If We Can Put a Man on the Moon, Why Can’t We Put a Man on the Moon?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-we-can-put-a-man-on-the-moon-why-cant-we-put-a-man-on-the-moon-1514833480

by dbattaglia • 9 years ago

113 233 9 years ago

wsj.com

neonate• 9 years ago

http://archive.is/g1NEH

draugadrotten• 9 years ago

https://archive.is/PO1WZ/image

ogdoad• 9 years ago

Because putting a man on the moon would be putting a man on the moon!

coliveira2• 9 years ago

We can't because the USA prefers to create more bombs and other war machines rather than invest in science.

gozur885• 9 years ago

We would never have done it the first time if not for military competition with the USSR.

TeMPOraL12• 9 years ago

Doesn't mean we have to keep competing militarily if we could go to space instead.

(Though there is potential for another military race there too - the first country to put a deorbiting system on a near-Earth rock wins.)

mikejb3• 9 years ago

It's a mixture of both: Military competition is what drives a ton of research with an immense budget behind it. The problem I have with some nations (the US is not the only offender here) is that they deploy the poisoned fruit of that research.

coliveira2• 9 years ago

The USA already has bombs, no science is being used to produce more of the same.

njharman• 9 years ago

China manages to do both:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Prog...

https://www.google.com/search?q=china+weapons+development

gandhium• 9 years ago

Are you suggesting that US is scientifically losing to most countries?

KKKKkkkk1• 9 years ago

Looks like commenters here did not read the subtitle: Outside study blames NASA’s bureaucracy and contracting practices for delaying lunar missions

anilgulecha• 9 years ago

Well, the article does also say:

NASA has routinely faced similar criticism from some lawmakers and advocates of commercial space ventures, but seldom in a report released by the agency itself.

TylerE• 9 years ago

THere is little POINT in putting a man on the moon after you've done it.

We have plenty of moon rock to run experiments on.

Any micro/low gravity experiment can be run cheaper in LEO.

There aren't any valuable resources there to exploit.

It's a bit like asking why we don't build a habitat on the bottom of the Marians Trench - we COULD, but why WOUDL we?

abecedarius• 9 years ago

Lunar resources could have great value just by their location. The energy cost to lift them into space is much lower than from Earth. Doing anything ambitious in space would require a lot of material, which has limited our ambitions since the 1970s.

(Asteroids might serve better, though: a wider variety of stuff, comparable in energy cost but farther away.)

I wish the damn article would link to this new report, or at least give me the keywords to search for.

gozur885• 9 years ago

Doing anything ambitious in space would require a lot of material, which has limited our ambitions since the 1970s.

We go to the moon because materials are cheap because... we want to build what?

maccam9410• 9 years ago

I'm not sure what the delta-V is like to get materials from an asteroid vs the Moon, but I'd expect there is much more variety of resources on asteroids. I think an orbital station is also more attractive than the Moon from a delta-V standpoint.

sillysaurus3• 9 years ago

Because it's awesome. :)

I mean, we burn piles of money just for fun. May as well burn a pile of money to put someone on the moon again. Doing it just because we can is a fine reason.

"Still got it!"

One tweak, though. Rather than forcing them to find a reason to go, i.e. gathering moon rocks, they should just let the astronauts play around. That's the goal. Go there, then turn on a webcam and romp around for a few days.

That would get the world thinking. And that'd be pretty cool.

dawnerd• 9 years ago

We already have good reasons though. Starters would be to prep a moon base and see how structures handle being constructed on the moon and how they fare.

olalonde• 9 years ago

That would get the world thinking.

It might get some baby boomers excited but I'm not sure about younger generations. It doesn't feel like an exciting, impossible mission today.

Pigo3• 9 years ago

I wish more people were inspired by Gene Roddenberry's vision of an ideal human society. I know it's a science fiction pipe dream because we're always held back by the lowest common denominator, but if mankind moved past the need for acquisition and power all that would be left is working together to achieve goals that make everyone's life more meaningful. We have to wait for meaningful goals to intersect with acquisition and power.

sohkamyung• 9 years ago

We have plenty of moon rock to run experiments on.

True for one side of the moon. The Far Side of the Moon (the part that never faces the Earth) is still mostly an enigma. It looks very difference from the Near Side and while we have mapped it, we don't have samples from it.

I would say a lunar mission is still called for, but for the Far Side.

That is what China's upcoming moon mission might be aiming for [1]: Chang'E 5 will conduct a sample return mission late in 2017, and Chang'E 4 will carry a rover to the far side of the Moon, the first mission ever to do so, about a year later.

[1] http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2017/20170920-cha...

nickik2• 9 years ago

That is just false. Did we take just one sample of our own earth and only work with that?

I'm a Mars first guy but going to the moon would require building up vital tech in launch and space habitation.

Also its false that 'we CLOULD, but why WOULD we' the fact is currently NASA simply can not do and all their efforts to work in that direction again have pretty much been failures.

thaumasiotes• 9 years ago

It's a bit like asking why we don't build a habitat on the bottom of the Marians Trench - we COULD, but why WOU[LD] we?

This is overstated. We could build a habitat on the moon. We cannot build a habitat on the bottom of the ocean; that's much, much more difficult.

pvaldes• 9 years ago

But would be much more rewarding, because we know that this other "moon" has living creatures that are practically unknown to us.

alexnewman4• 9 years ago

NASA can’t put a man on the moon, but Elon soon will make putting two lambos into lunar transfer orbit with the falcon heavy

PakG1• 9 years ago

You sure it's not Tesla Roadsters?

mikejb3• 9 years ago

The (single) Tesla Roadster is going on a transfer orbit to Mars.

