Gil Scott-Heron - Whitey On the Moon (Official Audio)

What Hacker News said

Recommends rospaya · 2018-07 · on “Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars”

There's a great Gil Scott Heron song with the same theme. In his case it was poverty and healthcare among African Americans in the 60s, not cancer. [this video]

Recommends lordlic · 2021-01 · on “One hull crack located in ISS, another one suspected”

No, the argument is that there's plenty to learn, and it's all very interesting, but it doesn't stand up against people's very real needs here on Earth. I'm about the biggest fan of space you'll find, but even I, sadly, find the ethical calculus unassailable. Manned spaceflight won't accrue material benefits for ten generations or much more, and meanwhile human beings are dying of treatable or curable diseases, suffering under poverty, and living without access to clean water. This spoken-word work from 1970 conveys the sentiment well: [this video]

Recommends bloak · 2021-07 · on “Whitey on the Moon”

Is this in some way related to Bezos and Musk's antics? There's a recording on YouTube. Only two minutes, worth a listen: [this video]

Cites rtpg · 2018-01 · on “The Google Lunar X Prize’s Race to the Moon Is Over. Nobody Won”

I think the debate forces an acknowledgement that the objectives themselves don't always have intrinsic value. I agree there's a lot of things that can be gotten from it like NASA funding, but many people do not really "know" the utility of going to the moon. For example, people will talk about mining on the moon, but I've only ever seen articles debunking the utility of this, and not a single in-depth analysis in favor of this. I might be looking in the wrong spots. My theory is that relatively few people can justify the value of these efforts convincingly. This is part of why NASA doesn't have a bigger budget. "Whitey on the moon"[0] has a ring of truth to it. Developing strong arguments f

Cites RA_Fisher · 2019-01 · on “New Horizons Reaches Ultima Thule”

Seems like a good time to reflect on the work: "Whitey on the Moon" [this video] It'd be one thing if this was private money, instead it comes out of the pocketbooks of those suffering. That's rarely acknowledged.

Cites theothermkn · 2019-03 · on “SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station”

> Do you ever wonder how people felt when they say Magellan or Captain Cook set off? Or, when they watched the Apollo missions happen? Yeah, I do wonder: [this video] I think how they feel probably depends on their perspective, their financial situation, their susceptibility to public relations, and so on. Let's say everything goes "great," and there are a million people living on Mars in 50 years. Will it matter to people dying in a war, or ailing next to an open sewer, or what-have-you back on Earth that there's some depressed Martians trapped in smelly cans and covered in perchlorate- and iron-laden dust 4 to 12 light minutes away? I don't think it will. I think that when many of us "wonder" o

Cites rjf72 · 2019-04 · on “The Notre Dame fire and the future of history”

It sometimes seems that democracy, somewhat paradoxically, trends towards division. The grand projects of times past were generally created by entities where their successor would generally be vested in their success. Be this in the form of religions organizations or non-democratic political entities such as monarchies. In democracy this kinship frequently does not exist between successive entities, and there is even often an effort to dismantle the works of a previous administration as well as blaming any faults on them. There are also basic democratic political problems. One very myopic, and very common, political argument is of the form: "You want to [do something amazing] while there's [

Cites sbr464 · 2019-05 · on “Blue Moon”

I’m not downvoting you (maybe mentally), it’s a valid point. It’s also been a long-standing perspective; Whitey on the moon, from 1969: [this video] And from the Atlantic: Moondoggle: The Forgotten Opposition to the Apollo Program [LINK] (I’m personally for moon and space missions, there will always be issues to overcome)