But that's incorrect, we can go back to the moon any time, there just hasn't been a strong enough incentive to really make the cost worth it for either science or commerce until recently.
We don't need make-work in 2025, spending 4% of the Federal budget on Apollo to push the edge and accelerate ICBM development. We have rockets and invisible jets, now we're scaling down to drones, etc that are dominating future warfare.
They cant rebuild Saturn V (well they can now they reverse engineered the engine) but they literally are going back, its just the most junkyard expensive nonsense in Artemis.
We have two left ( Saturn V first stages ), and nine engines, and the engines are absolutely unique. Many scientists say that they cannot be reproduced.
"Reproducing the Saturn V rocket engines, specifically the F-1 engines used on the first stage, is a highly complex task due to their immense size, powerful thrust, and intricate design, requiring advanced engineering and manufacturing capabilities to accurately replicate the combustion chamber, fuel injectors, nozzle, and other critical components, making it a significant undertaking even for modern aerospace companies; essentially, recreating them would involve detailed reverse engineering of the original designs, access to specialized materials and manufacturing techniques, and extensive testing to ensure proper functionality and safety. "
My understanding, based on a documentary I watched, is that a bit of funding for Artemis bled off into a reverse engineering study, where they designed a new one, but Artemis went with the shuttle engines in the end so it never got produced.
The Apollo program cost the United States $25.8 billion between 1960 and 1973, which is equivalent to about $318 billion in 2023 dollars. The Apollo 11 mission alone cost about $355 million in 1969 dollars, They had over 23,000 engineers on the ground. Now there are less than 3,000.
For other's reference, the F-35 program is expected to cost $2 trillion dollars [0], and each jet costs roughly $100 million [1]. We have about 1,100 of them [2].
Conclusion, money isn't preventing us from sending people to the moon.
It's not really accurate to say that we can't go back to the moon. Setting aside the fact that there have been a number of successful unmanned lunar missions in recent years, whenever your point gets made, it usually glosses over why people make that claim.
The immediate answer is that we simply weren't interested in supporting major new manned missions. Manned spaceflight in general requires serious, ongoing political support across administrations. At the height of the space race, public support pretty much never rose above 50 percent in the United States.[1] The literal high mark was 53% immediately after Apollo 11 successfully landed on the moon, which is honestly mind-boggling to think about. We've completely white-washed the existence of serious political opposition[1] to the Apollo program that plagued it from the beginning to the end because--looking back--it seems almost absurd, as if the very idea that half the country had no interest in going to the moon is an insult to the American psyche.
It's honestly amazing that we managed to follow up with the Space Shuttle at all. The STS program was shaped by a great many compromises NASA had to make in order to elicit political
and military support. John Logsdon's After Apollo is a wonderful read on the subject.
Anyhow, it's not like we can't go back. It's not like orbital mechanics changed on us at some point and now we're all stuck in LEO. It's just a political choice, and we can make a new one whenever we want. It's just hard, in large part because we don't have the cold war and constant fear of imminent nuclear war to push the program through congress.
Beyond the political, to go back means redesigning everything that was done for Apollo. That's not a slight on American engineering or manufacturing capabilities. Everything--from the Saturn V, to the lunar module, and the countless pieces of equipment that helped get both where they needed to go--was designed for the manufacturing capabilities and techniques of the 1960s. You can't just grab the plans for the old Rocketdyne F-1 and start building them anew. The welds alone[2] represent a fundamental shift in capabilities and thinking. Common CAD design and analysis programs would have had Apollo engineers singing in the hallways in joy once they got over the shock.
They took what they had, and they made it work brilliantly. Change that context, and they would have designed a different engine, and the same goes for everything else.
It's interesting how the “scientific we” is used for “we... go to the Moon”, where most folks seem to be referring to the USA? Or the subset of nations with capable space programs, excluding China? But the people writing, “we”: are they engineers working for NASA, or parroting the P.R.?
Because I personally haven't landed on the Moon, and I don't plan to, but “we” is typically assumed to include the speaker.
I'm beginning to suspect that those who perpetuate the meme of “we never landed on the Moon” are coyly defining “we” in a restrictive way that excludes the astronauts who did. “We [our family in California] never landed there!”
Cheap word-games. See also, political slogans designed to be misinterpreted and energize the base.
You have politicians in UK arguing first cousin marriage to be ok.
Welcome back to 14th century
The fact that politicians had to add law to ban it in the first place is ridiculous on its own. Everyone knows its an insets and it causes birth defects etc.
What next ban sticking fork in a socket. Ban drinking bleach?
There is a difference between the question “LLMs don’t understand Bells Theorem what does this tell us about physics” and “LLMs don’t understand Bells Theorem what does this tell us about LLMs”.
For a given game there are often multiple categories. With rules for each. Some forbid some exploits, some complete game as fast as possible some 100% it.
When a new tech gets discovered there might be a debate if it belongs to certain categories or not.
Even abused children can be loyal to their parents because they're scared of consequences, and often desperate for love and validation back, or at the very least attention. Some of my friends are still trapped in abusive living situations and it's absolutely heartbreaking to see what bad enough parents can do to someone.
You may be interested to know that some extremist biased guts-be-more-dignified-than-cortex outlets around the world are named "The Truth" (I follow the press from many places).
The failure of education in teaching Critical Thinking around the world is massive. It would be a good idea to focus on how to exploit LLMs to improve the situation.
Also because, given the situation, the same "forces" that promote viscerality shamelessly naming it "The Truth" could have the opposite idea about chatbots and similar areas, exploiting them in their direction...
We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. You simply can't do this here, regardless of how provocative another commenter is or you feel they are.
Here is a small kicker. Human brains absolutely do the same.
I split brain patients there are behaviours initiated by one hemisphere not known to the other (due to severed connection) and the person part of brain will make up a reason (often quite stupid) for the action and beleive it 100%.
It's eirely similar to hallucinations of ai.
That said a current llms are not aware, but are starting to act more and more like it.
I had a similar insight (blog post: [link redacted]).
In a very unscientific way, I would say that the LLM is not the whole brain, it's part of it and we are still in the process of simulating other parts. But it does seem to me like we've solved the hard part, and it's astonishing to me that people like authors of this article seem to think that the current state of things is where evolution stops.
The brain works through flow of stimulation. Inputs and outputs probably creating consciousness somehow. LLMs are limited in self stimulation and it's memory model is very basic compare to humans.
But I feel most people come with gut feeling position that we have divine spark that makes us tick. And the view that we might be more basic even crude akin to LLMs makes them uneasy.