(Actually, the Tesla is 'just' going into a heliocentric orbit with it's apogee around the Mars orbit. That is sufficient to prove that it can get to Mars because it's just a matter of timing, which is relatively trivial, but it doesn't crash into another Planet and upsets planetary protection officers - yes, that's a job)

alexnewman4• 9 years ago

What evidence leads you to believe that nasa is currently run as efficiently or as innovative as during say the first half of Apollo. Everything I’ve heard from people who worked there is that it’s generally become more and more of nightmare

mruniverse• 9 years ago

You ask for evidence, then follow up with "I heard from people..."?

aeorgnoieang2• 9 years ago

People telling you things is evidence.

alexnewman4• 9 years ago

Ahh, I am glad you asked. I actually have been lucky enough to work at two small spacecraft companies. I am not an aerospace engineer but I talk to people who are and interact with tons of x-nasa people. Also, my weirdo comments aren't my own. Checkout the omega tau series, especially http://omegataupodcast.net/218-a-life-in-apollo/

Pica_soO• 9 years ago

Because capitalism, as religion while in its optimization frenzy- cripples the ability's of mankind? Reaching the moon already was only done to compete with a faction outside the reference system. Without commies to race and lean against, the western system decayed to just another nice decorated, well managed cotton plantation.

There is no price on the far future events, such as bollide strikes. If there where, suddenly the moon would have holiday resorts.

TeMPOraL12• 9 years ago

Nicely put.

Though this is not caused by the religious aspects of modern capitalism, but by its core mechanism of work - people are forced to work on what earns them and protects their short-term profit (poor people to eat, rich people to not become poor people).

There seem to be only few people on the planet with simultaneously enough wealth and focused will to tell the market where to go, as opposed to being directed by the market - I'm thinking about people like Gates and Musk. Fortunately, one of them is hell-bent on getting to Mars; without that forcing function, we'd probably be talking about scrapping ISS by now.

(I don't feel like you can blame situation in NASA purely on capitalism though, at least not directly. They don't play the capitalism game. But they are controlled by politicians, and politicians play the capitalism game.)

drdeca• 9 years ago

Politicians play the politics game.

This game involves people acting with self interest, and relates in some ways to access to/control of resources. This is the case regardless of economic system.

"Capitalism is moloch, yes, but government is also moloch. Anarchy is also moloch."

closeparen• 9 years ago

If there were a price on even medium-term future events, we would all be living in condo towers and taking public transit. We can’t even manage to shift the balance of ground transportation in response to a planetary crisis, there’s no way it would take us to space.

nickik2• 9 years ago

I'm sorry but that is a bunch of nonsense.

Reaching the moon already was only done to compete with a faction outside the reference system.

Yes, going to the moon had to do with geopolitics but all this stuff about the 'reference system' is nonsense. Any geopolitical opponent could have led to the same result.

Without commies to race and lean against, the western system decayed to just another nice decorated, well managed cotton plantation.

You are again trying to shoehorn your larged philiosophy about 'modern capitalism' into the argument. First of all it is absolutly clear to anybody with idioligical glasses on that NASA started to perfom less well long before it was clear to most people that the Soviet system was going to collapse.

NASA was young, flexible had lots of budget and thanks to a set of luck circumstances. The reality is that NASA has been burocratiesed and and largly been controlled by congress and presidents trying to use NASA for anything but space exploration.

Non of that has anything to do with the Soviet Union and some problem with 'capitalism'.

There is no price on the far future events, such as bollide strikes. If there where, suddenly the moon would have holiday resorts.

Just like in democracy things only happen if large numbers of people can support it, neither capitalism nor democracy has done mutch to defend against meteors.

And nowdays it is actually capitalism that is driving the push towards people living of planet.

dang• 9 years ago

Would you please not post ideological boilerplate to Hacker News, regardless of which ideology?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

partycoder2• 9 years ago

Because the Apollo Program happened during Bretton Woods, a period of time where America had virtually infinite money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege#Oppositio...

JumpCrisscross• 9 years ago

Because the Apollo Program happened during Bretton Woods

We are still under the Bretton Woods system, more or less. Almost 2/3rds of foreign currency reserves held by central banks are held in U.S. dollars [1]. If anything, real interest rates are lower today than they were in the 1960s.

[1] http://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2017/03/31/pr17108-IMF-R...

partycoder2• 9 years ago

Yes but the US does not allow audits on their gold reserves.

They could print as many dollar bills they wanted until the Nixon shock.

That ended, and as a consequence the economy is not doing as well right now.

If not but because of exclusive deals (e.g: oil) it would be very hard to justify the dollar current value.

jl6• 9 years ago

You can’t put a man on the moon but your grandparents could.

TeMPOraL12• 9 years ago

"Back when I was your age, I had to go to work 400 000 km. In near 0K cold for 3 days. Upwell! Both ways!"

nkrisc• 9 years ago

If you were in direct sunlight for those 3 days to the moon I'd be more concerned about being hot than cold.

rurban• 9 years ago

The germans could. When the anglo-british bureaucracy took over the german Huntsville engineering management and forced them to Houston/California and switch to solid rockets it started failing. This was the inside view. The new type of management was called "destructive organizational culture". https://www.jstor.org/stable/25611289 [of course the new management blamed it on the germans]

mcguire5• 9 years ago

"The only people who have been above low Earth orbit were born in the 1930s and put there by Nazis."

T-A• 9 years ago

Edit: nope, looks like it's this one: "Stepping Stones: Economic Analysis of Space Transportation Supplied From NEO Resources"

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/eso_fin...

---

I think the report in question is "NASA's In Space Manufacturing Initiatives: Conquering the Challenges of In-Space Manufacturing":

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?print=yes&R=20170011108

These may also be interesting:

"NASA's In Space Manufacturing Initiatives: Overview and Update", https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?print=yes&R=20170011109

"Additive Manufacturing for Human Space Exploration", https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?print=yes&R=20170011644

maccam9410• 9 years ago

I really want to see asteroid mining prioritized, as well as a space station capable of permanent human habitation (either partial or full gravity). A space station is also preferable to another planet for our next big space endeavor IMO because it is easier to get materials to and from it (no extra gravity well to deal with). Also, I feel like a lot of people think "ah, everything has to be done differently because space is a zero-G environment", but I bet it would be easier to adapt a lot of traditional technologies, engineering processes, and biological elements in a rotating station. Once we have the ability to do fabrication and construction in space, everything becomes much cheaper. Lastly, if researchers need to experiment in zero-G, we could construct zero-G modules adjacent to the center of the ring for experimentation.

