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Comment by testing22321 | Hacker News Reader

> We’ve already beaten China to the moon by 56 years, 3 months, and some change. And counting

Of course, but there a few things to consider.

1. This is a new race. The olympics happen every four years to see which nation is the current best. It seems it’s time to find out again.

2. The last time the US was dominant was 56 years ago. That’s three generations. Based on SLS and the comments here, it seems extremely unlikely the US is still dominant. Let’s find out.

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>Based on SLS and the comments here, it seems extremely unlikely the US is still dominant.

Literally every other nation is trying to catch up to Space-X and is nowhere close. An American company, based in American, primarily staffed by American engineers.

I don't know by what measure you'd say that the US isn's still far, far ahead but I don't know of any other country currently re-using rockets dozens of times. What did I miss?

> Literally every other nation is trying to catch up to Space-X and is nowhere close. An American company, based in American, primarily staffed by American engineers

The whole point of this article, and the NASA admin steps to open up the contract and all of Berger’s recent reporting is that it’s almost a certainty China will beat the US back to the moon.

It is already too bad that the US's plan to get to the moon was so flawed that it has been delayed again and again and money was wasted.

Let's imagine that China puts people on the moon next year in a method similar to the way the US did it in 1969 (but probably better in some ways). They still are mostly doing something that has been done before by the USA.

In that same year, the USA will probably continue to launch 80% of the rockets to space. Maybe we don't do our next trip to the moon for another five years. But there's good chance by then we will be using much more advanced and reusable rockets. Does that really make the US behind?

I want to see us invest more into space exploration. I think its sad that NASA's plan has been dumb. But getting two or three people to the moon is more about showing that China is capable (which is a very reasonable goal for them) then showing they have some long term advantage.

China’s plan looks nothing like what was done in 69. They’re going to build a base there, just like the US wants to.

Yeah, their plan is more extended than Apollo, but their initial part of the plan with which they can beat US to the moon is just like Apollo. The later parts of their plan need a rocket which doesn't exist yet (and they recently decided that it will be Starship-like). Meanwhile Starship may be delayed and be later than the first Chinese landing, but it allows to send unprecedented payload to the Moon from the start.

What a tremendous waste of resources.

what do you mean waste of resources????

An American company, that the American government tried very hard to exclude and kill, built by the very immigrants it's attacking, the one that has twice now been threatened with contract cancelations just because the leader doesn't kiss the president's behind on a handful of issues.

It's rich seeing all this unearned bluster about having the lead due to SpaceX, when SpaceX had to drag America kicking and screaming into that position.

By h1b engineers

I believe space is actually a protected industry, and your run of the mill h1b isn't good enough, you need citizenship too - see the ITAR reqs on SpaceX job openings: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/spacex/jobs/8101417002

That's because SpaceX has military and national security contracts, not because it's space as such.

A policy of the US to attract talented people.

Immigration of talent is historically an American asset. Look bo further than the moon landing itself for an example.

What does that have to do with H1B engineers, who typically end up writing crud apps for banks?.

Personally, I think it matters whether its achieved by a private company versus by society. That's especially the case when the private company is so closely tied to someone who hates and alienates so much of society. I don't think that I could view a win for Musk as a win for anything that looks like my chunk of the US.

There's also the fact that part of NASA's mission is to share their knowledge with the public.

>Personally, I think it matters whether its achieved by a private company versus by society.

How exactly are you making the distinction? Space-X wouldn't exist without governemnt funding. CATL sells launches to commercial entities as well as servicing the government.

Official ownership? Because China seems to think a lot of what Space-X is doing can only be accomplished by the commercial sector and is funding startups in China to do the same thing.

https://spacenews.com/chinas-landspace-secures-state-backed-...

> China seems to think a lot of what Space-X is doing can only be accomplished by the commercial sector and is funding startups in China to do the same thing.

That's how China's been running their economy for decades. Every few years, the government sets a direction everyone should row in, and generally lets private firms figure out which one of them will get there fastest.

Who any profits go to would be an easy first measure.

> Personally, I think it matters whether its achieved by a private company versus by society.

People appreciate German cars just fine, and no one seems to be particularly bothered that they are produced by workers in private sector companies instead of 'by society'. Whatever that even means.

I'm not sure that I understand how a consumer product like a car is similar to something done for inherent value like space exploration.

When I say "by society" I mean a non-private organization like NASA.

The space exploration is done by NASA using inputs from the private sector, like hammers or rockets.

