Slashdot Mirror
How the Critics of the Apollo Program Were Proven Wrong
MarkWhittington writes "A recent story in The Atlantic reminds us that the Apollo program, so fondly remembered in the 21st Century, was opposed by a great many people while it was ongoing, on the theory that the money spent going to the moon would have been better spent on poverty programs. The problem with this view was that spending for Lyndon Johnson's Great Society dwarfed the Apollo program, that the programs in the Great Society largely failed to address poverty and other social ills, and that the Apollo program actually had a stimulative effect on the economy that fostered economic growth and created jobs by driving the development of technology,"
So there just wasn't any other way to get this stimulative effect besides the Apollo program? Manned spaceflight as a whole seems like a bust too me. Way too expensive for far too little gain. Probes (and robots) have done so much more and cost so much less. Someday maybe it will be more economical to send a man to Mars. Until then, why the rush?
Here, let me clear-up the confusion for you since you apparently spend too much time on daily kos...
The Republicans are not ..."dedicated to the idea that government doesn't work and that out should ultimately be abolished", they are just realistic about human nature. Humans are, by nature, imperfect and lazy. Give humans a guaranteed job and most of them will under-perform. Don't hold them accountable for their work, and most humans will do shoddy work. As a result, most Republicans think that when you setup big government programs with lifetime positions, guaranteed retirement packages, power-over the customer (as opposed to accountability to the customer) and no competition you are likely to get bad performance, waste, inefficiency and poor customer service. All the empirical evidence we have before us with every part of our government pretty-much confirms this viewpoint.
Republicans tend to support some parts of government (like the military) not because they think these parts are better than the other parts but because [1] they are absolutely essential [2] they are required by the constitution [3] there's no practical alternative.
As for NASA, we have a spectacularly successful moon landing program (pushed to completion by shoveling tons of cash through the inefficient government) followed by 30 years on low earth orbit with failed program after failed program to replace the shuttles. This would be like some government agency a hundred years ago buying five Wright Flyers and then operating them for 30 years without agreeing on a follow-up airplane... NASA has started and cancelled more manned programs in the past 30 years than it has actually completed...and when they do robots, they spend more time and money making one-off unique machines than any business would ever consider... converting these into jobs programs for scientists and engineers. Spend a decade building a unique new lander, six years operating it and another four writing reports about it and analyses of its data and you have a nice career. A business would setup an assembly line for a single standardized design, build a bunch of identical rovers, and send them to explore many places. This would not create full careers for guys who design rovers... but there's a certain clarity of purpose in that difference.