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Comment by meddlepal | Hacker News Reader

Terrible loss of life, but both of those wars were catalysts for major technical and industrial breakthroughs... I'm curious if the tech advancements of those wars outweigh the direct deaths.

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I hear this a lot, but it's silly on its face. What if the money was just put directly in to research instead? If any government action leads to spin-off technologies, I'd rather it be in the form of a space program than in the form of a war that kills many of the next generation's great scientists.

Practically speaking, the money would never be allocated without a good reason. War is a reason to do things. People don't buy into other reasons as strongly as "that guy over there is trying to kill you."

I agree, the argument is silly on it's face, but pragmatically speaking, until we can "convince"[0][1] every person alive (and the empowered leaders) to find other ways to allocate resources more efficiently such that everyone is satisfied to the degree of their own ideal resource consumption without resorting to conflict, I doubt things will change.

Besides, def establishment is already clamoring for a "why not both option"[2] with increasing the development of capabilities to conduct war in space.

[0] I have some ideas about how this can be done in practice in the future, though I suspect some could call it the War on Humans™

[1] https://elifesciences.org/articles/27069 "Tetherless magnetothermal deep brain neuro-stimulation"

[2] http://spacenews.com/air-force-chief-goldfein-well-be-fighti...

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.” ― Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Necessity is the mother of invention". If you don't desperately need something, you don't need to put resources into developing it. Unfortunately, war has driven technological progress. And that also includes the space programme. If the cold war hadn't driven the space race, then I suspect space exploration would be a distant and poorly-funded priority.

Without a sufficiently good reason, governments won't put money directly into research (at least, in the eye-wateringly large quantities spent in wartime).

You cannot be serious. No, you don't need mass war to catalyze major breakthroughs.

I don't know why someone would even think that unless they were extremely ignorant of history.

No, you don't need mass war to catalyze major breakthroughs.

True, but it is also true that periods of heightened tension even short of shooting wars do accelerate development. The Space Race is the classic example. The Internet is also a product of the Cold War. The jet engine was developed in the period before WW2 when things were already looking fraught.

That’s historical fact; “worth it” is a whole ‘nother matter.

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