Why Land on the Moon? (1963) | Hacker News Reader

Why Land on the Moon? (1963)

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"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." (JFK) [1]

Probably my favorite quote of all time. Those were the times.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwFvJog2dMw

I always found that quote incredibly pointless. If you just want to do something because it's hard, there's lots of options, the cheapest is to turn up the difficulty on a game.

Don't waste tax payer money sending humans to the moon for no scientific purpose - leave that to the machines. Hard things can be wasteful too, just because something is hard doesn't make it valuable.

Come now. We've wasted a lot more tax payer money on endeavors with much less reward.

http://thevietnamwar.info/how-much-vietnam-war-cost/ Vietnam War cost more than putting a man on the moon

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-war-anniversary-idUSB...

Imagine how $2 trillion of R&D would have changed the world.

I agree we've definitely wasted far more money in far worse ways, but it still doesn't change the fact it's wasteful scientifically and economically speaking, just because there are bigger wastes doesn't mean we should accept all smaller ones, this is known as the "fallacy of relative privation" or "not as bad as" fallacy.

When you say wasteful, you mean not the most efficient?

Because science and engineering benefited from the project. we are better off for having done the project. However, we could've gained the same knowledge in other ways, for less money.

So, if it costs of $25 billion to put a man on the moon, and the same knowledge could have acquired for $15 billion, you think the effort was wasted?

I get the feeling many forget the value in simply inspiring generations of people; think of all those who have increased aspirations as a result of that event - what is the worth / value of that?

Or maybe the fact that we didn't do it would inspire a new generation to achieve something (going to the Moon) that is still out there to do. I don't think anyone is forgetting the inspirational value, just challenging whether it was value for money.

For what it's worth the moon landing had a profound effect on me. I was 6 during Apollo 17 and still remember looking up at the moon and knowing there were people on it at that moment.

You may be right, it's very hard to measure these things. Though that's part of my point too - why are people so sure when they claim it's a waste? (they should at least consider they might be mistaken)

Living around the time of Apollo 17 must have been very interesting. I was born a few years later, with no more manned trips to the moon. In line with your point, I guess I had to find other things to motivate me!

I think you just pointed out the difference between technocratic thinking and political/social thinking. Which is interesting as well. Humans search for more purpose than just scientific purpose. Going to the moon is one of mankinds oldest dreams. It wouldn't be possible to go for an endeavor of the same magnitude for some purely theoretical reason or a game.

The quote is taken for a speech, not a formal argument.

The president was trying to exhort his people to join in a difficult endeavour for it's own sake.

https://what-if.xkcd.com/imgs/a/124/kennedy.png

I think going to the moon was a good choice.

It's too bad Shackelton's advertisement has turned out to be apocryphal: "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success."

While we're about it, let's not overlook: "We came in peace for all mankind."

Translates as 'not because they are easy, but because we need to show the Russians we can match them in space'.

I use the moon challenge as a time, before cable, when the media was the glue that kept the country together.

One single view repeated over time.

Then, imo, cable and now the internet has changed glue to acid that breaks us apart.

I have not changed but how we get information and news has.

Can we have another moon moment? Probably not but to me the better introspective question is am I adapting to how information is sought, ignored and processed by me???

It's hard to have a "moon moment" in times where there is a large population that think we never landed on the moon, and half the country believes in alternative facts.

And the third half have trouble with statistics.

A brilliant example of competition driving human achievement. Pity we lacked a more worthy opponent, though; otherwise we might well now be on Mars. Or they might - it'd be a win for the species, either way.

The scientists from 1963 were right even then: the robots were enough to explore the Moon, transporting human flesh and bones around and keeping them alive is not something that directly increases our knowledge of the Universe. The "man on the Moon" was a political, not a scientific project.

The worst place on Earth is still better suited for human life than either Moon or Mars or any other object in the Solar system. We depend on almost all, compared to the other objects, unique properties of the Earth. And the other stars, which could have the planets more suited for us are many light years away. The humanity must learn to respect the Earth. We won't get a way to easily survive without Earth no matter how we'd like to.

Global warming or a nuclear weapon "accident" are too probable to wipe out what the humanity achieved up to now for us to ignore the necessity of urgently solving these. Not to mention even more "inconvenient" questions of the whole approach to the use of all the Earth resources.

We still have to clean up our own backyard first. There is no known reachable second Earth waiting for us and we won't discover it by experimenting with the survival of a few persons on Mars. The human life is not self-sustainable there and it won't be even if we create some "colony."

I've been wondering why we don't focus on getting 3D visuals of the surface of Mars that can then be distributed the same way Hubble images are. Even a low quality 3D experience would transport all of us to the surface of Mars for a moment.

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars3d/ ?

Yes, I suppose I should have said with virtual/augmented reality experience. But something tells me that you knew what I meant.

> Global warming or a nuclear weapon "accident" are too probable to wipe out what the humanity achieved up to now

> We still have to clean up our own backyard first

> We won't discover [a second Earth] by experimenting with the survival of a few persons on Mars

> Human life is not self-sustainable [on Mars] and it won't be even if we create some "colony"

These are assumptions. If colonizing Mars and mastering terrestrial civilization were mutually exclusive, I'd agree with you. But there is a lot of spending between those poles. If the Apollo programs offer us any lessons, it's that space travel and better living on Earth are more complementary than competitive.

What makes you think human life on Mars is not sustainable? Mars has everything we need to live.

Except air, water, food and protection from space radiation?

It has oxygen, water is relatively abundant, food can grow on Mars (in greenhouses or underground), dirt is excellent for shielding radiation.

We can generate/recycle most if not all of these from or on mars. Surely not trivial, but possible. Air, water, food are a loop we already know well, and structures arent new...

We don't have even sustainable use of the Earth resources, even if the Earth is actually suited for human life, but you somehow imagine that we'd be able to do better on Mars, which isn't suited for life at all, having no magnetosphere?

Please study where the energy on Earth comes from and how the rare materials are obtained.

The basic assumption of all "Mars colonies work" theories is the functioning Earth civilization that supports it, paying a lot for it (at least in resources and work) to support it.

The argument for having a Mars colony is "in case something happens to Earth." But "in case something happens to Earth" the Mars colony dies. It's that simple.

Living on mars forces everything you do to be considered sustainable from first principles.

It's like removing the standard library and every 3rd-party library from a project. You would never do it because it's a waste of time, but if you were forced to then you'd see things from a new perspective. You would probably change quite a few things along the way. Everything you learn would be able to benefit us back on Earth.

> We don't have even sustainable use of the Earth resources, even if the Earth is actually suited for human life, but you somehow imagine that we'd be able to do better on Mars, which isn't suited for life at all, having no magnetosphere?

Is a magnetosphere the only way to shield from radiation?

> The basic assumption of all "Mars colonies work" theories is the functioning Earth civilization that supports it, paying a lot for it (at least in resources and work) to support it.

Supply ships are essential for the bootstrapping of any colony, but Mars does have everything we need long term.

> The argument for having a Mars colony is "in case something happens to Earth." But "in case something happens to Earth" the Mars colony dies. It's that simple.

It's not simple, it's actually quite complex and interesting. Read up on Mars exploration, everything has been addressed except for the will of the people.

> Mars does have everything we need long term.

Earth doesn't have it for the long-term high-tech life under our current ways of life. We use hydrocarbons as the main source of energy, and we used up half of them in just 100 years. The other significant source of energy is liquid water in the atmospheric cycle, completely not existing on Mars, due to the lack of the comparable atmosphere.

We have problems with the small changes in weather here on Earth, consider the weather conditions there if we would try to mess up with the atmosphere there.

If you tell me "nuclear energy" - look how fragile it is on Earth. In Mars environment it's even more. The life on Mars is not self-sustainable. Having a colony there won't allow us to discover the solutions which we lack right now on the Earth.

Solar works on Mars. Nuclear energy is not fragile.

What makes you think human life on Mars is not sustainable?

I can see weak gravity as a problem.

"We won't discover second Europe, let's just stay there". Human curiosity brought us where we are now, it would be kind of sad to ditch that with the excuse that it's "not practical".

It would have been better for untold millions if Europeans had indeed "just stayed there".

No one lives on the moon, or on Mars - in the latter case, not for many millions of years at least; in the former, not ever.

If you refer to the American continent, the people lived there and that the civilizations as Columbus arrived. They had from our point of view unpleasant religions but otherwise were very able to live without the input from other continents. The continent allowed self sustainable human life.

Compare Mars.

If you want to implement Mars colony because of a possible nuclear catastrophe, the Earth after one would be more suitable for human life than Mars is now! Ditto for most "end of civilization as we know it" scenarios. All the concepts of "building a colony on Mars" assume the healthy Earth with a functioning high-tech civilization.

Knowledge isn't the only consideration here. This moment in history is the first in which our species has been without a frontier. Early evidence suggests rather strongly that we're not at our best that way.

For the most of its existence Euroasian civilizations didn't function based on the existence of inhabited lands which are to be conquered, quite the opposite, it was known the other humans are there and the conquering involved military actions.

And there were other civilizations on the American continent too at the time it was "discovered" by the Europeans.

Still, the whole Earth is Earth-life-friendly due to so many aspects not present on Mars, including the magnetosphere and air.

> Pity we lacked a more worthy opponent, though; otherwise we might well now be on Mars.

It wasn't the fault of the opponent, really - or at least so I was led to believe when reading up on NERVA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA#In_the_space_program

"The Mars mission became NERVA's downfall. Members of Congress in both political parties judged that a manned mission to Mars would be a tacit commitment for the United States to decades more of the expensive Space Race. Manned Mars missions were enabled by nuclear rockets; therefore, if NERVA could be discontinued the Space Race might wind down and the budget would be saved."

From Wikipedia [1]:

> Landing men on the Moon by the end of 1969 required the most sudden burst of technological creativity, and the largest commitment of resources ($24 billion) ever made by any nation in peacetime. At its peak, the Apollo program employed 400,000 people and required the support of over 20,000 industrial firms and universities.

