Why Curing Cancer Is Not a ‘Moonshot’

Here are some things that have been compared to moonshots: Google Books, nuclear fusion, Google Glass, artificial brains, drone delivery, getting from New York to London in one hour, a really big home run. Here are some things that actually are moonshots: going to the moon. Of all of the metaphors that have gotten shiny at the elbows, it’s the beleaguered “moonshot” that may be the worst. President Obama rolled it out again during his final State of the Union address when, expressing a desire to cure cancer once and for all, he called for a moonshot to get the job done. The audience applauded as audiences always do at moonshots, and it’s hard not to. The term evokes one of America’s finest and boldest moments, when the Soviet Union beat us into space with Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, and we responded with men on the moon less than 12 years later. But the problem with using that real moonshot to call for metaphorical moonshots is that it misunderstands both the stakes and the difficulty of actually accomplishing what it is you’re trying to do—making hard things seem easier than they are. Getting to the moon was undeniably an extraordinary thing. But we were further along when we began than most people realize. We knew how to build rockets—indeed we had already built plenty of them, though we called them missiles and put warheads instead of astronauts at the top. We similarly understood the physics of orbital and trans...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Cancer health moonshot NASA President Kennedy President Nixon President Obama state of the union War on Cancer Source Type: news