Comment by msl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by msl | Hacker News Reader

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> None of it put any infrastructure for the long-term access of space into place, or anything to make future moon landings easier.

This is not entirely fair. The actual landings (which did teach us a lot about the moon) were just the tip of an iceberg. Consider project Gemini [1] for example. A dozen missions and several astronaut-weeks of space time to get hang of such consepts as rendezvous and docking of two spacecraft and extra vehicular activity, all of utmost importance in modern space exploration. Much of the hardware developed for the Apollo program was also very versatile, as demonstrated by, for example, the Skylab program [2]. A lot more mileage could have been extracted from the investment by means of the Apollo Aplications Program [3] had it not been killed to make way for the STS (I'm simplifying the history somewhat on this point).

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Applications_Program

Just a note that the USSR space station program completely outpaced the US with Salyut & had automatic docking procedures for unsupervised unmanned resupply missions in the 70s. The core module for Mir2 became the core of the ISS.

Also the Buran could and did fly totally automated. NASA refused to allow the Shuttle to, because they didn't want it to be used for unmanned missions.

We did learn a lot, but that's kind of the problem. All of the capital that was created was intellectual - knowledge and experience, mostly in the heads of the few hundred or however many people that were the core of the team. Very useful while you have it, but also very easy to dissolve as soon as the funding goes away and all of the people with that knowledge scatter.

That's also the problem with Government funding of things like this. You can accomplish some pretty awesome things with a blank check from the Government, but those only get created for political reasons, and are subject to disappearing for political reasons as well. Businesses have their own problems, but once they put together a system they can turn a profit with, they have the incentive to keep doing it and improving on it indefinitely.

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