Were the Apollo Missions a waste of money?

[russ_watters]

I don't think it's difficult to gauge this at all. If you're referring to manned spaceflight and a Mars expedition in particular. Forget about the science per se for a moment. You can't really put a price tag on the adventure and human heroism a manned mission to Mars would yield.

I don't like that cliche. It is at best inaccurate: the Apollo program did have a price tag. It was $110-$170 billion, depending on what all you include in it and when you consider the start. What the Apollo program and a Mars trip don't have is a clearly identifiable value.

To me, while the national prestige of Apollo 11 was great, it faded fast with later missions and lacking a cold war and given that no other country has been to the moon, that factor is virtually nonexistent today, for Mars. So to me, that intangible value is pretty low.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

And you think the space-exploration people are unrealistic

I'm afraid I don't understand your criticism, do you think that people aren't desperate for these things and that they are more desperate for a Mars mission? My comment was on the nature of what people want, not what we could solve now if we tried. These are huge issues and as you point out there are many examples where things are getting better, even if in recent years many countries have had certain things worse.

Now if you think we can ever remove poverty then you are unrealistic: somebody always screws up, and they end up on the bottom for it. Not much you can do but encourage plutocracy and have a decent welfare program.

And what do you consider "poor economic conditions" anyway? The inability to buy a PS4 for christmas?

I certainly think it's possible to get rid of absolute poverty, and on a global scale. Humanity has made great strides towards that. In terms of other forms of poverty it's trickier but I don't think it's unrealistic to envision a society with low-no levels of nepotism, high job security, a good safety net and a system that allows for smooth social mobility. We're getting off topic here though and not drag this thread into a discussion on the extent of poverty and it's perception and whether or not plutarchy is innevitable/desirable.

If you were thinking about the likes of sub saharan Africa: well, what do you want to do? The main thing that would help them wouldn't be charity but massive investments and people emigrating there to create some kind of educated class and proper governments. Are you thinking of going?

Actually I have gone to 3rd world countries to volunteer at charities. Regardless though I think this is a typical and poor criticism. Leaving aside the fact that you've misread my post (where I was referring to what people want rather than what we should immediately focus on) the idea that if you don't personally move to a poor country to help them then you don't have a right to advocate charity/development is asinine. Me as an individual is going to make little difference versus a nation electing to allocate a portion of it's resources to international aid. Again though this is side tracking.

 

[DiracPool]

I don't like that cliche. It is at best inaccurate: the Apollo program did have a price tag. It was $110-$170 billion, depending on what all you include in it and when you consider the start. What the Apollo program and a Mars trip don't have is a clearly identifiable value.

I think the best way to address this is to ask you a question: If you could go back in time and change things, would your mission be to reallocate the funds spent on the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs to various domestic and military budgets? If so, where would you have reallocated the money and how might that reallocation have better served humanity than landing a man on the moon? I submit that pouring that money into said domestic/military programs would have had an absolutely zero effect on changing the current state of affairs on the planet today, with the exception that we would be continue to be a population of peoples that haven't left their planet to venture anywhere beyond. What do you think?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I submit that pouring that money into said domestic/military programs would have had an absolutely zero effect on changing the current state of affairs on the planet today

Why do you think it would make no difference? I think it would have made a massive difference. The AAAS has a bunch of different charts tracking federal science funding over time (available here). I downloaded the excel file from the By Function: Defence and Non-defence R&D, 1953-2014 to take a look. It's all been adjusted for 2014 dollars, what you see in that file is a breakdown of how many billions the federal government dedicated to different areas of science. If you take the data for non-defence R&D from the period of 1961-72 (the time of the Apollo program) you'll see that total spending was $394.17 billion. Of that space funding constituted $219.1 billion, or to put it another way a whopping 55% of the total funding went to space science. Now not all of that might have been the Apollo program specifically but that fits with the estimation of ~$170 listed on wikipedia.

Given that do you still think that there would have been absolutely zero effect if that all that, or even just the $170 billion was invested in the other fields? I mean it would have essentially doubled science funding in the US for a decade, I'm having a hard time imagining that it would have done enough except spur development along massively.

