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Dear Moon

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Re: Dear Moon

#221

Post by PopsiclePete »

tomcam wrote: post #87
askafriend wrote: post #4

Honestly, this is beautiful. Let's fucking do it. No seriously...let's do it. We're humans - this is the kind of funny, beautiful, impossible stuff we can uniquely do. Capital allocation? Bleh, don't be so boring and uninspired!

How much of your capital do you plan to allocate? And do you plan to allocate any of mine (i.e., the taxpayer)?

So many "taxpayers" are concerned about a few hundred million here and there that could bring benefit to the entire human race but never blink an eye when the bloated military budget grows by a few hundred billion....

Re: Dear Moon

#222

Post by godelski »

zherbert wrote: post #25

This guy is only worth $3B, he may be spending half of his entire net worth to make this happen. I hope he inspires the richest billionaires of the world to fund such lofty ventures.

Besides the fact that he isn't spending $1.5B on it, really, what can you do with $3B that you can't do with $1.5B? There's really not that many more things that you can do. So spending it on a (hopefully not) once in a lifetime opportunity doesn't sound like that bad of an idea.

Re: Dear Moon

#223

Post by godelski »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #159
isoskeles wrote: post #144

Honestly, I don't see how this is any bigger of a deal than going to the moon in the first place. There is a level of forced sentimentality here, as if a painter or a musician is going to see something different from a regular astronaut, because they're just special. Any time I see something like the level of response somewhere, I can't help but assume everyone thinks they're saying what they're supposed to say. "Thi…

> as if a painter or a musician is going to see something different from a regular astronaut A scientist, after years of training, can look at a physical system, break it down into its component parts, figure out how to model each part using mathematics, synthesize the models, and then do experiments to confirm the overall model. An artist, after years of training, can look at a scene from twenty different perspectiv…

Feynman on beauty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbFM3rn4ldo

Re: Dear Moon

#224

Post by perl4ever »

FiatLuxDave wrote: post #193
perl4ever wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sturgeon's law: 90% of everything is crap. Ironically, or fittingly, I've been reading a comprehensive collection of his short stories, because it was impressed on me early in my life that he was a great author, and I have recently been horrified at how terrible many of his more obscure ones are. The interesting thing is that the quality does not simply improve with time and experience. There are extreme outliers.

Weird question: I've been trying to find a short story I read years ago, which I think is by Sturgeon. Is there any chance you have run across it? In it, an engineer is brought into a war zone, where giant tank-like creatures are on the edge of overrunning the front lines. The lines must be maintained in a cave system to keep extracting a valuable mineral. The generals keep pressuring the engineer for weapons, but he…

I've never read that one, but if it's by him, I should find it eventually.

Re: Dear Moon

#226

Post by abdullahkhalids »

lawlessone wrote: post #174
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as if a painter or a musician is going to see something different from a regular astronaut A scientist, after years of training, can look at a physical system, break it down into its component parts, figure out how to model each part using mathematics, synthesize the models, and then do experiments to confirm the overall model. An artist, after years of training, can look at a scene from twenty different perspectiv…

Don't reduce artists and scientists to their professions? Scientists can be artistic and artists can be scientific. They overlap.

Sorry, when I said "scientist" and "artists", I didn't mean professionally, just someone who has spent a lot of time honing their skills in these fields. One person (say Lenardo di Vinci) can be both.

Re: Dear Moon

#227

Post by vinayms »

Also take a refugee and a homeless person from third world who starves regularly to balance things out. Would they, as they look out of the window, find their struggles irrelevant after looking at the beauty of the bright blue blob as it rotates gracefully about itself while also majestically traversing around the source of life as if paying obeisance to it, as seen against a stark black background filled with infinite bright dots that don't twinkle anymore, or would they be heartbroken that rich people around the world are splurging on such self congratulatory endeavors while millions of people like them could have had a sliver of dignity added to their existence had these patrons of futuristic science and tech expanded their horizons by getting real and looked inwards instead and brought some twinkle in their eyes, or would they feel something else completely unexpected? Lets find out. No really, lets find out that as well.

Re: Dear Moon

#228

Post by basicplus2 »

basicplus2 wrote: post #97
tomcam wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of your capital do you plan to allocate? And do you plan to allocate any of mine (i.e., the taxpayer)?

Essentially pretty much most of it.. tax deductions cost you more of your own money to pay for higher profit margins on privatised services and on lost maintenance on public infrastructure, and so you are definitely paying for it..

Sorry.. that should read tax cuts

Re: Dear Moon

#229

Post by octygen »

Am a big fan of Michener and was reading his book Space recently. The paragraph below came up as two main characters were debating sending people to the Moon for a price VS sending machines to the Moon AND Mars AND Saturn for the same price. Felt it was relevant to showcase this initiative by SpaceX as meaningful for it is the beginning of something bigger.

"Man was the measure of all things, and although it was correct that machines could perform miracles, they could not enlist the emotional support of the public. Astronauts could, and he left this confrontation committed to the role of human beings in space, for without them as a measure, a criterion for meaning, the program had no viability."

Re: Dear Moon

#230

Post by isoskeles »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #159
isoskeles wrote: post #144

Honestly, I don't see how this is any bigger of a deal than going to the moon in the first place. There is a level of forced sentimentality here, as if a painter or a musician is going to see something different from a regular astronaut, because they're just special. Any time I see something like the level of response somewhere, I can't help but assume everyone thinks they're saying what they're supposed to say. "Thi…

> as if a painter or a musician is going to see something different from a regular astronaut A scientist, after years of training, can look at a physical system, break it down into its component parts, figure out how to model each part using mathematics, synthesize the models, and then do experiments to confirm the overall model. An artist, after years of training, can look at a scene from twenty different perspectiv…

I think you're assuming a lot more intent from my comment than there was. I don't think scientists are better than artists or vice versa. I don't think any two people experience life in the same exact way. I didn't say artists "do nothing interesting."

However, an artist and a scientist are going to see literally the exact same thing when they pass by the moon (barring any medical conditions, e.g. Van Gogh). That's what I meant in saying they will see the same thing.

And I want to point out two observations about your definition of what an artist can do.

First, your definition is limiting. It is overly specific. You can agree that not every artist looks at a scene from N perspectives to synthesize all possible emotional impacts, etc. especially not in some conscious, trained way. And if it's unconscious, people capable of such a talent aren't the only people qualified to be artists.

Second, the definition itself sounds like it was written by a scientist or mathematician, a bunch of little checkboxes describing process and behavior. Maybe you were just doing that to try to get through to me. If so, I appreciate it.

However, I assume this is just how you think. And I believe that this insistence on how important and significant it is to have an artist look at the moon from up close is one heavily rooted in and biased toward empiricism / scientific-mindedness / whatever you want to call it. ("If only I could get a little closer to the moon, to measure it etc., I could properly gauge the emotional impact etc. etc. etc.")

Artists are able to write or paint (or do something in another medium) about experiences they have never had, still with significant impact. Dostoyevsky didn't have to murder anyone to write Crime and Punishment. It's not a prerequisite to see or touch something to be able to conceive of its emotional impact. The same goes for this. It may be the case that an artist gets closer to the moon and is inspired (similar to the idea of a muse), but it's not a foregone conclusion.

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