Ask HN: What Is a Moonshot Project?

3 pointscsours2 comments

What does "Moonshot Project" mean to you?

It's certainly an evocative name: A seemingly unreachable, but supremely inspiring goal.

Bringing a nation or other large group together, devoting, time, money, and attention in small discrete areas of focus, building up those areas of focus to the larger goal.

Are there any 'true' moonshot projects left? Is it a moonshot in relation to the size of the group?

Your thoughts please!

View on HN

I had a huge idea for a moonshot project back in 2012 but had to stop working on it and focus on more down-to-earth, immediate goals, such as improving my health. I come from a modest background and can’t afford to quit my day job to start a political non-profit. But it’s still sort of my dream. I guess that’s what makes it a moonshot, it’s (seemingly) out of reach.

Thinking about it on my walk just now, the original Kennedy Moonshot had a visible, realistic antagonist: Soviet Russia.

The Soviets beat the US to several space-based accomplishments, calling into question everything including political and economic systems. However, the Apollo program to get humans to the moon and back again was not a direct attack on the antagonist; it was an in-kind demonstration of power.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com