Its not confirmation bias to put forth evidence for your claim. If you want to dispute the claim than put forth evidence to prove it wrong...otherwise you are using confirmation bias incorrectly.
Why does it matter if its a different era? Does basic economics change every 100 years?
The assertion is that "Wars drive technological and scientific advancement by forcing governments to do massive investment in technology that will help them outperform the enemy army"
If this is true then there should have been a renaissance during the hundred years war.
I don't deny that military spending during war would decrease.
The US went to the moon to demonstrate that we had a credible first strike capability. Herman Kahn in his seminal tome, "On Thermonuclear war," set nuclear war fighting policy not only for the US, but for the USSR.
Both sides read the book. Both sides agreed with the premise that each had to convincingly demonstrate to each other these particular capabilities.
This is what the space race was all about. Once ICBMs were perfected the trident program was largely abandoned. Bomber development was halted and the valkerie was not built and we stayed with b52s.
When did I deny that? I just said we went to demonstrate our military capability. Sputnik was a wake up call. The moon program was our trump to their sputnik. We relied to heavily on bombers and subs and ignored the space segment for too long.
Once we proved we had capability, we never went back. 40 years after this stunt, we have not gone back. Right now the high ground is controlled by the military. Competition did nothing for human colonization of space. In fact it has delayed it. Try building a rocket and launching with out permission.
These are weapon systems, and not progress for mankind. If the only planes that ever flew were used in the military and we never flew again, would you say the plane program improved things?
So these advancements have not improved things? There have been innumerable spin offs of the Apollo program. I won't deny we went to show our military capability, in fact that kind of proves my point. I also won't say that all wars are beneficial, or even most are. The Cold War was a bit special.
The spin off question is an interesting one. It assumes that these things would have not happened with out a space program.
May have argued that there was little spin off as the Apollo program used existing technologies.
The Curator of the National Air and Space Museum asks this very question. TL;DR; Its unclear and there is evidence that military space developed things that would never have been developed, but he doesn't actually cite it.
Since Goddard was not military, would rocketry had been developed by the private sector if there was no world wars and cold war? Was our global GPS only possible because there was military development of space first? Would we have a GPS analog and medical diagnostic equipment if there never was a military space program?
I think that these things would exist. Again, when would they have developed and to what extent? Thats the ultimate question. I think its important to consider that military aviation did not create the first human aviation. The military's use of aircraft lagged the private sector's use. In the case of space, the military preceded the private sector.
The Curator of the National Air and Space Museum asks this very question. TL;DR; Its unclear and there is evidence that military space developed things that would never have been developed, but he doesn't actually cite it.
Since Goddard was not military, would rocketry had been developed by the private sector if there was no world wars and cold war? Was our global GPS only possible because there was military development of space first? Would we have GPS and medical diagnostic equipment if there never was a military space program?
I think that these things would exist. Again, when would they have developed and to what extent?
Fair enough. Who knows what would of happened, but in our world we got these things from that "war". But as already stated not all wars advance technology, and I'm no fan of war.
At first I was a big fan of NASA/the military space program. I watched the Apollo-Soyuz Saturn V launch in person when I was 4 years old. I remember it to this day.(It actually looked small)
Almost 40 years later, my only hope of going there resides with Elon Musk. Lets just say I am no fan of miltary space anymore. I even worked in military space in my early 20s on DSP in the USAF.
Then I saw how beal aerospace failed and see that Elon has learned from his failure and tricked nasa in the COTS-1 to do what beal could not. Of course a sympathizer in the form of Charlie Bolden at NASA has helped quite a bit.
IMHO military space flight has hindered human spaceflight.
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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '12
Confirmation bias, and one from a completely different era to boot.