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Subject: Space Age: RIP
Time: 5:48:00 AM EDT
Author: stuartatk
WELCOME TO CARNIVAL OF SPACE and UNIVERSE TODAY readers! :-)
The world changed forever on October 4th 1957 when Sputnik 1 – little more than a small, reflective ball that resembled one of Stephen Baxter’s enigmatic “Silver Ghost” aliens with 4 pencils sticking out of it and carrying a radio transmitter – entered orbit around the astounded planet Earth, and, beeping like a demented R2D2, heralded the glorious dawn of a glorious new age.
Oh, and what an Age it promised to be! An Age of noble astronauts working and living on the Moon, and striding across the rocky, canal-crossed surface of Mars with its Alpine blue sky; an Age of gracefully-spinning, wheel-shaped space stations, serviced by gleaming PanAm passenger spaceplanes complete with fashionably-dressed stewardesses; an Age of sharp-finned, sleek rockets thundering into the sky one after another in a relentless exodus of scientists, adventurers and explorers from Earth out into the void, to seek out new worlds and push back the new frontier with ever-increasing passion and determination…
Historians have christened this Age “The Space Age”, and it began 50 years ago this Thursday.
50 years later, the time has come to declare the Space Age - or at least the first Space Age - dead.
What? The Space Age, dead? What is he saying? Is he crazy?
No, I’m not crazy. The Space Age is dead, it died of starvation and neglect, somewhere around 1980. Yes, we fed it and gave it money while it was young, and exciting, and sexy, while our love for it was bright and new, but when it got older, and needed more expensive care and more of our time and understanding we guided it to a comfy chair over on the far side of the room, made it a cup of tea, handed it a magazine and left it to look after itself instead of giving it something useful and stimulating to do. Time passed, and we didn’t hear its calls for help because we were too busy wooing anew Age, the Computer Age, and then quickly and fickly moved on to The InternetAge. And so when the Space Age started to look sick, and tired, we hoisted it into a wheelchair, put it in a corner, and left it to die while we went out partying with Yahoo, and Google, and Windows and iPods and all their fancy friends. The Space Age effectively died of abuse. Now it’s time to lower its creaking coffin into the ground, toss a handful of soil onto it, and walk away into the rain under our umbrellas, mourning its passing, wondering, in vain, What Might Have Been if Things Had Been Different, simply denying our own role in its shameful death.
Let’s face it, we don’t live in a “Space Age” anymore because we don’t send people into space anymore. We send them up. Yes, we send them up very high, but they still only go up, up as far as the docking port of the International Space Station and no farther. Today, half a century after Sputnik’s plaintive bleeping sent seismic tremors through the whole planet and all its people, we haven’t the technology, or the money, or the political will – or, let’s be honest, the guts - to go beyond a safe EVA’s distance from an ISS airlock. We’ve stalled. Where once space thrilled us as a race, as a species, now it chills us. Where once space called out to us like the siren songs of mermaids on the edge of a glittering, beckoning ocean, now it moans at us like a wraith from the dark depths of a forest.
Space isn’t a frontier anymore, it’s a barrier, a wall. And it’s a wall that is getting taller, and thicker, and stronger, with each passing year.
The truth is we’ve exiled ourselves here on Earth. Half a century ago we saw the cosmic ocean glittering like a silver line on the horizon and ran to it, laughing andjumping with the joy of children exploring somewhere new, shedding socks and shoes on the way – only to dip a toe into that ocean and, seeing how huge it actually was, feeling how cold and deep its waters actually were, turned and ran back to the safety of the grassy dunes again.
What the hell were we thinking? No, seriously, what the hell were we thinking? We had a beach-head in space; we’d stepped off the Earth and started to become a multi-planet species, a species capable of surviving an asteroid impact, or a nuclear war, or population crises. We’d just started to Think Big, to dare to dream, to look beyond our own close horizon to the world beyond, and we turned away from it all. We ran back from the Moon with our tail between our legs, whimpering, cowering from the darkness, frightened by its immensity.
