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Fair enough. You did go out of your way to clarify that you didn’t mean to say that “things only happen because of war”, but I still got the false impression that you thought that we would’ve never landed on the moon without the Soviets.
Since you admit we would’ve done it eventually without war and Soviets, I’ll admit it probably would’ve been a while.
I just don’t like the pessimism behind that kind of “it was nothing but a national pride show off contest” thinking, though - even if that’s not what you meant, it kind of touches on it. Soviet competition got us to the moon, but it couldn’t have happened without the engineers who believe in the future, and it’s the visionaries and hopeful engineers who believed in the future of humanity that got us to the moon, but it couldn’t have happened as quickly as it did without the space race.
And those visionaries and that hope are what will take us the rest of the way to being a multiplanetary species.
Plus, there’s nothing to say that even a halfway-Utopian place like Equestria won’t experience competition. Just look at all the evil supervillains that threaten it.
But yeah, I think we’ve reached a sort of understanding.
Also, with how long I’ve been on this site, I’m surprised there isn’t a “space discussion in the comments” tag yet…
Edited
@Vinyl Fluff
Just one more thing
Here. Done.
Edited
@Cirrus Light
Yeah, never claimed they did. But that’s what afforded them the opportunity. Suddenly getting government funding and access to whatever you need is undeniably a huge boost.
The goal of the space race was to beat the soviets, even Kennedy admitted later that that was the true goal, and not actually landing on the moon. That was just something that would happen in the course of beating them. Furthermore, Kennedy’s assertion that the US would land on the moon before the end of the decade shocked the hell out of a lot of people in the government and private sector because it was totally a surprise: We had zero hardware capable of doing what was required. It was a scramble afterwards to make his statement a reality. His statement was a shot across the bow for the soviets to demonstrate how superior the US was to them. That political move is what got us on the moon before the end of the decade. Keeping to the president’s word made sure that timetable was tight.
It’s sad, but true. Look at what happened after the US beat them. Moon landings became considered so commonplace and such a non-event that most networks didn’t even cover the later landings. And Apollo 13 wasn’t a big deal until the accident. The last mission was scrapped because it was felt to be a waste of money. And without the kind of incentive there was previously pushing us, we’ve not been back since.
Sigh. Once again, you’re assuming I said that conflict was an absolute necessity for anything to be done. I never did. I said a lot of our technical progress has come from it. What’s pushing stuff like Orion? Two things. The private sector and the idea of commercialized space flight (not to mention getting lucrative government contracts for being a launch platform, seeing as how with the shuttle fleet’s retirement the US has to pay Russia to be a taxi service to the ISS) and the fact that people like Elon Musk are, frankly, space nuts (and this is a good thing.)
Never said it was necessary. Not once. Ever. In my previous two replies on this subject, I said it was a large part in contributing it. Not the single sole only element. Our space program wouldn’t be as far along as it is now.
Money. Lots and lots of potential money. Companies being run by billionaire space enthusiasts. Makes a potent combo. If you had the chance to indulge in a passion of yours while the possibility that doing so would make you untold money, that wouldn’t make you jump?
The other angle you’re not getting here is I’m not limiting “technological progress” solely to scientists and the space program. Weapons technology, transportation technology, materials. The whole gamut of technological progress we’ve made. Necessity is the mother of all invention, that has always held true. At the beginning of WWII we were using prop-powered planes. By the end, we were flying jet planes that only existed because we had a need for them. Would they have eventually existed without WWII? Sure. But they wouldn’t have existed until later. Potentially much later.
You’re basically putting words in my mouth with the constant assumptions that I said progress only happens during war and because of it. When I specifically said a lot of technology comes from it, and it does. And in reference to the space program that it would not be as far along as it is, not that it would not exist at all.
Edit: Also, kinda sad we don’t have a
Space Discussion in the Commentstag we could slap on this for humor.Edited
I’ve studied aerospace for years, I’m familiar with these things.
Again with Von Braun, him and his engineers - none of them wanted to work on military weapons. They wanted to work on spaceflight technology.
“No impetus for the space race to prove national superiority.”
And there’s the really upsetting thing. Does the plaque on the Apollo 11 Lunar Lander read “We beat the Soviets”? Did Kennedy give a speech about how we’d beat the Soviets to the moon?
People today have forgotten what it’s like to really believe in the future, and this is reflected in their attitudes towards the past. They didn’t inspire the public with competition, they were inspired by a belief that technology was the future. However much they may have been inspired by competition, they didn’t seem to make such a big deal of it publicly, so much as making technological achievements.
The engineers and scientists who accomplished this feat wanted it to happen. They grew up in a time where World Fairs still happened, when science fiction was as rampant as hype for future innovations.
Of course I think the Soviet Union and competition might have provided some nudge, but funding alone doesn’t get people to do amazing things, they have to really believe in what they’re doing. At the very worst case scenario, landing on the moon wouldn’t happen for another century - but even that I find incredibly hard to believe. SLS will be launching an Orion spacecraft around the moon, currently planned for late next year, and much of the hardware is already built for that mission. Where’s the space race pushing this, if it’s so necessary to do these kinds of things?
Things like Vietnam, Civil Rights, and the Cold War often seem to make people think that space exploration and amazing feats are a waste of resources when “we need to solve our problems here, first”. Honestly, if anything, I think people like Kennedy and Von Braun intrinsically believed in what they did, but were able to use the feelings of competition to help push it forward.
But again, NASA isn’t dead, the flyby of the Moon is set to happen next year, and Musk (SpaceX) and NASA both still have their sights on Mars - if a Cold War is necessary for these things to happen, then where is this cold war?
How come the greatest innovations in aerospace since Apollo are coming by in the last few years by a private company with no political adversary, no war, no cold war rivalry?
As someone who’s studied aerospace for many years, it’s extremely hard to convey just how amazingly mind-blowing SpaceX’s advances in technology have been. They’re literally as impressive and revolutionary as when NASA first went into orbit - they’re complete game-changers, and they’re inspired by nothing more than a vision of a multi-planetary species, not by a cold war, not by a hot war.
I don’t think humanity progresses from wars. I think humanity stretches a bit to make technology reach closer to science, which gives the false impression of progress, but is really what would’ve happened anyways, only a few years earlier, maybe a decade tops. But all our great accomplishments are in spite of our self-destructive tendencies, not because of them, and this would’ve been immensely clear had the Cold War gone hot and turned the planet into an inhospitable, frozen, radioactive wasteland. Einstein may have somehow survived it, but who knows how many didn’t? Schwarzchild lived just long enough to show he had potential before WWI took him.
Again, SLS, SpaceX, fusion research, genetic engineering, computers - these are things that happened in times of peace, and I don’t think I know of any scientists whose work was motivated by war, and many of the great inventors weren’t. The Wright brothers, Edison, Graham Bell, Robert Goddard (liquid fueled rocket). Einstein, Tesla, Hawking, Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Liebnez. And Einstein is lucky he survived the warlike nation that caused WWII. So even is Von Braun, for that matter.
War is not necessary for the progress of technology, is really what I’m getting at.
@Archonix
Ninja’d. Obviously that post took some time to write.
Conversations flow. It happens. But responses could easily go to forums if this goes any further.
Edited
I never said all technology was derived from war, but a great deal was. There’s a great deal of butterfly effect that goes on as well. No WWII? Von Braun likely wouldn’t have done the work he did. That work not exist? We wouldn’t have the Saturn V rocket that enabled flights to the moon. No cold war with Russia? No impetus for the space race to prove national superiority. No space race? We likely wouldn’t have a space program near as advanced as we today. And you would not believe the amount of things you take for granted on a daily basis that came about due to the space race, and NASA in particular. The way it’s set up, everything that NASA invents is released to the public. No patents. NASA has a list of things on their website that they’ve invented over the years that has found it’s way into the public sector. And it’s literally as long as your arm.
One quick example I can guarantee you’re literally using right now: Heat pipes. The heat piping in your computer’s heatsink/fan assembly is a NASA invention. It consists of pressurized tubes with channels filled with liquid, usually purified water. The tubes run through the heatplate and heatsink and absorb the heat until it boils. The water is then drawn away by capillary action in the channels until it reaches the heatsink and fan, which cools the water, it recondensates, flows back down, and repeats the process. NASA invented it for cooling space craft hardware.
Don’t mistake what I said for “War is great, and things only happen because of it.”
In a world where magic solves many problems, it’s only logical that some of the technology we developed to solve some of those same problems never happened. And the technological leaps we made due to conflict would also not likely happen, given a country that is at relative peace for thousands of years.
Edited
Edison, Robert Goddard, Einstein, Hawking, Tsilkovsky, Schrodigner, Faraday, Maxwell, Newton, Tesla all the great musicians and painters, sculpters and writers, I don’t know of any that needed war, poverty or strife to do their work. Even Von Braun only dabbled in war as a means to find funding for what he wanted to do for peace.
A few of the great scientists made their work in spite of these worldly failings, not because of them. I wonder how many else never achieved greatness because they never had the wealth, or had their lives taken early, or worked so hard to survive never found time for these great works.
I know Schwarzchild is someone who developed the first solution to General Relativity, and shortly after died in the trenches of WW1.
That’s true. A lot of technology comes from adversity and, unfortunately, warfare.
Another example of modern technology in the show: The hospital with lights and X-Rays.
Also, with job satisfaction, political stability, and racial harmony at higher levels; and war, poverty, and other societal ills either rare or non-existent, the necessity that birthed many inventions simply wasn’t there.
That’s true. Also, thinking back on it I’m pretty sure the dam in MMDW was a hydro-electric dam.
Don’t forget Vinyl’s DJ equipment.
Button Mash is shown playing an arcade game. Twilight has multiple computers and scanning equipment.
Officially, the technology level of Equestria is “whatever the story calls for”, by word of Faust back in the day. So if they need to show a supercomputer for whatever reason, it’ll show up.
If I had to nail down a precise “technology level”, I wouldn’t limit it to any specific era, I’d just say that due to the fact that magic exists, they didn’t put as much an emphasis on developing technology like we did, so their world isn’t chock-full of technology being constantly in your face. But things like electricity are commonplace.
TS: “…okay, that was a hug. Another book for another.”
Me: “No, it is a hug. You didn’t say there was a limit on how long the hugs can last.”
TS: “…oh.”
I got 10 books, how about one hug for one book and one kiss for the rest? ;)
Sometimes we turn up for the hell of it after just one.
Do you not realize they are like Beetlejuice times three? If you type that word one time, they all start showing up.
He has summoned another maelstrom, we’re all doomed!
This is like saying “discount book sale” and not expecting Twilight to show up!
You fool, what have you done? D: