Gil Scott-Heron - Whitey On the Moon (Official Audio)

I think the debate forces an acknowledgement that the objectives themselves don't always have intrinsic value. I agree there's a lot of things that can be gotten from it like NASA funding, but many people do not really "know" the utility of going to the moon. For example, people will talk about mining on the moon, but I've only ever seen articles debunking the utility of this, and not a single in-depth analysis in favor of this. I might be looking in the wrong spots. My theory is that relatively few people can justify the value of these efforts convincingly. This is part of why NASA doesn't have a bigger budget. "Whitey on the moon"[0] has a ring of truth to it. Developing strong arguments for further development is one of the most effective ways for people to support further development. Otherwise you end up with things like "We'll go to Mars for space tourism/exploration!". Which is... well you do what you want with your money, but that's a hell of a lot of money for tourism. Public funding will be hard to come by. [0]: [VIDEO]

There's a great Gil Scott Heron song with the same theme. In his case it was poverty and healthcare among African Americans in the 60s, not cancer. [VIDEO]

Seems like a good time to reflect on the work: "Whitey on the Moon" [VIDEO] It'd be one thing if this was private money, instead it comes out of the pocketbooks of those suffering. That's rarely acknowledged.

> Do you ever wonder how people felt when they say Magellan or Captain Cook set off? Or, when they watched the Apollo missions happen? Yeah, I do wonder: [VIDEO] I think how they feel probably depends on their perspective, their financial situation, their susceptibility to public relations, and so on. Let's say everything goes "great," and there are a million people living on Mars in 50 years. Will it matter to people dying in a war, or ailing next to an open sewer, or what-have-you back on Earth that there's some depressed Martians trapped in smelly cans and covered in perchlorate- and iron-laden dust 4 to 12 light minutes away? I don't think it will. I think that when many of us "wonder" or "imagine" what people felt like when they watched or participated in these events, what we're really doing is projecting the relief and and other pleasant emotions that we experience when we imagine them, when we use imagining them as an escape fantasy to cope with our own anxieties, to that imagined audience. Frank Borman actually went to the Moon, and his feelings about it, are definitely situated inside of his own perspective: [LINK] It's probably important for us to face this phenomenon square on, to check in with what's really going on with our "dreams of space" or sense of Solar "manifest destiny." There's a reason that space-age propaganda seems so successful, both in its own time, where its object was removed from us only by the impassable gulf of 10 km/s, and now, when it is beh

It sometimes seems that democracy, somewhat paradoxically, trends towards division. The grand projects of times past were generally created by entities where their successor would generally be vested in their success. Be this in the form of religions organizations or non-democratic political entities such as monarchies. In democracy this kinship frequently does not exist between successive entities, and there is even often an effort to dismantle the works of a previous administration as well as blaming any faults on them. There are also basic democratic political problems. One very myopic, and very common, political argument is of the form: "You want to [do something amazing] while there's [people dying of cancer] [kids starving to death in Africa] [etc] [etc]?!" This argument feels reasonable to most people, and can be used to frame a candidate (who wants to do grand things) as being out of touch. And it's extremely effective. It makes it difficult to spend large amounts of money on things outside of those that can be justified on a very immediate level, such as war. The space program is probably the greatest project the modern United States has engaged in. And if it had carried on it's likely our species would now today inhabit bodies beyond just this planet. But it was not continued. This [1] is a song from the 70s that was published shortly before Nixon, who had a long standing animosity with JFK since losing a razor thin election to him in 1960, would completely gut the

I’m not downvoting you (maybe mentally), it’s a valid point. It’s also been a long-standing perspective; Whitey on the moon, from 1969: [VIDEO] And from the Atlantic: Moondoggle: The Forgotten Opposition to the Apollo Program [LINK] (I’m personally for moon and space missions, there will always be issues to overcome)

This is such a meme comment, some white dude on the internet thinks he knows better than everybody, what gives? I'm curious how white people reacted when this song dropped: [VIDEO]