Watching shuddery footage of Neil Armstrong descending Eagle’s ladder, and of Dave Scott standing wide-eyed with wonder on the edge of Hadley Rille, the historians of the future, sitting around their holographic displays in the grand museums and universities of the worlds circling 51 Pegasi and other exotic star systems will shake their heads in disbelief and pity and contempt at what we did after Apollo. They’ll think us timid at best, cowards at worst, for how we fled from the future. They’ll debate endlessly the reasons why, instead of keeping going, instead of settling the Moon, reaching out for Mars and spreading across the solar system as is our destiny we came home, shut the door, turned off all the lights and went to bed, pulling the covers over our heads so we wouldn’t have to see the Moon and planets and stars shining seductively through the window.
God, if we'd just kept going... don't you ever wonder what it would be like now? What kind of world we would be living in? We would wake up, go online and read the latest blog entries from the latest martian expedition, with an update on their drive through Valles Marineris. We'd buy a paper from the corner store on the way to work and see pictures of the latest extension to Moonbase, cranes lowering another big module into place... at work we'd be asked by a colleague if we'd seen the previous evening's documentary about preparations to launch the first manned fly-by mission of Vesta... and on the bus or train home we'd look out the window and gaze up at a sky with half a dozen Venus-bright space stations arcing across the heavens, and see the campfire lights of several outposts glittering on the dark face of the Moon...
It makes me want to scream at the sky “I’m sorry! We were stupid! Forgive us!” and hope my words reach the citizens of the future, it really does. Whenever I stand outside on a clear and frosty night, looking into my telescope, I feel thrilled by what I can see, but guilty for what we, Mankind, threw away. When I pull away from the eyepiece and see the Moon shining lantern-bright in the sky I have to remind myself that We Went There, it doesn’t seem possible, even though I know it happened because I lived through it, or at least the latter stages of it. I go into schools to give Outreach presentations about astronomy and spaceflight, talk about Apollo to kids of 5 and 6 and see blank “So what?” faces staring back at me. I want to shout at them “For pity’s sake, we went to the Moon once!”, but it’s not even history to them, it’s a fairytale, a work of fantasy like the adventures of Harry Potter or the heroes and heroines in their latest favourite computer game.
And I stand there at the front of the class, looking at the whitescreen showing that immortal, iconic image of Buzz Aldrin standing on the Moon, and I could cry. I feel helpless. None of them Get it, or even care, that once people, men from Earth, thundered into the sky atop cathedral tower tall rockets that belched fire and flame like an enraged dragon, then landed and walked on the surface of the Moon. Not just once, but six times! Twelve evolved monkeys from Earth stood on the Moon, picked up Moon rocks with their gloved monkey paws, looked up at the coal-black sky and saw Earth, Home, shining there like a Christmas tree bauble… and none followed them. The ladder we’d built to the Moon was pulled away and chopped up for firewood, and instead of aiming for the Moon and stars we turned inwards,
And then, dutifully, like a good boy, I tell those same kids how they’ll have the chance to go to the Moon, or maybe Mars, when they grow up. How, if they work hard enough, they’ll have the chance to follow in Armstrong and Aldrin’s footsteps and maybe even be the first to find life on Mars because “We’re going back to the Moon – and beyond!” with Ares and Orion and the Vision for Space Exploration.
Ah yes, the VSE. I’ve no doubt that the men and women at NASA given the task of turning that Vision into a reality are of good faith and stout heart, and will work themselves into the ground to return astronauts to the Moon and send the first explorers to Mars, but the truth is that the VSE is going to be a big, fat, dollar-stuffed sitting duck for ambitious, vote-chasing politicians for the next two decades. NASA’s top guy Michael Griffin recently let slip that the aim is to have people on Mars by 2037. No, sorry, 2037 just isn’t good enough. If that’s the date they have in mind now, that date will inevitably slip further down the timeline, not just once, but again and again until we’ll be lucky if we see a boot being scrunched into the martian duricrust before 2050.