The primary blocker for a rotating station as far as I know has been the mass requirement. If you have a structure above a certain rotational speed with a radius that is too small, the occupants are likely to become nauseous. From the research I've seen, the minimum size for a viable rotating station would be about 600 tons[1]. Moving that amount of mass into orbit would have been extremely expensive, but Falcon Heavy could launch it for under $1.5B, and the BFR for even less.

[1] http://www.nss.org/settlement/space/GlobusRotationPaper.pdf (page 22)

GCU-Empiricist• 9 years ago

It'll happen when there's a business model that reduces the operating margin for a company. My best guess is this will be when the price for lithium or trans-uranics goes up significantly, or some engineering process requires microgravity conditions.

Animats• 9 years ago

Because, half a century later, it's not any cheaper to do it than it was then.

maccam9410• 9 years ago

It's recently gotten way cheaper.

Cost per kilogram delivered to LEO:

Saturn V (used for the Moon landing mission): $8,250

Falcon 9: $2,700 (price for an expendable launch)

BFR (hypothetical, in development rocket): $500

Klathmon• 9 years ago

Does that scale to a full lunar mission though?

Just because it's cheaper to take the bus downtown doesn't say anything about the cost of airfare to another continent.

sytelus• 9 years ago

In inflation adjusted dollars? I would have still thought its 10X cheaper now because of all the learnings plus much lower cost computing and other engineering enhancements.

Back in 1973, the total cost of the Apollo program reported to Congress was $25.4 billion. By far the most expensive parts of the mission were the Apollo spacecraft (the Command Modules, the Lunar Modules) and the monstrous Saturn V launch vehicles. A single Saturn V launch cost up to $375 million in 1969 — or, in today’s money, a few billion dollars.

In 2009, NASA looked back at the cost of the Apollo program in its entirety, and arrived at a figure of $170 billion in 2005 dollars (or around $200 billion in today’s money). Compare these costs to modern day space travel, where companies like SpaceX charge just $133 million to launch a spacecraft to the International Space Station. The Falcon Heavy, which will be comparable to the Saturn IV, will be in the same price region.

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/186600-apollo-11-moon-la...

valuearb6• 9 years ago

Space Shuttle $50,000

SLS: $15,000

Falcon Heavy: $700

lmm11• 9 years ago

The Falcon 9 isn't human-rated, and cost per kilogram doesn't cover everything - putting together 10 pieces in orbit would be really expensive.

mikeash2• 9 years ago

It would be way cheaper to do it today. Apollo cost about $110 billion, adjusted for inflation. SpaceX projects that development of their Mars rocket (which could easily do the moon too) will cost $10 billion. Even if they're off by a factor of 2 or more (and their history suggest they aren't), that's still massively less expensive.

Al-Khwarizmi2• 9 years ago

This seems to happen to a lot of things.

In my city (random Spanish mid-sized city, around 250K population) there is often debate about building a light rail or tram public transport line. But it is always dismissed by the administration for being too expensive, pharaonic, disproportionate for a city of this size, etc.

Doing some research on the history of the city, I discovered that not only there were several tram lines in the early 20th century, but there was even a tram line that went all the way to a nearby town of population around 15K, 22 km away. If anyone proposed a tram line like that today, I think they would be dismissed as being kidding for proposing such extravagant spending.

This, in a context where Spain is a much richer country than it was back then. I often wonder what went wrong.

jpatokal2• 9 years ago

Classic trams and modern light rail are different beasts.

Trams were popular worldwide back in the days where automobiles were far too expensive for most people and buses hadn't taken off yet, and since they were the only practical means of transport for medium distances, even small cities had massive ridership. They also ran right on the road, sharing space with cars, which was OK because there were a lot less cars and cars were not meaningful competition.

These days cars are affordable, and light rail has to be better than cars to be competitive, and do so well enough to entice a significant portion of the population out of their cars to be affordable. In practice this means dedicated right of way, which is far more expensive to purchase and fit out as a rail line than just laying some rails on an existing street. And of course modern safety, environmental and just plain bureaucratic regulations also inflate the prices of public works considerably compared to the good/bad old days, particularly in the US.

Doxin• 9 years ago

They also ran right on the road

Sidenote: so do many modern tram systems.

Al-Khwarizmi2• 9 years ago

Yes, that's a very good summary of what happened.

I'm aware of those factors, but I still think we took a wrong turn. Maybe not in the US due to the population sparsity and sprawl, but in Spain and many other European countries, if we could connect every town or city of more than 10K people by either rail, light rail or tram (instead of having spent billions on highways), that would cover 80% of the population. A large majority wouldn't need a car, and could instead use Uber-like services for the last mile. Pollution and emissions would be much less of a problem, and quality of life in cities much better.

But that's what happens with gradient descent, it can lead you to a local minimum...

micheljansen• 9 years ago

Interesting take. Where I live (The Hague, Netherlands), trams are slowly turning into light rail systems. Where trams historically shared the roads with cars, they are now increasingly running on separate tracks (elevated or otherwise). This allows for different kinds of (more comfortable) trains, because they do not need to be built for collisions with cars.

Fnoord• 9 years ago

In early 20th century:

1) Communities were more local and relevant than today. This also means travel was more local and relevant.

2) Trams didn't have as much competition with other viable, automated means of transport.

kalleboo• 9 years ago

I lived in a Swedish city of a similar size. They had a tram network that was dismantled bit by bit until it was completely shut down in 1973 because it was seen as unmodern. And now 40 years later they're all talking about building trams again since they're so modern...

