> Also, War has undeniably driven technological advances throughout history.
The opportunity cost of a war is huge. It can easily be argued that it is larger than the perceived gain of a war. Objectively measuring those two costs is another matter, but there is nothing undeniable about it.
Let's pick WWII as an example. Rockets came out of it and put people on the moon. What if we had peace instead what would those rocket scientist have done instead? Likely they still would rockets and other vehicles, but their would have been input from more scientists and it would have taken a few extra years while those scientists made other things. The moon would have happened anyway, but probably in a more sustainable way than a postwar "space race". What about Nuclear power? Maybe delaying that a few years might equal the economic output of the two cities it obliterated. Another view, without the specter of nuclear war we could have built more of the cleanest and safest power source we ever devised and redirected all the labor on coal and oil to other areas that nearly limitless energy might provide.
But this assumes that even without war and the attention it brings, rocket scientists could get access to the materials and manpower needed to further their work. The space-race arguably leveraged national-pride and used it to create demand for rockets. Without it, they probably could never went past small-scale rockets and scaled up to where they are today.
Even if they did, you already admitted there'd be a delay to things without the "war-boost". If it's OK to delay things like this, why are we in such a rush to counter the effects of global warming? Sometimes, the short-term does matter - whether it means obliterating 2 cities or obliterating the fossil fuel industry.
Your argument about short term and long term cuts both ways.
It is quite likely that "Rocket Scientists" wouldn't still be "Rocket Scientists", but they certainly still would have been scientists. They would have worked on something. The Moon only a time sensitive goal because of the cold war, but global warming/climate change is time sensitive, because nature and basic human survival say so. If some of those scientists had been working in meteorology and climatology the state of climate science could easily be 10 years ahead of where it is now.
What about all the scientists that could have been, but were instead blown up by dropped bombs or doomed to mediocrity as they had to work to reconstruct after a war? What about all the people who didn't get education because the war disrupt their city's basic infrastructure?
Can any amount of a soft resource like "leveraged national-pride" measure up to an absolute increase in resources like "More living and productive people"?
> What if we had peace instead what would those rocket scientist have done instead?
Not gotten funding to build rockets in the first place, in large part.
OTOH, there is at least an argument that the labor involved would have been directed in a manner that would produce more benefit in the civilian economy had it not been centrally allocated to military priorities.
Your response describes the likeliest outcome, IMO. The resources von Braun got were plausible in the 40's only under a dictatorial nationstate waging a war.
You act though smart people like von Braun wouldn't have done something else productive. A no on a funding application is not a death sentence. Look at scientists like Norman Borlaug[1], he revolutionized food production and turned several countries from food importing to food exporting, without a war.
Surely von Braun and other rocket scientists are at least as smart as some kid from Iowa.
I was not assigning intrinsic value to alternative historical scenarios but estimating the resource cost of a rocket program in the 40's being out of reach in any other situation. US and USSR bootstrapped their programs based on V2 technology and then perfected their engines driven by the need to rain orbital nuclear death on top of each others without the chance of interception.
Functional space propulsion became as a side product of these murderous efforts.
Sure, we all would be probably happier if none of that had ever happened. The original topic was - would we have had rocket engines without ww2. Perhaps, but not as soon.
> Also, War has undeniably driven technological advances throughout history.
The opportunity cost of a war is huge. It can easily be argued that it is larger than the perceived gain of a war. Objectively measuring those two costs is another matter, but there is nothing undeniable about it.
Let's pick WWII as an example. Rockets came out of it and put people on the moon. What if we had peace instead what would those rocket scientist have done instead? Likely they still would rockets and other vehicles, but their would have been input from more scientists and it would have taken a few extra years while those scientists made other things. The moon would have happened anyway, but probably in a more sustainable way than a postwar "space race". What about Nuclear power? Maybe delaying that a few years might equal the economic output of the two cities it obliterated. Another view, without the specter of nuclear war we could have built more of the cleanest and safest power source we ever devised and redirected all the labor on coal and oil to other areas that nearly limitless energy might provide.