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zachguo | 4 years ago

Well, SpaceX is in the U.S.

discuss

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coldtea|4 years ago

Yeah, and who knows, soon might even manage to get to the moon, something we already did in 1969. But now better and cheaper (with tech made 50+ years after the last mission, it would a challenge not to do it better and cheaper - but is it half a century worth of better and cheaper? Considering the dreams then was a moon base and mission to mars coming in the next decades, something that never came to be).

tbihl|4 years ago

The space race was possibly the pinnacle of the principle that government spending can accelerate technological progress in particular fields by raining money on those fields. The progress puts it way ahead of what could be expected and occurs to the detriment of sectors from which the money was taken.

We now have a good understanding of just how far ahead we pushed ourselves beyond what market forces were going to pursue: 50-60 years, which is pretty cool.