45 years ago today, Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. It has been downhill for the United States ever since.
Apollo 11 was done by government. Apollo 11 could *only* have been done by government, because there is no profit or loss statement that could have withstood the massive expense of sending men to the Moon to return a few pounds of rocks. Even the supposed technology benefits of the Apollo Program don’t pan out when you look at the actual technology used to send men to the moon. Contrary to popular belief there was little of the Apollo technology that actually drove civilian computer technology. For example, the Apollo Guidance Computer used RTL NAND gates wire-wrapped together on perforated substrates, which was long obsolete technology by the time Apollo flew, replaced by etched-copper substrates and TTL by 1964. Furthermore, civilian satellite launches primarily have been done by boosters derived from early missiles, not by anything developed for the Apollo project.
In short, the Apollo project could not be justified by any kind of profit or loss statement. But that was not the point of Apollo. The point of Apollo was that there was this thing that needed to be done to insure the future of mankind: the conquest of space. It was a thing that could only be done by government, because other than launching satellites there is not any profit involved, just the survival of the species if something happens to Earth itself. And then…
… then we quit.
We let the nattering nabobs of negativism convince us that if there was no profit, it shouldn’t be done. We got talked into believing that government was the problem, not the solution — despite the fact that there are a huge number of problems that have no solution other than government because there is no possible profit. Our old people aren’t on Medicare because health insurers were politically powerless in 1965. They’re on Medicare because there’s no profit insuring old people against major medical problems thus health insurers didn’t want to insure them, meaning old people in 1965 simply couldn’t buy health insurance on the open market, period. That’s just one of the problems that have no profit but which had to be solved or we’d have a lot of dead bodies. And dead bodies are Bad Juju.
Thus the need for government, which is the solution where something needs to be done but it’s impossible to make a profit doing something. But somewhere we allowed ourself as a nation to worship the mighty Prophet Profit rather than pay attention to common sense, which is that insuring the general welfare (as called for by the Constitution in its very first paragraph) requires government to do some things that private enterprises won’t or can’t do.
And so we slide down in the abyss of being a third world nation. The annual anniversary of the moon landing is always bittersweet to me. Once upon a time, we were a nation that could do great things. Today… not so much. We couldn’t land men on the moon again if we wanted, because the infrastructure isn’t there anymore to do it. It all got sold to the highest bidder in China or Malaysia or Korea or Vietnam. Because the great Prophet Profit said to do so.
So it goes.
– Badtux the Bitter Penguin
The Space Program was a point of National Pride. I mean WE freaking walked on the Moon! Hot Damn, we could have gone on to such Great stuff after that.
Instead we can’t seem to figure out that a long pipe of crude oil will eventually Break and cause a big mess. We have been dumbed down considerably as a nation. Back in the 60’s I was so sure we were on to the ends of the earth and beyond and that each generation would be smarter and better off than the last. To finally leave behind ignorance and racism for the goal of reaching forward together as a country united.
What the F, happened. Exactly the reverse?
a Saddened w3ski
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The New World was explored for three reasons; God, gold and glory. The Apollo mission was all about glory; an ultimately empty desire, so naturally the moon program folded shut right after success. Glory can only keep you going for years, not decades.
Lately some entrepreneurs want to do asteroid mining; literally a search for gold. This is a sounder motive than glory; it can get people moving for decades; but not centuries.
For centuries of labor, you need God or the equivalent. I propose the terraformation of Mars, motivated by a ideological/religious desire to pay back Momma Gaia for our naughtiness, or some such.
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Here is to the first Martian Temple of whatever, and I remember reading many stories as a kid with ‘Space Miners’ being the lead role. That wouldn’t be too bad a reason to go back.
w3ski
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Leslie Fish wrote a song “Hope Eyrie” about the landing
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Oh Dear–it put the thing UP!
I just meant a link, sorry
her “Witnesses Waltz” is not bad either
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You put just the link, but WordPress is “smart” and knows about YouTube links and actually inlines the video. No problem.
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At one time we went to the moon.
Today our big thing is kitchen cabinets and drawers with soft close.
Progress US style.
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“Even the supposed technology benefits of the Apollo Program don’t pan out..” You seem to have forgotten about TANG!
But seriously, the whole idea of finding other worlds because we are screwing this one up so badly, needs to be dealt with by fixing this one instead of hoping we will get another chance.
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The technology needed to save this world is the exact same as the technology needed to build space colonies on, say, the Moon. That is, the ability to maintain a fairly closed loop cycle that doesn’t require plundering a planet to sustain. But the point is that there’s no profit to do that — or for that matter, to mine asteroids, since the amount of energy needed to do so is far higher than would be needed to mine landfills for the elements we’re talking about.
And my point is that the Prophet Profit is a false prophet, that there are far more things worth doing than Profit will ever accomplish.
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Do you realize that for us ‘Olds’ we now have Tang flavored Metamucil. I never knew we had come so far.
w3ski
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Apollo was a publicity stunt. It wasn’t meant to self-sustain. Since then most space exploration has been by robots. They have done very well; and robotics is a tech with Earthside uses, unlike spacesuits.
