[ExI] Hawking urges Moon landing to 'elevate humanity'

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Thursday, June 22, 2017 6:06 AM Giulio Prisco <giulio at gmail.com> wrote:
> Of course I agree that cheaper space access is needed and,
> once it's there, will open many doors.

Then Hawking has it backwards: we need to work on making it less expensive rather than shooting for really big Apollo-like projects that drain budgets and raise costs.


> But don't dismiss the power of symbols. Apollo was all about
> flags and footprints, and everyone knew that.

I disagree. I wasn't a witness to that time, but from reading the histories it seems like space exploration was a bigger focus but there was also the Cold War. And from reading people from that time, I don't think they saw as let's just do a flags and footprints mission. They were demonstrating capabilities, doing geology, seeing how humans stood up to long-duration space travel, and the like. It seems to me that many of them were focused on doing much more than Apollo.

Add to this, there were some who argued against Apollo and wanted a space station _first_. IIRC, von Braun argued that way.


> Yet Apollo inspired a whole generation, and some of them did
> great things, in space and in other sectors.

I believe Apollo made many folks think space is far too expensive and dangerous to be done by anything by a Manhattan Project approach.


> We need cheap access to space, and people like you are doing good
> things for that, but we also need to start dreaming again.


I don't think "we" ever stopped dreaming. The problem is to build foundations under our dreams. There either has to be some game-changing breakthrough or space has to get a helluva lot less expensive. The former is unpredictable. but the latter seems to be happening, especially with SpaceX's approach.

Regards,

Dan
  Sample my Kindle books via:
http://author.to/DanUst

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