EDIT: Fixed a minor error in calculation.

EDIT2: For interest here is the total spending of federal science R&D from 1961-72 broken down by fields

Field / $ billions

Health 51.76
Space 219.10
Gen. Science 33.29
Energy 27.99
Nat. Res. /Env. 12.96
Other 49.07
Defence 502.71

 

[russ_watters]

I think the best way to address this is to ask you a question: If you could go back in time and change things, would your mission be to reallocate the funds spent on the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs to various domestic and military budgets?

No, I think the Apollo program was a good thing. The point of the comparison is to show why the value of a Mars mission would be much lower (and, of course, the cost much higher).

 

[Nikitin]

I'm afraid I don't understand your criticism, do you think that people aren't desperate for these things and that they are more desperate for a Mars mission? My comment was on the nature of what people want, not what we could solve now if we tried. These are huge issues and as you point out there are many examples where things are getting better, even if in recent years many countries have had certain things worse.
I certainly think it's possible to get rid of absolute poverty, and on a global scale. Humanity has made great strides towards that. In terms of other forms of poverty it's trickier but I don't think it's unrealistic to envision a society with low-no levels of nepotism, high job security, a good safety net and a system that allows for smooth social mobility. We're getting off topic here though and not drag this thread into a discussion on the extent of poverty and it's perception and whether or not plutarchy is innevitable/desirable.
Actually I have gone to 3rd world countries to volunteer at charities. Regardless though I think this is a typical and poor criticism. Leaving aside the fact that you've misread my post (where I was referring to what people want rather than what we should immediately focus on) the idea that if you don't personally move to a poor country to help them then you don't have a right to advocate charity/development is asinine. Me as an individual is going to make little difference versus a nation electing to allocate a portion of it's resources to international aid. Again though this is side tracking.

I meant meritocracy was desirable, not plutocracy. Apologies, a slip of the tongue.

Well, granted I did not read all the posts in this thread, so I thought you preferred for the money to be spent on helping the poor. This is a pretty common position so I assumed that was what you took. Anyway, my response to that has always been that you can't just throw money at it and expect the problem to disappear.

In case of poorer nations, they will get richer only when their populations develop better work ethics, become more educated, more enlightened and so on. Spending money on charity is a waste, as allot of it gets stolen and what does get thru will only hurt the local economy in the long term. IMO it would be far better to do stuff like invest in African infrastructure and companies, sponsor exchange programs, lighten import duties on African goods (especially on agricultural products: Africa has some of the most fertile land in the world).

In case of fixing problems "at home",, how exactly are you going to fix nepotism by throwing money at it? Job security and social welfare in general will be fixed only when governments start redistributing wealth (by increasing taxes on the richer strata), which is not really a money problem.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

As I mentioned before Nikitin I think this is just derailing the thread. No one has proposed that the Apollo money would have been better spent on social programs, some of us might think that and there might be an argument to be made but trying to argue against it is just going to drag the thread into a debate on how to solve poverty. Instead why don't we stick to the original question of whether or not the Apollo missions were a good investment? If people want to go down the route of arguing that the money would have been better spent on social issues then fine, but at the moment the thread is concerned with the scientific ROI.

 

[DarthMatter]

EDIT2: For interest here is the total spending of federal science R&D from 1961-72 broken down by fields

Field / $ billions

Health 51.76
Space 219.10
Gen. Science 33.29
Energy 27.99
Nat. Res. /Env. 12.96
Other 49.07
Defence 502.71

Thanks for the numbers. I'm always missing the spending on military attacks/charges in tables like this one though.

In case of poorer nations, they will get richer only when their populations develop better work ethics, become more educated, more enlightened and so on. ... IMO it would be far better to do stuff like invest in African infrastructure and companies, sponsor exchange programs, lighten import duties on African goods (especially on agricultural products: Africa has some of the most fertile land in the world).

I'd agree on the probable benefit on spending money on most of these points. About the work ethics I'm not so sure though. I think many of these people are working pretty darn hard.

 

[jack476]

Even people during the Apollo missions were rather divided on whether they were worth it, plenty of people just saw it as the US needlessly weenie-wagging at the Soviets and many people understandably saw millions and millions of dollars being spent to go to the moon and bring back what appeared to just be rocks. So I think painting it as the "killer app" to get people into science might not be the way to go.

