https://longnow.org/ideas/space-dead/
"When I was a young kid in the 90s, my dad and I made a bet. Actually, more of
a long bet. I wagered that humankind would put a person on Mars by 02020. I
lost.
As I was growing up — devouring sci-fi books, watching
Star Trek, poring over
Popular Mechanics, and even attending Space Camp — it just made sense that
humanity’s next steps into the universe were both inevitable and imminent.
Technology was improving, after all, and there seemed to be ever more
sophisticated proposals for how we’d travel to Mars and what we’d do when we
got there. I remember the illustrations: chunky spacecraft spinning through the
void, sleek domes sprouting like mushrooms out of rusty dirt.
And I wasn’t the only one. Kim Stanley Robinson’s
Red Mars — still considered
one of the most rigorous hard science fiction novels of all time — was
published in 01992. Robinson put the start of colonization at 02026, with the
first man on Mars some years before.
Yes, there’d been a lull after the high-flying moonshot 60s, but the space
shuttle and the international space station were still impressive feats: a
foothold in orbit. In 02004 Bush laid out a plan to go back to the moon by
02020, and send crewed missions to Mars as soon as 02030. There was talk of
commercializing space, space tourism, space mining, all of which seemed just
around the corner. Throughout the aughts I figured I might lose my childhood
bet, but it still felt like something was
happening.
Now all this feels naive, given what we know about the 21st century’s politics,
predilections, and challenges. In retrospect, Bush’s ambitions seem more like
muscular nationalist posturing, shoring up our image at a moment of declining
American popularity abroad. When Trump made the same promises and founded the
much mocked Space Force, it felt like a naked appeal to the nostalgia of his
aging Baby Boomer base. Nowadays anyone eager to put boots on Mars puts their
faith in the increasingly noxious and incoherent Elon Musk. While SpaceX has
become a real player in the rocketry sector, at this point I trust Elon’s grand
plans and promises even less than Trump’s."
Via
Fix the News:
https://fixthenews.com/279-breakneck-solarisation/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