Besides, the problem with 2037 isn’t that it’s 30 years away, it’s that it’s at least 4 US Presidents away, and any one of them could slash the VSE’s budget enough to murder it. I believe the VSE will suffer death by a thousand budget cuts, each new President quietly trimming its budget here and there until it simply dies from blood loss.
And all the while India, China and even Russia will be eyeing the Moon and Mars hungrily and greedily. When the first US astronauts set foot on the Red Planet, chances are they’ll be met by a welcoming committee of beaming Russians, Indians and Chinese, bearing trays of Borsch, samosas and noodles while their nations’ flags flutter behind them…
To be honest, I’ve reached the stage where I don’t actually care any more who gets to Mars or the Moon first, as long as someone goes soon, while I’m still alive. I’ve grown up believing that I’d see, at the very least, a small Moonbase and the first few manned expeditions to Mars before I died, but now I’m not so sure. In 2037 I’ll be 72 – good god, 72!!!!!! – and if I want to watch the 3D TV coverage of the First Landing I’ll probably have to fight other residents in the Care Home for the remote control.
I think it’s pretty clear now that unless an unmanned martian probe makes a stunning discovery on Mars – i.e. life – then for the foreseeable future Mars and indeed the solar system will belong to unmanned spaceprobes, those fragile metal and glass butterflies we send fluttering from our hands to study and photograph Earth’s sister worlds. No-one can debate that unmanned probes such as Voyager, Galileo and Cassini have revolutionised our knowledge and understanding of the solar system, and many think that we should surrender the solar system – and space exploration itself – to them, forgetting all thoughts of planting bootprints in alien dirt. That’s a debate for another time. But it’s clear as the 50th anniversary of Sputnik’s launch approaches that, for now at least, Sol’s planetary empire is the sole domain of Mankind’s robot ambassadors, and that for another generation the only eyes that will stare out upon alien vistas will be mechanical ones.
What annoys me most of all is that the Powers That Be just don't Get it! We are the first generation in history - in history - to have the capability, and therefore the responsibility, to ensure that human civilisation and culture, and the actual species itself, would survive a planetary catastrophe, natural or man-made, by getting people - a limited number of people, admittedly - off planet and setting up colonies or even just outposts offworld, to preserve everything we've done and achieved. If we perish before there are humans living, independantly, on the Moon or Mars, or even just in orbit, then so does Mozart, Turner, Shakespeare, Einstein, Plato, Galileo and every other great man and woman who ever lived, along with every work of art, every piece of music and invention we have ever made. Therefore we have a solemn and heavy responsibility to ensure their preservation, so all of human history and evolution, all the wars, the massacres, the diseases and plagues and epidemics we faced and survived weren't in vain.
So what might change this rather sorry state of affairs? As the mourners drift away from the graveside of the first Space Age, listening to the rain pit-patting against their umbrellas, what could trigger a Second Space Age? What, or who, could initiate the Big Push out into the solar system?
Well, not NASA, that’s clear. If the spirit and determination and belief of NASA’s men and women could be harnessed and used to propel spacecraft we’d have had colonies as far out as Triton by now, because those men and women work themselves into the ground to open up the Frontier. But the truth is that NASA funded by the US Government, and is essentially a body in the water totally at the mercy of politicians who circle it endlessly like sharks scenting blood. For NASA to be guaranteed of landing people on the Moon and Mars via the VSE it will take the emergence of another Kennedy, and that’s just not going to happen. The world has changed, that boat has left the harbour. Modern politicians care nothing for dreams and vision. Push away all thoughts of a US President standing on a podium and announcing a martian Apollo, it’s just not going to happen.
Private companies then? The big players in what’s been christened “NewSpace”? Probably not, at least not yet; all the NewSpace companies are working towards suborbital and then orbital flights, the Moon and Mars are waaaay over their horizons. Which is fair enough, we can’t criticise them for that. By building the first railroad up to low Earth orbit in the way they hope to they will open up space for many, many people – poets, musicians, teachers and even, god help us, politicians - and the consequences of that, and the effects on our culture, just can’t be imagined.