But the Apollo missions were ultimately necessary, it would not at the time have been possible to perform those experiments remotely. Now, it would be quite easy to do so with a remotely-controlled rover or lander compared to sending a human crew.

On top of that, it would effectively amount to a human sacrifice in the name of science popularization. Assuming everything goes perfectly, those astronauts will not be coming back to Earth. One way or another, they would almost certainly die on Mars. They'd have a finite supply of food and water and be thoroughly dependent on resupply missions, producing breathable air would require constant maintenance of a farm, they'd be subject to the health hazards of radiation and low gravity, and they'd have only whatever emergency medical supplies they can fit with them. And forget entertainment: just getting the bare essentials into a spacecraft would be hard enough. And they'd have to live like that for the rest of their natural lives, which could very well be shortened by a whole host of things.

I don't think any humans will set foot on Mars until we're talking about full-scale colonization and population efforts, and I don't think that's going to happen for a long time.

 

[leright]

The Apollo program generated a ton of new technology (spin offs) that eventually became ubiquitous in society. A lot of new technology had to be invented in order to get to the moon. This could very well justify the investment in the Apollo program.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies

 

[Ryan_m_b]

The Apollo program generated a ton of new technology (spin offs) that eventually became ubiquitous in society. A lot of new technology had to be invented in order to get to the moon. This could very well justify the investment in the Apollo program.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies

True but in terms of the investment the counter argument would be that if all this money had been invested in basic research we'd have far more new technologies than the handful of spin-offs. In my opinion there's only one reasonable objection to this counter argument: that were it not for the Apollo program this money would not have been spent on science. Whether or not that is true is an interesting question.

 

[dragoneyes001]

its easy to say it was a waste of money if you ignore that the 70's as we knew them would not have existed at all without the Apollo missions. all those new materials which made so many horrific living rooms,the social changes not only the new materials but processing of would never have gone the way they did however you may view this as good or bad they made huge changes including the development of the personal computers we now take for granted. without the direction the space industry took plastics in the 60's and 70's would not have been prevalent enough to attract the attention they did making many projects much less likely to have developed at all. I used the personal computer as an example because the plastics industry was a pivotal part in the timing of its creation because of costs and availability for mass production.

the amount of spin off from the Apollo program is so huge we miss many of the outcomes that affect our every day lives. I'd definitely say no the missions were not a waste of money. don't forget at the time remote control was at best pretty crappy so unmanned was at the time a bigger waste of money.

 

[dragoneyes001]

True but in terms of the investment the counter argument would be that if all this money had been invested in basic research we'd have far more new technologies than the handful of spin-offs. In my opinion there's only one reasonable objection to this counter argument: that were it not for the Apollo program this money would not have been spent on science. Whether or not that is true is an interesting question.

I'd have to disagree with the above: look at the cancer research and how many billions of dollars are pumped into it every year how much new technology does that money generate? it does create some but its not a huge variety of new tech.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I'd have to disagree with the above: look at the cancer research and how many billions of dollars are pumped into it every year how much new technology does that money generate? it does create some but its not a huge variety of new tech.

It generates quite a lot, as evidence by the fact that cancer survival rates increase year on year to the point where some cancers have very good survival rates compared to a generation ago where they were a death sentence. I think your criticism is unfair and unfounded as it implies that no advance has been made. In reality even if there were no better treatments (which is untrue) our understanding of cancer biology would be such that we know far more about what doesn't work and what avenues are best to investigate in future.

In short your argument seems to come from a somewhat naive end-use perspective, rather than an appreciation of the field.

 

[dragoneyes001]

It generates quite a lot, as evidence by the fact that cancer survival rates increase year on year to the point where some cancers have very good survival rates compared to a generation ago where they were a death sentence. I think your criticism is unfair and unfounded as it implies that no advance has been made. In reality even if there were no better treatments (which is untrue) our understanding of cancer biology would be such that we know far more about what doesn't work and what avenues are best to investigate in future.

