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In 1903, NY Times predicted airplanes would take 10M years to develop

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Re: In 1903, NY Times predicted airplanes would take 10M years to develop

#81

Post by Kon-Peki »

andy0x2a wrote: post #44
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #25

Note that the first flight was also in 1903. According to the legend I've heard - this was published the day before the Wright Brothers first flight in Dec 17 1903. I didn't see the publication date in the article.

according to the first paragraph of TFA, the first flight was 9 weeks after the 1903 article was published

But that doesn’t really matter. They sent out a press release after Kitty Hawk; newspapers refused to publish it. Some instead published articles making fun of them.

Nobody believed them until 1908ish, when they flew over crowds in France and could no longer be ignored.

Re: In 1903, NY Times predicted airplanes would take 10M years to develop

#82

Post by cubefox »

bregma wrote: post #22
nightski wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly are you measuring "return" in this case? Because I feel that would be nearly impossible.

Well, you know, things like microelectronics, medical imaging, telecommunications, weather forecasting, stuff like that. Nothing important. Certainly we would have been better off if that money was spent here on Earth rather than sending it all into space.

I am skeptical that those things were invented by the Apollo program, and if they were, it would have been easier to do so without also developing moon landers.

Re: In 1903, NY Times predicted airplanes would take 10M years to develop

#84

Post by Merad »

cubefox wrote: post #80
Merad wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apollo program is estimated to have generated a ROI of $7-8 for every dollar spent by NASA. Today NASA has a budget of around $20 billion but they generate $70 billion in economic output. 0: https://nss.org/settlement/nasa/spaceresvol4/newspace3.html 1: https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/3721375-how-much-does...

I do not understand how this ROI was calculated. What, exactly, is the economic use case for NASA technology?

I suspect that you're drastically underestimating the breadth of the technology that NASA deals with.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies

Re: In 1903, NY Times predicted airplanes would take 10M years to develop

#85

Post by standardUser »

cubefox wrote: post #79
transcriptase wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So few people seem to realize that the point of many of these technological/societal achievements wasn’t necessarily the deliverable itself, but the development and implication of capabilities required to achieve them. In simple terms, it was sending a global message: “If our propulsion and guidance technology can put people on the moon, imagine what else would be trivial for us?”

The US was already far ahead in their military capabilities. Landing on the moon first or second would change nothing about this.

The US was behind the USSR on space technology at the start of the 1960's and had no idea how far behind they might be. By elevating the space program Kennedy (et al.) closed the gap, got ahead and stayed ahead.

Re: In 1903, NY Times predicted airplanes would take 10M years to develop

#86

Post by [deleted] »

nightski wrote: post #68
unsupp0rted wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't mainly that money got thrown at research. It was mainly that several generations of researchers were funneled into a singular mission, fueled by patriotism / ideology / propaganda. A JFK speech calling the nation to adventure + a blank cheque to your org + Walter Cronkite on tv & your nephew at school calling you a hero researcher can get a lot of basic science done. Is that basic science better aimed at a…

I'd imagine more has been spent on cancer research at this point than the moon landing.

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