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Comment by tenant | Hacker News Reader

I remember watching the Apollo 13 movie for the first time in 1995 and thinking at the time how modern they were in those far off days of 1970. Now the same length of time has passed since 1995 (in the blink of an eye) and it still hasn't dated. The internet is huge but it feels like the only thing we've done since 1970.

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Extreme poverty has halved or so in the last 30 years. Smallpox has been eradicated

Technologically the internet is probably the biggest event, yes.

Smartphones also.

Smartphones. Holy crap. Remember arguing about some objective fact and having to "agree to disagree" at some point?

We lose those kinds of social events (I liked them), but I think we are far better off. All this knowledge instantly accessible.

Smallpox may have gone but I'm fairly sure that there was a vaccine for that a very long time ago. As regards extreme poverty, I don't know that the situation in sub-Saharan Africa has improved, it may even have become worse. But I'm not doubting that there have been massive improvements in a qualitative sense to such an extent that in some ways they are revolutionary.

The 50 or so years from about 1895 gave us powered flight, radio and television, the first antibiotics, nuclear energy, rockets capable of escaping earth orbit, the big bang understanding of the origins of the universe, motor cars and even car phones. They also gave us two world wars which may be significant. By comparison the last 50 years appears rather dull, from this layman's perspective.

> Extreme poverty has halved or so in the last 30 years.

People love to bring this up, but always fail to mention the change is almost entirely in China and India. The US has completely stagnated and done pretty much nothing new in the past 30 years.

Rent-collection is the only imperative now.

Only a shock if you have a US-centric view of the world.

I understand that space fanbois find manned space exploration romantic. But it's not all about entertaining you.

Manned space flight has been a complete waste of resources and money, and likely will remain that way for the next 100 years.

Since 1970 far more influential events:

- 747 (early 1970)

- Intel 4004 (1971)

- GPS (1980s)

- Internet (1990s)

But aside from that, there have been incremental improvements of 1%/year in areas like fuel efficiency, medicine and metallurgy. That really adds up over 50 years.

The Space Shuttle literally ate America's space exploration budget, and didn't even go past LEO. Everybody knew this, yet nobody did anything about it.

The US needs to adopt space policies that actually advance science and technology, not manned spaceflight just for feel-good PR shots.

A good start would be de-orbiting the ISS ASAP - the final manned space flight should be to send somebody to the ISS with a chain saw.

Now think about when would we have GPS if there hasn't been rush to the space.

It helps put todays (communication) satellites into space.

There were satellites before there was man in space, and still today communication and GPS satellites are launched without the need for a human being to position them. In fact, many communication satellites are launched from completely different infrastructure than the US or Russia’s manned-spacecraft sites.

> The US needs to adopt space policies that actually advance science and technology, not manned spaceflight just for feel-good PR shots.

I would guess that your man-in-the-street can identify much more readily with another human doing 'something' in space than they can some 'robot', even if the latter might be more more productive. And what's wrong with some 'entertainment', not every aspect of life needs to be optimised and tuned for full productivity / efficiency.

I agree to almost all points, but de-orbiting ISS would be a waste. Dozens of astronauts go there (and to Mir before that) every year for decades, and yet every day their work time is packed with scientific experiments. Sure, some of that work could be done by automatic labs, but humans can do a lot of things machines still can't. So, it's a valuable source of data and knowledge that we wouldn't get otherwise.

ISS is expected to function for another 10 years, and its lifetime is very likely to be extended further. Big part of ongoing expenses is transportation of materials and personnel, but it will be lowered over time due to competition.

I've suspected for a couple of decades now that the most significant science aboard the ISS is simply living in space.

What are the impacts on individual human bodies, on equipment, crews, projects, international collaboration and cooperation.

But mostly uman-body effects so far as I can make out.

Transfer of which to terrestrial use is nonzero, but likely limited.

I've periodically requested lists of acievements in other fields -- the supposed actual intent of the station. Answers have been ... vague.

Nasa's own list:

Space Station Research Goals, NASA Research:

- Space Life and Physical Sciences

- Research and Applications

- Human Research Program

- Science Mission Directorate

- Advanced Exploration Systems

- Space Technology Mission Directorate

Astronomy, planetary science, reconnaissance, and communications seem to make up the lions share of the remainder.

The problem is not manned space exploration. The problem is a lack of focus on making space exploration cheaper, and a lack of investment.

Space Shuttle wasn't cheaper. It was ridiculously expensive, with designs decisions that shouldn't be made in the first place. If it was just a rocket that launched astronauts into space. That would be one thing. It's quite another to carry literal deadweight into space.

Look at SpaceX's starship program. It's much more ambitious than anything we have on the drawing board. It isn't just another super heavy lift rocket, but a mass manufacturable reusable launch system. Everyone else is still thinking about how they will make reusuable rockets. Meanwhile, SpaceX is making their own game, playing on their own level.

Manned flight isn't a burden. It has nothing to do with why we stagnated in rocket development. In fact, manned flight is the point of SpaceX, especially colonization.

Space Shuttle was a system designed around classified military requirements that disappeared and left the civilian program holding the bag.

Can you image the government in charge of mobile phone design? The incredible innovation of Space X is primarily that it's a private company with accountability and incentives around it's customers, and of course run by someone who truly understands both the problem and the evolving technology.

Can you imagine mobile devices that are not built to extract the maximum possible profit from the systematic exploitation of people's private data and attention spans, leading to political manipulation and instability, all to further fill the coffers of the global elite, who already own most of the world?

I think that most space fanboys would agree with part of your argument. Just like the Shuttle did in the late 70's and 80's, Artemis and the Space Launch System are decimating NASA's budget to perform real science.

It's particularly galling that NASA is giving Boeing $2B/launch whereas Elon is targeting $2M/launch for a similar capability. Few people believe he'll reach that target, but a miss on such an audacious target will get us far more than spending much more on something that teaches us less even if it's more likely. (And given Boeing's performance lately, "more likely" is in doubt too).

> A good start would be de-orbiting the ISS ASAP - the final manned space flight should be to send somebody to the ISS with a chain saw.

This is the sunk cost fallacy in reverse. Yes, you may question the costs of ISS decisions in the past but right now the ISS is doing real science at a reasonable cost as long as you ignore the massive number of dollars wasted in the past. That money is spent, we can't get them back. Even NASA agrees that it's not worth the money to refurbish the ISS but they're going to continue using it as long as they can without spending real money on it.

PR matters because without PR people forget things exist or are worth spending money on. Without manned space flight I suspect you get roughly 36 hours before the first Senator proposes slashing NASA's budget.

You could have been better received if you didn't:

  * Use the pejorative "fanboi"
  * Propose a strawman that manned-spaceflight enthusiasts think it is all about entertainment

Now that we have the rude parts out of the way:

Yes, there were many conflicting priorities in various manned-spaceflight programs through US history. Yes, we have had many achievements due to researching human life in space. Yes, a long term (more than a presidency) goal should be sustainable human life on another rock. Yes, we can do both manned- and unmanned- space research simultaneously, if we can attempt to de-politicize it a little.

Please don't be an asshole on HN, even if you don't feel nostalgic for space travel. It helps no one and just makes the thread worse. We've had to ask you this kind of thing before. You've got some good points here, but in the future please express your good points thoughtfully.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

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