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pfortuny

So: first attempt to get to the moon (by them, who are not quite USA or China) and they just fail at the very end.

Like getting a silver medal at the Olympics. Yes, sad. But man!

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With a population of < 3% of the USA, < 1% of China.

Very important if attempt involves standing on shoulders!

Right, and I'm sure they didn't get any tech or mission critical help from the US.

Don't get me wrong, good on them for doing this, but let's not pretend like this happened in a bubble away from anyone else.

If you read the article it says a SpaceX rocket brought them into space in the first place

Also a private, albeit subsidized, company.

Private with the prime minister on the control room? Sounds about as private as Chinese corporations.

SpaceX is not subsidized, unless you were referring to SpaceIL.

Subsidy "here is some money to exist"

Contract "here is some money to meet these contractual requirements".

I think you're confusing SpaceX with United Launch Alliance (ULA), who's Annual Capability Payment of $1 billion per year was given to them literally so they can keep the lights on. A lot of congressmen were seeing red when ULA decided to not even bother with a bid for the most recent GPS launches (which SpaceX cleaned house with overall) where SpaceX required zero subsidy and managed to do it cheaper in every way.

Oh I didn't even think we needed to get into that part since it was stated. I'm saying their space program has directly benefited from the ongoing relationship with the US allowing them to develop as far as they have.

OP was pointing out how far they got despite being such a small nation, I'm just saying that's not an accurate statement whatsoever based on what actually happened.

> I'm sure they didn't get any tech or mission critical help from the US

What's your point? NASA got a bunch of help from Nazi scientists.

Those scientists only came to USA because the Jews inspired Hitler, so it's still thanks to Israelites..

If someone puts a gun to your head and says "Do this thing or you and your family will be executed" it doesn't make you the same as them. Coming from Nazi Germany does not make them necessarily Nazis.

Well, Von Braun was most definitely a nazi and not driven by threats of bodily harm. He was just very into rockets, and worked with whoever let him develop them.

My point, which I'll just keep remaking here, is that pointing out the "super tiny" population of Israel is disingenuous since the intent is to show Israeli exceptionalism. If I was claiming "NASA is the best, way better than Israel whom NASA helped" then your whataboutism would be a valid critique. But I'm not saying that.

Pointing out the population relative to the US/China is the "Tony Stark built this in a cave from spare parts" argument, but that's not really what happened here. It's more "Tony Stark built this from a schematic given to him by Reed Richards and using parts gifted from Hank Pym" (to stretch my Marvel analogy as far as possible). It's still impressive, but that statement doesn't provide clarification to the accomplishment's significance.

TL;dr- "Israel did a cool thing, and they had lots of international help doing it" is the accurate statement on what happened.

To be fair, the United States didn’t exactly start with home grown talent either.

relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/984/

They also got a fair number of Russian engineers.

Not to mention 0.1% of the budget!

0.1% the budget because they didn't have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to research and build the last 60 years of space technology - rolling progress forward one painful, costly mistake at a time - to do it. Hardly seems reasonable to use such a comparison or make such a point given the actual context.

> 0.1% the budget because they didn't have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to research and build the last 60 years of space technology

That sort of argument isn't very honest or reasonable. Would you believe it would make any sense to point out the centuries of R&D work and countless money spent on it prior to the creation of the US space program to insinuate that the US freeloaded its way into one of mankind's most important achievements?

The US and China could (and have) put a probe on the moon for far less than $100B. $100MM is still a great accomplishment, but let's not exaggerate it.

To be fair the hardest and most expensive part was handled by a US company. Many small countries have put satellites up using launchers from the larger players.

You do realize that Israel has put it's own satellites into space? And in a much more difficult way to avoid launching them over hostile countries.

Yeah, they use a dead simple solid-fuel rocket based on their ballistic missiles that can only really hit LEO and has a pretty limited payload.

implying that makes it unworthy of praise?

In the same way that 'getting to space' is not nearly as impressive as 'getting to orbit', there is another large step to 'getting to trans-lunar injection'.

It's perfectly reasonable to show the differences in two achievements, and doing so doesn't imply the derision of either.

In any case, I love that so many people around the world are able to participate in the exploration of our sky, and will celebrate every single step that makes it easier and cheaper, regardless of where the people making it happen happen to live.

Also a lot of countries have an advantage in space access over Israel: Israel prefers to launch on retrograde orbit flight paths so that any debris falls into the Mediterranean instead of on their neighbors to the east. I don't blame them for hitching a ride.

Aren't they also the world's largest foreign aid recipient?

No, they are not.

according to this[0], iraq and afghanistan get more aid from the usa than israel does.

[0]https://www.concernusa.org/story/foreign-aid-by-country-gett...

Iraq and Afghanistan have each 5 times the population of Israel, and only 33% more aid than Israel. Also, both Iraq and Afghanistan are desperately poor countries against which the US waged war, causing further destruction. What's the reason for Israel's aid?

> What's the reason for Israel's aid?

Because they are our only truly stable ally in that extremely chaotic, highly strategic region.

Hm. I see very well what the US does for Israel: 4.5 billion in military aid, constant international support (vetoed 44 UN security council resolutions against Israel), passed illegitimate laws in several states to punish those who support a boycott of Israel, recently recognized the illegal annexation of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, puts orthodox Jews in charge of drafting peace plans with the Palestinians, etc.

But what does Israel do for the US? It's not very clear to me. The only thing I know of is intelligence. Is that enough? I think even Saudi Arabia provides much more support: military bases, etc.

The Michael Collins of lunar trips.

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