We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Long ago in the future On July 21st, 1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin returned from the Moon after joining up with Michael Collins who had orbited overhead.
The last man set foot on the moon a few years later. All the hard work and miraculous efforts of thousands of dedicated scientists and engineers was thrown into the dustbin of history. World experts on esoteric science and engineering fields were fired and drove taxis to feed their families.
This is what happens when you place your faith in the State.
Photo D. Amon all rights reserved
Down load and play this song (vocals Julia Ecklar, words and music Bill Roper)
If you still don’t understand then you have no soul and I can’t help you.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
Haven’t you heard? They never landed on the moon , it was all done in a movie studio!!
(sarcasm off)
Last guy who said that to Buzz’s face got decked…
This is what happens when you place your faith in the State.
This may be the silliest statement in the most vacuous post (“Long ago in the future”) to have appeared on this usually sensible site.
George: I suggest you down load and play this song http://www.prometheus-music.com/audio/legends.mp3
This is what happens when you place your faith in the State.
I forgot to mention this is the most breathtaking non sequitur I’ve encountered in months.
What is mp3?
On July 21, 1969 I brought my nine month old son into the living room and sat with him in front of the television as I watched those images of Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon… so that some day my firstborn could say that he had somehow been a witness to that historic event. Yesterday I held my newborn grandson, just a few hours old, the first born son of my first born. None of the things I had thought would come to pass following that first moon landing have come true. We have no colony on the moon. In fact, we no longer have the capability to journey there! Blame Richard Nixon; he was planning on dismantling our space achievements even as he enjoyed the reflected glory. Blame hundreds of congress-critters and senators for turning NASA into a pork barrel. Blame NASA for becoming a massive bureaucracy. Blame NASA and the FAA and the major aerospace/defense contractor oligarchy for their attempts to block private enterprise in space travel. Blame you and me for putting up with all of the above.
Pardon me, but isn’t this a libertarian site?
Is there anything to stop you guys – Dale, Jim, whoever – from rounding up the requisite capital, hiring scientists and engineers, renting a suitable launch site (or making some equivalent arrangements) and launching yourselves to the bloody moon? Or to Mars?
Why is it the government’s job to go to the moon when I, the taxpayer, don’t give a rat’s ass about the moon?
Is this site being infiltrated by socialistic pinkos? (Just kidding — I actually love you guys.)
You just don’t get it, do you: “This is what happens when you place your faith in the State.”
It *is* what happens when you place your faith in the State. Bait and switch, call it what you will.
Anyone who “placed[d] their faith in the State” to conquer space, or whatever, was a fool.
In this case, the State (the USA in the 1970s) did the right thing: it cut its losses. But this is unusual: the State rarely cuts its losses — it continues to pour money down some bottomless rat-hole.
So, Dale, if your point is that the space program proves the folly of placing our faith in the State, then I agree with you that I “don’t get it.”
One last try and then I give up.
In the UK, people have placed their faith in the State to provide medical care.
In the US, people have placed their faith in the State to regulate the release of new drugs.
In the US, spacers placed their faith in the State to get us off the planet.
What do you see in common? Is there a lesson to be learned? What other examples can you think of?
“did the right thing: it cut its losses.”
A return of $14 to the national economy for every $1 invested. “Losses” eh?
My parents bought their first TV set in order to watch the moon landing in 1969. To this day, my mother swells with pride when she hears the statement “Tranquility base here, the eagle has landed.”
I think it is pointless to argue about whether or not disappointment in the State is warranted for our not going back to the moon. Instead, I feel that we should be pressing the case to remove the roadblocks to private concerns from going to space. Because, if you remember it was the British East India Company, among others that had a far greater effect in the initial colonization of the new world than the British government of the time.
On an unrelated note, just after the Discovery exploded this year, my composition class was discussing the future of the space program. One girl said she was against any future landings because they would “ruin the lunar environment and eco-system.”
I was in a campground in Linz Austria when the landing took place. The camp ground owner provided a TV, set up on a picnic bench near the campground office. I believe I was the only one in the campground who didn’t hang around that set.
I really don’t know why but the manned space shots just never captured my attention. Things such as the Viking probes and the like DEEPLY interested me, and when Pioneer was heard from for the last time I felt like I had lost a friend. But the manned space shots? I just didn’t see the point.
