Reply to What was the point of going to the moon?

Forum Index » Off-Topic

Reply to "What was the point of going to the moon?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This thread is so depressing.  Americans really have lost any sense of exploration and curiosity.

…

Landing on the moon gave us a target through which all sorts or rocket science and space operations developed.[/quote]

It’s this last point. It isn’t that we [i]couldn’t[/i] do these things without a human space flight program, it’s that we [i]wouldn’t[/i].  If you give people a suitable grand project and motivation and funding with a clear goal and end date (all of which Kennedy did), the outcome is a whole lot of innovation and people with skills and knowledge that didn’t exist beforehand. The ROI on this kind of scientific/technological endeavor is generally regarded to be better than just about any other investment because it causes collateral growth.

Often people make a counter-argument that things like web companies and SpaceX prove that innovation happens in the private sector without the need for government intervention. But the Web and SpaceX absolutely would not exist without government funding. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics