The road to hell is paved with good intentions and I was hoping to commemorate the 49th anniversary of the moon landing this month, but as i'm away in the Med, the date passed me by. Not a milestone as such until 2019, but worth remembering those heady days of the moon shot and the space race, when everything was geared towards astronauts and spaceflight.
These days deep space seems a little ordinary now, as we can routinely scan transmissions from the ephemera, view unprocessed images of space and receive tweets from a robotic messenger on Mars.
The wonder of the cosmos seems to have paled into insignificance and the myth about the staged lunar landing still seems to have credence, despite the fact that the descent stage of the LEM is actually visible on the moon surface!
A mission to Mars seems equally unlikely now and as the extent of the known solar system seems to have been routinely mapped, I ask "what now?". What can possibly stir the collective curiosity of tbe public in the same way that the moon shot did? An oddly shaped asteroid recently blasted through the solar system, barely raising a scientific eye brow and causing only a brief mention on the news:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42053634
Cassini's vast trove of information about the Saturnian system is routinely meted out on Twitter, with utterly breathtaking images of ice fountains on Enceladus and enormous hexagonal polar vortices on the parent planet, vying for attention and losing out to piano playing cats and vitriolic rhetoric about Donalds Trump's hands.
Its a shame that the excitement and wonder of space travel has been rendered into a comic book trope and a movie meme. I was really annoyed to see the utterly ridiculous rescue scene for Princess Leia in the last Star Wars epic, which flew in the face of all natural physical laws, even in a universe which upholds the presence of a supernormal 'force'. Even more oddly, the franchise then goes on in the latest Han Solo epic to redress George Lucas' famous gaffe about 'parsecs' in a New Hope, bringing the issues of a unit of distance being used as a measure of time, firmly under control.
Perhaps the success of science fiction has satisfied the basic human desire for curiousity and shown what exists on the dark side or in the farthest corners of the universe cinematically; and replaced that need to climb atop a multi billion dollar firework and go look in person.
Hear hear! Very eloquently put, Bill, and I couldn't agree more.
ReplyDeleteAlso very scrumptious pics! I'm curious how you did the Davies-LP rocket above the Johnny Astro moonscape. :)
Cheers -- Paul
As somebody or other once said in Space:1999, the reality of spaceflight is that it's expensive. As long as we live in an era of parsimonious governments we are going to be stuck pootling about in low Earth orbit (which ought to be impressive but, somehow, isn't!).
ReplyDeleteI used to teach lessons on debunkink the moon landing hoax theories! The kids were usually relieved to discover it was real!
You echo my thoughts about space and science fiction pretty exactly; SF has become so spectacular that it is difficult for the real world to compete.
ReplyDeleteAs we all know , the bottom line is money : It's hugely expensive to sustain a long-term exploration program and government bean counters would be bleating on about the need for tangible "results" (whatever they may be ?) so sadly I think the era of State sponsored space exploration has largely ended
ReplyDeleteFenton
I fear you maybe right Fenton.
ReplyDeletePeople seem more interested in superheroes than real life space travel. Love the pics. What is the middle one of?
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree Jeremy. I'm hoping the discovery of a lake on Mars will fire the public's imagination. The middle picture by Bill is of his scratchbiult rocket based on the small one in LP plastic space toy sets in the late Sixties and Seventies. http://www.danefield.com/data/albums/userpics/10004/spex.jpg
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