> When I say "by society" I mean a non-private organization like NASA.

Is there any non-government organisation that can do any good in your opinion? What about a charitable trust? What about mostly unorganised protesters like those that moved Germany towards unification?

Charities can do a lot of good. When it comes to stuff like this, my only concern is whether they are able to discriminate against people.

It's mainly profit oriented organizations that I don't trust.

> so much of society

Much of society agrees with his points on crime

I don't think that matters. There's still roughly half of society that doesn't. Meanwhile NASA has something like a 90% approval rating.

It's just wrong to say he hates and alienates society. As far as crime is concerned (which I brought up), he stands for those of us that live in violent areas and can't just scream what the other side does.

I don't know what to say. He clearly hates trans people, routinely shares anti-semetic content, and sure seems to hate anyone on the left.

He is critical of the trans movement. He is not antisemitic. He supports pro Israel parties. If the right is hateful, why has there been an increase of liberal killers? This is a genuine question - I am neither liberal nor conservative

The vast majority of political killers are right wing.

Saying that his daughter is dead to him because she transitioned and working to remove trans rights is a bit more than just being "critical of the trans movement".

Again I don't know what to say. If sharing neo-Nazi material and doing a Hitler salute isn't anti-semitic then I don't know what is.

Do the Chinese view this as a race...?

I've seen no indication that they see it in these terms. They've been pretty low-key about their progress.

To me it looks like the US obsession with reframe everything in terms of a "new cold war". From the US perspective, in end you look stupid if you lose, and you look stupid if you just spend a ton of money to repeat what you did last time

In world history, it's a common case that the number 1 is always inclined to stay at number 1 while beating down would-be contenders.

China has always been insular, and they don't think about space glories that much at the moment. It would take a couple more generations for them to care about something like that.

I just think it's about framing.

"Glory" can exist without comparing yourself to others. When they built the three-gorges dam they probably weren't thinking "our dam is better than those American dams". It's just impressive in its own right

They can be working on going to space without constantly bringing out the proverbial measuring tape to compare themselves to the US.

I'm not totally in the loop with the Chinese zeitgeist, so my post was a genuine question. Maybe they are comparing, maybe not. Both seem sensible reactions

Well if anything the general chinese working culture is to keep your head down and work diligently. If they do have to compare it's because of how connected everything is nowadays.

The US comparatively does boast a lot more that it's a bit of a meme on chinese social media.

What is the point of winning though? We could be doing other things in stead, and I'm going to submit that they are more valuable (you are of course welcome to disagree - this is an opinion).

Personally I hope no human lands on the moon again. I like telling my parents they are so old humans walked on the moon in their lifetime (last human left the moon December 1972 - before I was born). There is no value in this statement, but it is still fun.

To me, a significant part of the value presented by space exploration is the way that it inspires society. I think that whatever else we would do instead would need to be equally inspiring. Honestly, I can't really think of something comparable.

So lets focus on genetics and see if we can get fire breathing dragons instead. That should be just as inspiring

Humans with feline features!

There are a lot of options, but they are hard to think of...

I was really hoping someone could come up with an idea along a completely different line.

Sure, but might as well start with the basics and iteratively go from there. :)

The electronics we're typing these comments on were only rapidly miniaturized originally to be small and light enough to shoot into space.

There are second, third, etc order effects to things like a space race.

Sure. So let’s do something useful and new. We know how to go to the moon - it’s just a matter of money (and political will). If there’s something else to do on the moon, let’s be clear that is the objective.

I do agree with this. If we are returning to the moon just to say we did, as a space lover, I do have an issue with this and can't really get on board. I am hoping we have some other larger goal in mind, like maybe are back to the idea of a permanent moon base and a potential jump off point for other projects or we have a list of long term moon experiments to do. But yea, it just isn't exciting if we are going there to take a couple pictures and just to rub it in the face of China or India or some other nation. We've already done that.

The goal could be simply to learn how to do it again, since almost everyone who actually has done it--on any level, be it engineering, management, manufacturing, flight crew, ground crew, etc--is dead. That's a totally worthwhile exercise if it's actually a serious goal to explore further.

We have plenty of people working on space - we go to Mars with robots all the time which is harder than the moon. We have a space station (though it is nearing end of life). We have all the needed knowledge it is just applied elsewhere. There will be some things to learn about the moon that are different but not much.

