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Can you think of any strategic value to the moon? I can't.
Can you think of the strategic value of $Bn stealthy air superiority fighters to fight guys living in caves?
1. Give the terrorists a space Program. We didn't go to the moon because we thought it'd be neat up there, we went to beat the Soviet's asses. That's why Americans were interested then, that's why they'd be interested now.
2. Make gains clearly applicable to world power. Gee oh I wonder why the US was so willing to invest millions and millions into rockets. Might it have something to do with the fact that they used the same technology to give themselves the ability to put a Nuke in striking distance of anything on the planet? The government only gave a crap about the Moon because it pleased the people and because it made their death-weapons possible.
People are no dumber now than they were then. In fact, people are loads smarter. Look at the devices they use on a daily basis!
Why is there some need to lament the state of humanity at every turn? Guys, it's not really that bad. Everything's going to be OK
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The problem is that they worry foreign companies will muscle into the picture. Imagine if China landed the first Moon Base in 2020 and was wellestablished there before the US even landed another astronaut. Highly unlikely BUT the fear is there - and with that fear comes the other one; strategic habitation of the Moon establishes something of a superiority over other countries. Summary: the US govt. will guard NASA as…
Can you think of any strategic value to the moon? I can't.
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I agree with all of the points. The knowledge of science across the population as a whole is decaying in the US. Could've edited better.
It's more meta than that. If knowledge was decaying yet interest remained high, then that could be addressed straightforwardly. What's happening is analogous to children believing that meat comes from supermarkets, not farm animals... Accomplishments of science and engineering are taken for granted. But mobile phones and MP3 players don't grow on trees...
Take, for example, some bad PHP-webprogrammer (or RoR, or whatever). They will wonder what the hell some 'webserver' is and why you need one and what's all that fuss about networks, ports, routing, security and such. (Please don't kill me, I just needed an example for ignorant people in software industries and this one was the first to come to my mind :). In other words, the abstraction of such a Web framework creates a certain ignorance and even missing knowledge about the underlying mechanisms.
And now consider this: A child gets food from the supermarket and does not know about the cow behind this. Looking at this from a bit further away, these two patterns look awefully similar, because here we have an abstraction AGAIN (the supermarket, similar to the web framework), which hides the actual infrastructure (cow, butcher, truck, ...). And again, there are people showing heavy ignorance and even missing knowledge about the underlying infrastructure.
Certainly, I do not know how to butcher a cow or drive a truck either, and I am unable to configure a webserver in a dark room with a blindfold and one hand tied behind my back, but I certainly know that these things happen behind the abstraction.
So, is this a certain indicator of ignorance, if one just uses abstractions and never ever looks behind the abstraction?
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Can you think of any strategic value to the moon? I can't.
Helium-3 In a nutshell human beings have depleted helium reserves on planet earth to the point that within 20 years we run out. Now you say, big deal, no more party balloons. But little do you realize that the manufacturing processes for just about everything super technical requires helium. It's a big enough deal that both Russia and China are developing standalone robotic systems to harvest helium-3 from moon rocks…
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Can you think of the strategic value of $Bn stealthy air superiority fighters to fight guys living in caves?
Yes--they ensure that guys living in caves are our biggest threat. If we did not have stealth fighters and stealth bombers, actual countries might think a war with the US would be a fair fight, and they might start shit.
We should be actively colonizing space to increase our survival chances. However, behind every technical reality, there is a far more important economic reality. First, the need for a back-up planet isn't that high yet. Second, NASA isn't self-supporting. It can't amplify its achievements like business can. Putting men on the moon was the peak of what it could do without requiring an unrealistic change in the nature…
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Yes--they ensure that guys living in caves are our biggest threat. If we did not have stealth fighters and stealth bombers, actual countries might think a war with the US would be a fair fight, and they might start shit.
Switzerland has a decent army, but nothing like the US. When were they attacked the last time?
Plus we have obligations to protect foreign allies.
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Switzerland has a decent army, but nothing like the US. When were they attacked the last time?
Unlike Switzerland, the US is actually worth attacking. Not that Switzerland isn't, but it's in an easily defensible position. It's easy to make attacking Switzerland a bad cost-benefit. Not so much the US. Plus we have obligations to protect foreign allies.