(boy am I in for a blasting! but there it is)
On an unrelated note, just after the Discovery exploded this year, my composition class was discussing the future of the space program. One girl said she was against any future landings because they would “ruin the lunar environment and eco-system.”
Hehe, thanks for that chuckle.
Claire,
Can you elaborate please? What do you mean by a return “to the national economy”? (The national economy sounds to me like a statistical category rather than an entity capable of investing or receiving a return.) And how do you calculate the 14-to-one?
I have a nomination for poster child for commercial space ventures: Natalie Lileks. The cheese planet moon awaits!
Yes, I too would love to see how Claire gets that figure.
It’s the standard one figured by a number of economists. It has to due with the ROI of the R&D effort. It’s probably not far wrong. What is left unsaid is that it isn’t really a good justification for government programs because private ones do much the same.
Perhaps you had to have been there. I was one of the youngsters who grew up on a daily diet of the space age. I was going to be on Mars when I was 30. I planned my education and college and life around what would be useful for a space bound life… and two years into college… it was all gone. All so a few more dollars could be transferred from the small NASA budget into welfare and warfare.
I think you will find this is the very reason the soul of the space movement is basically libertarian. It was a defining moment. It taught us all that the State is a Liar.
Do not place your faith in the State. The State is not your friend.
The lessons I found from the cut-backs in the space program were that – when you take your eye off the ball you miss the goal. Take your eye off the goal and you loose the dream.
The public took its eye off the space program because nothing “new or exciting” was happening. Kennedy had placed the goal of getting to the moon asap in everyones mind – As soon as the landing on the moon had been achieved – that was it – goal achiveived….. end of mission!
The following Apollo missions became just epilogues to the main story.
A new MAJOR exciting end goal should have been announced and initiated immediately!
The next goal to be announced should have been – getting to Mars asap…. That would have given impetus to building of a space station launch point + interplanetary spacecraft along with a space shuttle ferry to service the station in order to produce more appealing results- like real interplanetary launches rather than just placing satellites in orbit or watching weightless worms reproduce.
A real goal of an off world mission to Mars is what is required. With the majority of state monies thrown at that… leaving the rest of the space program to be privately funded. The excitement of having a real goal with a tangible end result would bring in more private money and get better returns because the people would get to live their dreams through it.
As soon as you take your eye off the ball you start to lose track of what the real dream is… then before you can say 3-2-1 -blast it the damn accountants and nay-sayers move in and before you know it you are no longer working for the dream – you are just working.
Oops! – forgot to put this at the end of the last post….
The people need a goal to aim for… They need that dream…States don’t usually have a dream…. but they need one. That is why Hitler was so successful in getting the German people to follow him – he gave the German people a dream… it turned into a nightmare- but he understood the power of giving the people a dream.
It is what is wrong with the UK at the moment…. NO DREAM… just an infestation of the soulless: accountants, middle-management, lawyers and PC naysayers.
I think you will find this is the very reason the soul of the space movement is basically libertarian.
I think also that libertarians simply love the idea of going into space, too, whether or not they have any direct connection with the space movement. I don’t know about you, but if I could go to Mars (or possibly even just near earth orbit) with the certain knowledge that I would die on the way back, I would go anyway. I am also willing to bet that a large percentage of the people who post and comment on this site feel the same way. Even though NASA today is a bureacratic abomination building giant white elephants, we still all have a remarkably soft spot for it when things come down to it.
The thing which always amazes me about the Apollo missions is just what was achieved with what in some ways seems extremely primitive technology. Yes, the physics of rocketry was well understood, but computers and electronics were unbelievably primitive, and there was nothing in the way of the advanced materials we have today. New fields had to be invented almost from scratch to make anything happen. With all the greater resources and off the shelf technologies we have now, it must be possible to go into space in a much less bureacratic, much less monolithic way. I think we are seeing signs that this is about to start happening with all the various small seeming but competing private sector space efforts that are starting to happen. This makes me more optimistic about the possibility of getting things done with respect to spaceflight than I have been in years.
