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Comment by pfdietz | Hacker News Reader

I view the manned space program back then as something highly pathological. It was enormously expensive and arguably of little benefit. Do taxpayers really need to be on the hook for prestige of the government (read: politicians)? The adulation of astronauts as heroes was just part of the sickness.

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It was not enormously expensive. The entire Apollo Program cost about 1/6th as much as the Vietnam War, and that's direct costs only. One created something people can be proud of, expanded human knowledge and horizons greatly, and put us one step closer to the next and presumably final stage of human expansion. The other wasted a lot of money on some vague geopolitical goal that achieved literally less than nothing - much less than nothing.

If we spent our money on nothing except Apollo Program type projects, the world would be imaginably different today. We could very well be living in the sci-fi future that many living through the 60s would have expected to see emerge over the next 60 years. If you told them that, instead, in 60 years we'd be struggling to achieve a manned flyby of the Moon, not a soul would have believed you.

Think about this another way - if we had decided to pass on the geopolitical stupidity, we could have afforded a program (with no increase in spending) of more than 6x the scale of the Apollo Program. It's really tantalizing to think about what that could have been like. Alas that's for the other timeline where humanity is already on the verge of constructing a Dyson Sphere. In this one, maybe we'll finally manage to achieve a manned Moon flyby sometime soon.

>It was not enormously expensive. The entire Apollo Program cost about 1/6th as much as the Vietnam War, and that's direct costs only.

you're comparing something to one of the most grossly mismanaged loss-of-value wars the United States was ever involved in such a way as to demonstrate thrift.

the Vietnam war represents one of the largest financial and strategic blunders of US history. Without considering long-term post-war expenses we spent an adjusted trillion dollars on that war and got nearly nothing to show for it except for a lot of abused and tired veterans.

It was not particularly unique. We spent more, inflation adjusted, in both of Iraq and Afghanistan than we did in Vietnam [1] - meaning we're now up to dozens of Apollo Program scale projects. We endlessly blow money on geopolitics that just makes the world a much worse, and less safe, place. Yet the anti-war movement in the US is pretty much dead, while there does seem to be an increasingly growing anti-space movement that often cites cost as a motivation. It's quite nonsensical.

[1] - https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/06/13/cost-of-war-...

Did The Onion ever mark the number in their 2004 article title to market?

"U.S. To Give Every Iraqi $3,544.91, Let Free-Market Capitalism Do The Rest" https://www.theonion.com/u-s-to-give-every-iraqi-3-544-91-le...

Sum of all NASA budgets 1958 to 2011 are smaller than us military budget from 2011.

http://steveharoz.com/blog/2012/science-and-war-visualizing-...

This is the "bigger rat" defense. The rat, having been caught by the rat catcher, complains this isn't fair because there are other, larger rats. But it's still a rat.

A program that isn't worth doing remains not worth doing even if there are larger programs that also weren't worth doing.

But your attack is limp. You're complaining about a project on the basis of cost when it is basically a financial rounding error. The US government is 34 trillion in debt [0], led mainly by the largest welfare state (by absolute size, not by generosity) in the history of the globe. The annual interest on that debt alone is about the size of the total 50 year history of spend on NASA [1]. If, in that context, if you're going to attack a productive project as a waste of money:

1) You aren't seriously looking at the political situation. There are actual budget problems without going to find imaginary ones.

2) You're representing a perspective that clearly has no political power, and you're representing it by attacking one of the easiest programs to justify. If you've got no political power, it makes more sense to attack weak opposing positions.

Finding wasteful US government spending is like shooting fish in a barrel; the forever wars alone are enough to harp on for decades. But you're going to try and launch an attack on the space program, which did at least advance the state of humanity? You're setting yourself up to look silly.

[0] It is already closer to 35 trillion, I wish my salary grew that quickly.

[1] _trampeltier's link

I think it is one of the best things that came out of the cold war.

War is destructive by nature, military campaigns are expensive, hurt both the attacker and the defender, and the only reason is that governments want to govern instead of the other governments. There are some beneficial side effects to war, but overall, it is all about destruction.

The space race, culminating in the moon landings was not destructive, it was about doing something that hasn't been done before. Sure it was a pissing context, but it was for progress, not destruction.

As for astronauts as heroes, it sure was part of the propaganda, but they were actually part of something great. Compare to war heroes, who, in different contexts, would be called mass murderers.

I am not into heroes and adulation in general, but should we make people heroes, I think astronauts are in a good spot. There are generally good people (it actually was an important criteria for selection), intelligent, hard working and healthy. And they put their lives on the line for something awesome.

> I think it is one of the best things that came out of the cold war.

Better than integrated circuits? Better than cheap air travel? The direct human impact of manned spaceflight has been very marginal.

> Better than integrated circuits?

Funny you mention that. The Apollo Guidance Computer was the first computer to use integrated circuits and is often used as an example of the major innovations the Apollo program contributed to.

We'd have had ICs without manned spaceflight; they were necessary for the Minuteman II, for example, as well as terrestrial avionics and commercial uses. Without them, all users of digital electronics would quickly have hit a complexity and reliability wall.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but you can't really judge the benefits of the US space program in terms of its fluffy whitewashed publicly stated objectives.

Arguably, it was primarily a way to garner public support for the technology and infrastructure to build up the US's ICBM force, and to beat the Soviets in having a military force in space.

Remember, in the 60's people were envisioning manned space stations for the role that unmanned spy satellites later served.

The Outer Space Treaty happened in 1967 and forbade the militarization of space. I don't think it's a coincidence that 1964-67 was by far the apex of NASA's budget as a percentage of GDP.

It immediately started going down as it became clear that the treaty would be enacted. By the time of the last Apollo mission it was down to around 1.5%, and would drop to below 1% a few years after that.

