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Comment by Dalewyn

5 days ago

>Air travel has really only become commonplace fairly recently.

Air travel has been mundane for at least the better part of a century now. Just to remind us all how old we are: The Boeing 747 first flew in 1969 and went into initial service with Pan Am in 1970, that's 55 years ago.

>Space travel was rare and extremely expensive

I said quick and mundane which the Space Shuttle accomplished in spades. Nobody talks about going to space anymore unless something is particularly novel.

>As to culture and militarily some of this depends on how western you view Russia.

Russia was never considered Western: Politically they have been considered east of Eastern Europe since ye olde days and "Second World" post-WW2. Religiously they were always the Russian Orthodoxy and the various Orthodox Churches all have eastern-to-Europe vibes.

>But, the US was cautious of China all the way back in the Korean War well before Vietnam when we did the same.

And arguably not cautious enough, including to this very day.

>we’re better off economically,

The stock market is having the time of its life, but that isn't entirely reflective of the real economy.

Remember that Harris lost this election ultimately because of the bad (or at least perceived as bad) economy.

>militarily

A lot of Western military still uses hardware from 50 years ago, and even the so-called latest is 20-ish years old on average.

I also question the real efficacy of Western militaries when placed in an actual peer war. We talk big, but the US has also lost practically every single war in the modern era against inferior enemies.

>technologically

Nearly all of the bleeding edge technology is manufactured in the East. Even if the West produces the ideas on paper, it's the East which actually turns them into practical and tangible reality.

Also, new isn't necessarily better. Russia and Ukraine are both demonstrating quite viciously that dumb-and-cheap might be better. Ukraine has already called out the M-1 Abrams as useless in today's battlefields without certain modifications, which the US military and industrial complex are refusing to entertain.

3 comments

Dalewyn

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Retric  4 days ago

Mundane != commonplace, in 1969 when the very first 747 entered service there was exactly 1 of them in service. It took a long time to build up an actual fleet of them.

Aircraft are a durable good, 20 year old aircraft are in regular service even today.

> quick and mundane which the Space Shuttle accomplished in spades.

Again perception not reality, from 1981 to 2011 each shuttle averaged roughly 1 flight per year. The program was paused twice for multiple years after each failure.

It was very much still an experimental program where they where they constantly tweaked things not a mundane just do everything the same every time kind of thing. “Shuttle main engines 104 percent” because the RS 25 went through a series of upgrades. FMOF, Phase I, Phase II (RS-25A), Block I (RS-25B), Block IA (RS-25B), Block IIA (RS-25C), Block II (RS-25D): First flown on STS-104.

> Russia was never considered Western

So rather than falling, that suggests an overall trend of political ascendancy of the west through at least the fall of the USSR in 1991.

> perceived as bad) economy

Perception has become wildly devoid of reality. The US economy handled COVID amazingly well, but we’ve become so used to success we don’t even understand what it means to suffer minimal issues. We’ve had such long term success we’ve forgotten what failure looks like, that’s about the opposite of failure.

  • Dalewyn  4 days ago

    >in 1969 when the very first 747 entered service there was exactly 1 of them in service.

    Yeah, and also in 1969 air travel was already mundane.

    >that suggests an overall trend of political ascendancy of the west through at least the fall of the USSR in 1991.

    I did argue the peak of the West was in the mid to late 20th century.

    >We’ve had such long term success we’ve forgotten what failure looks like.

    The 2008 Great Recession was the latest significant failure, though even that was actually pretty mild as failures go.

    Nonetheless the economy today is bad, because Main Street says it's bad. Complaints of inflation, stagnant wages, rising costs of living, among others are all real.

    I suppose if there's any consolation, at least a head of cabbage doesn't cost around $7 dollars here (yet?) unlike in Japan.[1]

    [1]: https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15582870