JeanMarcS• 9 years ago

In Marseille,France there was a tram when I was young (mid 80’s). They dismantled it. Then build it back in the 2000’s...

jandrese• 9 years ago

Even in the US you see this. There was a light rail line[1] that ran west from Washington DC connecting several small farming communities in the early 1900s. It was dismantled and turned into a bike trail and now we are spending billions of dollars[2] to build a Metro expansion parallel to the old rail line.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_and_Old_Dominion_Ra...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2016/02/1...

agumonkey• 9 years ago

the so subtle notion of progress..

Tiktaalik• 9 years ago

What is interesting about the renaissance of light rail to me is that for many cities it's a restoration of how the city was originally designed.

Relatively modern cities, especially north american ones, would have grown along with the tram network, adding on "streetcar suburbs" as the city grew.

For example if a neighbourhood comprises of one major street lined with commercial with residential everywhere else, that was likely once a streetcar line.

At some point these cities threw out the trams and replaced them with buses and cars, but these cities weren't designed for that infrastructure.

Newer cities that are designed around cars are unwalkable stripmall deserts. It will be much more difficult to turn these into walkable transit oriented communities.

dmead• 9 years ago

many places in the US are like this as well. trains used to criss-cross many cities and towns, but those lines have since been paved over for roads or just fallen out of use altogether.

raldi• 9 years ago

Does your city have buses? If so, what would light rail do for you that the buses can't?

nunobrito• 9 years ago

This will go on until one day a large enough government admits that moon landings back in the 60s/70s were filmed, instead of real.

The large majority of people here are based in facts instead of religion and dogmas. As a fact-based society, we should be able to look from a distance and re-evaluate the facts with a colder perspective.

From what I observe, every year we are either 5 year away from settling on the moon (or Mars), every year there are nn reasons why it didn't happen (loop and repeat since the last 50 years).

Very few doubt the fact that selfies of astronauts smiling directly at the sun are possible (without injury).

Very few wonder why the first landing was a success, right on the first try even as other agencies (SpaceX) iteratively fail on the first runs.

Very few ask why the the original recordings don't exist any longer, only botched TV recordings.

The effect of radiation outside the earth shield is simply too strong. We have always sent animals during any space milestone before humans. Look up what happened to them, if you can find the records.

I'm an engineer. If possible, would like to see humans on the moon during my lifetime. Instead, we are taught that the sun orbits around the earth and burn apostates on the public square. We can do better.

Happy 2018! :-)

ourmandave• 9 years ago

You forgot the /s

aurizon• 9 years ago

They need driverless, conductorless subways/trams in enclosed tubular right of way with passengers entering from one side and exiting from the other, via offset doors. Think of the days when you had elevators with operators who were paid for pushing the floor number for you - (a carry-over from the cable-pull hole in the wall days when operators were needed.) These trams were killed by the wages of the operators, in much the same way that modern subways are ruined costwise by the wages of the drivers and conductors who each have hourly wage costs of $50 or more = large ticket costs and avoidance to car use. In effect opportunists grabbed all the $$

In the moon race, NASA is so burdened by legacy wages and other costs AND the fact that Congressional opportunists grab the money that NASA was prevented from that course.

johnminter• 9 years ago

The author answers the question in the first sentence. It is not that we can't, the problem is that it is not cost effective to do so. Or, as the cliche goes, "It's all about the Benjamins".

The inconvenient truth is that the US has a national debt of over $21T and a federal bureaucracy with a reputation of being unable to bring projects to completion on budget. Think of this in a more personal context: you need to plan to support yourself in your old age (retirement). Your lifestyle depends on a successful return on investment. What percentage of your savings would you invest in this? Where does this fit on your hierarchy of "needs" vs "wants"?

stupidcar• 9 years ago

Your analogy makes no sense. America isn't a person, doesn't have a limited working life, and isn't going to "retire".

The solution to an inefficient federal bureaucracy and a large national debt isn't to cut economically irrelevant spending in those areas where the US enjoys an actual advantage over other countries. It's to improve the bureaucracy and balance spending in meaningful ways.

Unfortunately, any sane attempt at improvement is blocked by "small government" Republicans, who deliberately impede evolutionary improvements in government functioning in the hope that, by forestalling them, they can hasten some future libertarian revolution, wherein it becomes politically possible to eliminate all social programmes altogether.

In order to maintain their false image as being in favor of fiscal constraint, these same Republicans attack easy targets like NASA. At the same time, they protect insanely profligate projects like the F-35 fighter, which provide essentially socialist redistribution to defence contractors in their own districts. In your flawed comparison, it'd be like someone complaining about his children's spend on candy, while buying a dozen broken Ferraris every day.

pjc502• 9 years ago

wherein it becomes politically possible to eliminate all social programmes altogether

.. but not, as you pointed out, the biggest expense of all in the military.

The way back to the moon is the same reason as America went to the moon in the first place: competition and colonialism. As soon as China or India look like they might go back to the moon, the space race will resume.

valuearb6• 9 years ago

Calling this a republican problem is being willfully ignorant of the problems in our government structure. We didn’t get $21B in debt cause of republicans, or democrats, but because of congress.

Congress directed NASA to spend $20B to build the SLS, a super heavy launch system built by congresses favorite contractors. It won’t be reusable at all, ever launch rocket will be burned up in the atmosphere. Each launch will cost about $2B, and the first version will only put in orbit about the same amount of cargo a Falcon Heavy will for $90M.

