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Comment by eru | Hacker News Reader

The 'space age' was ahead of its time. And I don't mean that in a positive way: 'putting a clown on the moon' (to quote Tom Lehrer) was an enormously expensive project with 1960s technology for at best questionable utility. (Apart from winning a pissing contest with the Soviets.)

Similar for the Concorde.

Nowadays, we would be much better placed to put people in space. But fortunately we are perhaps wiser (or perhaps forced to be wiser against our own impulses), and are still not lining up to re-ignite manned space flight.

I'm all for space exploration, but manned space exploration does not (yet?) make sense, and neither does space tourism so far.

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I kind of disagree. Yes the person on the moon wasn't that important but all the technology outside of the moonlander itself had nice utility.

Its just that the US kind of messed up its space investment strategy. Instead of leveraging all the parts of Apollo it was systematically killed.

Had the doubled down on Apollo and simply continued investing in the technology they could have done impressive things.

The could have built a Saturn 1C as a workhorse rocket for the military and commercial. And then have the Saturn V as your super heavy for the occasional deep space probe, huge telescope or space station.

The Apollo capsule could incrementally be made reusable and could continue to be used for LEO or occasional moon missions.

During Apollo they were already deep in development on second generation version of the different components.

This was not actually finically unsustainable, it was just financially unsustainable while also investing in Shuttle. And because a Saturn 1C wasn't considered, the military built itself up with Titan rockets instead.

The Saturn 1B looks vaguely like Falcon 9 if you squint appropriately. The H-1 engine is in the same thrust class as the Merlin 1D (it just weighs twice as much).

So, one can imagine the S1B evolving over the years into something like a F9, with the first stage being recovered.

The idea of designing boosters to minimize cost rather than maximize performance also goes back to the late 60s. The biggest problem is government contractors have different incentive structures than SpaceX does.

It would really be the government driving to a unified architecture, making the apart commodity and create enough demand. It would need actual long term strategy.

> I kind of disagree. Yes the person on the moon wasn't that important but all the technology outside of the moonlander itself had nice utility.

Counterfactually, all the tax payer money wasted on manned space flight would have been used for something else, and would have driven some other technology, and at that other spending would have had direct utility. (Especially if the money had been left in the tax payers pockets.)

See 'What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen' https://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss.html?chapter_...

> Had the doubled down on Apollo and simply continued investing in the technology they could have done impressive things.

You really need to learn to start thinking in terms of opportunity costs. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

> [...] it was just financially unsustainable while also investing in Shuttle.

I agree that the Space Shuttle was an even greater waste than the Apollo program. They overshot their projected cost per kg to orbit by 100,000% (one thousand times).

But I hold that approximately all manned space flight is a waste of tax payer money.

If you are just against government spending there is no argument you can make that can challenge that.

> specially if the money had been left in the tax payers pockets.

This was peak suberbia and peak people buying cars. I think there is a good argument being made that more money invested in suberbia and cars wouldn't be good investment. In fact, there is a good argument that this is a negative investment for society.

On the other hand, Apollo lead to a massive investment in engineering and scientific talent and to a huge amount of technology development that was then utilized by lots of other industries.

If I could have picked, I would have preferred some of that investment into nuclear technology. But that wasn't really in the cards.

People have always been critical of Apollo as specially on the left they would have preferred social programs, and libertarians would have preferred nothing.

I am libertarian leaning myself but as far as government spending goes, this is some of the better things they can do. They did arguably spend to much to fast, rather then taking a measured approach.

> If you are just against government spending there is no argument you can make that can challenge that.

Government spending that clears a reasonable bar of utility is fine by me. Eg overall I think I am getting good value for my tax dollars here in my adopted home of Singapore. (Of course, I don't agree with every last item on the budget.)

> This was peak suberbia and peak people buying cars. I think there is a good argument being made that more money invested in suberbia and cars wouldn't be good investment. In fact, there is a good argument that this is a negative investment for society.

I am glad that we have you to tell people that what they want is bad, and that they should want something else instead.

(Btw, it's spelled suburbia. It's not a problem for me, just thought you might want to know.)

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39598737 for more of a fleshed out argument.

> I am glad that we have you to tell people that what they want is bad, and that they should want something else instead.

Suburbia and cars were massively subsidized by the government and have a very high cost for society.

I don't want to tell people what to do, but if a damaging thing is subsidized, suggesting that subsidizing something else might be better isn't much of a stretch.

> Suburbia and cars were massively subsidized by the government and have a very high cost for society.

Yes, and you can probably predict my opinion of those subsidies.

So I'm not sure why you strawman me to be in favour of suburbia, or subsidies for suburbia?

(Btw, I think we should shift more of the funding for roads onto usage fees for them. Ie toll roads. The technology for road usage tracking has become a lot better and cheaper in the last few decades.)

> I don't want to tell people what to do, but if a damaging thing is subsidized, suggesting that subsidizing something else might be better isn't much of a stretch.

Two wrongs don't make a right. Just drop both subsidies.

It's the same thing with free trade: unilateral free trade is optimal, no matter whether the other guys insists on damaging their own economy with protectionism. So mutual 'trade agreements' are useless. (Or should be.)

I disagree with that cynicism, though. I saw Apollo 11 three times when it came out, and I still get excited when I see the sense of purpose and detail in everybody involved. It was a singular event that occurred at this conflux of technology and hubris, like Christopher Columbus' landing. It took so long for everybody to sort out their feelings on what this meant, that an entire subculture sprung up based on the idea that it was all faked by a contemporaneous sci-fi director. It's okay to appreciate those kinds of wins from time to time. And anyway the astronauts brought back a moon rock to give to the Soviets.

not sure what this means - perhaps 13 rather than 11?

No, Apollo 11 is a thrilling big-screen documentary about the successful moon landing, all original film without narration.

thanks, i've just bought it on amazon!

> I saw Apollo 11 three times when it came out, and I still get excited when I see the sense of purpose and detail in everybody involved.

I think you are proving my point? Manned spaceflight is strictly for entertainment and pissing contests only.

So we should finance it like entertainment, instead of making random tax payers suffer for your amusement.

> And anyway the astronauts brought back a moon rock to give to the Soviets.

Yes? Obviously you are going to be all smug and rub your success in your adversaries face.

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Btw, just to be clear: I also find space flight inspiring, and I hope I live long enough to see the vast bulk of humanity living in space habitats (while still increasing the absolute number of humans on earth). I want to see space elevators (via active support) and all that good stuff.

Two things:

(1) The early manned space flight barely contributed to these long term goals. It's only recently thanks to the private sector that launch costs are starting to come down. And the other big advances are coming from better robotics and better computing, both of which are being developed on trajectories so far largely independent of space exploration.

(2) I don't want to force other tax payers to suffer for my flights of fancy. Just like I don't want to have to finance other people's pet projects with my tax money, either.

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