Is Charles Koch? is Jim Walton? The list of billionaires is expansive at this point in time. While there are some like Elon Musk who are directing the economy in ways that would be perceived to some like myself as positive. For the ~262 million people in the US who would be unable to afford a Tesla, will never go to the Moon or Mars, live paycheck to paycheck and may lack the education ( or interest ) in space to appreciate the science and technology advancements being made, These activities can best be summed up with this song inspired by the 1969 landings. [VIDEO]

No, the argument is that there's plenty to learn, and it's all very interesting, but it doesn't stand up against people's very real needs here on Earth. I'm about the biggest fan of space you'll find, but even I, sadly, find the ethical calculus unassailable. Manned spaceflight won't accrue material benefits for ten generations or much more, and meanwhile human beings are dying of treatable or curable diseases, suffering under poverty, and living without access to clean water. This spoken-word work from 1970 conveys the sentiment well: [VIDEO]

Is this in some way related to Bezos and Musk's antics? There's a recording on YouTube. Only two minutes, worth a listen: [VIDEO]

An alternative viewpoint: [VIDEO] I'm not convinced that exploration is such a self-justifying good that we should look past the very real and very urgent problems that are aggravated precisely by the people "leading the way" here.

I think while it's impressive to think that the moon landings achieved an incredibly bold and complicated task, it just shows what's possible if you siphon off a big chunk of GDP into big projects and an organization capable of execution. A lot of that wealth since has been distributed around the globe, or poured into industry, medicare or social security. With that global wealth distribution, incredible medical advances have been made, and we have blown past the UN millennium goals. It's all a matter of priorities. Gill Scott Haron had this funny critique of Apollo program. [VIDEO] With that said, not all priorities are chosen well in my opinion. The vast economic capacity required for a program like a moon landing have since been sequestered by shareholders benefiting from the returns of selling consumer data, building guided missiles, and seeking rents on privatized access to healthcare.

> A human being landing on Mars would probably be the single most watched event in human history. I'm actually skeptical about that. It certainly would be the "single most watched event in human history" among geeks interested in space, and probably among geeks in general and nationalists of the country that did the landing, but I suspect it's a biased projection to extend that attitude to all of humanity. Objectively, it's likely that stuff like the opening days of some war or the 9/11 attacks would be more watched than a Mars landing. Apropos: Gil Scott-Heron - Whitey On the Moon (Official Audio): [VIDEO]

> But those aren't caused by resources diverted to space exploration. Going to space IS politics. It is, essentially, a vanity goal for a whole society. The resources diverted are, essentially, mindshare and political. It is only fair then that people ask why we as a society look to space when we have so many problems here, just as it was fair to ask why so much attention was given to the race to the moon rather than, say, civil rights [1]. [1]: [VIDEO]

Previous generations also had it easy. Generally speaking technological advancement isn't blocked by motivation but by other concerns, namely funding. Personally, I'd rather fix healthcare if we're going to spend political capital. [VIDEO] remains as relevant as ever

The past wasn't optimistic, we merely ignored negative Nancies because they had nothing to say. In the last 10 years for some reason we gave them the megaphone and let them dictate how everything is done. Exhibit A: [VIDEO]

> I'm sure Uyghurs in China would not give a damn about AI. Which reminded me of "Whitey On the Moon" [0] [0] [VIDEO]

Well sure, if you're looking to be angry you can tie anything into your interests. But actual criticism of the moon landing is soberly connected to reality: [VIDEO] I'm just saying there's a reason why moon landing is such a funny topic to discuss—if you do deeply care about it enough to deviate from the accepted narrative, that's very odd.

> IMHO, "tech optimism" reached its peak in 1969 when Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon. Not everyone was so optimistic. You just didn’t hear about it on mainstream media [VIDEO]

Yeah, that's the take I have been looking for a spot to drop. [VIDEO] I believe that folks in the US are, by a large margin, the most highly propagandized group of people in history. It's hard to watch stuff like this. It's not that I don't understand that comparatively space exploration is small compared to the associated costs of the boots that might hit the ground today.