The SLS won’t ever be canceled despite its awful economics because it’s diverting billions to favorite contractors like Boeing. That’s the problem. NASA could buy launch capacity for a fraction of the cost using commercial providers, but key congressional districts get no windfall from that.

smitherfield2• 9 years ago

Actually, Republicans usually favor more NASA spending than Democrats do (e.g. Bush started funding manned Moon/Mars missions while Obama cut that program and the Space Shuttle), because most of it goes to red areas (Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, rural Florida, rural California). By contrast, Lockheed Martin made the F-35 program unkillable by selecting facilities and suppliers in all 50 states, plus several NATO allies and other prospective buyers.

mikeash2• 9 years ago

Apollo cost around 2% of the US federal budget at its peak. In individual terms, if you earn the current US median income of ~$43,000/year, that's less than $1,000/year, or $20/week. How many people spend at least $20/week on "wants"?

The overall federal budget was much smaller then, too. If we take the peak cost of $3 billion/year, adjust it for inflation (about $23 billion/year), and divide it by the current federal budget, it would be 0.6%, or the equivalent of $5/week for someone earning the US median income. How many people spend that on "wants"?

And, it probably wouldn't cost nearly as much if you did it today. SpaceX projects that development of their Mars rocket would only cost $10 billion total, and it would easily be capable of lunar missions. SpaceX tends to miss their time-related goals but hit their cost-related goals, but even if they're off by a factor of 2, it's still way cheaper.

Obviously we don't want to spend even that much, collectively, on doing it, otherwise we'd be doing it. But IMO the "what percentage of your savings would you invest in this?" question just shows why we should. It's utterly insignificant on the scale of national expenditures, and the results would be far better than you'd get from another squadron of F-35s or whatever.

baursak3• 9 years ago

National debt is simply national savings. "Paying off" national debt means taking away one of the most popular, liquid, income producing asset from people and corporations.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/opinion/deficit-tax-cuts-...

logfromblammo3• 9 years ago

But it isn't savings. It is, as you said, an income-producing asset. Its primary function is not as a store of value, but as a claim against promises of future production.

The national debt is mining resources needed for current operations from the future, rather than drawing down the stockpiles of those already mined from the past.

Claiming that debt is wealth is mistaken at best, and fraudulent at worst. Please reexamine your premises and analysis before repeating it.

crdoconnor2• 9 years ago

The inconvenient truth is that the US has a national debt of over $21T

That isn't an inconvenient truth at all. The US is not dollar constrained.

If you think that the US is natural resource constrained - that's another matter. Are we in danger of running out of the resources required? Clearly no.

If you think the US is labor constrained - that wages are too high and we cannot afford to hire more people without causing spiraling inflation - that's another matter.

However, if you believe that, you also have to believe by necessity the idea that American labor is becoming less efficient and that automation isn't eliminating any jobs - let alone lots of jobs.

ThomPete14• 9 years ago

The question is why would we put a man on the moon?

I grew up with Moonbase Alpha (although I am not expecting to be thrown into space by a major explosion) and want this as much as anyone else but is there any reason (mining, strategic, know benefits to research) which justifies the price?

ams61102• 9 years ago

That really explains why it happened the first time. Price was not a concern. We were on almost a war footing to get it done.

The whole reason that NASA stopped innovating after about 1972 was that the costs were unsustainable.

ThomPete14• 9 years ago

Yeah that's what I am thinking too.

I would love that we are the point where we need a base on the moon, but I don't know what would justify it other than tourism and we aren't that rich and it isn't that easy and safe just yet.

TeMPOraL12• 9 years ago

I'd say the costs were projected to be unsustainable. There apparently was this whole episode with the Congress realizing that Wernher von Braun & crew are aiming for Mars, and deciding to cut the party short before it gets out of control[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA#Loss_of_political_suppor...

nnq5• 9 years ago

is there any reason [...] which justifies the price

THIS kind of thinking is our problem imho - we are living in rich times and we should start behaving as such! We have more of everything than we need. Yeah, there are children starving or dying of preventable diseases somewhere in the world, but guess what, even if we'd be 10x richer there will still be. Or we'll whip out a world war or some runaway next gen bioweapons instead to ramp up the killing that way. That's who we (Homo Sapiens) fking are!

A space race would be a pretty awesome way to encourage competition and progress on a scale similar to that encouraged by the last "world" war. But no, instead we'll go for the "mass-surveillance-technology supremacy race" or "best AIs for trading race" or the "let's pretend energy is scarce and price-war on in while talking about solving climate-change race"...

GROWTH and EXPANSION are our only reasons of being and our own authentic good motivations as human beings, and infecting as much of the cosmos as possible with ourselves, aka "space technology" development should be our core drive as a species!!!

ThomPete14• 9 years ago

As much as I want to agree with you I think it's a very naive way of thinking about this problem (which can sometimes be good so don't get me wrong).

I personally believe in what I call natural next steps. I.e steps that are naturally extending previous ones.

To me, the next step is making the space station much more robust.

And focusing on AI might actually be a much smarter move as it might allow us to build a secure and stable moonbase before we could do it using humans.

So it's a very complex discussion where priorities might sometimes look like they are ignoring something like a space station on the moon, but actually end up being a better choice because it will allow us to get there quicker.

conanbatt• 9 years ago

Yeah, there are children starving or dying of preventable diseases ~~somewhere in the world~~ in America

Fixed that for you.

I love space much as the next guy, but i dont see why the government has to spend considerable sums for it. The only purpose for space is science, either aplicable to science in general or to the military, but im sure its not cost-efficient for all the science there is to be made.

So if people love the space, they should pay for the things they want to be done out there. No reason for Nasa to not crowdfund or SpaceX to get private money to build something. The people that want to go to space or get space stuff get what they pay for, and the people that dont, dont.

I dont find it reasonable to think someone making very little money has to pay taxes that somehow fund Elon Musk's journey to Mars.

lmm11• 9 years ago

I see it as worthwhile for the same reason that art or theoretical research is worthwhile.

ThomPete14• 9 years ago

Philosophically I agree 100% but they cost a fraction of what it would cost to create a base on the moon for instance.

Someone has to pick up that bill.

I am sure we will get a base on the moon with time but technologically we aren't there yet.