Absolutely. Those people did incredible things in a very short time. They had even more incredible things ready to go in short order. Have you ever looked at what was in the pipeline for the Apollo Applications Program?
What they (and what those of us who were too young to have worked on it) failed to realize was that by going to the Moon via State resources they were tied to changeable political purposes. Assets like the left over Saturn V’s and all of the infrastructure associated with them could only be left to rot by a government. No free enterprise system could afford to do such a thing. They would have been used for something and even if that something weren’t a return to the Moon, it would have been something that kept us in space.
Only a State can spend billions to build magnificent technological feats like the Saturn V, the Nerva rocket engine, the X15… and then not only fail to follow through, but completely abandon the capital investments.
This is why I try to remind people at every opportunity of just where the government road to space leads… just look at that rusting Saturn V laying on its’ side in the Huntsville museum.
Government gives you museum pieces. Free enterprise gives you living Space.
I sincerely hope that yet another generation doesn’t have to relearn this same lesson.
I’ve started to post on this thread a couple of times, and I get all tangled up in the huge giant mind-blowing awesomeness of space, and the small insignificant irrelevance of me sitting here in a formica cubicle staring at a cup of coffee. It feels…presumptuous. Hm.
Space is hope and dream and frontier (a trillion trillion frontiers). It’s our optimism in the future. It’s belief that science can lead to something other than apocalpytic disaster. It’s space, or face up to the fact that we’re just stupid, louse-picking monkeys, after all.
I don’t lay my disappoinment entirely at the state’s feet, though. I lay it mostly at the feet of my fellow stupid, louse-picking monkeys. The moonwalk put the formula “we can put a man on the moon, but…” into the public discourse.
The first time I heard the phrase, it was coming out of the mouth of a “social activist”: “we can put a man on the moon, but we can’t feed all our children.” Undoubtedly, the particular children of whom she was speaking neglected to starve to death (and would have neglected to do so with or without the increased welfare payments she was plumping for) and are today fat, middle-aged useless wastes of good oxygen, for whom we all sacrificed Spring vacations at a resort hotel on the Sea of Tranquility. Bad bargain.
I’m surprised no one’s mentioned XCOR yet. The XCOR of Bill Whittle’s Trinity. Oops, I hope I didn’t spoil the ending for anyone.
Dale is right when he says that many talented scientists and engineers found themselves on the scrap heap after the Space Program was wound down.
Nevertheless, I suspect that many would have willingly done the same again, even had they known what would eventually happen.
I have read quite a lot of stuff about the Apollo program and it is pretty clear that the people involved regarded themselves (rightly) as making history and would not have wanted to miss that for anything.
As to whether Government was or is the best route to space, or whether the Apollo program was a good or bad idea, those are different questions (and I didn’t understand Dale’s comments to be directed at those questions).
Cydonia
George,
Among other things, I said “Blame NASA and the FAA and the major aerospace/defense contractor oligarchy for their attempts to block private enterprise in space travel. ” In other words, yes I do want to see private enterprise moving into space (for something other than communications satellites). I want to be able to buy a tourist ticket into space (and, damnit, I want it soon because I’m sixty years old!) and I want my children and grandchildren to live in an age of space travel and I want the human race to have the benefits of access to space resources.
You asked “Is there anything to stop you guys – Dale, Jim, whoever – from rounding up the requisite capital, hiring scientists and engineers, renting a suitable launch site (or making some equivalent arrangements) and launching yourselves to the bloody moon? Or to Mars? ” Well, that’s exactly why I was critical of NASA and the FAA and the bloated aerospace defense contractors — they ARE what is hampering the rounding up of the requisite capital and they are what is putting bureaucratic roadblocks in the way of the entrepreneurs who are attempting to build private enterprise space travel.
I didn’t mention Xcor yet because the Xcor leading lights are amongst our readers and can probably speak for themselves…
PS: Hope that meeting in DC goes well… 😉
Actually.. the moon DOES have an ecosystem.. at least one.
My understanding is that it’s about the size of my thumbnail, growing on the insulation of one of the Rangers.
We should save it before it dies out!!
Back to reality..
It occurs to me that everyone I know who considers themselves even vaguely libertarian is also in favor of space exploration and development in some form or another.