When the true era of human spaceflight begins, it will involve a sounder support than national glory. By definition spaceflight is a planetary project. I propose hunting dangerous Earth-crossing asteroids; push the worthless ones into another orbit, and mine the valuable ones to oblivion; thus combining the profit motive with save-the-earth idealism.
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That wasn’t the feeling I had at the time, Paradoctor. We all understood that Apollo was more of a proof of concept of space flight than anything else, but we all thought that there would be something after Apollo. Instead, there was the prototype of a large space plane of which five instances were built (two of which ended up blowing up), and that was it. No big rotating space station with fleets of space planes arriving like airliners. No moon colony. No real exploration of the asteroid belt. None of what we all thought was going to happen as space flight became common and humanity moved out into the solar system (nevermind the stars, anybody who knew science knew that the stars were forever out of reach, but the solar system is *there*).
Yes, there’s been some science experiments done with robots, and they’ve told us a lot. What they’ve *not* told us has been far greater than what they’ve told us, because they were done on the cheap and with little mass for advanced science experiments and little ability to adapt if a science experiment turned up something unusual and a followup was needed. And none of that solves the problem that there’s another dinosaur killer out there, somewhere, and it’s going to some day hit the Earth. The biosphere might not be suited for human habitation for hundreds of years after that event… but without any humans in artificial biospheres elsewhere in the solar system, that pretty much means the end of the human race.
Of course, that might be for the best, given what humanity has been up to lately…
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Tux, I’m surprised that neither you nor any or your intellicommenters have pointed out the main reason the negnabobs triumphed — the military. So much money that could have gone into space exploration “lifting bodies” went to MIRVs and MARVs and “Peacekeeper” missiles. Not just the U.S., either. The USSR and the combined efforts of European nations dumped a lot of capital and talent into better jet fighters, submarines, etc. What would have been the outcome for humanity if a larger percentage of that effort had been diverted to extra-planetary efforts instead of extermination?
I remember a speech that Jesse Jackson Sr. gave during is presidential run in 1988 (before he was revealed to be a philandering grifter) about how the U.S. had developed nuclear missiles while the Japanese were developing better TV sets. “How many of you own a TV, and how many of you own a Minuteman?” was his point about why the Japs were kicking Yank arses back then. What has changed, except for the substitution of Chinese in that example.
Because it’s my job, and also because I like to ponder it, I wonder why, psychologically, we act like that. Why does the Pat Buchanan authoritarian part of the human brain take precedence over the Arthur C. Clarke “what’s out there?” part. As a species, we’ve evolved to wander in search of new places to find hunting, not just with the instinct to kill to protect what we’ve already got. I reckon it all flows back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Humankind’s strongest drive is to stay alive, fight for the bird that’s in hand. That comes before looking for two more in the bush. We might not even glom our subconscious motivations in that direction, but they’re there, driving us.
Only, we’re supposed to be more evolved than the reptilian/screeching chimpanzee mentality. As societies, we could be nudged in the right direction if our leadership wanted to propagandise us that way. The masses are sheep. They can be herded toward good or bad ends. The profit motive could be engineered to have us shoot off moon-mining vessels of some sort (chemical-powered rockets are a dead end) as a Keynesian economic engine as well as it can be used to build useless B-2 stealth bombers. I reckon that we’ve chosen the Path of Death because sociopaths gravitate to positions where they seek power over others, and thus become our leaders. Ultimately, sociopaths want to destroy other human beings. Going to the moon is a positive, building effort. An ICBM is destructive. That gives our Sociopathic Lizard Overlords more of a woodie than an Apollo.
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There are so many years and so many dead ends. Bukko mentioned 1988 and I was immediately sucked into a place from which I could not extricate myself. This was the last hurrah. I have never been affiliated with either major party, but this was an ideological battle from which I would not abstain. A battle lost before it began. Dukakis and Jackson were a joke we played upon ourselves in the hope that there might be some reason left in our souls. We lost both our souls and reason in 1968 and I didn’t even notice. Did you?
A precedent was set in the “88” election. We elected a former chief of the CIA to president. We elected a man whose family had ties to Nazi Germany. We elected the first Bush. I have not voted since. This is the America we deserve and I am not going to stop its destructive path to our ruin one bit.
I remember the moon landings with childish wonder and exuberance. I gave up my dream of being a cowboy and wanted to be a spaceman. I almost felt good about things.
Being a middle class white kid at twelve in America in 1969 was to be at the top of the world.
I never felt it. I remembered my first death (JFK) when I was 6 and the memory of it has never left me. It is probably one of my earliest memories. As I get older I remember less and less. I will never forget the coffin in our church with the American flag on it. I will never forget the little boy saluting his father.
I will never forget the daily “body counts” on the TV and the attempts to make people into monsters. I never bought it. I see we are doing the same today.
Taken as individuals most people are reasonably tolerant.
Once those individuals join a group they become intolerant.
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