Let's focus on build a solid and habitable space station then we can use some of that knowledge to establish a base on the moon. (once we have solved the resource issues)

Pigo3• 9 years ago

There's no Soviet Union boogeyman to compete with. Maybe if North Korea was competent and had the resources to start shooting for the moon, then I'm pretty sure we'd deem it worthwhile. I'm not sure we fear China enough to see them as that type of threat.

jasonmaydie• 9 years ago

I think the real question is why we want to put a man on the moon. Imagine you climbed mount Everest with no climbing equipment and then 30 years later someone asked you why you haven't done it again.

mezuzi• 9 years ago

If you can read a wsj article, why can't you read it?

indubitable• 9 years ago

The article answers itself: "NASA’s traditional manned programs for deep space exploration, costing well over $3 billion annually, continue to enjoy solid bipartisan backing among lawmakers and major agency contractors." That quote is speaking largely of the SLS. It's supposed to essentially be the Space Shuttle 2.0, but it's often just referred to as the Senate Launch System for good reason. We've spending billions of dollars on that program and it's not going anywhere anytime soon. This [1] is the Wiki entry from 2011 detailing the program's promises, which have been constantly 'reimagined.' In reality it's mostly a giant pork project.

Ultimately it's being driven by congressmen who only care about getting their kickbacks and it's being developed by ULA, an anticompetitive merger of Boeing and Lockheed, who only care about profit. And the companies themselves are also falling apart. This [2] is Lockheed Martin's CEO. One of the largest aerospace companies in the world is headed by a person who has absolutely no background whatsoever in aerospace or related technologies. Until 2015, this [3] was the head of Boeing - same story. Perhaps not coincidentally, since Boeing put an aerospace engineer in charge - they have sharply changed their direction and competitive outlook.

We have an increasingly corrupt government contracting work to companies who are driven only by money. Musk's success and the government's success in the 60s have something very simple in common. They were not driven by greed or short term self interest, but big picture ideology and aspirations. And it seems the whole notion of aspirations, beyond earning lots of money, is something that is somehow fading in society.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Space_Launch_Syst...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marillyn_Hewson

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_McNerney

nnq5• 9 years ago

Why don't more people realize that infecting as much of the cosmos with ourselves should be one of the MAIN GOALS of Humanity?!

Ergo, space exploration technology should be a priority, even at massive costs, and even when those cost are measured in human lives and human pain and suffering. This, plus "defeating aging", plus "achieving superhuman general-purpose intelligence" (either by augmenting/improving human I or by developing AIs). Almost nothing else matters besides these. What fucked up global leadership did we end up with that they seem to have completely forgot this?

kazagistar• 9 years ago

You might wanna justify those claims? Having a bunch of oppressed miserable humans rules by tyrannical AIs or whatever seems quite a bit worse then living happily on our single planet.

megaman22• 9 years ago

Better to have the seeds of humanity spread across many baskets, rather than in a single one that is perpetually endangered by an unlucky intersection with a rock.

Who knows if we'll ever be able to actually get outside our local system, but we're never going to figure out how to do it if we can't even setup shop in the cosmic equivalent of our front yard.

TeMPOraL12• 9 years ago

Despite your obvious irony, you're actually right - those should be primary goals of humanity. Beyond all this talk about life being a journey and not the destination, people sometimes forget that at some point, you're supposed to stop taking in the view and start doing something useful.

paulus_magnus2• 9 years ago

Economy. If Moon was made of gold it wouldn't be worth going there for it [1]. Perhaps reusable spacecraft can change that.

For strategic / military reasons (money no objective) we can achieve much more than if profit is the only motivation.

[1. need a better source?] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/22059/if-the-moon-...

Edit:

Elon Musk: With New SpaceX Tech, Rocket Costs Will Drop By A Factor of 100

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/908254079092002816?ref_s...

Also analysis / spaculatoin for BFR. Keep in mind we're only talking about sending stuff to Mars, not retrieving it. http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3343/1

Edit 2 federal court set the value of the moon rocks at $50,800 per gram based on how much it cost the U.S. government to retrieve the samples between 1969 and 1972.

https://www.space.com/11804-nasa-moon-rock-sting-apollo17.ht...

DennisP• 9 years ago

Not only is that based on expendable rockets, but as your link says, the game changes if you use a mass driver to launch your payloads back to Earth.

And of course, as Andy Weir has been saying, tourism could be a major economic driver once reusable rockets get cheap enough.

Robotbeat4• 9 years ago

But we ARE talking about retrieving stuff from Mars: the BFS must be returned to Earth to be reused. It's also capable of bringing people back from Mars, and that's supposed to be included in the $200k/person ticket price. Assuming at least 200kg of human plus consumables per person for the trip back, that implies that anything worth at least $1000/kg would be worth sending back.

So I think Musk is actually wrong when he says that he can BOTH send people to Mars super cheap with return tickets AND that there could not possibly be something of enough value on Mars to return to Earth even if you had cocaine ($100,000/kg?) prepackaged on the surface (gold is $35,000/kg or something).

...not that I expect a vibrant Mars export economy or anything. Musk's basic point about not expecting Mars to fully and profitably pay for itself with physical exports is correct.

gruez• 9 years ago

even if you had cocaine ($100,000/kg?)

it's $100k+ retail value, but wholesale value is much below that, more in line with gold.

bdowling• 9 years ago

How about this: We legalize cocaine, but only cocaine manufactured on Mars. Investors (and engineers) will figure out the most economical way to get there, manufacture the cocaine, and get it back to Earth. The side effect will be that we will have figured out economical interplanetary space travel.