I don't think that effort would have been considered sustainable. Although it's a bit of a shame that we seem able to find the cash for perpetual war instead.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program

It's kind of sad that "the largest commitment of resources ever made by any nation in peacetime" is still only about a third of what we spend every year on war.

Damn it guys. We've been on the moon! We actually launched rockets carrying people off the planet to the moon.

What the fuck. If that doesn't give you butterflies and plaster a massive childish smile on your face, I'd conjecture that there's something wrong with you.

It helps not to know in detail the difference between the space program we had, and the one we could have had. If you've seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, its entire first act, and a fair fraction of the second, were predicated on the assumption that the Apollo missions would serve as the preliminary to real human space colonization which their architects intended that they be.

For those excited about the concept of space colonization who wish to stay that way, I don't suppose I can unreservedly recommend detailed study of the US manned space program's history, especially not that post-1969. To say that such study can be disillusioning beggars language. It does, though, answer a whole slew of questions which all more or less boil down to: "What the hell happened?" But it's up to each interested individual to evaluate for herself whether the acquisition of such knowledge is worth more or less than the fatigue its possession is likely to inflict on her idealism.

It makes me sad when I think of the sacrifices made by previous generations for the greater good, to consider that in our time we're happy to gamble with the future just to make things more comfortable for us in the present.

In the 1940s, millions of people made the ultimate sacrifice to defeat tyranny, then in the 60s huge amounts were invested into technology, transforming society, but we can't even agree on a carbon tax to start to pay for the mess we're making, never mind trying to come up with ways to reverse the damage.

A green economy should be our generation's Moon landing. Massive investment in basic research and into renewables, energy storage and transport, and improved materials could again transform the world, and benefit all of us, but I guess if you can't physically see your enemy then there's just not enough urgency.

I recommend the book 'Flight' by Christopher Kraft. It's a quick read, and a really enjoyable history lesson about the development of the US space program.

That was completely unconvincing. Sending people to the moon was a mistake. Totally a job for robots.

They didn't have robots in 1969, at least nothing that could do almost anything useful. They did send a bunch of automated probes to orbit and the Moon back in those days, and most of them failed because the tech was so poor, and the few that didn't fail didn't do much useful science anyway.

To be clear, Venera 7 landed on Venus and transmitted data in 1970. We did have robots (probes, landers) that while crude by today's standards, did serve a scientific purpose.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera

Venera 7 lasted less than an hour and only transmitted one or two crappy images, along with some sensor data. Granted, humans can't do any better on the surface of Venus due to the temperature and pressure, but humans can do far better than that on the Moon with ~1969 technology, and they did. Humans brought back many kilograms of rock samples, they set up a bunch of experiments, they drove around for hours on a buggy (in the later landings, not Apollo 11); they did FAR more than any lander of the time could possibly have done.

I'm thrilled that we went to the moon, and am glad we did. Venera is just an example of a possible alternative to what we chose to do by sending humans in that era. Less science for less money.

1969 space technology was the result of a mandate to get humans on the moon. A mandate to get robots on the moon would have likely radically increased the ability of these robots to collect data as compared to what Venera accomplished.

I'm still +1 for human exploration.

You're forgetting that we already sent landers to the Moon before we sent people. We didn't get much out of them. We just didn't have the technology, and the public wasn't going to be excited by a campaign that went like this: "it's too dangerous and expensive to send people to the Moon, so we're going to invest a ton of money into robotics technology so we can send robots there in 40 years!" A mandate to put robots there any faster wouldn't have worked; we just didn't have the technology. We developed a lot of our current computing technology IN the Apollo program itself, so the reason our computer-driven automation is so good these days is because we did send people to the Moon, instead of waiting and hoping for technology to improve.

First of all, we don't have a general purpose robot that can reliably fill even an entry-level fast food position in 2017, never mind 1969. But send a fry-cook to the moon and they'll get more science done in a day than a rover could do in a week.

Second of all, WHEN would you like the humans to go? How many robots should we send before we get the privilege to go there? Should we have stayed in Africa forever while only sending robots to the rest of Earth?

Can be read as a question about real estate.

The moon was not claimed for the USA (though a USA flag was planted). What if the moon was less like Antartica, amd more like California?

After USA got schooled by a bunch of "commies" who were able to make history by putting the first human and satellite in space (among other things), America had to prove to the world that a nation as filthy rich as theirs was not a total waste of space and was still capable of rivaling the dirt poor USSR which only a few decades ago consisted primarily of illiterate, toothless peasants.

US claimed that they did it for mankind, yet they never shared any knowledge, technology, or offered any assistance to other countries to allow them to make the similar advances in an effort to progress our world towards bigger goals. Who knows, maybe mankind could've been on Mars by now if everyone had the know-how. The whole thing was an impressive, yet selfish and ultimately useless, feat.

Well, at least all the American kids can now claim that "they've" been to the moon.

What are you talking about? Have you heard of the ISS? Hubble? NISAR? The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project? In what world does NASA not share its knowledge and technology?

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