the first to come to my mind :). In other words, the
abstraction of such a Web framework creates a certain ignorance and even
missing knowledge about the underlying mechanisms.

And now consider this: A child gets food from the supermarket and does not
know about the cow behind this. Looking at this from a bit further away, these
two patterns look awefully similar, because here we have an abstraction AGAIN
(the supermarket, similar to the web framework), which hides the actual
infrastructure (cow, butcher, truck, ...). And again, there are people showing
heavy ignorance and even missing knowledge about the underlying
infrastructure.

Certainly, I do not know how to butcher a cow or drive a truck either, and I
am unable to configure a webserver in a dark room with a blindfold and one
hand tied behind my back, but I certainly know that these things happen behind
the abstraction.

So, is this a certain indicator of ignorance, if one just uses abstractions
and never ever looks behind the abstraction?

------
otto
The author seems to be a bit misinformed.

 _because there are only a few shuttle missions left. After that, nada.
Nothing. Zilch._

True, there are only a few more shuttle
missions(<http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle>). However this isn't the end of manned
space exploration, check out the Orion
spacecraft(<http://www.nasa.gov/orion/>). NASA recently tested
MLAS(<http://www.nasa.gov/centers/wallops/missions/mlas.html>).

 _Oh sure, NASA talks about designing a space plane- but they’ve been talking
about designing a space plane since before Neil took his ride- and I ain’t
seen one yet._

NASA has worked on this, many pilots of the X-15 qualified as astronauts,
though I would not consider this a space plane either. Several Single Stage to
Orbit ships have been built(none of them coming close to
orbit)(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-stage-to-orbit>).

 _NASA isn’t going back to the moon, not any time soon._

Bah! Constellation program,
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Constellation>)

It bothers me that posts like this with such misinformation exists. Does NASA
not have enough publicity to get this information out there?

~~~
JabavuAdams
> Bah! Constellation program,
> (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Constellation>)

Ares and Constellation are dead, except in name. The NASA budget has been
reduced to a level that is incompatible with completion of the program. I've
read NASA insiders acknowledging this on semi-public message boards.

See this, for example: [http://www.spacepolitics.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/04/grif...](http://www.spacepolitics.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/04/griffin-goddard-speech.pdf)

> But work at the staff level continues out of view of the nation’s elected
> leadership, and in the recent passback to NASA from the Office of Management
> and Budget, the news is not so good. After a small increase this year,
> Exploration Systems at NASA goes down by $3.5 billion over the next four
> years. When combined with earlier reductions of almost $12 billion during
> the Bush Administration, well over $15 billion has been extracted from the
> Exploration Systems budget in the five short years since the new space
> policy was announced. Funding for lunar return in the Constellation program
> was already less than $4 billion in the years prior to 2015. This was to be
> allocated to early work on the Ares 5 heavy‐lifter, and the Altair lunar
> lander. With only a half‐billion dollars now available, this work cannot be
> done.

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tybris
We should be actively colonizing space to increase our survival chances.
However, behind every technical reality, there is a far more important
economic reality. First, the need for a back-up planet isn't that high yet.
Second, NASA isn't self-supporting. It can't amplify its achievements like
business can. Putting men on the moon was the peak of what it could do without
requiring an unrealistic change in the nature of people. The market needs to
step in and develop a genuine space flight and colonization industry. This is
a slow process, but has already started.

In general, if you think a large group of people are idiots, you should count
yourself among them. People are competitive creatures and won't all step in
the same direction because you want them to. They'll act in their own
interest. They'll do business. That is how mankind achieves things.

Think distributed.

~~~
eru
I guess we won't colonize space with a profit, if we can't even colonize the
seas economically. See seasteading
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading>).

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alexgartrell
If you want to go back to the moon:

1\. Give the terrorists a space Program. We didn't go to the moon because we
thought it'd be neat up there, we went to beat the Soviet's asses. That's why
Americans were interested then, that's why they'd be interested now.

2\. Make gains clearly applicable to world power. Gee oh I wonder why the US
was so willing to invest millions and millions into rockets. Might it have
something to do with the fact that they used the same technology to give
themselves the ability to put a Nuke in striking distance of anything on the
planet? The government only gave a crap about the Moon because it pleased the
people and because it made their death-weapons possible.

People are no dumber now than they were then. In fact, people are loads
smarter. Look at the devices they use on a daily basis!

Why is there some need to lament the state of humanity at every turn? Guys,
it's not really that bad. Everything's going to be OK

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edw519
Nice rant. If I think about it long enough, it's depressing. So I won't. I'll
code something instead.

(Sometimes I think the reason I program so much is because the big issues seem
so futile. This is one thing that I _can_ do something about right now, so I
do.)

~~~
access_denied
Gandhi just started out alone on a "big issue", and he even saw ROI during is
lifetime.