Symmetry• 9 years ago

There's a lot of interesting things manufacturing-wise you can do in zero gravity which are now pretty impractical financially since it's so hard to get raw materials up the Earth's gravity well. It might be cheaper to get them from elsewhere where the gravity wells are shallower and the lack of air lets you use a mass driver rather than a rocket. Then it's a long slow trip to Earth orbit via ion driver but if it's just a hunk of metal it doesn't care.

hackeraccount• 9 years ago

I wonder about that idea. I mean, thinking about it there's almost nothing found outside of earth that's worth the cost of the infrastructure needed to bring it inside of Earth's gravity well.

Which is a bummer. The only thoughts I have contra that are that it's only expensive if you count the cost of the infrastructure - given that moving resources from outside of Earth to it isn't super unattractive.

Second it's possible that costs should be viewed not just Earth to outside of Earth but also outside of Earth to outside of Earth. That is to say mining water on the Moon doesn't make sense if the destination is Earth - it the destination on the other hand is another part of the Moon there might be some logic to it. You could in theory be cost competitive with the Earth as you don't have to get it out of Earth's gravity.

mohi13• 9 years ago

Have been wondering the same for quite sometime. None of the mentioned reasons seems convincing enough.

Exuma• 9 years ago

So how much would it cost to send someone to the moon again?

Robotbeat4• 9 years ago

Simply put, we need a lander. If we had a lander, we could use existing rockets to get to Mars via Earth orbit rendezvous (see Gemini, also ISS is regularly refueled and boosted by visiting vehicles). But we spent all of our exploration money on an expensive rocket (and a capsule that is much heavier than it needs to be...).

kraig9112• 9 years ago

Maybe we realize now going to the moon from a financial standpoint is purely political. If there was a efficient way and industrial need for plenty of resources from the moon maybe they'd make it possible. But right now grandiose measures of showing off your countries genitals kind of creates a narrative of wasted resources to me right now.

I've heard the argument that spending on stuff like this creates jobs and economy and I'm sure it does. But work a soup kitchen for a day and you'd realize we have economies of wealth built on the back of despair and hopelessness.

Our society needs to change to be a space faring one. Maybe I'm stupid and a traveling to space would initiate the change we need. I just can't see how.

downrightmike• 9 years ago

It isn't just that we develop tech that is useful in space, but that it also pushes the current tech to the next level: http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/worklife/10/04/nasa.everyday/...

Banthum• 9 years ago

Our economies of wealth are not built "on the back" of the people in the soup kitchens.

Those few people who are going to soup kitchens are typically so crippled by their own internal issues (e.g. mental illness, impulsive criminality, addiction, total inability to manage money) that their productivity is extremely low or negative. Nobody's taking anything from them because there's nothing to take.

In fact it's the opposite of what you said. It's the people in the soup kitchens who are living (e.g. eating soup) on the back of the healthy, productive people running the economy. Just ask: Which group would suffer more if the other group disappeared?

And before those full of moral rage jump in here, no, I'm not saying they deserve to suffer, etc. They don't. But nor is the underclass a productive group being forced to hold up the wealthy. It's not the medieval era any more; in a modern economy those with zero or negative human capital are nothing but a liability.

danaliv• 9 years ago

in a modern economy those with zero or negative human capital are nothing but a liability

They're also, you know, human.

I blew several hundred dollars on air travel this weekend, for fun. People in soup kitchens are not living on my back. They're maybe living on my pinky nail.

Mental illness and addiction, btw, are illnesses. They're no more "crippling internal issues" than, say, diabetes.

_lbaq• 9 years ago

Whats spent here is peanuts compared to whats spent on the military, the US (and the world) could easily sustain a moon/mars/ganymedes base and feed its poor if it prioritized its people instead of the defense complex.

chrisatumd• 9 years ago

This letter gets posted time to time. Definitely one of my favorites for explaining the rationale on spending money pushing boundaries when there are plenty of things that money can do to help people in need now.

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html

kraig9112• 9 years ago

Investing in space exploration is necessary and all I don't disagree. But saying it adds to the economy as much as investing in people who need investment I can't necessarily equate. There's millions of children's not getting an adequate education, and there's millions of people hungry and starved. In our current society; investment only happens when there's a vacuum of opportunity that could be filled. Only governments seem to invest in people right now. In a space faring society education is necessary. We don't have enough highly trained workers as is without space ships. We need investment and radical change in education.

reaperducer• 9 years ago

But right now grandiose measures of showing off your countries genitals kind of creates a narrative of wasted resources to me right now

Countries spend all kinds of money showing off their genitals in much worse ways. Think North Korea's nuclear weapons, or any of the Western nations' colonization follies.

How much has been spent on Olympic games in the last couple of decades? Would that be enough to get us to the moon?

TeMPOraL12• 9 years ago

How much has been spent on Olympic games in the last couple of decades? Would that be enough to get us to the moon?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_the_Olympic_Games

Given the double-digit billions in operating budgets per game, we could probably get a Mars program going for the cost of two or three of those games.

nine_k2• 9 years ago

North Korea nukes is more like showing venomous teeth than genitals.

The same way, launching the first Sputnik was a demonstration of military prowess: see, that thing flying over your head could be carrying a spy telescope, or a nuke.

None of this applied to the Moon landings.

mcguire5• 9 years ago

Not a WSJ subscriber, so I can only see the first two paragraphs...

"NASA’s current plans for returning astronauts to the moon aren’t affordable and likely won’t produce sustainable, long-term economic benefits, according to an independent research study commissioned by the agency."

As an ex-NASA contractor (at the NASA Enterprise Applications Competency Center, and yes, I think that name illustrates some of the problems of NASA), I completely agree. Management is extremely broken. Fifedoms are the major organizational component. Personalities are the driving principles. No one solves problems; they work around them. Going through the motions of the established procedures without understanding is expected to produce the optimal result.

On the other hand, all of this is a direct result of the funding model. Legislative and administrative priorities change every few years. Much of the priorities involve spreading contracts across important Congressional districts. It's not a surprise that the plans they come up with are PowerPoint schemes that sound good but have no real chance of success.

