We walked on the moon in 1967. In 1968 MLK and RFK were assassinated, the cities burned, and in the following years the country realized the government was lying to us about the war in Vietnam. US society has never been the same. Vietnam was the beginning of a long slide. People think this was a long time ago but Nixon's henchmen Cheney and Rumsfeld were key players in the Iraq war. In retrospect the 1967 moon walk was the high water mark of American power. — fishfry
The real question is why the heck would anyone want to live on the Moon, or Mars, or anywhere remote and inhospitable? Is there either some national interest or some individual desire? — apokrisis
In retrospect the 1967 moon walk was the high water mark of American power. — fishfry
Rocketry had been perfected to the point needed to rain nuclear warheads down on any point of the planet. Colonising the Moon, or heading on to Mars, was a crazy waste of money from the point of view of furthering any national interest. And still is. — apokrisis
You’d have to be an oddball to want to live on another planet. It’d be the same as living in the middle of a desert or top of a mountain or down in Antarctica. All those are fun to visit. But hardly desirable residences. The commercial real estate opportunities of the Moon or Mars would be even less. So unless it was all about mining, what could pay for it as more than a token kind of business? — apokrisis
We walked on the moon in 1967. In 1968 MLK and RFK were assassinated, the cities burned, and in the following years the country realized the government was lying to us about the war in Vietnam. US society has never been the same. — fishfry
Yeah, and if everything comes down to a matter of what provides the most amount of utility to me, we would all be heroin addicts, yeah? — Posty McPostface
I have no interest in being a heroin addict. But if I had to choose that or being shipped out to a Mars colony for life, then heroin does seem the rosier option. — apokrisis
I think you’ve fallen for some romantic notion about space travel - that it somehow represents humanity’s best side. But exploration is just the precursor to exploitation. It isn’t noble even if it makes sense to big up those willing to take a risk on behalf of the masses. — apokrisis
Hah. Your OP is flawed in taking it as intuitively obvious that we would want to be spacefaring. That’s hippie thinking. But it’s funny to see the same old dickheads still police physics forum. Russ and Evo are just deeply unhappy people. Intellectual wannabes. Laugh and move on. — apokrisis
Actually the date of the first moon walk was July 20, 1969. Following that, there was a massive party of celebration at Woodstock, New York, from Aug15-18 1969. — Metaphysician Undercover
I don't understand your prejudice about living on Mars. What's so wrong with that I wonder? — Posty McPostface
Actually Americans didn't just give up further missions to the Moon, they de facto gave up the mission to go to Mars and anywhere else (like a manned Venus flyby). Basically when Apollo missions were still going, Werner von Braun was already thinking of the next step being a Mars mission, that would be carried out in the early 1980's. Then Nixon called it quits. Basically the only thing that wasn't scrapped was the Space Shuttle, which was designed as a cost cutting device (which in the end it wasn't). After Apollo, manned exploration of space stopped. The only true accomplishment that we got was the International Space Station in the realm of manned space flight. That we have even that is an accomplishment.Yet, we've tried this once before during the space race in the cold war, and after winning the space race to the moon, we sort of just gave up on further missions to the moon. Some would say that the economics of the whole issue was too burdensome to undertake such a mission to establish a lunar base at the time. However, I would contest that through a commitment to the goal of establishing a lunar base on the moon, the economics or cost would sort itself out through reducing costs. — Posty McPostface
I think you’ve fallen for some romantic notion about space travel - that it somehow represents humanity’s best side. But exploration is just the precursor to exploitation. It isn’t noble even if it makes sense to big up those willing to take a risk on behalf of the masses. — apokrisis
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