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I've been thinking about this a little bit lately, with all the hoopla around the 40th anniversary. The moon landing, in the public mind, was like Lewis & Clar
by davi 17y ago
I've been thinking about this a little bit lately, with all the hoopla around the 40th anniversary.
The moon landing, in the public mind, was like Lewis & Clark -- it was exploration, trail-blazing. But the point was that once the trail was blazed, everyone else could follow, like pioneers going to California in the early 20th century. There would be space colonies, the West was no longer West, it was... Up! Out!
But none of that happened. It turned out that space travel was for supermen, not the everyman. And the everyman turned away. Space was just another place, like the corner office of a skyscraper, that rich, privileged, educated people -- other people -- got to go. And with that, and the conquest of the Soviets that Wolfe describes, we turned away.
The companies trying to do it faster, cheaper, better, and for anyone who wants to go are the heirs to the original impetus. They may eventually deliver on the promise that originally attracted the national attention: that this was a new beginning.
- timwiseman 17y agoIt is all true. I am constantly hoping that the world, whether it be the public or the private sectors or a partnership, will return to the stars properly. It is long past time to begin the true exploration of mars.
- russell 17y agoThe Vietnam War killed our spirit for a generation. We had been defeated and were thrown into inner turmoil. Kennedy died and we got a succession of presidents with no vision, no spirit of wonder. NASA went from leadership to mediocrity. Wolfe gives us the metaphor of single combat, but we thought then that the space race was way better than the arms race. Then Johnson and Nixon dragged us through the Vietnam mud.
- rms 17y agoI think it's an accident of human history that we went to space so early. Can you imagine landing on the moon with computer technology circa 1969? It's an amazing accomplishment. It would have made more sense for the information technology revolution to come first. It's only now that more widespread space travel is even beginning to seem reachable.
- shpxnvz 17y agoBut the point was that once the trail was blazed, everyone else could follow, like pioneers going to California in the early 20th century. California had been explored by Europeans early by the 1500's, and you are talking about settlers in a period 400 years later. It's insane to expect that the process of settling a different celestial body would take a mere fifty years from first setting foot there. And that's just the moon - we haven't even set foot on Mars yet. When it comes to space travel you can't think in terms of things happening during your lifetime, which I suspect is really why the public has lost interest. People don't seem to care in the least about anything they won't live to see happen, be it environmental destruction, the results of reckless economic policy, or long-distance space travel.