Apollo made about a half dozen crewed trips to the moon (quantity deliberately left vague to account for quibbling over technicalities). They made it a relatively reliable, repeatable affair. My point is that organization--the team of people who have done that no longer exists. So until another team starts doing it again, we just don't know. Theoretically it's very probably achievable, but theory absent experiment doesn't really mean anything.

There is value in experience, but for something like this I'm going to submit that the larger value is in learning to spin up teams that do something completely different.

IF you were talking about building a good public transit system the value is in building a team and keeping it running. However this is - for all we know - just a one off show and so there isn't value in getting experience. The people looking at Mars have value in experience, and there may be value in robotic moon missions, but so far as I can tell human missions are just for showing off and should be treated like a one time show off and then get rid of the team for another 50 years.

Yea but it is also about opportunity cost. I would love if we can do everything, but we can't. Sure, we can put a man on the moon again, but is the cost that we are not gonna be able to send a probe to Titan? Ultimately it comes down to resource allocation. Is putting the man on the moon for just merely because the people who did it are not around worth the resources? No, not compared to the other things we can do in space. Actually, putting a man on the moon again probably very much robs resources from other project that will actually push novel exploration.

Unfortunately it feels more like the drive to return to the moon is just a way for the high school quarter back to relive his glory days, as the stereotype goes and is actually less about accomplishing something meaningful to push science and understanding. Tons of things we could do to push science and understanding that is novel that we may forgo to relive former glory.

I actually think getting the political will, money, and execution together would be the part that would be a noteworthy show of force (and I'd argue being unable to get it done would be equally noteworthy in the other direction).

But a show of force for who? We're not in the middle of a Cold War. Are we trying to upstage India or China? And could we get the same political ends via something more useful/with better returns?

For everyone (including India and China).

Could we get the same ends via something more useful? In theory, sure, but it seems pretty evident that the answer in practice is no, since our congress has mostly been gridlocked for the past 16 years.

Fair enough, but IMO there are better places we should be focusing on getting political will together if we want to focus on something big.

Yes and no, I'd say. Going back to the moon is big but it's also pretty self-contained, in a way. It just costs money (and doles a bunch of it out to the contracted companies). It's also mostly time-boxed.

Healthcare, worker's rights, voting rights, infrastructure, etc, are all more important (so I agree with you there), but also all have way more consequences that are wider-ranging and longer-term (which I'd say contributes do the political dysfunction around those topics).

This should be an "easy win" by comparison, and the "PR" impact of success (or failure) will be significant.

Edit: that said, if you gave me a magic wand to pick any one of these topics for the US to succeed at, it wouldn't be going to the moon.

I would like to point out it is not a sure thing, rockets explode all the time. It is fantastically dangerous.

The matter of factness of the shuttle shows how good the program was, but we still had two explode completely.

Sure, I didn't mean to imply space is easy. It's absolutely not. I just want to get a return on investment. And up-staging India and China for the sake of it probably doesn't give much return.

I'm all on board for doing something useful and new, my comment was not in support of having a space race for the sake of having one.

Nah, that’s false. Miniaturization was already underway before the Space Race. The space program absolutely benefited from it, yes. But NASA wasn’t at the forefront of those developments.

I was talking about rapid miniaturization, not just miniaturization in general, which I agree was underway before any space development.

NASA literally had departments and budgets dedicated to miniaturization.

I’ll give you an example: the technology in the Instrument Unit on the Saturn V, which was the computer that controlled the Saturn V during launch, was largely derived from System/360. By technology here I mean things like the Unit Logic Devices (ULDs) out of which the logic boards in the Launch Vehicle Digital Computer (LVDC) were made. No surprise, I suppose, given that it was contracted to IBM’s Federal Systems Division.

Sure, but compare density of a s360 mainframe and the Apollo Guidance Computer - they pumped a lot of money into integrated circuits just as they weee becoming viable to hit their size, mass and power targets.

Sure, this would likely have happend anyway, but possibly later with all related knock off effects.

> Sure, this would likely have happend anyway, but possibly later with all related knock off effects.

What are we missing because they did that though? Or what came latter? There is no way to answer this. It is easy to see what happened because of effort, but not what you didn't get (or got latter) because to focused on something else.

Minuteman III perhaps.

Sending humans to the moon is just burning money though. It isn't useful at all.

That does seem to be the trend these days. See: AI proliferation, cryptocurrency.

> That does seem to be the trend these days

These days? The space race was 50 years ago.

Burning money is the trend these days.

The first time around, the space race was expensive, but not entirely unnecessary. There were real strategic advantages at play.

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