Feds on the Moon

[PattyLee loves dogs]

Please convince me that the Feds are really competent enough to have sent space-men to the moon a dozen times before 1972.

No one claims they did, there were six landings. But unless the laser reflectors were carried to the Moon by UFOs, and the radio transmissions were beamed back to Earth by secret robots, then there were at least a few landings. (Have to get back to you on the first one, can't remember if they put out any reflectors on that trip, or whether the universities and amateurs were already picking up the [very directional] signals).

It takes about the same energy to get into orbit as it does to fly from NH to Australia. Space travel has been technologically trivial since the late 1960s. As was ocean travel for the Ming dynasty... you should read my old article on the ominous parallels:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/walker2.html

[mackler]

[T]here's [one of] two things about NASA you need to consider. ...they weren't typical government bureucracies at that time. There was fierce competition with the Soviets driving innovation on both sides.

Now this is one thing I'm having a tough time getting my head around: the idea that the Federal Government was in "fierce competition" with the Soviet Government, as a basis for believing that all (or even many) of the otherwise inevitable institutional mechanisms that cause government to fail were not present during the time that, according to the moon theory, the Feds were sending agents to the lunar surface and back.

I will go partway down this line of reasoning, insofar as I recognize that it is the lack of competition that is behind most government failures.  There is easy evidence of this truth when one looks to two areas:  firsty, where government is forced to compete, for example the US Postal Service was suddenly enabled to deliver parcels overnight as soon as Federal Express began taking business away from them by doing so.  And second, evidence is provided by the government-like failures of private businesses that don't have to compete in a free market.  As someone who has been a customer of both Verizon and Comcast, I need no further proof that competition or it's absence explains most of not all of the failures of government solutions.

But I do not understand exactly how it was that the US Federal government was in "fierce competition" with the Soviet Government in a way that would have enabled either of them to achieve the greatest technological feat in human history.  What were they competing for?  And what was the price of losing that competition?  I can conceive of competition in several different forms.  There are athletic competitions, such as a marathon, or a baseball game.  There is market competition, where businesses compete with each other.  In all these forms of competition there are clear goals, and significant penalties for losing the competition, which one way or another translates into losing money, a job or both.  The car salesman wakes up every morning knowing that every customer who buys a car from his competitor will not buy one from him.  That is strong motivation to compete for the business of customers looking for cars.  If he doesn't achieve then he loses money and eventually goes out of business.

What I am not able to understand is what was the supposed motivation of the Federal bureaucrats during this storied period of history that made them do what government bureaucrats are never otherwise motivated to do?  You seem to be suggesting, Kevin, that back in the 1960s, Federal bureaucrats were waking up in the morning, thinking "somewhere on the other side of the planet is my competitor who is trying to send agents to the moon, and if I don't make sure that my bureaucracy sends agent to the moon first then ..."  Then what?

Was he going to lose his job?  No.  Bureaucrats never lose their job no matter how badly they screw up.  Not a single Federal employee lost his or her job as a result of September 11, arguably the biggest Federal screw-up in history, so it's fantasy to think anyone was going to lose their job for failing to achieve the greatest technological achievement in the history of humanity, a fantastically greater goal then simply providing basic security service.

Was it going to cost him any money if he didn't get some of his agents to the moon?  No, bureaucrats' salaries are not based on performance.  He was going to get paid one way or the other.  There's no motivation.

No, I'm afraid I just cannot understand what the statement "The Federal Government was in fierce competition with the Soviets" means exactly.  The Soviets put a satellite up.  Nobody got fired.  The Soviets put a monkey into orbit.  Nobody got fired.  Where's the competition?  Where's the incentive?

Right now, the Federal government is in "fierce competition" with the insurgents in Iraq.  Yet with all their billions of dollars they can barely maintain control of the Green Zone.  Just saying there is "competition" doesn't mean that there is the sort of market competition that actually works to weed out incompetency and reward achievement.  In the 1960s, the US Congress never considered canceling NASA's budget and paying the Soviets to do the job in their stead, so what exactly were they competing for?

If you really believe that competition of the sort that you're suggesting existed in the 1960s really works to enable government to achieve such astounding results, then you should support a national Federal medical insurance system, because all we have to do is be in "fierce competition" with Canada and other socialist countries, and our Federal Government will be able to achieve the greatest medical technological achievements in the history of humanity.  Now does anyone here really believe that would happen?

[John Edward Mercier]

Emotional fervor.

[Russell Kanning]

why do you want to be convinced that they went to the moon?

[KBCraig]

Now this is one thing I'm having a tough time getting my head around: the idea that the Federal Government was in "fierce competition" with the Soviet Government....
...
But I do not understand exactly how it was that the US Federal government was in "fierce competition" with the Soviet Government in a way that would have enabled either of them to achieve the greatest technological feat in human history.  What were they competing for?  And what was the price of losing that competition?

I don't ask this dismissively, but only to understand the context of your question: what year were you born?

I wasn't alive in the '50s, being born in 1963. Even so, my early public schooling was filled with stories of the terror caused by Sputnik, and the development of long-range nuclear missiles, the Rooskie threat, and how if we didn't beat the Reds in the arms and space races, we'd have to duck beneath our desks and kiss our butts goodbye.

Whether real or manufactured, that was the motivation to compete. And the public demanded it.

[Lloyd Danforth]

What Kevin said.

[Russell Kanning]

I once even had someone say that the space race was not even important for the government or the average person.
Not only was the race to space and the moon important ... the feds had to worry about that "bunker gap".

[mackler]

I don't consider "conspiracy theory" to automatically be a derogative or dismissive term.

Fair enough.  I guess my discomfort with the term comes from the fact that it is typically (mis)used in such a sense.