I’d like to see private enterprise in space, but let’s not fool ourselves here… do you think any man would have gone into space yet without massive government programs? Where’s the economic viability in putting a human up there? What economic resources would he or she be able to harness from up there that a robot couldn’t?
Also, would everyone have felt such pride & involvement if the first man up there was going up for Microsoft, either as a publicity stunt or a direct money-making exercise?
As for the rockets rusting/the abandonment of the program, this type of stuff happens in private enterprise all the time! The number of superior/viable products that have failed/been abandoned because they don’t fit in with the current corporate strategy is immense, even within the little company i work for. Some of these (or the ideas behind them) eventually get recycled, either by the company or competing companies, & this is presumably what’s happening (& will happen) with the remains of NASA’s grand space program.
Dale, could you summarise a few of the things in the Apollo Applications Program, or provide a link? I’m very curious to see what they were planning!
[filled with enthusiasm for space having just finished “The Right Stuff”]
Permanently manned lunar bases were in the offing. Much of the hardware was there or close… just google “Apollo Applications Program” and you will get some of the documents.
And no, whether a technology is beaten by another or not, billion dollar physical assets are *not* wasted. If nothing else the competitor buys them out and uses them for something. I was not talking about ideas, I was talking about hardware.
yeah, i concede… you’re right about physical assets; they’re only occasionally left to rot in private enterprise. Software which people have spent the last 8 months developing though…. :@
Only a State can spend billions to build magnificent technological feats like the Saturn V, the Nerva rocket engine, the X15… and then not only fail to follow through, but completely abandon the capital investments.
Buddy, I got a 100 thousand miles of installed fibre optic cable to sell you (or Iridium satellites or e-commerce websites or copies of OS/2 or BetaMax tapes or …)
Capitalism achieves efficiency through the tremendously wasteful processes of competition (which requires losers) and taking risks on what the market will support. (Nothing wrong with that – its just how it works.)
And today’s market, being a flightly, faddish creature with a extreme case of ADD, is not frendly to a long term prospect like interplanetary space travel.
Neither market or state deserve faith….
I’ve always found my favorite space-themed song to by Hugh Blumenfeld’s “Shoot the Moon” — run it down if you can:
If I’d been ten years older/
I might have been tripping on Yasgir’s farm/
But I probably would have been a Phantom flying over Vietnam/
In a dream of altitude where blue turns black/
never looking back at the pieces on the ground//
But I saw the choppers rise out of Saigon’s fall/
And my fingers traced the writing on the long black wall/
And I knew there’d be no spaceships in my future/
I guess I was born a little late…
…or way too soon.
When a company installs 100 thousand miles of optical cable, or launches dozens of satelites whose services it can’t sell, it goes out of business, and those assets are sold off. What still may be valuable will get used.
When a government does the same thing, instead of cutting its losses and going out of business, it forces everyone to buy into the mistake by raising taxes, or letting the assests sit idle as part of a preserve, or by undercutting the competition, or imposing a monopoly to force people to use its services.
The problem with project Apollo is that unlike almost every other government project other than dam building, it had a definite goal to achieve, and once it was successful, there was no reason for it to continue. Attempts to ignore that fact have lead to a quarter-century dead end with the Shuttle and the “International Space Station.” We’d still be on the moon if it had only been on step in a larger, more grandious goal of making the solar system a true frontier.
Most of you are too young to remember the Carter years. I assure you they were every bit as bad you may have heard. The destruction of the space program was only one of the many disgraces perpetrated by this foolish little man. The Panama Canal comes to mind. Can you imagine 21% interest rates on your mortgage?
If Reagan hadn’t come along, we’d be living in Orwell’s “1984” right now instead of celebrating the deaths of two vile torturers and the liberation of millions of innocent people.
I remember. I turned 20 within days of voting for Reagan in 1980. (My birthday falls on Guy Fawkes Day.) Tax liberation was the crux of my political interest at that time, and all other sorts of liberation caught my attention as time went on.
Thank you Paul Volcker for (not painlessly) ending hyperinflation, and thank you Reagan for cutting taxes (even if you couldn’t cut spending), and for weakening the USSR so it couldn’t stomp out the 1989 freedom movements in Eastern Europe as it had in past years.