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Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

Robotic missions are multiple orders of magnitude less inspiring or interesting to society as a whole, probably because human beings like to see human beings doing things.

For a good example, consider that the Moon Landing was a global, civilization-wide event, whereas even the most famous robotic mission has never been anything more than a popular news item of the week.

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But the latter moon landings were news items of the week. And the latter shuttle flights weren't even that, unless they were carrying interesting cargo.

The last human on the moon was almost 50 years ago. Shuttle flights (barring obvious exceptions) were pretty routine; definitely not the most inspiring missions. But humans back on the Moon, or on Mars, in the 21st century and setting up colonies? That's completely different proposition.

Building a colony on Mars or Luna, beyond the celebratory beginning, is brickie work in a spacesuit. The inspiration will pale rapidly.

Even billionaires can find their lives boring. No human is safe from adapting to their environment and the banality of it.

This is true, in the movie Apollo 13 it's portrayed as part of the plot that TV stations don't want to do a live broadcast of the mission. This is based on historical fact. Even Mission Control told them to cut it short because there was a Baseball game on. The broad public was only interested once something went wrong.

Spacex did a 150m test hop and even that got 2.5 million views, so I think you are underestimating the interest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYb3bfA6_sQ

Youtube Views < mainstream media reach.

Numbers at population scale are hard to think in.

As someone who lived in Florida most of my life, I can say that people were/are still in awe of every rocket that blasts off... probably because we could see it happen.

Maybe not quite as interested as when things were first getting going, but that's human nature "meh I've seen it before".

But even so, watching the shuttle and SpaceX go up is definitely exciting to those who can actually see it.

> inspiring or interesting

That is, less of a... show?

What lasting effects of the moon landing(s) are there, to your mind?

Yes, less of a show.

Ask around at NASA labs how people got into the industry. Among those who were born up until 1970ish, almost every single one will tell you that he was inspired by the moon landings. The trend goes on even outside NASA, when asking people in STEM industries.

Furthermore, I would argue - though I have not seen a study on it - that these are the most enthusiastic people, those who love their work.

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Pretty apt for space travel, as well. The Moon Landing and Sci-Fi have probably done more for getting people into in science than a million textbooks and outreach programs.

Indeed. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry did end up writing the The Little Prince [0], a renown novella about a space faring prince.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Prince

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