What about international co-operation? Ha, don’t make me laugh! The “International Community” can’t co-operate on much smaller ventures down here on Earth, there are too many interests and political points to score, so if we wait for the world’s Powers and Superpowers to all join hands and skip happily to Mars together we’ll still be waiting in a century.
No, I think it’s down to the “Mavericks”, small groups of adventurers, entrepreneurs and filthy-rich businessmen who miss having a frontier to poke in the eye, and are basically bored and want a new challenge. If a small group of people have a big dream and a big budget to go with it, they can get things done, so perhaps we’ll see a small group beat NASA and China and India and all the others to the Moon and maybe even Mars with “bootstrap” technology.
But that’s all in the future. Right now, I’m not sure if I’m going to celebrate Sputnik’s anniversary or not. I want to, don’t get me wrong; we’ve achieved amazing things in the last 50 years, and my generation will go down inhistory as The generation that saw the planets of the solar system transformed from mere points of light in the night sky to incredible worlds with their own canyons, valleys and landscapes…
There is light on the horizon tho. On Thursday the Japanese SELENE probe is due to go into orbit around the Moon, and will begin what might possibly be an era of uninterrupted human presence at Earth's natural satellite: SELENE will be followed by other orbiters, then the Lunar X-Prize rovers and, eventually people, so barring some catastrophe or absolute retreat from space we could be seeing the dawn of the next Space Age, an Age where there will always be machines or people orbiting or on the Moon. That's something to celebrate, definitely...
...but I can’t shake this grumpy, growly feeling that somewhere along the line someone stole a much brighter future, a more exciting future - MY future - from me.
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That's a good post, Stuart - a bit of a rant, but mostly justified. I feel much the same way - how could we NOT carry on after getting so far so soon? How can we not build lifeboats to preserve the human species if we can do it? We know the political reasons and all the rest, and we know that people have different priorities and that one person's "vision" (a deep appreciation of future possibilities) is another person's "vision" (hallucination or fantasy). People's assumptions vary too, even the most fundamental ones. Are we (humans) really special, really worth saving? I happen to think so - maybe the ants are more successful in the size and diversity of their societies and probably in biomass, but I happen to think that our intelligence DOES make us special. We are the only species who CARES about other species and whether they (or we) are worth saving. Or even has a concept of caring about other species! Every other species "just is" (not that this gives us the right to wipe out other species or anything, Earth is a heck of a complex system, ecosystems are valuable, we are part of nature, etc.).
But some people (surprisingly including my wife) think that to some extent we humans are a mixed blessing on this planet, and if an asteroid wipes out our civilization and leaves mostly ants and bacteria, well, so be it. Maybe something better will evolve.
Anyway, there is reason for hope and wonder in what has been done, in the fact that we are still doing SOMETHING in space, that there is a private space movement and a Google Lunar X-Prize and a Chinese space program and all sorts of other stuff. And a lot of good music. Let a thousand flowers bloom. And keep doing those outreach programs - a few of those kids will Get It I'm sure. I'm working on that part too (not as many events per year as you seem to do, but I'm just getting started), as are many other people. Things could certainly be a lot worse.
Cheers,
Bruce
http://flyingsinger.b -
Ah, ya don't know ya born, lad! I was 25 years old when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. Looking back, I am amazed at the technological progess, and that it is even possible to look at pictures on a computer in my own home from the planets soon after they are captured. I am even more amazed that governments pour billions into such missions. I think it is too early for manned exploration of the solar system; it would be prudent to continue to develop more efficient ways of lifting smelly bags of water before sending them out into the cosmos... ;-)
Like most astronauts, guys like Von Braun were ego-maniacs, they just wanted to get their face on every newspaper and TV newscast. Their promises were fairytales even at the time, and as such were/are worthless. Something that has no value (beyond PR spin) cannot be stolen. Be happy for being alive - live for now, not tomorrow. :-)
10/15/07 5:30 PM
A. Gardener