What Killed the Space Race?

[C C]

http://iainews.iai.tv/articles/science-f...e-auid-453

EXCERPT: Science fiction did, argues one of the genre's leading exponents, and it may have harmed the long-term future of the human species....

[stryder]

I wouldn't suggest that Science Fiction ended the space race.
Consider the point of H.G.Wells "War of the Worlds", and the 1938 radioplay headed by Orson Welles. It considered the moment that captivated the American public's attention in regards to space and the consideration that there might just be more out there than just chunks of rock floating through space. (It considered the forebearer to Ufology and alien conspiracies due to the Hysteria the performance caused where some people thought the world was actually under attack.)

Science fiction if anything has bolstered peoples imaginations and made them more open to the possibilities of doing things "off-world".

Furthermore is the case and point of the political extremes of that time and the strategies used during the cold war stand-off. Getting into space and "reaching for the moon" was literally a way to "chest pound" without the consequence of war. It would prove the economic and industrialist levels of those countries "Competing" to prove their dominance (after all any country that could do these things in such a short allotted time would prove they could bolster their technologies when necessary and have the finances to do so.)

Strategically it was also a drain on the resources of those countries that competed, which meant as the cold war crumbled the necessity of "chest pounding" was reduced and therefore budgets into space exploration were cut and suggests that "Privatisation" would be the best for any space faring future.

Space exploration and development is therefore unfortunately curbed by the financial state of companies and institutes, as opposed to having the blank cheque of a black budget.

[Yazata]

I wouldn't suggest that Science Fiction ended the space race.

I wouldn't either.

Science fiction if anything has bolstered peoples imaginations and made them more open to the possibilities of doing things "off-world".

Exactly. Science fiction helped drive space exploration. In the 1950's and 1960's, satellites and putting humans in space and on the Moon were the realization of a vision originally popularized in science fiction.

Furthermore is the case and point of the political extremes of that time and the strategies used during the cold war stand-off.  Getting into space and "reaching for the moon" was literally a way to "chest pound" without the consequence of war.

The idea of human beings venturing off the Earth into the infinite sea of space was exciting, it was something that people already wanted to do. Certainly we didn't want to find the Russians already there when we got there, but Cold-War rivalries weren't all there was to it.

(We competed with Russia in physics research too, but I don't think that we should dismiss the science of physics today as a nothing more than nationalistic posturing.)

If I had to speculate about what killed the human exploration of space, I'd say the Space Shuttle.

It was a glorious piece of engineering, but its name and marketing were an absolute disaster. The promise that it would make space travel routine was deadening. The public didn't want routine, it wanted adventure. The Space Shuttle singlehandedly demoted astronauts from being intrepid explorers to bus-drivers.

The Shuttle never delivered on the cost savings that a reusable vehicle had promised. It was so complex and difficult to maintain that it was all that NASA could do to keep it flying. There were no resources for anything else.

And sadly, it was never used for anything exciting, for anything that captured the public's imagination. In the early days there was talk about using it to launch the components of deep-space vehicles for orbital assembly, but that never happened. Instead, we got 'the International Space Station', a boring piece of hardware that was always in search of a mission. In a word, once we had the Space Shuttle, NASA ceased manned exploration of space. (Robot space vehicles thrill scientists, but they don't electrify the public the way manned expeditions would.)

The United States currently has no national means of putting a human being into space and it is struggling to restore the ability we had in the 1960's to launch smaller and less ambitious manned capsules. (None of which will fly humans for years yet.) There's lots of brave talk about going to Mars, but I don't expect to see it in my lifetime, assuming it ever happens at all, which I doubt.

[stryder]

If I had to speculate about what killed the human exploration of space, I'd say the Space Shuttle.

It was a glorious piece of engineering, but its name and marketing were an absolute disaster. The promise that it would make space travel routine was deadening. The public didn't want routine, it wanted adventure. The Space Shuttle singlehandedly demoted astronauts from being intrepid explorers to bus-drivers.

The Shuttle never delivered on the cost savings that a reusable vehicle had promised. It was so complex and difficult to maintain that it was all that NASA could do to keep it flying. There were no resources for anything else.

And sadly, it was never used for anything exciting, for anything that captured the public's imagination. In the early days there was talk about using it to launch the components of deep-space vehicles for orbital assembly, but that never happened. Instead, we got 'the International Space Station', a boring piece of hardware that was always in search of a mission. In a word, once we had the Space Shuttle, NASA ceased manned exploration of space. (Robot space vehicles thrill scientists, but they don't electrify the public the way manned expeditions would.)

The United States currently has no national means of putting a human being into space and it is struggling to restore the ability we had in the 1960's to launch smaller and less ambitious manned capsules. (None of which will fly humans for years yet.) There's lots of brave talk about going to Mars, but I don't expect to see it in my lifetime, assuming it ever happens at all, which I doubt.

I was at Coco Beach, Florida for the STS-135 Atlantis launch.  It was stated to be the last shuttle launch, although there was still satellite launches planned just after that.  I did like most tourists would have done in the area and visited Kennedy Space Center, so heard from an astronaut about what the plan was at the time when the shuttle was skuttled.  Originally the suggestion was that the Shuttle was to take the place of a mock shuttle exhibit at Kennedy, obviously you likely know that plan was changed and instead they decided to exhibit it on the other side of the US which required a whole bunch of issues getting it across country.

The suggest was that when the shuttle was decommissioned that NASA would still be involved in launches, however it was intending to use other countries to piggy back of until they had reworked their new Orion capsule (but based upon old) design of capsule launches.  The suggestion was that capsules are the safer way to launch people since there was more options and window for aborting if there is an emergency compared to a shuttle. 

It's also possible that if countries use capsule designs that there is the potential for there to be an industry standard with what volume fits inside and what mass the rockets are pre-calculated to handle.  Some of the cost of space exploration is about the calculations done to try and deal with dynamic payloads, keeping within certain parameters makes those costs a moot point.

[Magical Realist]

The idea of human beings venturing off the Earth into the infinite sea of space was exciting, it was something that people already wanted to do.

My vision of the perfect life as a 13 year old was being a crew member of the Starship Enterprise. It was the exciting prospect of encountering strange alien lifeforms, many of them far advanced to us, in an endless exploration of the Galaxy. World after world of endless possibilities, evolutionary novelties, and metaphysical implications. Ofcourse I had fallen for the slick Hollywood version of life, of always being the heros, and of never being defeated, and of always moving forward to new and awaiting adventures. Such was the escapism of bored awkward nerd being raised in a small South Texas town.