Have you heard of opportunity costs?

About war: in our universe we got the first digital computers because of military efforts during the second world war. However, without a war IBM and Konrad Zuse and others would have gotten there, too. With much less human suffering.

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TheOtherHobbes 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's unlikely computing would have developed as quickly as it did without the Cold War. IBM's Sage and MIT's TX0 were both Cold War projects - one for a national early warning system, the other as an R&D platform for flight simulators.

Most US investment in associated tech - including the Internet - came through DARPA.

Not pointing this out because I support war, but to underline that the US doesn't have a culture of aggressive government investment in non-military R&D.

NASA and the NSF both get pocket money in budget terms. And at its height Apollo was a Cold War PR battle with the USSR that happened to funnel a lot of of money to defence contractors.

The original moon landings were not primarily motivated by science.

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eru 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Why does it have to be government R&D?

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TeMPOraL 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It doesn't, but it was, because it was tied to administration and nuclear physics and then rocketry.

Private sector doesn't do much without obvious short-term gain, and it especially doesn't do basic research. It may be good at fitting more pixels in ever thinner phones, but it wouldn't get to that point if not the government that needed number-crunching machines for better modelling of nuclear fission some 80 years earlier.

	▲	eru 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		As I said, IBM and Konrad Zuse were already on the cusp of general computing.

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necovek 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I believe you are making the same argument: the GP prefers space race over war for large technological development at less or no human suffering.

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bayindirh 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I have a hunch that space race is not for "peaceful technological progress of human race at large", or "let's see how this behaves in 0G, it might be useful for some global problems" anymore.

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adrianN 10 hours ago | parent [-]

It is my understanding that it always was about „rockets are good for dropping bombs on people“.

	▲	GTP 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Well, I highly doubt that the kind of rockets they are developing for Lunar and Mars missions will be mich better, if any better at all, than current ballistic missiles armies around the world already have. Those space rockets are huge and meant to more or less safely carry people over a long distance in space. Warheads are meant to carry explosives while also being hard to detect or stop. I'm no rocket scientist, but I believe that huge space rockets would defeat the purpose, as they would consume a lot of fuel for nothing, while also being much easier to spot and stopped by shooting something at them. So I think the opposite: we are way past the point of space exploration being directly useful for weapons.

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eru 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Well, getting your toes cut off is better than losing your whole foot, yes.

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fastball 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What opportunity is being lost out on because of space exploration?

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eru 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Whatever you can imagine they could spend the money on, including leaving it with the tax payer or taking on less debt.

(And, if you don't like the monetary framing: just look at the real resources spend instead.)

However I'm not nearly as harsh on unmanned space exploration.

	▲	fastball an hour ago \| parent [-]
		That's not how resources work. Resources that are used for space exploration aren't magically available for anything else when you don't do space exploration. The economy is not a zero sum game and human capital is not fungible. A rocket scientist/engineer/technician/etc at NASA is not going to work on the thing we "should" spend money on instead if tomorrow you shut down NASA's manned spaceflight programs. They'll probably go work on ads at Meta instead.

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gmerc 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Now do the opportunity cost of AI model virtue signalling to investors for several years

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eru 6 hours ago | parent [-]

As long as they mostly spend VC money, who am I to judge? It's no worse than rich people buying yachts.

Just don't spend tax payer money.

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creaturemachine 5 hours ago | parent [-]

But they dodge taxes, so they're effectively spending it anyway.

	▲	eru 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Are you talking about legal tax optimisation, or illegally not paying your taxes?

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TeMPOraL 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You are serious? Up until this point I thought you're writing in jest, because all the things you mention are actually good ideas - including especially funding manned space flight from entertainment budget, because:

1) It's better aligned with mission profile (inspirational, emotional, but not strictly necessary;

2) There's much more of it to go than NASA gets;

3) It would be a better use of that money than what it's currently used for.

	▲	eru 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm saying manned spaceflight is a waste of money and resources. We'd get more and better science by spending it on unmanned space stuff. Or you could even just leave the money with the taxpayer.

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YetAnotherNick 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Firstly how is this related to opportunity costs. Secondly, no one said that to create digital computer you should start a war. It's just that war is already present, regardless of you invent digital computers or space travel.