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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

When did HN become so trivially Luddite?

Artemis begins major launches, including for the Lunar Gateway and first crew, next year. VIPER is slated to land in November. We’re already putting billions of dollars of kit on and around the Moon.

If trains make sense for moving bulk on Earth, they do as well on the Moon. If they don’t there—if autonomous rovers are easier than trains even on the Moon—the latter definitely aren’t worth further consideration here.

> Could we get terrestrial railroads into a usable state in the US first

Granted [1]. Circa 1850 [2].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_tr...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transportation_in_the_U...

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Is it really outrageous to ask for some of the crumbling infrastructure around us to be updated or better maintained? Granted the OP comment said _first_ when it's not really an either/or situation. It's not like we need billions in R&D to apply what's been solved in dozens of other metros across the world.

> outrageous to ask for some of the crumbling infrastructure around us to be updated or better maintained

The top reaction on this thread almost refutes itself. Were this a story about autonomous rovers being ordered, I doubt anyone would blink an eye. But because it’s about even studying trains, we have complaints about cost.

> not like we need billions in R&D

But it does cost us billions more to do with trains what our peers have done.

They're two completely unrelated topics. Rail infrastructure in the US has nothing to do with rail infrastructure on the moon. Yes, they use vehicles on rails in both cases. That's where the similarities end.

One, again they’re separate topics.

Two, we passed a billion dollar infrastructure bill for exactly this a couple of years ago. Were you aware of this? What more do you want?

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3684

Discussing things like this on HN too often consists of people arguing based on what they assume is true without knowing what they want already exists.

> If trains make sense for moving bulk on Earth, they do as well on the Moon.

I don’t necessarily think they correlate that well. I don’t know a lot about lunar transportation but I can’t imagine it has the same design constraints as earthly ones.

> When did HN become so trivially Luddite?

Space shit is cool. I would still like the government to fund something more likely to be used by the American population first. Yea that industrial rail network is cool but why can’t we get around the US without driving?

It is a problem of government funding, though? Isn't it more of a legal and political problem?

Incessant NIMBYism is a grassroots phenomenon all around the West and stops or at least enormously increases costs of many projects that could otherwise be built cheaper and quicker.

We are still paying the price for the 1960s, when highways were built right through residential neigbourhoods without asking the locals. Now, as a consequence, every construction project gets analyzed and litigated to death.

Plus, people in the US don't seem to want new passenger railroads that much. It might be a vicious circle - no decent railroads, therefore no experience with decent railroads, therefore no desire to build more decent railroads, therefore no decent railroads. But the initiative, or lack thereof, still seems to be emanating from the people.

Space is trivial in comparison. No one lives there and if you can overcome the technical problems, you can build anything anywhere without facing environmental litigation from 30 different groups.

> It is a problem of government funding, though? Isn't it more of a legal and political problem?

Throw enough money at it and it doesn’t matter /s

The reality is that it’s obviously a political issue. But I dispute it’s “simply” a NIMBY issue. I think it’s a political and social issue of a different kind -inspirational and aspirational.

The space race was a crazy time in America and all Americans wanted us to build a rocket even if it didn’t really do much for the average Americans life. Most Americans don’t care about transit, like you said. Transit is a hard issue but it’s not a big TV spectacle type issue, nothing to brag about, just a slow persistent grind.

I don’t think it has to be that way. For example, myself, and a bunch of coworkers and friends have recently visited Japan on independent trips. After doing so, everyone said they wished America built trains like the Japanese. It’s simply that Americans aren’t familiar with good trains and what that can mean for QoL. Japan has spent a ton more money, as a function of GDP, and a ton of that went to their citizens’ QoL. If America was racing USSR to build the world’s fastest cross-country bullet train, I think more Americans would support it, and every town would be clamoring to have a stop on the “freedom rail” (or however it was spun). Which is a shame, because trains would improve the QoL of a lot of people compared to rockets.

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