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Comment by someguydave | Hacker News Reader

The moon landings were successful and also a waste of money

You know, I was going to argue that such an historical landmark has value beyond what is learned. Those who are inspired, those who believe in funding science, the sheer awe of what civilization can achieve and all.

But it would seem the cost ascended to what would now be $280 billion, adjusted for inflation.

CERN's Large Hadron Collider cost 4.75 billion. International Space Station? A cool 150 billion GPS costed 12 billion to put in orbit. James Webb telescope, 10 billion. Human Genome, 5 billion.

Now, there is a point to be made that maybe we just don't do other very valuable, very expensive projects, and you can always compare it to the US defense budget if you want to make the number look small, but I really wasn't aware of the sheer amount of money poured into this. Damn.

Just as an aside, the US defence budget is actually not the US governments' biggest expense.

Also, humanity is always going to spend a good whack of money on defence - it's just the cost of running a civilization. Lawful behavior is what keeps us on an upward trajectory, and laws are backed up by guns.

If Ukraine had nukes, there'd be no invasion.

If France invaded Germany right after Germany invaded Poland in 1939, there'd be no WW2.

If the Allies didn't invade Nazi Europe, Hitler's son/grandson would be ruling that continent, and possibly a couple of other ones as well.

I fully agree on your point regarding big, valuable projects though.

So were the Pyramids of Giza and Angkor Wat.

Isn't anything that isn't humanitarian aid technically a waste of money?

I would pick humanitarian aid over religious monuments to glorify unelected monarchs.

“As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.”

- Henry David Thoreau

Recently read the argument that monuments are less about glory and more about keeping the unwashed masses busy with work, so they don't have time or energy to overthrown the ruling class.

... or juicing the economy with a little redistribution, without simply giving handouts. Or a little of both.

The CCC in the US was a similar thing: paying people to build nice things in parks and such while people were going hungry. We absolutely didn't need that stuff. Coulda just given the money away to those who needed it. Though, this way, at least, we got some wonderful benefits that endure to this day—indeed, the kind of well-built, long-lasting, and nice-to-have but unnecessary infrastructure and flourishes, for the enjoyment and appreciation of all, that make one feel like one actually does live in a very-rich country—even if the resource-allocation wasn't ideal from a greatest-good-for-the-suffering perspective.

A sincere attempt at economic stimulus, or keeping the able-bodied masses busy & fed so they don't get any ideas? Probably both.

As for the true motivations of the pharaohs—who knows.

> So were the Pyramids of Giza and Angkor Wat.

Of course they were a waste. The reason we like them is because we didn't have to pay for them and we marvel at those who did. I like the moai on Easter Island; should we do more of that?

technically yes. both those things are a waste of energy that could have been spent bettering humanity. not to mention they were probably made by 'slaves'

Archaeological evidence suggests the pyramids were built by paid laborers who got free food and housing, rather than slaves. That's a better deal than most workers get today.

They're only wasteful if you ignore the scientific discoveries and inventions that came about because of the effort.

NASA is like the government's R&D arm with the excuse (marketing) that it's all about space.

I also think that the outcome value of going to space is far superior to spending those same R&D dollars on DARPA. Don't get me wrong, DARPA does make some cool tech...but instead of generating some science, some footprints, and a flag on the moon, and some rocket science to put communications satellites into orbit, those dollars in R&D put bullets and bombs into people, and prepare ICBMs to drop overseas. They're going to spend the money anyways, I'd rather they literally burn the cash than spend it on killing people.

I would say NASA is the public facing R&D arm. They also have DARPA as a more secretive R&D arm.

> The moon landings were successful and also a waste of money

As long as we have

colleges and universities pour money into sports, taxpayer subsidized NFL stadiums (not having to pay taxes is also a subsidy, we don't have to hand them buckets of cash, just waiving taxes is taxpayer subsidy)

and really any corporate welfare at all

I don't want to hear how investing in science is a waste of money.

> colleges and universities pour money into sports

That's not how it works. Colleges and universities break even or make money from sports.

> taxpayer subsidized NFL stadiums (not having to pay taxes is also a subsidy, we don't have to hand them buckets of cash, just waiving taxes is taxpayer subsidy)

This is just standard institutional legal criminality. States and cities issue huge bonds for the sake of private organizations with no ongoing payments, only a giant balloon payment at the end. When they sell these bonds, they magic them into being tax-free for the owners. When the balloon payment approaches, they issue another huge bond to fund the balloon payment. Eventually if they declare bankruptcy, the state or city has committed to paying off the bonds for them.

Doesn't have anything to do with sports. If you're friends with the right people, you can get this done for adding an expansion to your french fry factory that you promise will allow you to hire 10 extra people. Except there's no compliance enforcement, and instead you filled your new space with a machine that allowed you to lay off 20 people.

When it comes to sports, the government has special carveouts in antitrust law for the NFL (and the like.) It's simply corruption.

> I don't want to hear how investing in science is a waste of money.

This is a strawman. If I say that I oppose funding for your search for the angelic healing properties of bleach, it doesn't mean I'm against science. If I don't think your search for the cure for baldness is worth $50B of public money, I also mean that without reference to however much people who like football waste on football.

Wasting money in some ways is not a good reason to waste it in other ways.

You're out of tune with the zeitgeist. A legitimate defense of any politician doing something wrong these days is "Trump did it" i.e. what Bob did is bad, but the person I think is the worst in the world also did it, therefore what Bob did is good (somehow.)

He says using tech that wouldn’t exist otherwise…

I don't think he's using any tech that could not have been produced without a moon landing. Even if some part traces to the Apollo program, there's no reason to think it wouldn't have been developed via another route.

I'm all for science spending, and a moon shot is probably about as good as any other way to funnel money to scientists and engineers. But let's not be disingenuous that this program was the only possible way to spend money on science.

It would probably exist either way.

A good amount of that tech was also designed for ICBM usage. Some of it would may or may not have existed. It would be hard to prove either way as we only have what happened not what could have.

True, it's be hard to prove either way.

If not the Apollo project what would have been driving force that lead to the development of the personal computer industry at nearly the same rate?

There wasn't a market demand for computers that would justify the R&D budget that Apollo was given to develop computers to the level that was required to get us where we are today.

Of course there was – IBM got started 50 years before the moon landings. Mostly had to do with data processing (bank transactions, census etc.)

This is totally wrong,

Where we are today is a result if the work that IBM did not related to the space program, the work that was done for the space program, and the work that was done because of the space program.

The scenario you're describing only has the first one, but not the other two.

Would you say the same thing if WWII human experimentation had useful results? Would that make the cost worth it? How many people died for lack of $180B? Did they get that value back from "tech?"

Public schools for black kids must have been really amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nzoPopQ7V0

Didn't come out of my pocket so I could really not care less about the money spent. On the other hand I am deeply appreciative of the way it shaped life and culture since then, particularly in the optimism it gives me for the future.

Were they a waste of money? They kind of jump started the personal computer revolution, and the R&D involved as well as the infrastructure built secured the US the place where the latest technology continues to be designed if not built.

> ...a waste of money

Here's a clue[1] at no cost.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies

Let the taxpayer risk their money while private enterprise keeps all the intellectual property.

This is a fun point that's one of the differences in the For All Mankind alternate universe. In that universe NASA is allowed to patent and license all technologies they develop in the course of their programs. This leads to a huge NASA budget that, by the 90s, is so large political powers want to raid it to pay for welfare. It also means no public internet (as far as we see) despite there being an extensive network of audio and video devices on the Earth and the Moon. Not sure it's realistic but it's an interesting alternative.

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