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35 years ago today

· Aerospace & Astronautics

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the Moon.

After creating this wonderful capability, the Government did what Governments do. They squandered it. They threw it away.

The State is not your friend.

July 20th, 2004 |

11 comments to 35 years ago today

  • Julian Morrison
    July 21, 2004 at 2:00 am

    Threw what away? They never had it. There was the technology to land a couple of astronauts, a few instruments, stay for three days, hop around the landing site, and go home again. For an awful lot of money per trip. They made the right choice, to scrap it.

    I’ll say we have moon travel when the first permanent inhabitable structure is pressurized, and sensible moon travel when the first profit is turned on a moon flight.

  • spacer
    July 21, 2004 at 3:45 am

    LBJ , the greatest statist the US ever had as President got it right when he told Astronaut Wally Schirra. “We have this great capability, but instead of taking advantage of it, we’ll probably just piss it away.’

    Ironically, the Saturn V and its derivatives had the lowest cost per pound to orbit, of any US launch vehicle ever built. If we’d kept building them and refining them we’d probably have a viable Moon base by now.

    Maybe the state is just too stupid to be anybody’s friend.

  • A_t
    July 21, 2004 at 2:21 pm

    I agree with Julian. Doubtless if they *had* continued with these vastly expensive moon missions, you’d currently be deploring the massive waste of money they represented & using that as a stick to beat the govt. with instead.

    As for ‘the govt is not your friend’… No, they’re not often, but they got us there, didnt’ they? Isn’t that kinda cool? Would you rather we had waited until several decades from now when commercial interests deem it financially viable?

  • Jack Olson
    July 21, 2004 at 4:09 pm

    Why did the United States send astronauts to the moon anyhow? First, for prestige, second, for science. Having beaten the Soviets in the space race and collected lunar samples for the geologists, NASA concluded that there was little reason to send another dozen astronauts to the big empty rock. Been there, done that.

  • Julian Morrison
    July 21, 2004 at 5:24 pm

    Jack Olson: I don’t doubt NASA was as much in favour of exporation and colonization as I am, but the Apollo tech wasn’t up to that task. They were probably as frustrated as Dale is.

  • Jacob
    July 21, 2004 at 6:28 pm

    A_t,
    “As for ‘the govt is not your friend’… No, they’re not often, but they got us there, didnt’ they? Isn’t that kinda cool? Would you rather we had waited until several decades from now when commercial interests deem it financially viable? ”

    Yes !

    The only logic for the moon flight was “prestige” and the race against USSR. (and … “kinda cool”).
    Poor reasons. I would rather wait for better reasons, like financial viability, or scientific imperatives.

    I hate when Gov. spends hundreds of billions just to be “kinda cool”. No reason to hurry to the moon, though, of course, I would applaud it enthusiastically if it were done by private people, for good reasons (that is, whatever reasons they have, as long as it’s their money).

  • Julian Morrison
    July 21, 2004 at 7:45 pm

    Basically moon travel isn’t going to be “real” until it’s commercial. Any method of travel that doesn’t make a profit, destroys wealth. Because of that, you’re severely bounded on how much of it you can do.

    Put it this way: if trans-oceanic aircraft flight had to be government funded, there might be a few per year. But because commercial flight makes money, there are hundreds per day. They can afford to fly as many as there are paying passengers, because each flight is “free” after subtracting takings from costs.

  • Ken
    July 21, 2004 at 8:51 pm

    “As for ‘the govt is not your friend’… No, they’re not often, but they got us there, didnt’ they? Isn’t that kinda cool? Would you rather we had waited until several decades from now when commercial interests deem it financially viable?”

    They got us there? I don’t remember going to the moon.

    They got a few privileged individuals up to the moon for a few days, while the masses stayed behind on Earth and got to watch them on TV. Why is it that we’re supposed to envy and hate Bill Gates for living in a mansion but consider watching a privileged few riding in a spaceship to be in any way equivalent with “us” getting to go?

  • Dale Amon
    July 21, 2004 at 9:21 pm

    I will clarify what I meant, although I think many commenters understood anyway.

    The State digs holes and then fills them in again. Or just leaves them and walks away. It might sometimes be that a hole in that particular place is useful and needed, but that has little to do with the end result of it being filled in or abandoned.

    The Moon landings were a glorious adventure and many, many people were sucked in by the promise that it was going to lead somewhere. The Apollo Applicaitons project could have done marvelous things with a stable budget, and many of us at the time really believed it possible such things would happen. We were naive. We did not understand that government is simply incompetant at any venture other than warfare. The only reason it is good at warfare has to do more with Darwin than with anything else. We accepted the flawed parallel between WWII and moon programs and afterwards the even worse logic “If we can go to the Moon why can’t we….. ”

    The Saturn V was a very good vehicle. NERVA was close to man rating, perhaps only the cost of a single Space Shuttle away. We are going to need an engine like that someday because you can’t travel the solar system on chemical rockets and the private sector just ain’t gonna be allowed to build nuclear rocket engines until we’ve gotten far, far away from Earth’s control.

    I could rant on a very long time, but I’ll just close here. I have enormous respect for the people who did Apollo. Those on the ground, those at the contractors, and those who put ther arses on the line and flew those big suckers out where there weren’t no rescue ship to be had.

    I honour them and their accomplishment, not the State that proceeded to fill in the hole as soon as it possibly could.

  • Georgian
    August 27, 2004 at 5:29 am

    Amen, Dale.

    Did it ever occur to anyone how incredibly profitable the U.S. highway system has been for any business intending to compete nationally?

    I won’t defend that system, but it illustrates that sometimes our government has to lay down the tracks before, say, shipping can be profitable.

    I can’t say the moon projects would have been one of those some-times. It’s very different circumstances; people only live on one end of the trip. But I’m willing to acknowledge the potential for space-program utility in our society, even by strictly economic standards.

    If that acknowledgement is challenged, I suppose I can further expound upon its justification.

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