I think you may have failed to grasp a crucial difference between showmanship and engineering.
STEAM vs STEM, Liberal Arts vs Everyone Else, Everyone is Acting in Bad Faith etc.
- Thread starter Gergar12
- Start date
Because people are complicit and need bogeymen like the USSR to fund engineering projects like the moonwalk. People are arguing the Hubble telescope should point toward cities on earth because the "aliens are among us".
Part of the reason I want a very cold war between the US, and China is so that we can go back to the 1950s and 1960s funding for engineering projects versus making dumb apps created to addict you to gamble or steal your data. But that's what people want. They don't want a highway that connects South America with North America. They don't want nuclear-powered cities. They don't want a safe supersonic passenger liner or even rockets that land people from one end of the world to another. Bill Maher doesn't even want us to go to Mars.
That's government funding vs private enterprise, though.
But, I agree with the main sentiment though.
1.) The Cold War sucked.
2.) Huge engeneering prestige objects for grandstanding purposes don't advance science and squander money more beneficial elsewhere. Also we still have those (e.g. "The Line")
3.) I really doubt that the US would be able to push "the West" to take its side in a Cold War against China. At least unless China does something very dumb. Many Western countries have more economic connections to China than the US and are far enough away from it to not feel particularly threatened by China. So it would mostly be the US and some Asian smaller nations.
4.) I am sceptical about nuclear until fusion becomes viable. It is otherwise a dead end as the worldwise uranium sources are running out relatively fast.
5.) A "supersonic passenger liner" is just another climate sin that should never be built.
6.) But yes, rockets for passenger travel on earth are probably even worse. Where do all these horrible ideas come from ?
7.) I don't think that bringing a human to Mars and back is a good investment atm. There is literally nothing a human can do there that a robot can't. And if it is about advancing space travel technology, how about a replacement for the ISS instead ? Or finally getting cheaper and more reliable shuttle successors ?
The shuttle was just a bad idea compared to conventional rockets, IIRC.
As for a replacement ISS, the Chinese have their own space station (they had two others previously), and they are planning on expanding it. Nobody talks about it much, though.
Yes, it was. But there had been promising concepts tackling its downsides around for the past two decades. But actually realizing would still be a major investment only efficient if you know you will use it for a while.
Also rocket technology has been embarrassing slow to advance as well. SpaceX overtaking both NASA and ESA in the commercially most desired applications should never have happened. Ariane 6 is unimpressive and late, Ariane Next is still a pipedream. And NASA has nothing.
Oh, i am aware. But while its mission statement is promising and exactly the kind of research we actually want to advance for further space exploration, it is pretty small and unambitious and of course not international.
Also, let's not forget that the only reason the old Cold War fueled a space race was because of the new prospects of dropping nuclear weapons from orbit on every place without any chance of interception and, later, spy sattelites. A new Cold War won't funnel money into space exploration without similar new prospects of directly using it to get an edge on earth.
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Hate to tell you this, but a new Cold War would cause a massive increase in technologies designed to steal your data.
To the broader point, war and conflict have prompted technological advancement in the past, yes-- but that's not because war is in any way necessary for that advancement. Its because in peacetime our leaders don't fucking fund science enough. The solution isn't to manufacture conflict (we have enough threatening our survival already, thank you)-- the solution is to just invest in science during peacetime.
And if you absolutely need an existential threat to galvanise you into technological advancement, then move to a war footing against climate change. Its an existential threat.
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Is that actually true, though? While certainly, yes, technology does advance during war, is it a case of it not doing so during peacetime, or is it certain technologies advance during war while others are left behind, and we remember what's developed, and not what may have been?
The line is a meme, raise your hand if you want to live in Saudi Arabia.
The rocket was from Elon, it was off the top of my head.
I want my molten salt reactors and also smaller ones.
China is currently facing turmoil from global investors leaving. The business community is ramming away from China due to increasing authoritarianism. Their EV cars, and phones are cool tho.
Supersonic jumbo jet > private jet.
The Line is stupid, but that is exactly the kind of engeneering prestige objects you would get if the countries started again to compete here.
And yes, the rocket sounds like an Elon Idea. Most of them are bad.
If the world seriously built molten sand reactors (or nearly every other kind of fission reactor) everywhere, they would all need to shut down in 20 years because lack of fuel. All those ideas, as cool as they might be, are only viable if only a few countries use them much and they can stretch ressources over a century or so. It is not the future, it is a dead end.
Yes, China has problems. It is still a more important business partner than the US to many countries, even Western ones. And they would all stay neutral in a next Cold War. Do you remember how reluctantly all the others followed when the US pulled out of the Iran deal and how there was even talk about how various European central banks might step in to make sure its comapnies can continue to deal with Iran in spite of any sanctions ? With China this would be a hundred times worse.
Supersonic jumbo jets won't replace private jets. Private jets exist for people who want to use any route whenever, not nust fly between major hubs and who want, well, privacy and status. That said, not only should we not build supersonic jumbo jets, we should limit private jets more as well.
And yes, the rocket sounds like an Elon Idea. Most of them are bad.
If the world seriously built molten sand reactors (or nearly every other kind of fission reactor) everywhere, they would all need to shut down in 20 years because lack of fuel. All those ideas, as cool as they might be, are only viable if only a few countries use them much and they can stretch ressources over a century or so. It is not the future, it is a dead end.
Yes, China has problems. It is still a more important business partner than the US to many countries, even Western ones. And they would all stay neutral in a next Cold War. Do you remember how reluctantly all the others followed when the US pulled out of the Iran deal and how there was even talk about how various European central banks might step in to make sure its comapnies can continue to deal with Iran in spite of any sanctions ? With China this would be a hundred times worse.
Supersonic jumbo jets won't replace private jets. Private jets exist for people who want to use any route whenever, not nust fly between major hubs and who want, well, privacy and status. That said, not only should we not build supersonic jumbo jets, we should limit private jets more as well.
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Huh, there's an interesting question there-- whether sciences that have little/no wartime benefit (research into chronic illnesses for instance?) get shafted in the funding department during a war.