Loonshots, and Why We Need Them

THE ORIGINS OF LOONSHOTS

When President John F. Kennedy?gave his "We choose to go to the Moon" speech on September 12, 1962, he declared to the public his plan to land a man 240,000 miles away on the Moon before 1970, and the term Moonshot was born. It spurred an incredible pursuit of an impossible goal, fueled by the cold war and space race with the Soviet Union.

Looking at the numbers, 400,000 Americans worked on the project. $25.4B was spent on the Apollo program, which would be more than $150B in today's dollars, and accounted for almost 4% of the federal budget. There were of course people who were disgruntled about the cost of going to the Moon, but the amount of hope and motivation that derived from it, was inspiring. The imagination of the world, whose eyes were locked on the TV screens to follow mankind's first lunar adventure, now found room to dream about the impossible.

However, after going back to the Moon a few times, the cold war had settled down. It became less politically popular to engage in a space race that now did not have much opposition, and the program lost its support and budget. The dream of Mars that people saw only a decade away from our first touchdown, was now pushed off.

REPURPOSING THE TERM, MOONSHOT

While the term 'Moonshot' originally meant taking a long shot, the use changed to describe a goal that requires a momentous leap forward. An ambitious lofty project undertaken without a clear sight of profitability, usually including considerable risks.

To give some examples, consider that at the end of his Presidential tenure, Barack Obama asked then Vice President Biden to head up a national effort in leading the Cancer Moonshot. There have also been other political calls for moon shots, for instance to stop climate change. Similarly, in the private sector Google X, now just X, now even runs what it calls a Moonshot Factory, which focuses on everything from self driving cars, to drone delivery and renewable energy storage systems.

"While the original Moonshot was specifically targeted in reaching the Moon by the end of the decade, the new era of Moonshots are broader, with less of a defined clear path."

There is not a lack of Moonshots being announced, albeit with smaller budgets and less clear defined destinations. That is not necessarily a bad thing. As Peter Diamandis states in his blog, which lists his Top-50 Moonshots, we are living during the age of Moonshots, a time where entrepreneurs and scientists are able to go ten times farther than ever before. Today's challenges do not have clear-cut finish lines, so maybe a less grandiose approach lets us cover more ground, with more chances of success.

THEN WHAT ARE LOONSHOTS, AND WHY DO WE NEED THEM?

According to the author Safi Bahcall, who coined the term, a Loonshot is an idea that was initially ridiculed, put down, or given little or no funding. The innovators behinds them thought of as anti-establishment, troublemakers, who want to rattle the status quo. Or simply crazy or unhinged.

Later, these crazy inventors and innovators, have sometimes saved lives (Akira Endo - Statins), saved countries (Alfred Loomis - Radar), or accomplished many other extraordinary achievements, often winning them Nobel prizes. You would think that when someone presents ideas such as using a beam to detect ships and airplanes, or a drug to reduce cholesterol, that they would be congratulated. However, often their ideas are rejected and they are ridiculed.

Consider the example of Ignaz Semmelweis, who was a Hungarian born gynecologist who discovered the connection between mortality in maternity wards and germs. In 1847, he proposed a then radical approach through handwashing using chlorinated lime solutions, which would help reduce mortality rates down to 1%. Instead of looking at his various publications, contemporaries ridiculed and dismissed his findings. Semmelweis suffered a nervous breakdown, and was committed to an asylum by his colleagues, where he was beaten by guards and died 14 days later from a gangrenous wound.

Not until 40 years later, did physicians begin scrubbing up before surgery. We may believe that this was a different time, and that we would be better at judging what innovation is feasible or possible, and when to reserve our ridicule. But are we?

• 1995 - Newsweek shared the truth about the internet, that no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works. A sentiment that a lot of so called experts agreed with at the time.
• Early 2000s - Scientists believed that Neutrinos did not have a mass, and when it was discovered that they did, all physics books needed to be changed.
• Today - Where we are still considering if we can leave CRISPR alone, regardless of how important it is to discoveries like the Covid 19 vaccines, or how dangerous it is left in the hands of those who do not place weight on aspects such as ethics.

We need to refrain from easily succumbing to ridicule when faced with innovative thinking that may seem extraordinary, unbelievable, or even crazy. Since large corporations rarely can be innovative on their own, they have to resort to acquisitions of smaller companies and startups. This means supporting researchers and entrepreneurs who are innovative and adaptive.

While Loonshot innovators usually have creative traits, and work within smaller fluid teams, they often do not have the ability to scaleup the ideas, never mind to commercialize them. We need corporations and the public sector to support these researchers and entrepreneurs, and surround them with supportive tools and resources. Like Bachall states in his book: "A Loonshot is very vulnerable in its early days. It needs to be promoted and shielded from the critics. The inventors feel the idea will speak and stand for itself, but that rarely happens."

Most entrepreneurship support organizations now correctly speak about the role failure plays in development of entrepreneurs. We cannot be afraid to fail, and similarly we cannot be afraid to challenge our own thinking and beliefs. Who knows, tomorrow may challenge something as fundamental as what was discovered through the double slit or delayed measurement experiments.