In short your argument seems to come from a somewhat naive end-use perspective, rather than an appreciation of the field.

again I disagree you imply I mean that cancer research did nothing to advance its research. which is not what I said. I said cancer research although very well funded in the billions of dollars per year only generates so much variety in technology. where as the Apollo missions created especially with the need to include men in space a much broader quantity of technological advances.

 

[symbolipoint]

It has always seemed to me that you can make a very strong case that unmanned space exploration would have provided a MUCH bigger bang for the buck, and the rest of the money could have been spent on other technological projects and thus we would have produced the same level of technological spinoff as the manned program did. The only flaw in this argument is that it is ridiculous because it would never have happened. Without the space race there is pretty much no possibility that politicians could have / would have diverted so much money to technology.

A manned mission to Mars is even worse in terms of bang for the buck. Whether or not it captures the public's interest enough to allow politicians to fund it remains to be seen. Personally, I think it's a pipe dream to think it will happen any time soon.

Imaginably, the level of robotics engineering between then and now has changed. Present day gives more chance to avoid manned missions.

 

[phinds]

Imaginably, the level of robotics engineering between then and now has changed. Present day gives more chance to avoid manned missions.

True, but the hype is for a manned mission to Mars and I just don't see that happening any time soon. Too dangerous, too expensive. I hope we DO get serious and send more unmanned missions and drop this nonsense about sending people in the next couple of decades.

 

[dragoneyes001]

At some point we will need to be in space if for no other reason than to collect resources to sustain humanity. If nothing else it'll probably come down to water that hasn't been polluted beyond recovery. the longer we put off manned stations outside of Earth's orbit the less likely we'll be able to get to and retrieve anything in quantities worth the effort.
not sure Mars is the best starting point for it. we should have in the last 40 years already established a working long stay self supporting base on the moon.

 

[phinds]

At some point we will need to be in space if for no other reason than to collect resources to sustain humanity. If nothing else it'll probably come down to water that hasn't been polluted beyond recovery. the longer we put off manned stations outside of Earth's orbit the less likely we'll be able to get to and retrieve anything in quantities worth the effort.
not sure Mars is the best starting point for it. we should have in the last 40 years already established a working long stay self supporting base on the moon.

WHAT resources? You seriously think bringing water from space will be more economically feasible than building desalination plants and other clear water recovery efforts? I think that's a joke.

 

[dragoneyes001]

its pretty hard to clean up some forms of poisons especially if we make the water a genetic soup that can't be recovered as potable. desalination is only useful if the water hasn't turned toxic beyond recovery. yes we may be able to come up with some antigens but with the amount of medical waste and super bugs water could become our biggest problem. in England a study of some rivers points the finger at the polymer industry for the break down of X chromosome in the fish living in those rivers the companies bank on.(regardless of this studies voracity or not) its an example of how water can be made unsafe to consume and less likely to be cleaned by current means.

 

[phinds]

its pretty hard to clean up some forms of poisons especially if we make the water a genetic soup that can't be recovered as potable. desalination is only useful if the water hasn't turned toxic beyond recovery. yes we may be able to come up with some antigens but with the amount of medical waste and super bugs water could become our biggest problem. in England a study of some rivers points the finger at the polymer industry for the break down of X chromosome in the fish living in those rivers the companies bank on.(regardless of this studies voracity or not) its an example of how water can be made unsafe to consume and less likely to be cleaned by current means.

I agree this is an increasingly serious problem but I just can't see us making the entire ocean that bad without pretty much killing the entire planet.

 

[DiracPool]

True, but the hype is for a manned mission to Mars and I just don't see that happening any time soon. Too dangerous, too expensive. I hope we DO get serious and send more unmanned missions and drop this nonsense about sending people in the next couple of decades.

I completely disagree with this. A manned mission to the moon was also too dangerous and expensive in the 60's with the limited technology we had then, but somehow we were able to pull it off and inspire an entire generation of humanity in the process. It's never going to be "safe enough" to go to Mars. With a concerted effort similar to the moonshot, I think it's entirely reasonable to believe that we could put ourselves in a position to have the same chance of success at a Mars mission in 10-20 years as we did with the moon in the 60's, and it would be well worth the money to do so.