Definitely there are conspiracies, and sometimes people even go to jail for participating in them.

[mackler]

(Note: I appreciate the time people are taking to contribute to this thread.  I am trying to respond to the substantive posts more or less in order, and I know I'm a few days behind.  Please don't anyone think I am disregarding your comments because I am trying to proceed methodically through all the points people are raising.)

Why do you state that moon travel couldn't be repeated?

First, as to your question why did I state that moon travel couldn't be repeated, I don't recall making such a statement.  That said, I'm not aware that anyone who claims that Federal moon travel occurred in the first place also claims that it has ever been repeated (post 1972 if I understand the story correctly).  If it had happened in the first place it seems exceedingly unlikely it would have stopped.  Once the Feds send their agents somewhere they don't seem to display any tendency to abandon their occupation.  The Feds still have agents in Japan and Germany from WWII, as well as in most other countries in the world.  Obviously the expense of maintaining such occupations is no dissuasion for them to continue those programs.

The public did lose interest in repeated trips to the moon.

Next you suggest that termination of the supposed moon program occurred because the public lost interest in repeated trips to the moon.  I'm not sure when Federal Government activity has ever been based on public interest.  Does the public have an interest in Federal military forces occupying Japan?  I do not perceive any such interest, but that lack of interest does not seem to be a factor in Federal decision making.  Rather, it seems to me that the Feds do whatever they want, and they care little for the degree of public interest in their activities (except to the extent such public interest can be leveraged for PR value).

It was expensive and dangerous and offered little return on the expense.

You say the alleged moon program was "expensive and dangerous and offered little return on the expense."  That sounds like an accurate description of the Federal Government's current activities is Iraq and Afghanistan, but there is no end in sight to those endeavors.  In fact many more thousands of people have been killed in those projects than ever were even injured in the supposed moon project, which--according to the story that the believers tell--would have been quite safe by comparison.  I am not aware of any evidence that the Federal Government cares about either expense nor danger when choosing what projects to pursue. 

We were at the tail end of an expensive protracted and unpopular war. Scandal broke at the highest levels of government. People were fed up and pissed off and didn't want to throw any more money at the government.

You say that "People were fed up and pissed off and didn't want to throw any more money at the government."  Again, I have never seen anything in the way of evidence that Federal bureaucrats in their day-to-day operations care whether people are fed up or pissed off at what they are doing.  The Feds seem to do what they want,  and the "fed up and pissed off" people have no say in those activities.  If people being fed up and pissed off with government programs affected the behavior of Federal bureaucrats then the Federal Government wouldn't be paying farmers not to grow food, paying welfare queens to have babies, building bridges to nowhere, or 99% of all the other things it is constantly doing.

As far as "throwing money" at the government goes, I've never seen or heard of anyone throwing money at the government.  The government takes money by force, and displays a flagrant disregard for the opinions of those it's taking the money from.  To suggest that anyone ever throws money at the government is simply an inaccurate characterization of reality.

In general, you seem to be coming from a position that the people who call themselves the Federal Government choose their activities based on the desires of the people from whom they take money to fund themselves.  But the Federal Government will collect its money regardless of the satisfaction that those whose money it's taking have with the activities, so I see no realistic reason to suppose that the US Federal Government is the responsive institution you seem to be positing that it is.  If you have some evidence to the contrary, I'm interested in seeing it, but both all the evidence I've seen as well as my best attempts to apply logic and an understanding of human nature to the analysis lead me to the exact opposite conclusion.  Government is obscenely unresponsive to the wishes of "the people" and the US Federal Government is one of the least responsive governments going.

[John Edward Mercier]

The moon landing were emotional ferver (Public PR).

The Russians nor any other country ever attempted a lunar landing... so continually achieving something that no one cares about... isn't very good PR. Much the same as current planetary and deep space probe programs.

The moon does not to my knowledge have oil, nor the ability to stop the flow of oil... Iran does.
Now if you could get a politically connect corporation to take interest in manned lunar mission... I'm sure Congress would find the time to borrow the money for it.

[mackler]

The federal gov't didn't send men to the moon.
The federal gov't threw massive piles of money at smart people who were able to wade through the bullshit and accomplish a task.

I've never seen any evidence that having the government throw massive piles of money at smart people causes anything to happen other than the enrichment of the smart people.  Right now the government is throwing massive piles of money at private contractors in Iraq.  I've no doubt that the folks at Halliburton and KBR are smart, yet the taxpayers' money isn't buying electrical wiring that doesn't explode or even decent laundry service.  Certainly doing laundry or building a building doesn't take as much smarts as achieving the greatest technological feat in the history of humankind.

I understand where you're coming from.  At first blush your reasoning sounds good, especially since we all (or most of us) were raised to believe that paying more means getting more.  But when government is spending other peoples' money that's just not how it works...and the evidence shows it.   If having the government throw massive piles of money at a project enabled that project meet its goals, there would be no illegal drug use in the country, there would be no poverty, and Americans would be the most literate people on the planet.  Just because the paycheck doesn't have the name of a Federal Agency on it doesn't magically provide an incentive for people who will be paid regardless of their performance to work harder.

[error]

What's such a great technological feat about going to the moon? It's largely undergraduate level calculus and high explosives. People used to do math on paper, and fairly quickly, as I recall.

[KBCraig]

What's such a great technological feat about going to the moon? It's largely undergraduate level calculus and high explosives. People used to do math on paper, and fairly quickly, as I recall.

NASA was manned with people using sliderules through the mid-1980s.

[Russell Kanning]

If the government had to prove to you that they went to the moon ... or that those 19 arabs caused 9/11 ... without any help from the feds

... they couldn't do it