MOONSHOT: Does Project Apollo bring us to redefine humanity? [TALENT SEARCH]

A couple days ago I ran up a post, What’s a (metaphorical) moonshot? [TALENT SEARCH], where I looked at a couple of articles where Mercatus Center fellows talked of moonshots. I was looking for the metaphorical work done by the idea of ‘moonshots’, and I missed it. ‘Moonshots’, whatever they are, are obviously awesome. But why?

Why? The idea seems to carry the connotation that these are very risky ventures where success is not certain. That’s certainly what Tyler Cowen seems to think. After all he’s asserted that if most of his picks for Emergent Ventures aren’t failures, then he’s not doing it right (you’ll find the link in the previous post). But as Graboyes and Stossel pointed out (again, link in previous post), Project Apollo was not a particularly risky venture, not from an engineering point of view. We knew all the relevant physical principles. It was just a matter of getting the engineering right. The time table may have been a bit tricky, but as long as we’re willing to commit the resources success seemed certain. And it was.

So what’s the big deal?

THAT was the big deal, that success was all but certain. What does it imply about who and what we are that, when a nation set out to land a man on the moon within a decade, it did so? What does it mean that that (kind of) feat is within our capabilities

Mars too. Elon Musk says we could have a base on Mars by 2028. Do I believe him? Yes/no/I don’t know. But it’s the timing I’m iffy about, not the technical capability. If we’re willing to commit the resources, then YES, we can do it. Well, I’m also iffy about the psychological capacities of humans in a venture like that. But what kind of doubt it that?

On the other hand, while I think that computers will be doing some pretty interesting things in 2028, some of them not anticipated at the moment, I don’t think we’ll have common sense knowledge under control, nor do I think we’ll be anywhere near ‘artificial general intelligence’, whatever that is. In this domain we lack knowledge of the fundamental principles governing mental phenomena and so we’re just grope around trying this or that. Some things succeed spectacularly, others fail, but we don’t quite know why in either case. We’re accomplishing something, learning something, but just what, who the hell knows? We don’t. Not yet.

Back to moonshots. It seems to me that what underlies the metaphor’s power is the simple fact that, YES, we set out to land a man on the moon and we did it, on time and on budget (I think). What’s awesome about Project Apollo isn’t that it was a crapshoot that came through. Rather, what’s awesome is that it WASN’T a crapshoot and there was little substantial doubt that we would succeed (at least not among the engineers and scientists who planned and designed the mission). That such a thing is now within human capacity, THAT’S WHAT’S AWESOME.

Addendum, 11.25.18: Posted to my Facebook page:

Dictionary, language, word friends, I'm interested in when and how the idea of a "moonshot" became a metaphor meaning roughly, "a highly improbable undertaking but of possibly high value if successful". The reason that interests me is that the vehicle, in one terminology, of the metaphor is obviously Project Apollo. But success was not highly improbable. There were no unknown laws of physics etc. involved. It was a highly focused engineering venture, one that, given time and resources, was all but certain to succeed. As for its value, well, how do we determine that? But it was funded as a propaganda effort in the Cold War (though I doubt that's how the people involved in the project thought of it). That is to say, Project Apollo was NOT a moonshot in the metaphorical sense.

So, how and when did that come about? The OED might tell you something, but I don't have access. I checked the BYU corpus of contemporary American English. It's earliest example (and it only goes back to 1990) is from 1995, and that was clearly metaphorical.

Google Ngram is sparse and enigmatic. Thus from 1979, New York Holstein-Friesian News: "ALSO: A Redwood Ramona Moonshot with 1st calf from a dam with 17,767 3.5% 619 in 288d at 3-0." Further googling reveals "Redwood Ramona Moonshot" to be a bull in Livingston County NY, just how prolific I can't say. And then there's Glenmore Moonshot, a horse of some distinction back in 1982. And "the town of Moonshot, Oregon, is experiencing a rapid growth of population because of the recent relocation of an assembly plant for hand calculators near the town." From 1976, "But the real news is that short days, at least in the case of the Galores and Moonshot types result in substantially earlier flowering — and substantially dwarfer plants." So, we've got moonshot animals, moonshot flowers, and a town. All of which is really quite interesting. But I don't know what to do about it.

Thoughts?