An example: the Constellation program was supposed to re-use the shuttle solid rocket boosters to save money. Sounds good, right? Until an aerospace engineer and solid rocket dude pointed out that they needed more thrust than the SSRBs provide. Proposed solution? Add another segment (of solid rocket motor) to the SRB. Unfortunately, that actually requires a complete redesign of the solid rocket motor. It would probably be more effective and cheaper to start from scratch. BTW, as far as I could determine, the current SLS program is the Constellation program with the names filled off.

(Said AE friend works for NASA building web apps because "they fly and that [pointing at the 1/5 scale model of Aries-1] doesn't.")

"Released last month without publicity, the report advocates using asteroids to produce fuel..."

But here we have an example of the same problem. Have one hard problem you apparently can't solve? Replace it with 10 harder problems that sound better. Pure public relations.

bigfcjjyfcg• 9 years ago

I heard similar things from my ex-NASA roommate when I worked at SpaceX, do you think NASA can correct the problems you've outlined?

mcguire5• 9 years ago

I don't know.

There's a lot of institutional inertia and forces opposing any change (and change itself is just churn).

The science side of things has a much better track record, but the interplanetary stuff is done by JPL, which isn't really NASA, and most of the rest is mostly a-political (modulo the Earth sensing stuff, which I'm continually surprised isn't cancelled for global warming reasons).

Then there's private enterprise, which seems to be doing better. But I'm not entirely comfortable with the "Guilded-Age" model of development.

So, I dunno.

Edit: when I wrote, "Until an aerospace engineer and solid rocket dude pointed out...", that should be "pointed out to me".

dkonofalski2• 9 years ago

ProTip™️: Copy and paste the headline of the article into Google to get the full article. I really need to write a Chrome extension for this but haven't had the time. :(

mcguire5• 9 years ago

Didn't that stop working recently? Or was that the NYT?

Tempest1981• 9 years ago

Slight tangent but related: Andy Weir's new book Artemis has some good scientific details about living on the moon.

Some future cost estimates on getting there: https://www.marketplace.org/2017/11/27/world/blog-what-econo...

m3kw9• 9 years ago

Maybe because doin anything else that is slightly more complicated than a few experiments is gonna cost exponentially more and the budgets won’t get approved.

foxyv• 9 years ago

This is the one hope I have, with huge amounts of wealth concentrating in a few people's hands we may see pie in the sky stuff like Moon colonies and space tourism start up.

GlenTheMachine• 9 years ago

There are a lot of answers here about how expensive Apollo was, and about how those expenses haven't really gone away. Those answers are basically right: putting humans on the moon was, and would still be, enormously expensive.

But there's another factor at play which I haven't seen any mention of, which is that our risk tolerance as a culture has dropped considerably since then. We went from Mercury, to Gemini, to Apollo, in an INSANELY short period of time. We went from having never launched anybody into space, to Apollo 11, in ten years; we went from never having launched a Saturn V to putting three humans on top of one in thirteen months. We lost three astronauts due to multiple design flaws in the Command Capsule, then redesigned the capsule and launched it with astronauts in it in eighteen months.

None of that could happen now. And the reason can only partly be blamed on NASA losing its mojo. In truth, the entire spaceflight community has developed far a more comprehensive, reliable safety culture. But that culture is by necessity much slower than it was then. Nobody in the industry could move as quickly as NASA did in the mid 1960s. NASA of today can't - but neither can SpaceX, or Blue Origin, or Sierra Nevada, or anyone else I know of.

Even if we wanted to, we would have to re-educate our engineers. Engineers are taught how to do program management starting as undergraduates. We have an entire generation of aerospace engineers who have been taught to move at deliberate, conservative speed, to make sure nobody gets killed. The human inertia inherent in our current engineering culture just wouldn't allow us to go back to the speed of the 1960's.

A slower, more comprehensive safety culture costs even more money, but more importantly it requires financial support from Congress and the White House over a much longer period of time in order for a mission to make it from proposal to launch - support which is extremely hard to sustain across administrations.

And (personal opinion here) society as a whole is supportive of - indeed, has demanded and driven - these changes. We would not tolerate the US government spending 2% to 3% of the entire federal budget on a manned spaceflight program, and then losing an entire crew in a pre-launch accident, and then returning to launch in 18 months.

goldensnit• 9 years ago

I thought helium-3 was a viable and necessary resource to put people on the moon. Is it not?

steve0210• 9 years ago

In order to efficiently place people into space we would need a robotics based economy. Robots would need to build the rockets and fly the rockets. Humans would design the rockets and tell them where to go. Mission control would be replaced with one flight director observing an AI which monitors everything.

zamalek• 9 years ago

An additional reason is that expertise died out with the end of funding. We had exactly one generation that tackled this problem - there has been no opportunity for them to hand down their experience. We're not starting from scratch, but we're certainly worse-off than we were at the end of the space race - scientists and engineers will have to learn from books and papers, rather than having an expert around to guide them.

ElijahLynn• 9 years ago

Are most of the comments here based on the headline alone? This is a paywall and I am not seeing many comments discussing the article itself, just the headline (question).

PatchMonkey• 9 years ago

WaitWaitWait... Nasa had its peak funding during those Moon landing years. We've let that equipment dryrot, switched to new versions, run those into the ground, slashed the budget repeatedly (and again over NASA's climate change research), privatized everything possible, let the best engineers retire, underpaid and underutilized their replacements until they left...

And somehow we have the gaul to wonder "why is going to the moon not working?"

Its almost like we're asking for something for nothing. Scientists and Engineers need to eat too. We need to buy new hardware. Train new people. If we wait too long, Musk will buy Cape Canaveral. We've already let Houston get turned into a museum rather than a launch pad.

I dont care how much you're gonna blame bureaucracy for this - this is poor leadership at the helm of our nation to gaslight folks this way.

If We Can Put a Man on the Moon, Why Can’t We Put a Man on the Moon?

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