In light of that, I just want to ask one question: Does anyone here really believe that, had we diverted the funds used for the manned mission to the moon into other government programs, we'd be sitting around here today saying, "Ya know, it's a good thing we didn't blow all that money on that silly moon mission Kennedy almost got us into, look at what we got out of that money instead. In any case, space is for the asteroids anyway, not humans, just as flying is for the birds."

As far as the unmanned rovers, haven't we had enough of these already? There's where your hype is. Every new generation of these bring on a lot a fanfare but where are the results? All I see is new bot that can drill into a rock a few inches farther than the previous one, yielding not very different findings. I mean, yeah, keep the unmanned programs going too, of course, but I'd personally not mind seeing a couple generations of rovers put on hold and divert the funds to support a manned mission.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

again I disagree you imply I mean that cancer research did nothing to advance its research. which is not what I said. I said cancer research although very well funded in the billions of dollars per year only generates so much variety in technology. where as the Apollo missions created especially with the need to include men in space a much broader quantity of technological advances.

I still don't understand your criticism, you seem to be saying that because cancer research only produces treatments for cancer it is somehow an inferior investment/accomplishment compared to the variety of apollo spin offs. Is that correct?

 

[dragoneyes001]

I still don't understand your criticism, you seem to be saying that because cancer research only produces treatments for cancer it is somehow an inferior investment/accomplishment compared to the variety of apollo spin offs. Is that correct?

general research does not guarantee that the bang for the buck will be greater. cancer research has a huge budget its so big its in the same league as NASA for research. which of the two produces the widest variety of technical advances? the Apollo program had immense influence on many fields of research taking the same money and passing it around is in no way a guarantee to get comparable results.much less better ones.

 

[dragoneyes001]

I agree this is an increasingly serious problem but I just can't see us making the entire ocean that bad without pretty much killing the entire planet.

the problem with a genetic variant is we can't be sure we'll be able to reverse the effects. in the hypothetical event that we let loose a particular variant that's toxic in some way to humans (lets use the fish thing where the male genes are being flushed from the reproductive line) this event wouldn't wipe out life on earth. plants and some organisms would be unaffected to some extent while mammals would be decimated. if the cause is somehow self reproducing or spread by organisms it could pollute all connected waterways.

 

[phinds]

the problem with a genetic variant is we can't be sure we'll be able to reverse the effects. in the hypothetical event that we let loose a particular variant that's toxic in some way to humans (lets use the fish thing where the male genes are being flushed from the reproductive line) this event wouldn't wipe out life on earth. plants and some organisms would be unaffected to some extent while mammals would be decimated. if the cause is somehow self reproducing or spread by organisms it could pollute all connected waterways.

Yep, but if our only solution is to bring water from space 99% of us are going to die of thirst.

 

[dragoneyes001]

Yep, but if our only solution is to bring water from space 99% of us are going to die of thirst.

unfortunately that's probably true. unless we develop a standing practice of getting things in space which so far has been underwhelming at best. the landing on the comet was a huge leap forward compared to the last 40 years.

Let me edit the above: die of thirst maybe not. but suffer the consequences of the toxins would be more accurate.

 

[DarthMatter]

Yes, if you drink deadly polluted water because you are so thirsty you die.

How much money do you think would have to been invested into the Apollo or other space programs to generate the insight focussed research on cancer has given in the preceding decades? People survive today because of that research, which is a crucial reason why is it done at all. My point is that there are of course some scientific insights and applications from the space programs, but only if these applications somehow accidentally touch the areas the space agencies and their researchers chose to focus on.

 

[dragoneyes001]

how many fields of study does this site post as sections which are DIRECTLY related to fields the Apollo program advanced ?

 

[DarthMatter]

how many fields of study does this site post as sections which are DIRECTLY related to fields the Apollo program advanced ?

What site are you referring to? I think there may be a misunderstanding. I didn't say they didn't advance scientific fields or that their research focused on a too narrow field. I'm saying the cost of these advancements was probably higher than it needed to be - and there even are fields or even not directly science-related undertakings which may be considered more important by many, but on which the impact of space programs was in comparison very small.