Modern use of the word ‘moonshot’ mocks Apollo

Quote:<p>&gt; <i>Teller&#x27;s pragmatic, iterative, product-driven approach to innovation is the exact opposite of what the U.S. did after Kennedy charged it to &quot;commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.&quot; Letting Silicon Valley steal the term &quot;moonshot&quot; for projects with quite different management styles, success criteria, scales, and styles of innovation hurts our collective ability to understand just what NASA achieved 50 years ago and why nothing remotely comparable is actually under way today at Google, or anywhere else.</i>

Alternative explanation: it&#x27;s a hyperbole that recognizes, rather than mocks, the Apollo program.

Why am I not surprised that X is run by the grandson of the guy who tested the idea of using atomic bombs to dig canals and shooting down missiles with bomb-powered X-ray lasers.

Haigh is right. Unicorns, Moonshots, ... these days it&#x27;s even considered &quot;disruptive&quot; if you offer a couple of scooter for rent. Whom are you disrupting exactly?

It&#x27;s not that they mock Apollo, it&#x27;s just that they&#x27;re not talking about Apollo at all. Had the expression been &quot;starshot&quot;, or &quot;uranusshot&quot;, it would have been understood as mocking the Voyager story?

ACM just got the HN hug of death

The issue in my mind is that Teller didn&#x27;t really understand what the challenge was. The author of the article was pretty good in stating that it was a seemingly impossible task with a unrealistic deadline that got pulled off by a lot of engineering heroics.

Let me make sure I&#x27;m understanding this right: It&#x27;s not merely enough for it to be culturally taboo to criticize spending $20 billion a year on space missions -- we now have to watch out for accidental microaggressions?

And here I thought this was going to be a better way to to test my gql components...

It is a misleading metaphor. I work in cancer research where the current endeavor is called the Cancer Moonshot. Then again, it is probably better than in the 1970s when it was called the War on Cancer.

Archived version <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.fo&#x2F;TRUSa" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.fo&#x2F;TRUSa</a>

I don&#x27;t think an article with this clickbait headline should be on HN to be honest. Horrible &quot;journalism&quot;.

All meaning is saved and spent in equal measure.

The Valley is currently dead-set on spending all the good will &quot;tech&quot; has built over the decades and running away with the profits before people wise up to the fact they were promised tools but got Skinner Boxes and a corporate surveillance state.