In an alternate history of those events you might have had a Soviet constellation of nuclear-armed satellites in LEO by the 80's, making a first strike a lot more appetizing.

I think there were some benefits that are difficult to quantify. I'm not talking about progress with technology, instead I am mostly thinking about the psychological effect that seeing Earth from the surface of the Moon provided. I believe it altered the perspective of almost everybody at the time.

I think when one has to reach for this sort of vague, magical stuff it's time to pause and reconsider what one is trying to defend.

I don't think it altered much of anything. I don't think most people cared or gave any thought to it. I doubt it changed even the space fans. This sounds like wishful thinking from a group looking for an easy way to alter intractable human nature.

If you want something concrete, the development of GPS is directly linked to the space race

It was linked to unmanned space activities. We'd have had it without a manned space program.

And even more specifically, military spending. Similarly, development in rocketry was mostly focused around the V2 and the race to ICBMs. Similarly, jet engines were originally developed for fighter aircraft.

In a way, the manned space program was a way to try to whitewash the technology that was actually coming from cold war military spending.

I think you may enjoy reading about Mcnamara’s fallacy, coincidentally also related McNamara of the Vietnam war: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy

I hope it makes you reconsider your position about disregarding non-quantifiable benefits.

> But when the McNamara discipline is applied too literally, the first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. The second step is to disregard that which can't easily be measured or given a quantitative value. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. The fo[u]rth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide. — Daniel Yankelovich, "Interpreting the New Life Styles", Sales Management (1971)

The McNamara fallacy is about inappropriate metrics against real, objective measures like "have we actually won the war?", not competition against vague considerations that aren't even objectively definable.

The "Overview Effect" thing also struck me as self-serving bullshit. It didn't seem to reflect anything I ever saw in the real world. It was something a space fan would like to be true, and so motivated reasoning took hold.

I can't think of anything before that made engineering, tech seem cool to the majority of the country (world?). No doubt it is responsible for pushing math and science education in the U.S., no doubt inspired countless nerd kids to pursue engineering, the sciences.

I worry though that like a scene from the book, "Days Between Stations", the U.S., 55 years later, still has Neil Armstrong in B&W stepping out onto the Moon on constant replay on their television sets as that one golden moment in our history that we've never been able to again measure up to.

I did hear of a poster, supposedly up in a hallway at JPL, that said something like "7/24/69 was 25 years ago ... What were your dreams, then, of today?"

The Falcon Heavy Test Launch comes pretty goddamn close

I figure the real motivation was something said to the President behind closed doors along the lines of "If we can put a man on the moon we can put a nuke in the Kremlin."

I don't think it's pathological. If nothing else, it causes the USSR to spend itself into oblivion, potentially saving us a hot war. The real price was paid by the poor citizens of that centrally planned economy whose leaders went for glory.

For each individual person, county, or state it wasn't even that expensive. And it allowed the entire country to come together and do something cool as a society. This has value that you should never underestimate: it improves morale, and spurs innovation and industriousness, with effects far beyond the national effort.

Unfortunately it didn't also herald in a new (and rather more ethical) era of colonization at the time. In fact we've been in a bit of a space exploration winter for a while. But new developments look really promising. This time we might end up a 'multiplanetary' species.

At its peak, Apollo was several percent of federal government spending. That is expensive, and the putative benefits you suggest are certainly (IMO) not worth that cost. Your argument sounds like the kind of rationalization a special interest puts out when their hand is found in the cookie jar.

I won't say these are the best sources, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_... suggest that at its peak during the space race, NASA spending reached 4% of the government budget while if I'm reading the charts correctly, the government routinely spends up to 4% on the millitary every year since. I'd personally classify the Apollo program then as a rounding error as I pay more than that in sales tax and often don't notice... and that was at its peak.

NASA peaked at 4.4% of national spending, though not all of that was Apollo. Not every member of HN in America and they definitely don’t make the same salary but it’s like 600+$ in just one year taken out of your pocket and set on fire, except it’s worse.

NASA’s budget for manned missions needs to be considered across time and as part of the US’s debt over 60+ years not just spending in individual years. Countries need some military spending but most countries have looked at manned missions as frivolous because they are. This is an annual trip to Cabo on your credit card not rent.

As to the ongoing cost from Apollo/shuttle/etc population isn’t static, but people wouldn’t have gotten 30 year bonds at 15.21% in 1981 if the total debt was significantly less. So it’s not an easy calculation, but it’s a bigger debt burden than you might think. Which IMO puts these missions in a different light.

So presumably, form your attitude, you would be against the government spending 8% of it's budget to build a base on the moon?

Let’s do this another way - let us say tomorrow China started building a large industrial facility on the moon capable of 3D printing rocket parts and refuelling rockets. Logically that would allow militarisation of the moon too.

Let's imagine they are really going for it, and the first launches have already happened. Let’s say it cost them 8% of gov. budget, and it cost us the same.

Would you support or oppose matching China's effort? If you support it, is fear of falling behind the main motivation for you? Why is desire to get ahead not equally valid?

Watching China set 8% of its budget on fire to militarize the moon sounds like a US war planner's wet dream.

What are they going to do? Stage nuclear-tipped rockets there that you could wait until the next business day to respond to?

They could setup the infrastructure to defend a claim to the valuable areas of the Moon, eg the permanently shadowed craters with easily accessible water ice.

The US could always tunnel into those areas later, unless the Chinese are also allowed to develop a mineshaft-gap.

There is no earthly purpose to weapons on the moon.

There may be a lunar purpose however - to gain economic hegemony over lunar resources. That is an entirely different issue.

Why should it matter to Americans if China is inexplicably wasting money building stuff on the moon that they could have built in China for a tiny fraction of the cost?

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