More than 50 years ago, President John F. Kennedy captured the world’s imagination when he said, “This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
Wikimedia Commons. Hand-painted colorized frame from Georges Melies’ A trip to the moon.
And thus, the term moonshot entered the lexicon as shorthand for “a difficult or expensive task, the outcome of which is expected to have great significance.”
So, can the same kind of proclamation galvanize new generations to dream of cures for diseases or other grand ideas?
Let's take a look at the record
Yep. Started in 1990, by 2022 we had the first complete map of the human genome, thanks to the Human Genome Project. It was a landmark, international effort to unlock the secrets of our ingredients. We tap into this research and learn more about what can go wrong in the human body and how to fix it.
Progress. In 2010, Google spun off X, its "Moonshot Factory," where "a diverse group of inventors and entrepreneurs build and launch technologies that aim to improve the lives of millions, even billions, of people. Our goal: 10x impact on the world’s most intractable problems, not just 10% improvement."
The Moonshot Factory gave us Waymo (self-driving cars) and more. But check out what's under exploration. Projects include everything from harvesting clean water from the air to storing electricity as heat in molten salt. (Not every project makes it though. Plenty get discontinued.)
Progress. In 2013, then-President Obama launched another moonshot of sorts, challenging scientists to create a map of the human brain. The BRAIN initiative--or Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, sought to "produce a revolutionary new dynamic picture of the brain that, for the first time, shows how individual cells and complex neural circuits interact in both time and space." We're not quite there yet, but in 2023, researchers produced the first ever map of a whole mammalian brain: a mouse. Announcing the breakthrough the NIH explained why it matters:
"...This cellular map paves the way for a greater understanding of the human brain—arguably the most powerful computer in the world. The cell atlas also lays the foundation for the development of a new generation of precision therapeutics for people with mental and neurological disorders..."
Mouse brain coronal section. DataBase Center for Life Science. Creative Commons.
Progress. In 2022, President Biden reinvigorated the Cancer Moonshot. The goal: "...to reduce the death rate from cancer by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years, and improve the experience of people and their families living with and surviving cancer— and, by doing this and more, end cancer as we know it today."
What’s a moonshot, anyway?
Authors in the Harvard Business Review say:
"A good moonshot has three ingredients. First, it inspires. Reading Kennedy’s quote raises the spirit; a more typical corporate goal of increasing return on invested capital from 13.4% to 13.9%, not so much. That kind of financial target might be important, but it’s unlikely to get people to do extraordinary things. Second, it is credible. It’s easy to assume that a moonshot is just a ridiculous stretch target. But before Kennedy made his speech he had Vice President Johnson do a detailed assessment of underlying technological trends to ensure that the goal had a reasonable chance of success. Finally, it is imaginative. It isn’t an obvious extrapolation of what’s happening today (which for Kennedy would simply have been to fly farther into space), but something that offers a meaningful break from the past."
Google leadership expands that definition in a powerful way. A moonshot, to those at X, is:
A huge problem in the world that affects millions or billions of people.
A radical, sci-fi sounding solution that may seem impossible today.
A technology breakthrough that gives us a glimmer of hope that the solution could be possible in the next 5-10 years.
Are we still capable of moonshots?
Note none of these definitions mention money. Most moonshots take a lot of money. But mentioning money in the same breath as a moonshot undermines the definition, doesn’t it?
And yet, given X's (Google's) and others' experiences, can we still believe in moonshots? These Washington Post authors think that, when it comes to big tech companies, we cannot:
In "The age of silicon valley moonshots is over," they write that one issue is today's economy, forcing visionary companies to let go of the expensive big pursuits:
"Higher interest rates means the investment needed to keep spending on money-losing projects is getting harder to find, he said. Big Tech is “retrenching to protect their core business. And so I think you’re going to see them offloading one thing after another.”
They write that even Amazon was winding down "...its exploratory internal incubator, Grand Challenge. The team — at one point so secretive employees weren’t supposed to utter its name — worked on projects like Echo Frames, Amazon’s stab at smart glasses, and even cancer research, CNBC first reported in 2018."
Have hope
Companies are not the only entities with shots at the moon. We have governments, researchers, the international community. Pooling resources, not relying on the need to please shareholders, political will and the scope and urgency of the problem may still make moonshots not only possible, but essential.
What moon would you like to shoot for?
I’d have to agree about cancer research.